For large corporations...absolutely as they'll most likely be the only ones who'll be able to afford. As for the tech-hobbyists like me...oh boy...we'll find a way. With single terabyte storage quickly advancing to multiple terabytes...I've seen 2.5 tb advertised already...how far  behind are they in actually developing a holographic representation of a...are you ready...a desktop. The WC community would go apeshit in a quick minute. Imagine trying to skin ODNT in that realm. Amazing!

     Skinners unite! Your holodesk awaits!

thats how people reacted to gigabytes in the kilobyte era too remember?

come on.. what ever happened to nanotechnology?

Been reading about how it'd come around within one year for four years now.

yess, i can finally say goodbye to my collection of windows backup floppys

THat's just how we tech hobbyist are I guess. heh heh.

Oh yeah nanotechnology is also extremely impressive and especially because of it's extremely broad level of use. Thing is, 3D optical storage would be cheaper to commercially implement than any form of nanotechnology would I'm sure. Then again, that would depend on what the nanotechnology product is being used for.

Physical media is dead. 

R.I.P

I remember when the first 1 gig HD came out. Radioshack wanted $600.00 for it. Now you can get a terabyte for about half that or less.

a microwave, which has voice recognition and instantly makes a big mac for you..

mini robots that repair damaged cells in your body...

there are endless possibilities

Ooh ooh, my favorite: 3D printers! Imagine ordering a "blueprint" off of ebay and instead of having to wait til UPS arrives, the printer "prints" out whatever item you requested. Google it. They are trying to make some headway with it. The ones I've seen so far don't use nanotechnology, but if they did gawd they'd be amazing.

actually they already have this type of printer where it can literally print 3d objects, I believe they did it once on CSI:NY for the first or second season...and scientist have actually created (and are still developing) heart valves that were printed using a special kind of printer, I remember seeing that on Discovery Channel some time ago.

They've been around for ages...

Edit: Damn it, Jafo. Here, have this link anyways. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing

From memory it's a laser scan of a resin-suspended polymer that 'hardens' on contact/focus of the laser ....so the object solidifies within a solution ...