Life as an Artificial Lifeform

There have been two development in the Technology World in the last ten years that have been fascinating to me but have never produced actual products. The first is the e-paper technology and it seems like we are closing in on final products in that department soon - I expect to replace my nonexistent wallpaper with cheap modifiable video capable e-paper in less then 10 years and play in the first club that is immersed in e-paper screens all around in five years time - optimistic I know... Anyway the second biggest unresolved problem the digital world faces is backing up millions of trillions of bytes. Well there is that new format war on the horizon that promises "up to 100 GB of storage" in the next 5 years. HD-DVD or Blueray is the question and at the moment it looks like the more storage offering Blueray has its nose in front. Then that 100GB in five years and probably more 25 GB or maybe 50 GB next year- I still would need 20 discs (and about 10 hours) to back up all my data and I have virtually no MP3 or Hollywood rips on my HD - its all self made data - and anyone doing MoPics - even in lousy DV compressed Video Resolution - not even uncompressed, HD or 2k / 4k film res - will know that those gigabyte get eaten away fast fast. So only 50 GB? Please please NOOOO. I want to back up ALL my data to something secure in one go and make two secure copies in less then an hour. The hope for me was always on holographic storage since I first read about it in 1998 or something. It sounded promising back then and it didn´t sound extremely complicated - so in 7 years not a single product has emerged. That seems about to change as the company that holds all the patents to holographic storage and has working prototypes of media and recording machines is only looking for investment so they can ramp up their production and go into large scale distribution. What are they offering? Up to 500 GB on credit card sized media or up to 1TB on initial launch on a round DVD sized media - Possibility to go up to 3.6 GB soon. Now who in the world wants to have a DRM controlled 50 GB storage device if for a similar price and size you get 20 times more? The only problem Optware - the developer of holographic storage in form the HVD and HVC (Holographic Versatile Card in Credit Card form) faces is that they need venture capital for production and they are looking for that right now in the US. I for one can´t wait for this tremendously promising looking storage technology that would finally move backup storage back where it belongs - cheap, easy and larger then internal HD. And yes caddies are a good thing if they protect my data from scratches - I was never complaining about floppy disks having a plastic protective shelf around their precious innards to protect my data.