Archive for the ages

The National Archives is quietly planning one of history's great technological feats: a super-powered storage system that will preserve government documents indefinitely for access from anywhere in the world.

The agency gave the proposed Electronic Records Archives the daunting mission to "capture electronic information, preserve it forever, and make it accessible at any time, from any place." It is set to be a Rosetta Stone of technology, accepting data in virtually any format and making it accessible to anyone who officials believe has a legal right of access. Lockheed Martin and Harris Corporation are drafting competing designs for the project, which could cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build.

This massive effort is an attempt to solve one of the National Archives' greatest problems: dying technology. As time passes, newer generations of media (from punch cards to 8-inch floppy disks to Zip disks to CD-ROMs) become prominent. As the new format takes precedence, its predecessors are set aside, making old data hard to retrieve. Aging equipment becomes harder to repair and old media tend to develop defects.

With the Electronic Records Archives, users are supposed to be able to find data accessible for generations to come, regardless of what hardware or software becomes popular.

Another dimension

Sharp Electronics unveiled a new flat-panel display that gives the computer screen a new dimension. This 15-inch display is believed to be the first consumer model in the United States that displays 3-D images without special glasses.

The new display works by splitting light coming from the screen, with different patterns going in different directions. By looking directly at the screen, each eye sees a different image, creating the illusion of depth.

The concept grew out of the medical and scientific lab, where 3-D effects aid research; now it can jazz up computer games and graphic design. The new display, which costs about $1,500, is supposed to work with new software that can generate 3-D images from conventional DVD movies or digital camera snapshots.

The high-tech industry is showing hints that 3-D displays will be more and more commonplace. Nvidia and ATI, the Coke and Pepsi of graphics chip designers, are developing products that support 3-D images. Sony and Sanyo plan to create more 3-D applications, and Toshiba has announced that it is developing its own 3-D display technology.

Bits & Megabytes