No one could have predicted that the age of computing would have heralded the age of data, or that the average person could personally own more important information than could fit on a tape. Magnetic storage drives were capable of fulfilling the data needs of most people. While tapes boasted 18 gigabytes of data, all the storage any one person would ever need in their life, adequate storage with them was still bulky and portable only in principle. Optical storage soon became popular but at an 8th of the storage capacity and without the ability to rewrite over existing data, they were hardly attractive for personal data, which was constantly changing, and were relegated to static media like industrial records and surveillance footage.
This was until the revolution of transoptive glass. This material, which could change its crystalline structure instantaneously in the presence of the correct currents and pulses led to the subsequent revolution of holographic storage media. With this, a flat disk could store data in a non-linear way, turning a 2D surface into a 3D data store. With the initial optical storage capacity of 10 gigabytes, 3D implementations of transoptive media meant 10×10 gigabytes for a whopping 100-gigabyte drive! With this, a person’s entire biometric footprint could be stored and updated, leading to leaps in identification collateral. Furthermore, each person could have a personal portable disk with all of their private information in the palm of their hand. Finally, this meant the collection of large amounts of corporate information in data warehouse shelves and the easy transmission of huge data packages on Sneakernet.