Exponential growth...

It's funny how these things go, but for no real reason, I've had nearly the same conversation with any number of people recently.

If you know me at all, you won't be surprised to know that the conversation was based on what I like to refer to as the 'tech world,' and more specificly, storage capacities.

I remember back in the dim days of my 1st semester of college I bought a Mac Plus which came with a staggering one meg (yes that says meg) of RAM.

I felt like I was a God.

Well, a Demi-God at least.

It took a while before I really needed a hard drive, as at the time I could fully boot and install system software and run Microsoft Word from a single 800k floppy.

I know, right?

So, time goes by, and I finally get to the point where I need an external hard drive. I sold some comics (yes i was one of those guys) and made more than enough to buy a...wait for it.....

20 Megabyte hard drive. At the time, I remember thinking what a gargantuan drive this was, and how I'd never be able to fill it up...

Well, flash forward to now, what, 20 years later, and I routinely leave the house with 12 gigabytes on me. Just in case you're wondering, it breaks down like this: I have a 2 gig micro card in my phone (27k+ photos left), a 2 gig SD card in my camera (1100+ photos), and my smokin hot USB drive, which is 8 gigs.

I'm sure some of you know that this kind of growth rate was 1st postulated by Gordon E. Moore. If you look it up on wiki it says: 'For any exponentially growing quantity, the larger the quantity gets, the faster it grows.'

If you're more of a visual learner, the green line below represents exponential growth:




It's that whole doubling thing again. There's a theory being bandied about that lends some ominious overtones to the growth rate. It's also the basis of the Terminator and Matrix Universes.

We build a better machine, it's just *that* much smarter than us and decides it no longer needs us.

That's pretty much the beginning of the end.

But, that's not what I came here to talk about.

Pops and I took a walk today, obstensibly so I could buy a couple RCA y-adapters, but also to get Pops some excecise. He headed to the store, and I the Radio Shack in the same parking lot. I got my cables, and headed over to meet him.

I found him in the meat section (thats what she said) looking at a truly remarkable price. Pork shoulder roast, shrink wrapped and well sealed for 88 cents a pound.

There was some hemming and hawing (we were walking remember) but we finally decided that we needed to get some. I mean, it was just too cheap not too. Well, we bought not 1, but 2 packages. I wasn't worried about carrying them home. I've carried bundles of firewood home from the store.....

Well, it wasn't bad at all, really, and I can now truthfully say that I've humped 30 pounds of pork.

Buenos con queso,

T.