Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Art of Celebrating Life

I read this article about researchers being able to store ‘E=mc2 1905' in a bacterial DNA. Genetic material is becoming the biological hard disk. Bacteria will be the future thumb drives, USB drives and what not.

You don't need to take backups any more as bacteria replicate themselves in no time you will end up with multiple copies of the same data. No need to burn DVDs or backup on tape drives any more!!! Bacteria on an average need 20 mins to divide. So the bottom line is once in every 20 mins you can double the number of your backups!!

Human ChipMy thoughts then went even further!!

Bacterial backup are biodegradable, no need to worry about disposing unwanted data!!

What’s more striking is the thought about storing one’s private information. No need to store your private info in any external device anymore. Because there is always a risk that somebody might steal the device, say your mobile memory or your hard disk or a DVD.. So I thought why not instead store the info in bacteria and then store the bacteria within us.

Humans have a great variety of oral bacteria in our mouth. They are harmless and always stay there, except that if you don't brush properly they will increase in n folds and will cause a bad breath!

So cant we store all our personal info in these oral bacteria!! This storage seems to me a lot more safer option than storing our personal info like credit card details, passwords, bank account numbers, social security data etc in some external device.

But you are at a risk even while you brush, somebody might be waiting down the sewage line hunting for your oral bacteria! Spitting becomes a risky business.. A better way out would be to encrypt the data in the bacteria so that only you can decrypt it..

Store the decrypting key, where else, in your brain!!

Source: ToI