CDs when they came were cool, you could store 600+ MB of data, portable, light-weight, more reliable than floppies and good looking (unlike ugly tapes). Soon we wanted more and got DVDs, which can store 4.7GB on one side and mass produced industry-strength DVD’s can double that capacity by writing on both sides.
The two big concerns I have on CD/DVDs, are that:
1) They are not bio-degradable, the chief raw material that goes into making one of these shinny beauty’s is “black“ oil
2) To destroy a CD/DVD that contains my sensitive data is very difficult and dangerous; you can break a CD/DVD but you have to extremely careful that it doesn’t cut your skin.
Last week I saw a major announcement that solves both these problems. Sony on April 15th, announced a paper-made disc that can store 25GB!. It is based on Blue-Ray and the disc is made of more than 50% paper, so can be recycled. It can be easily cut with scissors to destroy it permanently.
Read more on this from Moore’s Lore (a blog that takes daily look at new implications of Moore’s Law in real time).