Ritchie and Roser published a 2023 study on Our World in Data.
Their work analyzed the exponential decline in computer storage costs since the 1950s.
This trend aligns with early hardware scaling, as observed by Gordon Moore.
Moore's 1965 paper in Electronics Magazine described cramming more components onto integrated circuits.
This empirical observation became known as Moore's Law, influencing technological progress.
Examples
- The cost of solar PV modules has also seen significant price reductions.
- Battery prices have similarly experienced a notable decline over time.
- The cost of sequencing a human genome has fallen dramatically since 2001.
- Internet transit pricing per Mbps also decreased substantially from 1998 to 2015.
Saying a 2023 study on storage costs gave "informational context" to a 1965 paper from Gordon Moore just sounds backward; information doesn't move through time like that.
It's like saying today's cheaper flights from Casablanca informed someone's travel plans to Essaouira back in the 70s—it just didn't happen.
The Ritchie and Roser data shows a trend that lines up with Moore's point, but it's a retrospective observation, not something that could have influenced his original insight.
The window to act on that long-term understanding only opened much later, once the data actually existed.
You can't use future information to explain past actions.