DNA encoding - the future of archiving?

[Zerui]

A few months back I raised the knotty question of archiving large collections of photographs for posterity. Most responses dealt with the short term solutions, like my RAID system. Nobody had confidence that any electronic system could be relied on for decades, let alone centuries.
I would be interested to hear what you think about DNA encoding, which is the subject of a scientific paper in Nature this week - and a lot of articles in the Press. The authors in Cambridge (England) seemed to have solved the problem of detecting and correcting the rare errors that occur during encoding and reading (parity bits and triplication). They point out that DNA code can be read after thousands of years, and that devices for reading DNA code will always be widely available.
The prototype archiving system reported this week is unaffordable for photographers, but that impediment is likely to disappear within a decade or so, judging by experience with the human genome project.
It sounds like a reliable archiving system for photography based on DNA encoding will become available in our time. Comments?
Goff

[BobDavid]

Interesting ... What are you smoking?

[simonstucki]

I don't know much about the recent advances but I definitely agree that DNA might be a very very save and very high information density storage system for archival purposes (and maybe more). I'm not sure if that will happen in the next 10 years, but it is certainly an interesting idea.

and no I'm not smoking anything at the moment!

[Gel]

It would be nice to think that instead of sending them their DVD you could stab them in the arm instead

[simonstucki]

It would be nice to think that instead of sending them their DVD you could stab them in the arm instead

are you serious?
the idea is not to store any information in a living thing! Just DNA in a container (what ever that might be, but definitely not something that is alive, that would be a very bad idea)

[Scott Hargis]

So, I wouldn't have to ship a blood sample to my clients?

Kidding.
Who can say what the future of archiving will be? Not me..I'm just glad I got rid of all those 8-track tapes.

[Zerui]

If you are interested in the new technique of long term archiving on DNA you can read more at http://phys.org/news/2013-01-dna-storage-million-hours-hd.html
It is coming soon.
Goff  (what am I on?  Physics! )