Pop-Sci Core77 Design Challenge/ Description MEMORY 7/16/03

Description of Design

The concept is to utilize the magnetic field of the Earth as giant, and free, hard drive. In addition to utilizing the existing resource of the Earth’s magnetism, is the concept of magnetic random access memory. Using magnetism rather than electrical power to store data has the potential to store more data, access that data faster and use less power than current memory technologies. Much like the early days of television, broadcasted images were free to those who could receive them. A free hard drive would provide information access to all. Even the most remote peoples and villages could access valuable information without an elaborate telecommunication infrastructure. Therein lies the broader social impact of such the concept. Although relatively weak, and unstable, the scale and magnitude of the Earth’s field could maintain a hold of the billions and billions of data bits. Each bit will carry a dipole configuration that will allow them to link to each other. Protocols within each bit are the glue that holds the information together once it has been retrieved from the drive via a reversed magnetic pull from the surrounding field. I like to think of this concept as "thinking out of the box" and "pushing the envelope" because we literally don’t have any boundaries such as disks or boxes, and we are using the Earth’s magnetosphere, or envelope.