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IMMORTAL INFORMATION

Can information be immortal?  Scientists at the University of Southampton (UK) say it can be.

For most of us, this claim would sound preposterous. We know that any medium we write or draw on, or encode our data on, will be destroyed over time. Heat, humidity, and chemical breakdown will rot paper. Clay tablets crumble. Stone breaks, and is eroded by the elements. Ferrous metals will rust. Celluloid melts under high heat, and decomposes as the chemicals that form it break down. The substances that form our DVDs and hard drives may last longer, but they too are subject to the relentless process of decay.

Finding a truly permanent data storage medium has been one of the great quests of the Information Age. A few weeks ago, scientists at the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Center demonstrated just such a medium. It is by far the most permanent and versatile data storage and retrieval method yet.

The new storage medium is a nanostructured glass disc made of fused quartz. A femtosecond laser writes the data onto the disc. The US ORC team calls its new data-writing method “five-dimensional”, based on the three position dimensions, plus orientation and size.

Each disc, slightly larger than a U.S. quarter, can hold 360 terabytes of data. It will last for 13.8 billion years, approximately the age of the universe, at 374 degrees Fahrenheit. At room temperature, it will be nearly immortal. The molecular structure of the disc will remain stable at up to 1832 degrees F.

Reading the disc requires shining a light through it, then measuring the resulting data with an optical microscope and a polarizing filter. Experiments in 2013 proved the feasibility of this method with a 300 kilobyte file. The method has been refined since then, and now can accommodate files more than a million times larger.

It is possible now to record the entire history of civilization, without concern about limits in storage capacity, or decay of the storage medium. The Southampton ORC gave UNESCO an immortal ‘5D’ disc with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Christian Bible (KJV), the Magna Carta Libertate, Newton’s Opticks, and other important historical documents have been stored on ‘5D’ discs.

Does this mean the story of your life will be immortal? It might. Be careful how you live. Your cat videos, your social media posts, your financial records, and your behavior at bars may be preserved for future generations to puzzle over.

It isn’t just glory that could live forever. Embarrassment could, too.

(Do you have enough bandwidth for your data needs? Talk to us. We can find the plan that works best for you.)

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PRIVACY AND THE WEB

The internet has been a huge benefit for most of us. It opens up nearly the entire store of the world’s knowledge to us, and it enables easier and faster communication. It comes at a huge cost, though: loss of privacy.

Your browser tracks your website visits in order to help advertisers identify your interests, so they can more easily identify the pitches you will respond to. Your posts on social media, and tags by others about you on social media, can live on forever, despite your best efforts to suppress them.

Some of the more prominent browser operators and social media sites have attempted to limit damage to personal privacy. There is only so much they can do, though. Parties determined enough to find and publicize the information can usually do so.  When Google attempted to comply with the European Union’s 2014 “Right to Be Forgotten” law, the British Broadcasting Company aggregated and reposted the links to its own stories that the search engine had delisted. The State of California enacted an “eraser button” law for minor children. Under its terms, minors are guaranteed a means to erase their social media posts, but the law can’t keep others from disseminating the information in them.

Any technical fixes may reduce our vulnerability, but they don’t eliminate it. Last June, Google expunged links to revenge porn from its search engine, and deleted the information in them. This makes revenge porn much more difficult, but not impossible. YouTube’s “face-blurring” tool can prevent being tagged by facial recognition apps. This is especially useful for participants in public gatherings, such as political demonstrations. It won’t prevent publication on other social media sites, though. And a person whose face has been blurred can still be identified by clothing, posture, or other distinctive features.

It would be unrealistic to expect to be forgotten on the internet. The best we can hope for is obscurity. Once your information is online, whether posted by you or others, you can’t control who sees it. With some prudence and a few technical fixes, though, you can shield yourself from casual spies. Only the most motivated, persistent, and technically savvy can find what you’re hiding.

To some, this will be cold comfort. For most of us, though, it will be enough. Take a few simple steps to guard your online privacy, and you probably will be fine. Use complex passwords that will be difficult to break. Disable tracking cookies on your browser. Be careful about the websites you visit. Above all else, remember your mother’s advice: avoid doing anything in a public venue you don’t want the whole world to know about. Be especially wary where cameras are likely to be present.

If you have ever been online, your privacy won’t be absolute. With a few basic precautions, though, you should be able to avoid serious problems.