Over the last 60 years, computers have become a transcending component of the human experience. Computers were once novel, misunderstood, mammoth-sized, greasy machines available to only governments and the wealthy. Today, they are an omnipresent force and indispensable component of our lives. In bio-mechanical fashion, these machines are rapidly becoming extensions of our physical bodies. With the recent evolution of artificial intelligence, one could argue that this could be defined as a symbiotic relationship.
This article will focus on one particular way these devices complement our lives: long-term data storage, or the biological equivalent of the hippocampus.
Birth of the Turing Machine: War & Innovation
The first true modern digital computer was created during World World II by Alan Turing; a project bankrolled by MI6 and approved by Winston Churchill, which was crucial to the Allied victory. If you've seen The Imitation Game, than you can skip over the next two paragraphs.
During the second great war, the Germans encrypted all radio communications with an enigma machine; a device which utilized an early, brilliant form of one-time-pad encryption, functioning very much like modern public-key cryptography. The enigma, with it's millions of possible settings and genius implementation of OTP encryption, allowed messages to be sent via shortwave AM radio all over the world; interceptable by anyone with an AM radio kit, yet decryptable only by those whom had the keys -- in this case, the Axis forces.
Allan Turing, a forward-thinking, misunderstood, brilliant man recruited by MI6 understood that in order to feasibly break 67-bit encryption (that's impressive - for a device invented in 1918. To put this in perspective, today we use 128 - 256 bit encryption to reliably keep our data secure), he needed to build a machine to do it. Thus, the digital computer, or "Turing Machine" was born. Of course, there were earlier implementations of the digital computer -- the distinction here is that Allan Turning developed the Turing Cycle; today represented as assembly code. Assembly is the lowest level of machine code; utilized by central processing units to this day:
Input > [Python/C++/Java/Ruby/Node/Etc] > C > Assembly > Processor > Output.
Omnipresence & Essence
Today, computers are a very essential component to the human experience -- perhaps even the prime component of the next phase of human evolution. Computers consist of a few key components: input devices, processors, temporary storage devices, long term storage devices, and output devices. This article will focus on the problems with long-term storage mediums, and how they may be mitigated.
Flash-based storage technology is beginning to replace not only hard disc drives, but even the need for human memory. This has been both very liberating and problematic for humanity.
Imminent Failure
"If you don't have at least three copies, you don't own it" -- Anonymous
Fact of life -- Discs fail, all of the time. When this happens, people are often surprised, angry, and depressed. I've lost countless memories due to a lost hard disc that contained three years of my best professional photography. I should have learned this lesson then.
Every disc will fail, eventually. The average life span of a modern solid-state drive is about ten years, but I did recently have a brand new m2-sata SSD die on me after only six months. My ill preparation for this incident ended up costing me a tremendous amount of money because I had a couple of Bitcoin wallets on that computer that I was unable to recover. I should have been able to recover those funds. I thought that I taken all of proper precautions. These were electrum wallets, and the seeds (backup codes) were stored in both an encrypted master password storage database and a notebook.
The trouble was that I had not made a copy of that database, and the backup code I had written down on paper was destroyed when I somehow spilled water on one of my notebooks. This is one example of why you should always have at least three copies of anything digital of value to you -- and in multiple locations. If the recovery phrase is stored on the same disc as the wallet, and the disc dies and you do not have another copy, then you are SOL.
Example II: One day, a couple of summers ago, I took my ex girlfriend to Boston for the night. Before I left, I created a new wallet on my cellular phone (a brand new OnePlus 5T) and deposited a few thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin on it. I tend to overestimate how much money I will need for a given occasion as I tend to be slightly obsessive when it comes to preparation. I did write down the seed to this wallet somewhere...
After renting bikes and riding around the city for a couple of hours, my ex and I were drinking Patron straight out of the bottle on a sketchy dock on the Boston Harbor while looking at pictures I had snapped that night of our adventure. Suddenly, she dropped my phone into the ocean (accidentally, I believe) ... and that, as they say, was that. Right after this happened, she fell into the harbor, and then I fell in as well while trying to help her up, destroying my electronic cigarette, a nice sports coat I had just bought, and some other things I cannot remember.
Fortunately -- or so I thought, I had booked our hotel room before this happened. Soaking wet, shivering, and drenched, we made our way to the hotel. Needless to say, I was not particularly thrilled with her. To make matters worse, she smoked cigarettes in the hotel room. I got a knock the following morning from security, and they informed me that I had to either pay a $200 cleaning fee or I would be arrested. Normally this would not have been an issue, but thanks to my lost phone, I had no way to deposit any money onto my Visa Bitpay card. After a few hours of trying to figure out how to take care of this mess, I got lucky and the hotel staff decided to give me 24 hours to pay the fee before filing a police report. After leaving the hotel, I went straight to the cell phone store and bought a new phone. It was awful. I was 27 years old and had to have my Dad temporarily add me to his phone plan so that I could get a new device.
I never did find the backup code to that wallet. Total damages of this incident as of today, factoring in the Bitcoin that was still on that phone are well above $5000.
The moral of these stories is to always, always have at least copies in multiple, secure locations of anything digital that you intend to keep. A waterproof notebook is a good investment. Wet paper does not do anyone much good. A fireproof safe is also a good investment -- I have not personally suffered the aftermath of a fire, but it doesn't take much imagination to see how this could be completely applicable here. It turns out that planning for failure is not "dumber than regular planning" (a quote from Rick & Morty).
Conclusion
- For personal data such as photographs, music, literature, and documents, I would advise using an encrypted cloud-based storage service such as mega.nz in addition to keeping a local copy of your documents on an external hard disc. You can grab a decent 4TB external hybrid solid-state/mechanical disc on Amazon for less than $100. Do not keep this drive plugged into your computer all of time. Instead, periodically synchronous your files and keep your backup disc in a secure location.
- Anything monetary or security related such as cryptocurrency or two-factor authentication recovery codes should be written down on waterproof paper and stored in multiple locations; at least one of which should be a safety deposit box (Consider stenographic means of data storage for monetary recovery codes if you do not trust the bank [wise of you]) or equivalent.
- Get in the habit of doing weekly backups of all of your files. You can configure your computer to automatically synchronize your files to a remote service for you, and this is great -- but it is also important to remember that there is no "cloud" -- it's just someone else's computer. This is why it's important to encrypt any data stored remotely. You should also be aware that sometimes even the most scrupulous service providers make mistakes, and your data can be lost. This is why it's important to have a local backup as well. You want a copy that is in your control.
It's a hell of a lot easier to deal with these inevitable failures before they happen in a precautionary fashion than it is to scramble after the incident occurs. Trust me -- I have lost years of music, photography, earnings, etc ... don't learn the hard way.
