What goes around comes around - store your data on paper?

[cowtown]

This is fascinating stuff. For the non-geeks, Blu-Ray is a high-density optical storage format, like DVD but with 4-6 times more capacity. It looks like the discs might well be made from paper!

From The Register :

From the nation that brought us literally paper-thin walls and Origami, the ancient art of paper folding, comes the world's first optical disc made largely out of paper. Researchers from Sony and the Toppan Printing Co. have created a Blu-ray disc based on the material, the pair announced yesterday.

The two companies mixed plastic and paper to create a cheap 1.1mm opaque disc substrate. On top of that sits the recording layer then a 0.1mm-thick transparent protective cover. Overall, some 51 per cent of the disc is paper.

...

Hideaki Kawai, head of Toppan's corporate R&D division, highlighted a fourth benefit: data security. "Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it's simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc," he said.

It might even be edible.

The prototype disc - the result of a year-long research project - is capable of holding 25GB of data. Details of the production process will be announced next week at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference held in Monterey, California.

Volume production is a long way off, but Sony and Toppan said they were committed the develop the disc for commercial implementation. ®