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If you're still using USB flash drives, and would like to pay £50 (USD $59) for a single 16GB stick, here's the designey solution for you. This is the Empty Memory Transparency USB stick:
Because your average USB flash drive looks like this on the inside…
…you might wonder how the heck they made this transparent. It isn't, it's a visual trick. Each unit is stainless steel, and the storage end of it has been polished to a mirror finish, giving the visual impression that it's transparent. (*Correction: Sharp-eyed readers have pointed out that the transparent portion is, in fact, transparent acrylic; it appears the chips have been shrunken and stowed inside the metal portion. Thanks to Damian, Dan and Scott for the spot.)
"Each design contains a physical emptiness in its sculptural form," the company writes, "giving the metaphor that you can fill the space with your own memory." I think the memory that would stick with me most, is that I spent ten times the price per gigabyte.
I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.
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A Seemingly Transparent USB Memory Stick
Yeah they make them tiny nowadays. This product looks like a tiny USB with an superfluous block of perspex. Pretty though!
HAL memory drives in '2001' were clear like this - you can see them in the deactivation scene -
"…you might wonder how the heck they made this transparent. It isn't, it's a visual trick. Each unit is stainless steel, and the storage end of it has been polished to a mirror finish, giving the visual impression that it's transparent."
I don't think Rain read the copy on this closely enough...
"it's a visual trick. Each unit is stainless steel, and the storage end of it has been polished to a mirror finish, giving the visual impression that it's transparent."
Noted and corrected in the post! Thanks all for spotting it.