Information technology would become even more ubiquitous but, also, almost invisible. It would use a fraction of the electricity as a typical PC or laptop and generate so little heat that data center exhaust would no longer be sufficient to heat a small village or cook a turkey in just hours.
The devices would save money and store data more reliably (except for the inevitable DNA mutations and resulting superheroes made from live data).
If they become practical, DNA microchips--or, less likely, holographic or other optics-based storage media--will do more than just shrink our hard drives. They'll change the way our computers look, where and how we take them with us, how we use them, how we structure the physical spaces of our workplaces, the IT infrastructures that feed data to us and the budgets, headcounts, specialties and roles of the IT people making it all work.
DNA-based data storage is unquestionably one of those stories you see and assume you'll see it about the time you put your first real jetpack or flying car in the driveway. It's the kind of story you read and think "Cool," then forget about.
I don't think that will be the end of it, though.
The endless march of miniaturization has us all programmed to expect smaller, more powerful computers in more innovative shapes every couple of years. Every once in a while there's a big development--like virtualization--that produces a serious change in the number of physical boxes that pack corporate data centers and the to-do lists of the IT people who work there.
It's an attractive and oft-repeated thought that storage, like all components of computers, can be miniaturized to the point that "the computer" largely disappears, except for the accessories we use to make the data bits dance.
That's more than just a bit of futuristic nonsense, though. It's a concrete expectation, and, with this report on the incredible density of storage in DNA microchips, it's one that we could start planning for already.
Think virtualization and cloud changed the way your IT shop is physically laid out? The way the staff is organized? The number of times you have to go touch a machine to make it work right? That's nothing. It's a change of paint, a rearrangement of the deck chairs in the sauna-like atmosphere of the data center.
Shrink your storage down far enough, and you're no longer limited by the size of your hard drive or the capacity of your solid-state drives. You're limited only by your imagination and the need to do something useful with the square miles of heavily climate-controlled, highly secured, empty spaces in what used to be your data centers.
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