DVD.” However, he warned, such molecules could also be affected by light in the environment; he calls for further research into molecules whose chirality is easy to induce, but which are stable in the natural environment.

Petr’s group also explored the possibilities of storing information in mixtures of chemicals that are essentially dormant until a certain event occurs, such as exposure to oxygen; then, its messages would become apparent through the resulting reaction, possibly by forming 3-D structures. According to Petr, “It is a lot like cooking; you open the fridge, grab something, and cook it. You have taken information from the fridge, where it was in stasis.”

Nature Always Wins

In an episode of the animated comedy series “Futurama,” a time traveller finds himself separated from a friend by nearly a billion years. The one in 3050 A.D. strategically damages the ceiling of a cave; the pattern of her laser blasts causes dripping water to spell out a message in slowly growing stalagmites, which her friend in 1,000,000,000 A.D. reads. This fanciful scenario underscores a real-world truth: successful long-term storage solutions must take nature into account, and work with it.

The field continues to explore materials both human-crafted and biological, while also examining how nature has passed messages through the ages thus far. For every piece of data a geologist, geneticist, or archaeologist deciphers, there is a potential revelation of how that message was written, how it survived, and whether we might use a similar method.

The media and storage methods we choose could make an enormous difference in the legacy we leave behind. As Human Document Project co-creator Andreas Manz said, “We believe that our ancestors were cave-men, particularly in Europe, because we found fossil bones and paintings in caves. Now, humans at the time would probably rather live in a nice, cozy valley with wine grapes and the lakeside and whatnot than in a cave, but if they die in those locations that are nice and sunny, then those bones will not survive; you do not find fossilized bones along the road or in the forest, only under very special conditions. So the information we have is biased by how the information is stored.”

 

Further Reading

de Vries, J.

(2013). Energy barriers in patterned media.

Doctoral thesis, University of Twente.

Elwenspoek, M. C.

(2011). Long-time data storage: relevant time scales. Challenges, 2( 1), 19-36.

Petr, J., Ranc, V., Maier, V., Ginterová, P., Znaleziona, J., Knob, R., & Ševčík, J.

(2011). How to Preserve Documents: A Short Meditation on Three Themes.

Challenges, 2( 1), 37-42.

Church, G.M., Gao, Y., and Kosuri, S.

(2012). Next-generation digital information storage in DNA. Science 337.6102: 1628-1628.

Rothenberg, J.

(1998). Ensuring the longevity of digital information. International. Journal of Legal Information, 26, 1.

Tom Geller is an Oberlin, Ohio-based science, technology, and business writer.

© 2014 ACM 0001-0782/14/05 $15.00

and be passed on to offspring through natural reproduction. According to Church, “We have already put our synthetic DNA into a living organism. Every time the message-carrying cell replicates, it does not know where the synthetic part begins and the natural part ends. You could essentially design selfish DNA with your message, in which case almost all the progeny get it.”

Even so, Church believes “dead” DNA from archaeological sites might be a better data-storage bet than such “ living” DNA. “Some DNA information has survived for three billion years,” he said, “but that DNA had information of great importance to the survival of the species. Your message, if it is an arbitrary message, will not be of great importance to the cell, and so will not last as long.”

On Chemicals: Active,
Sleeping, and Awakened

DNA is of the chemistry of life, and as such participates in the cycles of birth, reproduction, and death. Other chemicals are comparatively stable in nature, leading a group of researchers at Palacký University in the Czech Republic to consider two other ways we might encode information in molecules.

The first involves chirality, or “ handedness,” wherein certain molecules can be expressed in left-hand (S) or right-hand (R) forms known as “ enan-tiomers;” these could take the place of ones and zeros in digital documents. According to lead researcher Jan Petr, “We have examples of chiral molecules in our bodies, and they are stable for millions of years. The synthesis of chiral molecules can be induced by light, so it would be much like writing a

 

ACM has announced the names of this year’s recipients of two of its most prestigious awards.

The A. M. Turing Award, ACM’s most prestigious technical award, is given for major contributions of lasting importance to computing.

This year’s ACM A. M. Turing
Award is being presented to
Leslie Lamport, a principal
researcher at Microsoft Research
Silicon Valley, “for fundamental
contributions to the theory
and practice of distributed and
concurrent systems, notably
the invention of concepts such
as causality and logical clocks,
safety and liveness, replicated
state machines, and sequential
consistency.”
The ACM-Infosys Foundation
Award in the Computing
Sciences recognizes personal
contributions by young
scientists and system developers
to a contemporary innovation
that, through its depth,
fundamental impact and broad
implications, exemplifies the
greatest achievements in the
discipline.

This year’s ACM-Infosys
Foundation Award is being
presented to David M. Blei of the
computer science department of
Princeton University,
“for fundamental contributions
to artificial intelligence,
in particular the development
of topic models and
their applications.

Communications will provide in-depth coverage of both award recipients in upcoming issues, beginning with interviews with Lamport in the June issue.

— Lawrence Fisher

Milestones

ACM Bestows A.M. Turing, Infosys Awards