Data Storage & Retrieval

I remember using floppy disks. Not only that. I remember feeling pretty good about myself. You know? The cutting-edge-technology-feeling and all that. The parents were still writing in Diaries – pah!

Then, CDs came along and all the ‘important documents’ I had on floppy disk were not transferred to CDs. I don’t miss them anymore, so I guess they weren’t that important. At first, I dismissed these little things till I started missing the important things too. Like this wonderful video of the daughter, when she was about a year and a half or two years old. She could sing this poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘When at home alone I sit’

When at home alone I sit
And am very tired of it,
…
High o’erhead the Bumble Bee
Hums and passes.

I remember wondering what she was jabbering about till I caught hold of 3 or 4 words in the poem that weren’t entirely masked in baby-tongue and my heart swelled like a balloon. I pulled the proud-parent-act and promptly recorded it to show her children. I used to sing it to her every now and then, but I had no idea she had memorized the whole thing. That video is sitting in some tape somewhere that I can’t access anymore.

Of course, books as we knew them for the past 500 years is changing too. The e-books have wormed their way into our way of life.

Then I read this news article about how scientists encoded an entire book onto a DNA strand. How are we extract the contents out of a DNA strand though?

http://www.zdnet.com/harvard-scientists-encode-an-entire-book-onto-dna-7000002879/

Now that is something that is really interesting……can I infuse my DNA with the book and hope that the part of my brain that fuzzily recorded the little daughter’s song in my head would merge and help me when I retrieve the book?