CDR Sam

Putting Down Roots in Data Storage

September 13, 2009 | Data Storage

As computers were a revolution in themselves, data storage and analysis will be the next revolution.   I’m referencing Google’s great book scanning project.  It’s mind boggling to consider the information that will be available (by reference) and then the implications to researching human written thought.  The vision of the old great library of Alexandria that once contained all the ancient written  knowledge.  The somewhat mysterious end to the collection by first Julius Caesar and later by successions of burnings.  Not everyone appreciated great learning it appears or highly careless in the case of Caesar.

This time around knowledge is being stored in the form of digital bytes instead of papyrus and the intent of some search engines is to make it all available via search on the Internet.  This is not the current state of affairs with the Internet by far.  There are millions of web sites with varying states of authority (trustworthiness determined by algorithms) giving the searcher some rough indication of source but the system continues to be exploited by  a certain bred of advertisers to drive traffic to their lairs.

I was reading “Why We Buy” by Paco Underhill and Paco mentioned that one of drawbacks of the Internet is it has no organization to it.  He skipped the major influence that search engines and directories have been trying to achieve.  What’s more he really skipped over the point of libraries in the first place, or closer to home for him: the brick and mortar store.  We seek information and organization.  Information does not exist in itself as a pure force.  We seek information.  Be it at a store, print or on the Internet.  The game  changer for the Internet is the concept of search.  You can search for answers (or more questions then answers).

So this is where data storage is taking us.  In order to realize the the full potential of search everything needs to be digitized and stored.  Data centers are the new Alexandrian libraries spread across the United States, Europe and Asia.  Companies and individuals store their data on-line or ‘in the clouds’.  Storage needs increase and data storage adds another terabyte or petabyte to the equation.