From Matthew Stevens, Sydney, Australia
The widely reported news of a method of storing large amounts of data in glass is welcome when ever-larger quantities of data are being generated every day. And a medium that will remain intact after many thousands of years is a vast improvement on the ephemeral magnetic media we still use. But it is naive to imagine our descendants will be able to read the stored data. Already, being able to read data from floppy discs is restricted to the few specialists who maintain old disc drives. Our descendants are going to puzzle over the pretty rainbow patterns in the pieces of glass we leave (28 February, p 13).
