Processing and Storage

It seems to my diseased mind that we aren't nearly as far along with technology as we think we are.

Now we have our 1-2 TB Hard Drives and I just read last week about disks that can go up to 10 TB. My first reaction was like wow that's a lot until I remembered that once I thought 10 MB was a lot. My first computer was a commodore 64 - that bitch had 64K of memory available. My computer here has 4GB of memory so it literally had 1/65,536Th as much. Thinking about the size of my commodore 64 I could probably fill my house with the things floor to ceiling twice to get the same amount of memory as I have now - and then where would I put my chair? Definitely sub-optimal.

So what I have now is definitely an improvement. But can I record every satellite's feed from space? Not even close. I bet 10 TB wouldn't fit a millisecond from all the satellites in orbit pointing downwards at us here on the old green.

As for my processor, I might feel pretty psyched about having a 4-core processor but for perspective tens of thousands of machines link up to do the bidding of folding@home and study proteins folding over the course of a nanosecond and that shit takes months. One day I will be able to do that on my own box. In the background while playing a game. As I download the satellite feed of New York to watch some event aerially.

Show me that computer and I will be impressed. But only if I can browse with a nuclear mouse.