- Nov 29, 2012
- 258
- 0
- 76
Yesterday I watched Johnny Mnemonic for the first time.
It was amusing to hear storage references. At the time, 320GB of storage in a brain implant (you dump some of your current brain capacity, and fill it up with digital storage so you can smuggle data) was so much storage in the eyes of the writers that it completely maxed out that brain implant to the point of "seepage" in which case you will die from information overload.
I did the math using a chart showing the storage costs in 1995.
Basically, in 1995, 1GB of storage cost about $1,000.
Today, you can get a 3TB HDD for only $100; or 30TB for $1,000.
Thus, storage costs today in 2013 compared to those in 1995 are about 30,000 times greater.
Essentially, if Johnny Mnemonic were not made in 1995 but were made today in 2013, and supposing the writers have an equivalent imagination to what is considered "a hell of a lot of storage", then the 1995 equivalent of 320GB of storage in 2013 would be (320 x 30,000) approximately 10 petabytes (10,000GB)!
I thought it would be cool to share this movie reference with you guys, and my calculations updating the storage capacity of the brain implant to have the same viewer's effect (so you think something like, wow that's a lot of storage to put in your brain!).
It's interesting to think, in less than 20 years, standard storage capacity has multiplied about 30,000 times!
And an interesting fact, 20 years from now it may be exponentially higher! Because Seagate already announced last year that 60TB hard drives will be available soon! [SOURCE]
Another interesting fact about the movie, in 1995 the movie was created and the plot was set in 2020. That means in 1995, they thought that by the year 2020, 320GB of storage would be A LOT of storage!! But yet, here we are, almost 10 years early, and 100 TIMES higher storage than they imagined we would have almost 10 years from now!
It was amusing to hear storage references. At the time, 320GB of storage in a brain implant (you dump some of your current brain capacity, and fill it up with digital storage so you can smuggle data) was so much storage in the eyes of the writers that it completely maxed out that brain implant to the point of "seepage" in which case you will die from information overload.
I did the math using a chart showing the storage costs in 1995.
Basically, in 1995, 1GB of storage cost about $1,000.
Today, you can get a 3TB HDD for only $100; or 30TB for $1,000.
Thus, storage costs today in 2013 compared to those in 1995 are about 30,000 times greater.
Essentially, if Johnny Mnemonic were not made in 1995 but were made today in 2013, and supposing the writers have an equivalent imagination to what is considered "a hell of a lot of storage", then the 1995 equivalent of 320GB of storage in 2013 would be (320 x 30,000) approximately 10 petabytes (10,000GB)!
I thought it would be cool to share this movie reference with you guys, and my calculations updating the storage capacity of the brain implant to have the same viewer's effect (so you think something like, wow that's a lot of storage to put in your brain!).
It's interesting to think, in less than 20 years, standard storage capacity has multiplied about 30,000 times!
And an interesting fact, 20 years from now it may be exponentially higher! Because Seagate already announced last year that 60TB hard drives will be available soon! [SOURCE]
Another interesting fact about the movie, in 1995 the movie was created and the plot was set in 2020. That means in 1995, they thought that by the year 2020, 320GB of storage would be A LOT of storage!! But yet, here we are, almost 10 years early, and 100 TIMES higher storage than they imagined we would have almost 10 years from now!
Last edited: