The guguniverse is a work of speculative fiction exploring the problem of “peak storage”, – the point at which we run out of space to store new information – and its social, political and technological consequences.
Latest Entries
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A short history of the guguniverse
About 12 years ago, I realized that not only are we creating huge amounts of information every day, but that this amount increases exponentially, roughly doubling every two years. This shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with technology, where similar growth trends have been observed, in things like transistor density or the size of software. And it…
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Lagging behind reality
The expansion of History didn’t happen without glitches. During its first years, the Human Data Corporation found itself unable to fulfill its promises of worldwide reach. It turned out that their software developers had been too optimistic, underestimating the processing power needed to build History. Immense data centers, designed to process the information from entire…
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The right to be forgotten
History would not be worth much, if it didn’t register everything, everywhere. That included, of course, people. While being seen and heard all the time was for some a dream come true, for others, it was hell. The Human Data Corporation added some privacy protection to History, but it only restricted its replaying, that is,…
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The beginning of History
Peak storage is unavoidable, but humanity doesn’t seem interested in curing its addiction to growth. What can be done about it? In the year 2035, a group of scientists and engineers, concerned about the economic and political consequences of peak storage, founded the Human Data Corporation. Maybe it’s not possible to avert peak storage, they…