From Madhav Badami
The BBC reminds us that Moore’s Law marks its 40th anniversary. The law is named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel. Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors on a computer chip would double every 24 months. People thought that this rate of speed couldn’t be maintained but it has.
In the original 1965 article Moore also predicted home computers as one of the uses for these chips:
He had forgotten about it until a young engineer came to him with the idea to build a home computer, while he was chief at Intel.
“I said ‘gee that’s fine but what would you use it for?’.
“The only application he could think of for it was the housewife putting her recipes on it, and I didn’t think that was going to be a powerful enough application.”
The irony is rich. Our (masculine) global economy is fueled by a feminized technology.
More on Moore
Recipes were and probably are the only information in any sort of categorized and ordered order in most households. Of the few things I know how to make, they’re all typed up and saved on my computer. Maybe the engineer wasn’t that far off.