A couple of years ago, I converted all of my old VHS-C tapes to DVD — 24 DVDs in all.  Now I’m starting stage 2 of the process of converting all of my video tapes — the miniDV collection.  Estimated storage required for raw video capture is 300 GB.  Today the approximate cost per GB is 8.21 cents (about $25 for this project).  3 years ago (where the collection ends), the cost was about 3 times higher.  While still practical to do 3 years ago, it amazes me to think about how much storage costs have dropped.  When I first bought the mini DV camera (1999), the cost of per GB was around $16 — putting the total cost of this project at about $4800.  This site has a great history of the cost of storage.

I find it interesting that most of the books that I enjoy the most in the “Science Fiction” category are really not “Science Fiction” at all.  I’ve really enjoyed reading Zero History by William Gibson (not quite done yet!) and the other two books in the series.  While the publisher marks them as SF, they clearly aren’t.  There’s nothing really speculative about these books from a science perspective.  It reminds me of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, also categorized as SF but really just high-tech fiction.  And so my question is — who and what else should I be reading that falls in this category?  These aren’t quite suspense or spy novels, but they really resonate with me.

This seems like a pricing problem.  Look at the price of this book compared to the paperback.  Why are bits more expensive than atoms?  This is not a game — this is just unfortunate, especially for those of us who prefer our media in electronic form.