An informative video regarding data storage...

[KGIII]

I would ignore any predictions made about new technology. New and inventive ways to store data are predicted constantly and very few of those predicted technologies come into play.

Interestingly, he brings up the Beckenstein Bound. To properly understand this, you may need to first understand that there's a field of thought in which information is matter. It's called 'information thoery' and a pretty interesting topic - especially at the philosophy level. You can read more about the information theory here:

Information theory - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

To understand that information is matter (and carries all the observed traits about matter), one might look toward Hawking Radiation, which is now an actual theory with the weight of observation behind it. Of course, black holes are not easy to study. Still, starting there will give a good foundation to the 'information is matter' understanding.

No, this doesn't mean that all information is immediately available. That's not how that works. Information can easily be lost to humans but it remains in the universe. It can be hard to wrap your head around this but basically you can think of information having many traits with thermodynamics.

So, ignoring any predictions made about future storage...

He's not even remotely the first to mention DNA. DNA as storage has been bandied about for a while. But, he's a YouTuber. He's got to do YouTube things.

As for DNA as storage...

DNA digital data storage - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So, I'd ignore the DNA bit. It's not useful for enjoying the video. The good part is in the intro.

 

[Mike-BTU]

DNA fascinates me. 4-bit error-correcting memory!

 

[theLegionWithin]

DNA fascinates me. 4-bit error-correcting memory!

downside: it mutates over time and eventually becomes something else entirely.

 

[KGIII]

downside: it mutates over time and eventually becomes something else entirely.

That there is how you get cancer. It can be as simple as a well-placed photon knocking a chunk of DNA off and then that DNA replicating. It's one of the reasons why we'll probably never have a cure for cancer. (There's no such thing as 'a' cure - 'cause there are a whole lot of types of cancer.)

We humans share something like 99.9% of the same DNA. There's really very little between us other than a small bit of a small section of DNA. We also share more DNA with a banana than we do with primates. Modern humans, those not of African descent, share up to 4% of their DNA with Neanderthals.

It is indeed interesting stuff. If we could use it to store data, that'd be neat. However, I wouldn't hold my breath. Newer and better storage methods are proposed all the time. It's sort of like how there's always a new battery formulation coming out and it's supposed to be better than anything we already have. Sure, that does happen - but it doesn't happen often when compared with how often it's proposed. (A part of this is horrible science journalism.)

A decade ago, they were sure we'd be using crystals for storage (en masse). That has been done in a lab setting, of course. Otherwise, they would probably not make those claims. There are people still working on the idea, so it might happen. They claim that a small crystal (using '5D') will store hundreds of TBs worth of data. It'd amuse me greatly if they turned out to be the next ZipDisk.