Storage equivalent of 1995 to 2013 from movie reference Johnny Mnemonic

szvwxcszxc

Senior member
Nov 29, 2012
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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)!

johnny_mnemonic_1995_1.jpg


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:
Feb 25, 2011
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Biggest HDD in 1995 = 9GB (that I could find a reference to. The Micropolis MC191AV - One of those 5.25" monsters.)

Biggest HDD today = 4TB.

So, not 30,000. More like ~450x

And let's not forget Star Trek and their "Kiloquads."
 
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AnitaPeterson

Diamond Member
Apr 24, 2001
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I loved that film, it's an honest cyberpunk thriller, and a worthy precursor to "The Matrix". And the Japanese Director's Cut edition was even better, because it added much more detail, and cut off some of the schmaltz at the end.

Even the prologue text is drastically different - and much more prescient:

"New century. Age of terminal capitalism.
The armored towers of multinational corporations rise above the ruins of the democracies that gave them birth.
Soldiers of the Yakuza defend them.
Hackers, data-pirates, LoTek media rebels are the enemy, burrowing like rats in the walls of cyberspace.
A new plague convulses the cities: Nerve Attenuation Syndrome, incurable, fatal, epidemic, bringing fear and misery as old as the species itself.
But the most precious data is sometimes entrusted to elite private agents, wetwired to function as human data banks.
Mnemonic couriers."

I mean... doesn't the above describe the world we're almost living in? Sure, it's still the NSA, instead of a private corporation (Yakuza), but aren't we living in an age of terminal capitalism (yes, there's a double meaning to it)?

These being said, upgrading (sic!) the storage capacity of the story, to bring it in line with the reality of 2013 (I won't even speculate about 2020!) would also require a massive change in the plot. Because 320 GB in 1995 might have conceivably included the entire research into a pharmaceutical cure, but if we're now talking about (at least) 320 TB, which is too large even for an Encyclopedia Galactica...

So what would Johnny carry in such an upgraded storage? What could conceivably take so much data? (please don't answer "all the pr0n in the world"!)... I think there's only one thing that would make sense, and would also tie things up neatly:


The First Matrix
 

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
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Also, I think your costs are off. I distinctly remember buying a 1 GB hard drive in 1995 and it was between $300 and $400 IIRC.
 

AdamK47

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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It wasn't $1,000 for 1GB of storage in 1995. It was about 1/3 of that.
 

KingFatty

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2010
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You could definitely make use of the extra space when you start thinking about how to store super-fine details. Think uncompressed 4K or 8K video, and then expand that by orders of magnitude when you think of something like a 3D video or holographic display.

Also, now with 3D printing, you got much bigger files to store all the data, but then expand that orders of magnitude when you are specifying cook books of 3D printing with molecular recipes detailing things down to individual molecule or atomic scale.

So yeah, you can find a way to fill up vast amounts of data storage, just how much detail do you want?