From ALEXANDER BERELIN
Robin Harbour, in his “Is the pen still mightier than the sword?” (Forum, 3
September), raises the important problem of possible sabotage of
electronically stored data. When almost all personal, scientific, historical
and cultural data are stored in erasable and easily modifiable form, there is
a serious threat of losing them all in case of any world-scale calamity.
Harbour points out that the potentially most dangerous bottleneck is the
complexity of our electronic means of reading and writing, such as computers,
networks, optical discs, etc. What we need is a viable alternative to both
electronic (sabotagable) and paper (too bulky) ROM storage forms, such as can
be relatively easily accessed by simple devices like ordinary (light)
microscopes or (preferably) by unaided eye.
Reliable robust, easily reproducible, but difficult-to-change means of
information storage suitable for mass production (individual “Libraries of
Congress”) can undoubtedly be developed. Ten years ago I proposed isotopic
information storage as one possible candidate (A. A. Berezin, Speculation in
Science and Technology, vol 7, 1984). In an otherwise periodical crystal
lattice, various isotopes of the same chemical element can be used to store
information through their relative positioning (similar to codons in DNA). Is
there anybody else to suggest further ideas?
MCMASTER UNIVERSITY, HAMILTON, ONTARIO
