I was contemplating the vast amount of storage needed to house the world wide web.
Giant halls of servers thrumming endlessly.
But just how much space will these servers need as the number of users explodes into trillions over the coming decades?
How much energy will it take to keep these towering hives of wires cool?
Will we one day see colossal farms of storage encrusting the Moon or colder more-distant bodies and planets? Grand larders powered by the sun and cooled by space?
Gerry Anderson could never have predicted the World Wide Web [or at least I don't think he did] but had he then data storage could well have been a crucial role for his various world protectorates and space fleets.
My own favourite, Project SWORD, could well have found itself setting up and guarding the globe's mega-servers on data farms spanning colder worlds like Ceres or Io.
Massive satellites would harvest the flow while city-sized space stations would offer respite for SWORD personnel and the re-fuelling of sentry craft at the far edges of the system.
How would data sentinels look? How would SWORD web farmers and storage miners be transported? Which craft would be needed in the fleet?
As we contemplate this and other gargantuan puzzles we may well gaze at the grandeur of Gerry Anderson's titles for ETERNITY and seek some counsel there.
What do you think readers?