Note: Unfortunately the research paper linked in the article is a dead/broken/wrong link. Perhaps the author will update it later.
From the limited coverage, it doesn’t sound like there’s an actual optical drive that utilizes this yet and that it’s just theoretical based on the properties of the material the researchers developed.
I’m not holding my breath, but I would absolutely love to be able to back up my storage system to a single optical disc (even if tens of TBs go unused).
If they could make a R/W version of that, holy crap.
A big part of the problem is that most consumers don’t want to own things either. Subscriptions are exactly what too many people want.
I think even that goes back around to business interests. We can’t store that many physical copies in shrinking, expensive housing. Digital purchasable media is somehow just as expensive despite having tiny manufacturing and logistical costs, on top of being unreliable due to DRM.
Subscriptions so far seemed like a better value proposition but between splitting and vanishing libraries, increasing prices and the addition of ads, that’s becoming more questionable. Even average people aren’t so thrilled of having to subscribe to a dozen different services to watch, listen and play what they want.