OK, now you all have me absolutely confused and determined to stick with the ol’ 3 1/2 plastic magnetic disk – which will probably self destruct by turning into dust in about 10 years.
It would not surprise me if large scale data storage went to paper, as a previous poster mentioned, because the curse of paper books turning yellow and into dust is a current ‘technology.’ To make the paper more quickly and cheaply, sulfuric acid is added to the pulp mix and linen is left out. What comes out is volumes of cheap, perfectly usable paper – which contains a tiny amount of acid. In about 10 years, that acid starts breaking down the paper fibers. (Anyone have any paperbacks from the 70s? I’d guess that the pages are starting to get brittle and/or yellow around the edges.)
Good paper is available, but a bit costly. It’s made without acid, has linen fibers in it from things like old blue jeans, cotton waste, milling lint and so on. Sometimes flax is added. It will last, with a little care, for about 100 years, maybe more. Ages ago, pre-disk era and pre-dime novel, people with books handed them down through generations and they had to mainly worry about little worms eating through the text - (the REAL book worms) - or termites or mold.
Parchment (thin, cured sheets of lamb skin or sheep skin) lasts even longer with some due care.
BUT, now days, BIG BUSINESS, cares little for prosperity and churns out millions of tons of acid soaked paper, which will eventually self destruct. There currently is an expensive treatment for precious but acid drenched texts to remove the acid and stabilize the paper, involving something like a small pressure chamber and a mixture of gasses. Museums use it.
Now, go back to lasers and ons and offs and pits and dips and corrosion and not corrosion and masters and johnson or whatever.