Visual Memory: Storing “The Entire History of You”

Will BOZIC

Abstract


This paper investigates the plausibility of the video recording achieved by the bionic grain depicted in season one, episode three of the TV series Black Mirror. The grain grants the wearer the ability to record all sight and sound experienced through their eyes and ears respectively. Initially the storage required to record all visual information as if captured uncompressed by the human eye, for the average lifespan of both a female and a male was calculated. This was determined to be 6.65x109 and 6.37x109 Terabytes respectively. The physical volume required to store this using the most efficient hard-drive currently available was then investigated and compared to the volume of the grain. It was determined that when uncompressed and compressed the volume required was 1.18x1011 and 5.34x109 times larger than a grain for a female and 1.13x1011 and 5.11x109 times larger for a male respectively; thus showing the impossibility of this design given the deficit in current storage technology.


Keywords


TV programme; Physics; Biology; Lifespan; Digital storage; Black Mirror

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References


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