The Economist
The price of computation today is roughly one hundred-millionth what it was in the 1970s, when the first microprocessors became commercially available (see chart). According to figures collected by John McCallum, a computer scientist, a megabyte of data storage in 1956 would have cost around $9,200 ($85,000 in today’s prices). It now costs just $0.00002.
About GilPress
I'm Managing Partner at gPress, a marketing, publishing, research and education consultancy. Also a Senior Contributor forbes.com/sites/gilpress/. Previously, I held senior marketing and research management positions at NORC, DEC and EMC. Most recently, I was Senior Director, Thought Leadership Marketing at EMC, where I launched the Big Data conversation with the “How Much Information?” study (2000 with UC Berkeley) and the Digital Universe study (2007 with IDC). Twitter: @GilPress
