Who Comes Up With This Stuff?

So I found an article from the Wall Street Journal about decoding books into DNA.  Basically, someone decided to take a digital copy of a book and translates those ones and zeros into pieces of DNA.  The article is much better at explaining how they did it then I am, since I still don't understand how things work once they're in binary, much less in DNA.  But, apparently the space of someone's thumb could hold the entire internet.

Now, this is a very cool idea.  However, apparently it takes several days to transcribe it, and much longer to re-form those strands into a book.  I don't understand how they can do this, since DNA is sooo tiny.  But, someone much smarter then me has figured it out, and so now they can put literary information onto blank strands of DNA.

The better question seems to me to be, Why?  Okay, so now you have a book on tens of thousands strands of DNA.  So, why did you do this in the first place?  Just because you could?  I think we are doing perfectly fine with printed books.  If you want to read books from a computer screen or Kindle, that's fine, although I probably won't join you.  But what on earth possessed someone to say, "Oh, I want to read my book from a DNA strand today?"

Yeah, I understand that we're supposed to be improving ourselves and our technology all the time.  I wouldn't mind keeping things going at a slower pace, but that's just me.  I was born in the wrong century.  This is just crazy, to think of reading something through some complicated process that gets it off the DNA and into print.  But, hey, I suppose nothing will ever be lost again.

So, another article to think about.  Enjoy.