Rainbow Format: Missing the Point
January 29th, 2007
You may have heard about a new way of storing data- 256 Gb (~54 DVDs) on a single sheet of A4 paper, using colors and geometric shapes. Known as the “Rainbow Format,” does it sound too good to be true? Well, maybe…
TechWorld has a scathing article on why they think the technology is a hoax. While some of their objections are technically complicated, others are ludicrous and miss the entire potential of the Rainbow Format. For example, their last point:
14. Paper problems Paper distorts and inks fade so the long term storage potential is strictly limited. Paper also burns and can get torn which also restricts the method’s usability. Paper can be folded which would distort the represented information in the area of the fold.
What they fail to mention is that to date, paper-esque storage is our most reliable storage medium. We’re still reading texts that are thousands of years old. In comparison “archival” CDs claim to have a lifespan of merely 75 years. Not to mention the concerns that the 1s and 0s on those CDs are meaningless unless you have the proper format and tools to read them. Archival paper, on the other hand, can easily last hundreds of years, and needs no tools to decipher the contents, although a Rosetta Stone may come in handy.
A lot of TechWorld’s article (and the view of the tech community in general) seems to evaluate this as a replacement for hard drives and DVDs. Wrong! Obviously, a paper-based storage format would be horrible for conditions where the information needs to be read millions of times, and changed. If nothing else, changing paper is a mechanical process which will always be slower than the magnetic/light techniques we use to change information on hard drives and DVDs.
Instead, this format should be viewed as a revolutionary step in the process of archiving. With huge concerns as the Library of Congress digitizes their entire collection, due to the physical space constraints, in order to house all their documents, the Rainbow Format offers a new chance to preserve information in a lasting form. As long as we’re sure to intermingle Rosetta Stone-esque pages in with those in the Rainbow Format, we’ve given future historians a fighting chance.
To put it in more real-world terms, a 256 GB piece of Rainbow formatted paper could hold the contents of 50,000 Bibles. Let’s say, in the end, the Rainbow Format can only hold 0.00002% of its’ original storage claims: that’s still an entire Bible on a single sheet of paper. Now we’re looking at some serious space savings.
January 29th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I remember the TechWorld article, but never thought about it like this – what a tremendous idea! This is open-source, I assume? Let’s archive all of Vestal’s documents this way – I’m always worrying about data integrity in our CD/DVD archive.
Imagine 50,000 bibles. Hell, if we imagine the Bible to be an average sized book (I’d say conservatively), you would need only 400 pages to store the entire collection of books at Yale University’s library: the sixth largest library in the world. That would fit into a single book! You could carry the entire Yale library around in one volume! Though you couldn’t read it yourself.
January 29th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Dave – I think irony of this loss of perspective is even more nicely highlighted when you look at the source article that the TechWorld links to: “Data Can Now Be Stored on Paper”. And who says history doesn’t repeat itself!?
January 31st, 2007 at 9:21 am
This is a fascinating technology, but the problem I have with your example is that this is not a human-readable format. The Rosetta stone has to be more than just that – it has to be a means of extracting data, not just translating it.
As a librarian, I appreciate the irony, but I also recognize TechWorld’s point – paper tears, it discolours and it rots. It’s one thing to have 10pt black lettering on it, but quite another to have tiny machine-readable symbols. Now, if we can develop a more durable, damage-resistant paper, I think we have a chance…
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Um, how about just printing thepaper in fade resistant ink maybe chemically treat it with something like art fixative to prevent fading, laminate it and just keep it out of the sun?