Over the past five years, my storage needs have grown at a faster rate in comparison to all other technological needs (computers, gaming, consoles, phones, laptops, etc.). At first, I didn’t realize just how large applications and games had become just to install. I didn’t even take in updates and patches for consideration to the overall size. Add that with ISO (CD/DVD) images, installation executables, pictures, music and video files I had kept; my storage capacity slowly began to vanish.
It wasn’t until I considered not only software had grown substantially, but the number of devices that can capture video or images has exploded via phones and tablets. All these generators of media are prominently in everyday life. Five years ago, mobile phones did not all have cameras but today all mobile phones have a camera. It stands to reason that the opportunity to capture images or any information is growing faster than the storage that contains it.
So with this proliferation of devices in everyday life, the need for central storage becomes apparent to those when free storage space on whatever device has become practically non-existent. Digital storage is treated like most of life’s amenities: you use it with no regard to it’s finite and fragile nature until something goes wrong.
What do people need with all this storage? Well, frankly, anything we want. Storage is a luxury and a necessity. Right now, for most people, I’d argue storage seems more of a luxury, but I’d bet within the coming decade, that luxury will turn into dire necessity. Currently, free social services like Facebook, Google+ are mitigating the storage nightmare to come, but sooner or later, between the harsh bandwidth caps of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and privacy rights or lack thereof, people unknowingly want larger local storage.
Where do we go from here? We know our problem (or soon to be problem) but what is our solution? Where do we start? I’ll follow up on this in my next article in our series.
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