The Future is NOW

The future is now. The future is glass.

Microsoft's Project Silica is like something out of a science fiction film. If Microsoft manages to make the vision work as intended, data would be stored on glass. We're not talking a bay window sized glass; we mean something more around the size of a drink coaster could hold 1.75 million songs. As in, several terabytes of data.

Microsoft's Silica team is working with Elire to harness the power of glass storage for Elire's Global Music Vault in Svalbard, Norway. Why does this matter? It may be more sustainable than even the mysterious cloud storage (which is essentially just paying for space on a different computer that you don't own or see). Glass is a recyclable resource that can be found naturally and can be generated with relatively low impact to the environment, especially when compared to the processes that create other current storage methods. In addition, glass would be more sustainable than more common data storage tools, as glass does not have a 4-7 year shelf life like a computer or a thumb drive. Even the best SSDs are designed to last for around a decade before they need to have their data transferred to another device.

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