Paper may soon replace DVD’s as the storage medium of choice if the ‘rainbow technology’ developed by Indian computer scientist Sainul Abideen proves viable:

Files such as text, images, sounds and video clips are encoded in “rainbow format” as coloured circles, triangles, squares and so on, and printed as dense graphics on paper at a density of 2.7GB per square inch. The paper can then be read through a specially developed scanner and the contents decoded into their original digital format and viewed or played. The encoding and decoding processes have not been revealed.

Using this technology an A4 sheet of paper could store 256GB of data. In comparison, a DVD can store 4.7GB of data. The Rainbow technology is feasible because printed text, readable by the human eye is a very wasteful use of the potential capacity of paper to store data. By printing the data encoded in a denser way much higher capacities can be achieved.

Paper is, of course, bio-degradable, unlike CDs or DVDs. And sheets of paper also cost a fraction of the cost of a CD or DVD.

256GB, scratchproof and foldable.. excellent stuff!

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