Choose one of the resources above and write a 400-word analysis that addresses the following issues:
What is the potential for the future of an organisation you are familiar with?
What impact might the future have on us as information professionals?
Would you be surprised if I told you that there were 6000 tweets sent a second? Would it surprise you even more that there were 350,000 tweets sent in a minute? What about 500 million tweets in a day, or a billion in a year? (Sayce, 2020). The Worldwidewebsize estimates the size of the internet is growing daily, with the current indexed websites (websites that are search engine visited and analysed) sitting at 5.27 billion pages. This is a massive increase from 4.59 billion pages, when this article was written back in 2018.
So what does this mean for information professionals? And what does the future of storing information hold? The answer will surprise you (if you didn’t read the title of the blog). Now, I won’t leave you with suspense for too long. That answer is DNA. Now you’re probably thinking, how can you store information onto DNA? In laymen terms, information can be stored by “translating” data into the letters GATC which forms the chemical compound of DNA then the DNA is sequenced back into data (Goldman et al., 2013). Sounds confusing? It sure is!
If you want to learn more about how DNA data storage works, check out the site below by the Wyss Institute at Harvard University.
DNA Data Storage (harvard.edu)
As information professionals, our job is to store, collate, and provide access to information to the general masses for their use and their consumption (ALIA, 2020). As information is increasing online at astronomical levels, the need to revitalise how information is stored is being developed, and thus, this technology is still in its infancy (de Groot, 2018).
So why do this? Let’s look at the Bettmann Archive, located deep underground in a limestone mine part of a facility named Iron Mountain (Schultz, 2020). 11 million photos now part of Getty images are stored in cool, dry temperatures, effectively storing history (Schultz, 2020).
(The Bettman Archive. Source: This Vast Photo Archive Is Hidden Inside a Cold, Heavily Guarded Limestone Mine – Atlas Obscura)
If we were to store 5.27 billion web pages in physical form, we would probably need to dig deep into the Earth’s crust and store them at optimal “temperature”, where they get at least a thousand views a day to stay relevant! All jokes aside, what this could mean for the future is the evolution of libraries where instead of storing books, DVD’s, articles etc., we could be storing defunct web pages across labyrinths or DNA coded information containing your favourite GIFS and memes. Terry Pratchett had it right in one of his Discworld books. Maybe his imagination wasn’t so far of the mark after all?
References
Australian Library and Information Association. (2020). Foundation Knowledge, Skills and Attributes relevant to Information Professionals working in Archives, Libraries and Records Management [Fact sheet]. http://www.alia.org.au/open-access-resources/policies-standards-and-guidelines/foundation-knowledge-skills-and-attributes-relevant-information-professionals-working-archives
de Groot, J. (2018, January 5). The libraries of the future will be made of DNA. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-libraries-of-the-future-will-be-made-of-dna-86274
Department of Health. (2019). The flu vaccine: Your best shot at stopping the flu [Fact sheet]. https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/the-flu-vaccine-information-for-consumers-in-2019-fact-sheet_0.pdf
Goldman, N., Bertone, P., Chen, S., Dessimoz, C., LeProust, E. M., Sipos, B & Birney, E. (2013). Towards practical, high-capacity, low-maintenance information storage in synthesised DNA. Nature 494, 77–80. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11875
Sayce, D. (2020). Number of tweets per day in 2020. David Sayce. https://www.dsayce.com/social-media/tweets-day/
Schultz, I. (2020, May 11). Photo Archive Is Hidden Inside a Cold, Heavily Guarded Limestone Mine- Over 11 million Getty images are on ice near Pittsburgh. Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hidden-photo-archive-mine
I to read the “The libraries of the future will be made of DNA” and I kept thinking was “wow just wow”. The technologies of the future could see all libraries storing information in may many different technologies. Could DNA be our best option to store information for the future? It truly is mind boggling, but as information professionals adapting to technologies is our way forward.