Okay... Let's take a closer look, shall we?
Frankly, I'm not even going to read that whole thing
Is it really
that long? xD
because there is no point after seeing you say "As soon as you appeal to real-world physics and existing tech." <...> Zootopia in Sunderance is more advanced than we are <...> And frankly, saying that "If it can't be done with today's real-world tech, it doesn't belong" is like saying that Star Wars is a bad series because we haven't developed Light Sabers or Hyper-Drive yet.
we have already developed this exact technology. It simply hasn't been implemented yet.
I'm not really complaining either. There are tons of much worse unrealistic (in terms of science, not reader perception) tech moments in movies that serve little to no purpose, while here I see several reasons to draw an optical disc instead of a flash drive.
The second quote is what I have been replying to. I was not trying to say anything from the first quote. The third is what should have made that clear, and also where I said that I don't mind artistic license. One thing that annoys me is applying artistic license for no good reason, like characters typing whole texts without using spacebar at all, and it's not the case here.
And the fact that you had no idea that Li-Fi even existed until I told you proves that you are no expert on what is and is not existing tech anyway.
It proves nothing. One cannot know everything. (Also, Li-Fi is more or less
PON over the air, and I knew how PON works for a while.) I bet you didn't know that
Holographic Versatile Disk already existed as a prototype with 3.9TB capacity per DVD-sized disk, and expected limit is 6TB. The thing is, you need precisely positioned lasers and sensors close to disc surface to read any existing optical disks, and I tried to explain why remote reading would be too hard for how pointless it is.
Did I <...> think to go into full detail on the technical specs of a piece of technology that would literally change the world of computing as we know it? <...> If I could do that, I would just design the thing myself and be richer than Bill Gates.
I don't think it would change the world, It's kinda pointless. Also, I think you skipped a few steps in the end. Like actually building the thing, making it actually work, making it work reliably, making it mass-producible... Those things tend to be more complex than expected and are what usually chokes new tech. Knowing how something works
in principle may help estimate the limits of technology, but it's not nearly enough to make anything work. I know how a fully 3D holographic display could work, and I know for a fact that it
can be made real in less than a decade, but I'm highly skeptic that they really will be prototyped that soon, let alone commercially available, and at best I will take part in it as an R&D member at Samsung for example because it would cost a crapton of money to actually build anything, and it won't even work well for the first few prototypes.
As for "nitpicking future tech", you may notice that I said nothing about your holograms yet. And I wasn't intending to, since they are "realistic" in terms of reader perception, and are most certainly a proper use of artistic license. You can read how existing holograms work on Wikipedia or elsewhere, and I'd rather use the name "volumetric display" for what you call holograms. Something similar already exists, too. Only no one has any idea how to make such air-based volumetric displays do anything with light that reaches them, like reflecting or absorbing it, and the only current way of emitting light in "normal" atmosphere is creating small balls of plasma... Noisy and really, really hot balls of plasma. Nick-would-be-fried-and-dead-when-Jack-approaches kind of hot. But I'm not complaining, because who cares? Not me at least.
I only wrote about the flash/optical disk inconsistency because I thought it was a mishap, even if intentional. Then I replied because scanning an optical disc with phone camera seemed like the kind of explanation that characters often invent on the spot for comic relief, usually receiving "You're fucking with me?" reply (or just the look), optionally followed by "Nope" and "Whatever". And next I replied to your "
we have already developed this exact technology" because we haven't and are unlikely to.
And about my mind being "
obviously-stuck-firmly-in-the-present", one cannot be more wrong. I'm just trying to avoid baseless expectations. I eagerly await for Brain-Computer Interfaces to become more powerful and available. I can't wait to put my hands on an AR headset that looks like actual glasses and not a brick on your face. I believe in AI and fully expect multi-TB-sized SD cards and fully 3D displays all over the place before the end of the century. Worldwide high speed broadband through thousands of tiny low-flying satellites is something that might turn out to be economically feasible. I hope that warp drive will be built, but probably not in my lifetime, while I'm pretty sure that graphene-based space elevator will be there in a few decade's time. Actual useful quantum computers are gonna happen, and relatively soon.
Oh, and somewhere in my mind is the idea that our physical world might be just a computer simulation. The Big Bang is exactly how I started my "universe" when I tried writing simulators a few times, and computation optimizations would explain nicely both quantum entanglement and why larger-scale attempts at building quantum computers fail due to loss of coherence. If only we ever managed to hack that simulator from the inside...