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TED Talks Daily

How we can store digital data in DNA | Dina Zielinski

TED Talks Daily

TED

Creativity, Ted Podcast, Ted Talks Daily, Business, Design, Inspiration, Society & Culture, Science, Technology, Education, Tech Demo, Ted Talks, Ted, Entertainment, Tedtalks

4.111.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2019

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From floppy disks to thumb drives, every method of storing data eventually becomes obsolete. What if we could find a way to store all the world's data forever? Bioinformatician Dina Zielinski shares the science behind a solution that's been around for a few billion years: DNA.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This TED Talk features bioinformatic scientist Dina Zylensky, recorded live at TEDx Vienna 2017.

0:10.8

I could fit all movies ever made inside of this tube. If you can't see it, that's kind of the point.

0:19.4

Before we understand how this is possible,

0:22.6

it's important to understand the value of this feat.

0:27.6

All of our thoughts and actions these days,

0:29.6

through photos and videos, even our fitness activities,

0:33.6

are stored as digital data.

0:36.6

Aside from running out of space on our phones,

0:39.3

we rarely think about our digital footprint.

0:42.2

But humanity has collectively generated more data

0:45.4

in the last few years than all of preceding human history.

0:50.5

Big data has become a big problem.

0:54.0

Digital storage is really expensive,

0:56.0

and none of these devices that we have really stand the test of time.

1:02.0

There's this nonprofit website called the Internet Archive.

1:05.0

In addition to free books and movies,

1:08.0

you can access web pages as far back as 1996. Now, this is very tempting,

1:14.5

but I decided to go back and look at the TED website's very humble beginnings. As you can see,

1:21.4

it's changed quite a bit in the last 30 years. So this led me to the first ever TED back in 1984, and it just so happened to be a

1:31.7

Sony executive explaining how a compact disc works. Now, it's really incredible to be able to go

1:40.1

back in time and access this moment. It's also really fascinating that after 30 years,

1:48.0

after that first TED, we're still talking about digital storage. Now, if we look back another 30

...

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