Two-photon optical data storage

The generation and application of information is rapidly evolving from text and graphics based to multimedia based, and it will shortly continue to evolve to virtual reality. The evolution between these stages introduces dramatic increases in the amount of data associated with the applications. For example, where text-based meeting notes have given way to emailed copies of vugraphs, future meeting documentation may require storing and communicating an entire collaborative virtual reality session. Even in the near term, the need to store, search for, and edit large numbers of images and digital video clips will drive data storage requirements forward in home, office, and network arenas, as shown in Fre 1 .