
Cost of iPhone X in 1957 - lsh123
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/09/do-they-really-say-technological-progress-is-slowing-down.html
======
nopinsight
Having a billion transistors is not 10 times as useful as 100 million
transistors. The diminishing return kicked in even before that. Unless a
killer application needs a billion transistors, the value created over a
previous iPhone is incremental.

I think a better way to measure value is

    
    
       invention's cost effectiveness = price / (time * improvement to well-being)
    

The denominator is how much the invention makes our life better as measured by
(the amount of time * the extent it helps).

By this measure, smartphones are not bad but probably lose out to the
Internet, washing machines, and air conditioners/heaters in hot/cold climate.
Google is a pretty big improvement over older search engines and is worth
quite a lot although the price we pay as privacy is not obvious.

~~~
dwaltrip
> Having a billion transistors is not 10 times as useful as 100 million
> transistors. The diminishing return kicked in even before that.

I think this is far more difficult to evaluate than your comment admits.

More transistors -> more software that can do more things, written by
developers with a wider range of skills, in a society with increased tech
permeation, and so on...

~~~
Retric
The trade off is usually ~same functionality but better graphics. Compare
Office 1997 with Office 2017 and the average user sees a very modest
improvement relative to how much better of a computer you need.

~~~
marpstar
Another thing is that users also have a lot more applications running in the
background, calling servers, caching data, disk I/O.

------
abtinf
Offtopic: The second of the three pictures at the bottom of the post, the one
with the big yellow circle monitor looking thing, is a radar monitoring
station. It was meant for long shifts, requiring dedicated attention from a
soldier. In support of that purpose, it has a built in cigarette lighter and
ash tray.

The picture is from the Computer History Museum. Well worth a visit.

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SAGE_Weapons_Directo...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SAGE_Weapons_Director_Console_at_the_Computer_History_Museum.jpg)

~~~
t0mek
Other quite interesting item in this museum is a former ballistic missile [1]
that after its retirement started an academia career as an university,
general-purpose computer [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman)
[2]
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/108786967@N03/29376655486](https://www.flickr.com/photos/108786967@N03/29376655486)

------
duhast
Comparisons like that always assume the that price is constant with increased
demand even when world GDP is spent on something. What would likely happen is
first the price would go up and later down as the world manufacturing would
shift to vacuum tubes production.

~~~
Houshalter
Yes if a government started buying trillions of vacuum tubes, companies would
quickly get much more efficient at producing then and there would be a huge
investment into researching alternatives.

But that brings up the question, what tech could we be subsidizing today so we
can get it faster?

~~~
oliveshell
Nuclear fusion.

~~~
freeflight
The US is participating in the ITER project [0], that's pretty much as good as
it get's right now unless a country starts their own, very expensive, project.

[0]
[https://science.energy.gov/~/media/fes/pdf/DOE_US_Participat...](https://science.energy.gov/~/media/fes/pdf/DOE_US_Participation_in_the_ITER_Project_May_2016_Final.pdf)

~~~
majewsky
There can be benefits to running multiple projects in parallel. For example,
there are at least two competing reactor designs (tokamak and stellarator)
where we (IIRC) still don't know which one is more promising. ITER is a
tokamak, whereas Germany (which also participates in ITER) has a research
stellarator in Greifswald, the Wendelstein 7-X.

------
captn3m0
Trying to answer the following might be fun as well: How much is a 1000 USD
from today in that era in terms of purchasing power? What could you have
bought with the equivalent amount of money, and how many people could have
afforded the iPhone equivalent then?

~~~
oceanswave
According to saving.org, 111.42. According to
[http://www.earlytelevision.org/color.html](http://www.earlytelevision.org/color.html)
a 21" color tv in 1955 was $755 1955 dollars... or more than 6 iPhones.

This site seems to have more prices of goods
[http://fiftiesweb.com/pop/prices-1957/](http://fiftiesweb.com/pop/prices-1957/)

A cheap ford car was $1879 or 17 iPhones.

Kinda holds as a cheap ford today is around 14k

~~~
ro_sharp
It's probably important to also consider these prices against the wages at the
time.

~~~
TheGRS
It lists average income: $4,494

------
ZenoArrow
The factor that many seem to have overlooked with the $1000 price of the
iPhone X is that, if it proves successful, it sets a precedence for future
smartphones.

The spec improvements of the iPhone X do not line up with the accompanying
price increase. Even by iPhone standards it's an expensive device. If you
justify the price increases you're just telling Apple you're prepared to be
short changed when the iPhone X's successor comes out.

~~~
frou_dh
The name X (10) kinda reinforces this. As in, "Don't expect next year's
standard priced iPhone (nominally the 9) to be as good as this."

~~~
ZenoArrow
You misunderstand. The iPhone X is the new flagship line. Next year there's
most likely to be an iPhone 9 and an iPhone X2, though considering Apple's
naming strategy it'll probably be called something like 'the new iPhone X'.

~~~
frou_dh
They pronounce it "ten" so you expect them to say "ten-two", or "the new
iPhone ten" year after year?

~~~
ZenoArrow
My point wasn't about the name but about the new product line. iPhone X is a
new product line. Apple have made fundamental changes to the user interface.
The iPhone 9 would be the successor to the iPhone 8. Whatever name Apple comes
up with for iPhone X's successor, it's almost certain to keep the new 'all
screen' interface.

~~~
frou_dh
Well I'm sure it's Apple's intention to not give up a super fat margin after
establishing it. It remains to be seen whether in the medium term the market
would keep its enthusiasm for a "legacy" iPhone range which becomes implicitly
old and busted in the shadow of the "real" iPhone and competitor products.

~~~
ZenoArrow
My argument is not that Apple is looking to lose their fat margins, my
argument is that they're looking to extend those margins.

The iPhone X almost certainly higher margin than the iPhone. My argument was
that if consumers tolerate the $1000 price this time, they shouldn't be
surprised to see future high end phones at similar prices.

------
deepnotderp
It's unfair to point to one exponentially increasing technology and use that
as an index for general technology.

On the other hand, it's interesting they choose to use the semiconductor
industry as their example because progress _is_ slowing in the semi industry
due to the laws of physics with respect to standard CMOS and innovative
rescues in either architectural form or through novel device physics are very
unlikely due to industry's glacial pace and apparent allergies to innovation.
A field that scorns young entrants is bound to die someday.

~~~
pg314
> glacial pace and apparent allergies to innovation

Glacial pace? It followed an exponential, doubling the number of transistors
every 10 months for 40 years. You would be hard-pressed to come up with
another field with the same pace of innovation and progress. The amount of
innovation they had to come up with to sustain that, is staggering.

> A field that scorns young entrants is bound to die someday.

What nonsense. Who will produce your chips then?

~~~
deepnotderp
> Glacial pace?

Try to make a chip, you'll quickly realize that your challenges will be
primarily non technical in nature. It wasn't always this way, the semi
industry was once incredibly innovative and open to new ideas, and that helped
drive exponential progress.

>Who will produce your chips then?

I meant "die" to mean stagnate as the common euphemism in tech.

~~~
pg314
> Try to make a chip, you'll quickly realize that your challenges will be
> primarily non technical in nature.

I studied microelectronics. I am aware of the technical challenges. Can you
explain those challenges that are primarily non-technical?

> It wasn't always this way, the semi industry was once incredibly innovative
> and open to new ideas, and that helped drive exponential progress.

Things like Silicon-on-insulator, high-k dielectrics, finfets, extreme
ultraviolet lithography are not innovative or new ideas?

~~~
deepnotderp
> I studied microelectronics. I am aware of the technical challenges. Can you
> explain those challenges that are primarily non-technical?

We spent far more time buying EDA software, installing it, talking to
foundries, getting the PDKs, signing NDAs, dealing with buggy EDA software,
dealing with slow EDA response times, etc. than actually working on our chip.

>Things like Silicon-on-insulator, high-k dielectrics, finfets, extreme
ultraviolet lithography are not innovative or new ideas?

I'm not saying they aren't, but I have noticed that the general level of
openness, and following that, innovation and open-mindedness has dropped
dramatically in the past decade or so, and I do have to say that the general
semi industry has stayed generally innovative, and much of my criticism is
directed towards the rest of the industry primarily. That being said, there is
a major glacial pace.

Example of a real conversation I had with an engineer at one of the major
(can't name the exact one) foundries about a device that's actually pretty
close to reality:

Me: "Why don't you use this X device?"

Him: "Because it's still research"

Me: "Sure, but it's very promising, why aren't there at least any industrial
research efforts to commercialize it?"

Him: "Because it's still research"

Me: -__-

SOI is innovative, but it's been held back by cost and the self-heating
effect, both things that really aren't that much of a problem.

FinFETs were launched by a DARPA initiative.

High-k dielectrics I will say are the single most interesting (if not
innovative) innovation in the last decade in the semi industry, although I
have some bias there.

EUV is a feat to engineering no doubt, but again, my grievances aren't really
focused in that area.

------
DigitalJack
24 MHz? I can’t make that work with a simple typo...

~~~
morganvachon
Maybe not a simple typo, but with two errors it's plausible. The iPhone X's
A11 CPU is supposedly slightly faster than the A10, which is 2.3 GHz. So,
place a decimal between the 2 and the 4, and change the M to a G, and you have
a reasonable figure.

------
c3534l
For 150 trillion you could research how to make a smaller and cheaper
transistor.

~~~
zhte415
That's what happened

------
userbinator
...and yet, even with all this computing power, simple tasks like loading a
webpage full of text still take ridiculously long times.

Maybe not with a '57 vacuum tube (transistors actually existed at the time
already) computer, but then there's this:

[https://hubpages.com/technology/_86_Mac_Plus_Vs_07_AMD_DualC...](https://hubpages.com/technology/_86_Mac_Plus_Vs_07_AMD_DualCore_You_Wont_Believe_Who_Wins)

The massive increase in computing power has been accompanied by a
corresponding increase in complexity. For better or worse.

~~~
JoshMnem
Definitely for worse in many cases. Every time I buy a new phone with better
specs, I expect that things will be that much better, but they never are.
Instead, the power is wasted on useless things like animation, apps that I
can't shut off running in the background, etc.

~~~
grkvlt
People often claim this, but I've never really found it to be the case. Faster
processors and more memory let me run the same software much faster, or better
software the same speed as the old, in general. So, perhaps you are seeing the
second factor happening more, but don't want or need the improvements?

~~~
microcolonel
I think he's lamenting that the new hardware tends to come with (or mandate)
the newer software, which is generally slower, but trades this slowness for
nothing of value. That is, there is no legitimate reason that the same _tasks_
should take longer on faster hardware; but (usually) the exact same _software_
will tend to run faster.

I don't have this problem on my workstations (generally) except when I browse
the web, though recently I've had to make the practical tradeoff of owning a
smartphone, where this problem is rampant.

Worse than things not getting faster, the same product tends to get slower
because the software designed for the new hardware is the only maintained
branch, and the versions for older hardware are just backports from future
hardware.

------
logicallee
For the punchline, the author should have followed up:

>taken up 100 billion square meters of floor space that is (with a three-meter
ceiling height per floor): a hundred-story square building 300 meters high,
and 3 kilometers long and wide

by saying,

"Oh and by the way this device has an edge to edge display that is so real you
can hold it up seamlessly against a background while it invents a made-up
image and draws it on, pretending it's part of reality.[1] It knows its
position and can adjust to your movements. It also includes a photography
studio that makes billboard-size full-color photos. It fits in your pocket and
needs to have its battery recharged once per day. Also it's an entire
telephone including video which it has a camera facing the front for. And you
can talk to it, it has a built-in assistant. Basically, magic."

[1]
[https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/59b8/247c/b22e/38e2/0...](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/59b8/247c/b22e/38e2/0300/0549/original/ARKit_gif.gif?1505240185)

------
ajross
MLC flash stores more than one bit per transistor. Otherwise the numbers seem
sound.

------
nabla9
Two data points is not enough to figure if technological progress is slowing
down.

------
abecedarius
If I'm reading
[http://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm](http://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm) right,
core memory in 1960 cost about $0.60/bit (with ~10 microsecond cycle time). It
does list an only slightly faster transistor memory for 1957, maybe for use in
the CPU?

I'm guessing these are historical prices, not inflation-adjusted.

------
csours
Things that haven't improved exponentially since 1957:

Batteries

Cars

Houses

People

Dishwashers

TVs

Things that have improved exponentially since 1957:

Disk drives

Integrated Circuits

RAM

~~~
desertrider
I would say TVs have. Color, size, brightness, efficiency and resolution are
all orders of magnitude higher.

~~~
csours
They're better, but only in a linear way, not exponentially.

------
code_duck
This comparison seems fairly fantastical and irrelevant. Something from within
the history of consumer electronics would be more useful to consider, in my
opinion.

For example, in 1982, the wildly popular low-end home entertainment computer,
the Commodore 64, was released at $595, or about $1500 after inflation
adjustment. On release in 1977, the Apple II was $1298, or over $5000 in
today's terms. You could pay $400 per 4k of ram, so $6000 if you wanted one
with 12k ram. If the iPhone X came out in 1985 for this price, it would have
been $400 in 1982 dollars, or 40% of the C64 - with over 4 million times the
storage capacity, to say nothing of the other capabilities.

That our modern mobile devices are popularly called 'phones' misses the point
that they are used as general purpose computing devices, not primarily phones
or even necessarily primarily for communication. They are also GPS navigators,
cameras, calculators, recipe files, photo albums, alarm clocks, book readers,
walkmans, home stereos, encyclopedias, wallets, and a lot more. People used to
frequently pay decent sums to buy dedicated devices to perform many of those
services.

~~~
quuquuquu
What I think is also important to consider is median income and net worth of
US citizens at that time.

In the early 50s, much pf Europe and Asia was still rebuilding from war, and
the US held an effective monopoly on multiple industries.

From the data I could find for 1952 in the US, a house was 5 years of income
and a new car was half a year's income.

For many people in the US today, a new car (post tax dollars) is either
completely unattainable (multiple years of income) or a complete joke (one
month's income).

The numbers are different for 1982, but still closer to the 1952 US situation
than today's 2017 situation.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is that $1,000 for a phone is still
fabulously expensive for 99.3% of the world today who aren't millionares.

EDIT :

Thank you for your insight :)

I am thinking that maybe I am just very different from most consumers, or that
our definition of "afford" is very hazy.

I am writing to you either from my $50 cracked screen wifi only iphone 5c, or
my $40 2009 lenovo thinkpad running lubuntu.

What is strange to me is that I'm not buying this because I am price
sensitive, but rather because "it is enough for what I want to do".

I have a hard time believing that a large percentage of the US market will buy
an iphone X. Or if they are buying it, then they don't fit my definition of
"affording it". Here's why:

Just 36.8% of US adults have a networth of over 100k.

That means 63% of US adults would be spending more than 1% on a mobile
computer (phone) that is not very much different from a $300 phone. How many
of these users will Apple capture?

Additionally, many people's net worth in the USA is tied up in real estate or
retirement accounts. So these funds are not available to be spent, and it
manifests itself in the following stat:

In 2016, 63% of Americans said they could not come up with $500 to cover an
emergency purchase.

So, tons of americans can't even afford basic expenses, let alone luxury
phones.

That is why I feel this is a millionaire's phone only.

~~~
code_duck
My family were not nearly millionaires when we bought a $1500 equivalent
computer in 1982, but this phone costs less than that. And a iPhone X isn't a
phone, it's a computer. I agree you do need to be in an upper tier
economically to afford one, but only speaking globally. People bought plenty
of laptops when they averaged well over $1000.

The way phones are financed makes them much more attainable, also. The way
people will get that $1000 phone today is paying $2-400, and then $35 a month,
folded into their phone bill, for 2 years. That's reasonable for anyone with
decent enough credit to get standard wireless service. Not most of the US
population, perhaps, but definitely the same demographic as the people already
buying $800 Samsungs or previous iPhones, which is tens of millions of people.

~~~
pasta
I like to note that a smartphone is indeed a computer with one huge
difference: the phone does break more often.

It's no fun dropping a $1000 phone in the toilet or down the stairs.

A lot of people forget this.

~~~
code_duck
I If I tried to carry a desktop computer and monitor around with me all day,
it would probably get broken. Thankfully mobile device are... mobile. I'm glad
it ever fits in my pocket! You can mitigate the issues you detail with a heavy
duty case, waterproof phone, and/or insurance.

------
bhouston
The last image is from the TV series Time Tunnel. The TV show featured a
decommission SAGE computer as a major prop:
[http://q7.neurotica.com/Q7/scifi/Tunnel/](http://q7.neurotica.com/Q7/scifi/Tunnel/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-
Automatic_Ground_Environm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-
Automatic_Ground_Environment)

------
jdhzzz
from Paul Graham's Essay "Mind the Gap"
[http://paulgraham.com/gap.html](http://paulgraham.com/gap.html)

 _Another approach would be to ask, if you were going back to the year x in a
time machine, how much would you have to spend on trade goods to make your
fortune? For example, if you were going back to 1970 it would certainly be
less than $500, because the processing power you can get for $500 today would
have been worth at least $150 million in 1970. The function goes asymptotic
fairly quickly, because for times over a hundred years or so you could get all
you needed in present-day trash. In 1800 an empty plastic drink bottle with a
screw top would have seemed a miracle of workmanship._

------
dmichulke
This flies directly into the face of mainstream economists who claim that
deflation is killing an economy and therefore requires positive inflation
because otherwise "people would stop spending".

Here's the thing: Deflation got people spending money on an iPhone.

------
teilo
Now include the failure rate of electron tubes, and the literal bugs that
would gum up the works, and this theoretical machine becomes impossible even
ignoring the power consumption.

~~~
majewsky
> becomes impossible

I salute your high barrier of impossibility.

------
drjackyll
Comparison is inaccurate. iPhoneX has 256GB of Flash, not RAM. Vacuum tubes
were used for RAM, while smaller and cheaper ferrite cores were used for
permanent storage.

------
Houshalter
The comparison is a bit unfair because the technology of 1957 was primarily
analog. A few rolls of film can store the same HD videos as an iPhone for
instance. Video phones existed in the 1960s and just didn't catch on.

It's sort of an apples and oranges comparison. Obviously there are many things
that couldn't be done with analog tech. But it's not as bad as you would
expect with just naive comparisons based on the cost of vacuum tubes.

------
amelius
I think this post unnecessarily contributes to the overhyping of the iPhone.
It could just as well be written for any other brand of phone.

------
thinbeige
Expected a figure after inflation adjustment and not a calculation of the
parts' cost at that time. Still interesting.

------
pavement
tl;dr USD $150 trillion.

------
la_fayette
this is a nice approach. would it be possible to factor environmental costs
into this calculation?

------
nielsbot
Why 1957?

~~~
mrb
It's where the historical data of memory prices start on his source:
[http://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm](http://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm)

~~~
nielsbot
thanks.

------
thomasthomas
these comparisons are fine and fun. but a single iphone isnt that valuable if
youre the only person on all the different networks an iphone gives you access
to

------
snambi
In 2057 iPhone X would have cost may be 99c?

------
k__
I guess I'll get a note 8 then.

------
gwern
[http://pcdb.santafe.edu/](http://pcdb.santafe.edu/)

~~~
elliotec
What does this have to do with it?

~~~
gwern
I am demonstrating that OP is cherrypicking an example and that a broader view
of technological progress, such as the Performance Curve Database, shows that
very gradual improvements are the norm.

------
dredmorbius
I keep seeing these economic treatments of "how much progress has accelerated"
(and have been seeing them for some 30-40 years now myself), and ... I'm
starting to feel a case of three-card monty or the travelling dime problem --
keep moving the pieces quickly enough so that the audience^Wmarks don't spot
the trick.

First off: yes, absolutely, _the cost of provisioning and operating electronic
memory data storage and processing has fallen phenomenally_. DeLong makes that
point abundantly clear:

 _in 1957, the transistors in an iPhoneX alone would have ... cost 150
trillion of today 's dollars: one and a half times today's global annual
product ... taken up a hundred-story square building 300 meters high, and 3
kilometers long and wide ... drawn 150 terawatts of power—30 times the world's
current generating capacity_

But let's look at those comparisons right there.

The iPhone X costs $1,000, and for easy math I'll assume all of that is the
memory storage (this is wrong, but it's not horribly wrong, on an orders-of-
magnitude basis). If the 1950 cost was $150 trillion, then the price has
fallen by _at least_ 150 _billion_ fold. (And in fact it's fallen more,
because there's more than just memory in the device, so my easy math
_understates_ the case.)

Global GDP in 1955, or more accurate, GWP, was $5.4 billion. As of 2016 it was
about $80 billion, or, just for round numbers, lets call that $5 billion and
$100 billion.[1]

The multiplier is a factor of 20. Which, if I check maths, is somewhat less
than 150 billion. Which is to say that whatever's been strapping white
lightning to our capacity to chunk out memory circuits _has not_ been strapped
to the global economy as a whole.

Measures of the total built environment are difficult to come by, and even
proxies for that seem at best obscure. Since DeLong specifies the idea of a
100-story-tall building, though, there _is_ at least one interesting statistic
that can be readily produced. Up until 1970, there was precisely _one_ such
building, and it was the Empire State Building, which held that record from
1931 until 1972 (at which time the newly completed World Trade Centers in New
York City claimed the crown).

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_world%27s_tal...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_world%27s_tallest_buildings)

Naturally, there's been some contention for that prize since. A total of
_four_ additional tallest structures are listed: the Sears Tower (completed in
1974), Patronas Towers, Taipei 101, and Burje Khalifa. If we look at the list
of the world's tallest buildings, and use the ESB's 381 meter height as a
minimum qualification, there are by my count 37 such structures. Again, this
seems slightly less than 150 billion.[2]

Finally, energy consumption. In 1955, this was, roughly, 100 exajoule. In 2017
this is, roughly, 500 exajoule. The multiplier would be then ... 5. A number
somewhat less than 150 billion.[3]

The question which arises out of this is _what is it about information
technology that allows for a 150-billion-plus increase in capabilities_ ,
whilst total GWP (20x), skyscrapers (37x), and energy (5x) have seen far, far,
far less expansion?

There's another question which asks if we're actually including full costs,
which I'll note but leave off the table for this discussion.[4]

But the question I _would_ like to ask is _what additional service value is
being provided for all that the iPhone offers?_

Consider that it is, ultimately, an _information delivery device_. And that
the information end-consumer, the human tethered to it, _has an almost
ludicrously low consumption capability._ Sure, you can deliver gigabytes or
terabytes of _source data_ to a human, but the amount of that which is
absorbed, over the course of a day, amounts to ... a few megabytes, _at most_.
And we're talking _single digit_ values here.[5] What the iPhone can deliver
is video, audio, images, and text. Through on a viewport roughly the size of a
3x5 index card. The equivalent 1955 technologies it replaces are a notebook, a
telephone (and probably some form of answering service or secretarial pool),
the not-yet-invented transistor radio, a deck of cards or pocket game, a
newspaper and/or magazine, a paperback book, a letter. A pile of index cards
itself.[6]

And ... the iPhone X carries any number of unintended consequences: the loss
of liberal democracy, undermining a century-old tradition of advertising +
subscriber based print media, journalism, adtech, concentration, possibly an
entire generation.[7] Unintended consequences are a real bitch.

Delong's calculus is exceptionally insufficient.

________________________________

Notes:

1\. Wikipedia. Which, coincidentally, is citing one Bradforth DeLong as its
source.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product)

2\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings)

3\. Gail Tverberg, after Vaclav Smil and BP:
[https://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/03/12/world-energy-
consumpti...](https://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/03/12/world-energy-consumption-
since-1820-in-charts/)

4\. Much of this revolves around the question of natural capital accounting.
The good news is that this is entering mainstream economics, see the World
Bank for example. The bad news is that it's still improperly founded. Steve
Keen's work on energy in production functions is also of interest, though that
admits yet another factor.

5\. Consider audio. The human limit of perception is roughly 20 impules per
second, a/k/a 20 Hz, which is the threshold at which _beats_ become a _tone_.
Given 86,400 seconds/day, at 20x, we've got 1.7 million _bits_ of data, or 216
KB of audio-encoded pulses. For printed material, a 250 words/min reading pace
is fairly typical, which works out to 2.16 MB/day, sustained for 24 hours.

6\. a/k/a the Hipster PDA: [http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-
the-hipster-...](http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-
pda)

7\. [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-
the...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-
smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
A modern phone actually makes a good attempt at replacing:

Notepad

Telephone

Letter post

Still camera

Movie camera (not common in 1957)

Security camera monitor (needs external hardware, but still)

Audio recorder

Cinema

Library

Music collection

Games arcade

Map and navigation system

Magazine and newspaper stand

Store catalogues (concierge shopping, to some extent)

News and weather on TV

TV (partly...)

Job search

Travel guide

Restaurant and hotel finder

Flight booking and checkin tool

Business memo distribution system

Classroom toys and child entertainment

Textbook and trainer for older/adult students (limited, but hardly non-
existent)

Quick notes for friends and family

Clearly there's quite a bit more value than just "information delivery."

Source data doesn't need to be absorbed. No one in 1957 seriously expected
readers to memorise the written text of newspapers or magazines, and no one
seriously expects Facebook or Twitter users to memorise entire feeds today.

So the actual volume of useful information consumed daily has increased by a
huge amount, and it's presented in a far more accessible and
interactive/participative form than it used to be.

The point is that mobile devices connected to an open public data network
generate huge economic synergies. Processing speed and memory are far less
relevant than automation of old applications and the development of whole
classes of new applications. Both have literally been transformative.

As for liberal democracy and journalism - those are no more endangered now
than they used to be. Technology is a social multiplier, and if the roots of a
culture aren't sound media of all kinds will reflect that - but that's a
political problem, not one _caused_ by technology.

~~~
dredmorbius
Thank you for that list, all of which is _precisely_ information delivery, or
capture. Having lived in both eras, I'm rather familiar with the general set,
and not entirely unsympathetic to some of the benefits. And costs.

You might consider how _else_ such needs, or in many cases, _wants_ , were
previously satisfied. Or accommodated, or in which activities worked around
their lack. And how, often in initially subtle ways, the smaartphone's
presence has _changed_ the structures and institutions it interacts with.

But as I've expanded on this elsewhere, the supposed economic analysis of
DeLong is missing key insights.

Data and computation, much as work, expand to fill available time. It's less
how much computation can you buy and far more how much are you willing to
spend. A curious aspect of computers is that the price points have remained
remarkably resilient. In nominal currency, even. The original IBM PC cost
$1,565. A current-generation Lenovo (successor to IBM), say, the P310SFF is
priced at about half that, $710, plus $160 for the monitor, or a total of
$870. It seems that for typical end-use the question is more of "how much
computing can I buy for a given budget, than how much will X amount of
computing power cost me.

As for technology (and especially communications) not changing or disrupting
democracy or society, I'd very much suggest you reassess that premise as it
seems to me that _every_ communications revolution, dating to speech itself,
has had profound and often highly disruptive effects. Elizabeth Eisenstein
captures some of that in _The Printing Press as an Agent of Change_. The role
of cheap press, radio, audio tape, microphones and public address,
photoreproduction, and cinema in the rise and spread of fascism is another
hugely instructive episode.

DeLong expresses awareness of none of this.

------
kimmy13
this article is just made to justify the phone's price.

~~~
scarface74
In a free market, there doesn't need to be a "justification" for the price of
anything. The price is what someone is willing to pay.

~~~
musage
Then that justification for the price is the justification for being willing
to pay that price; same thing.

Also, "free market" is kind of a joke as a mantra. For example, "without
interference" kind of would require a whole lot of marketing people stopping
what they're doing. As it is now, many companies themselves are doing their
best to interfere with the decisions of consumers and workers, in some cases
even get in bed with each other and wage outright war on those they extract
money from; so that's not a free market by a long shot.

~~~
Gibbon1
I use the phrase 'Potemkin Markets' to describe a lot of this stuff.

------
guelo
Is the point supposed to be that the iphone x is not expensive? If so it's a
dumb point. Moore's law is exponential, news at 11.

------
madengr
Though I doubt an iPhone could do all the processing those SAGE computers did,
despite being infinitely more powerful as a general purpose CPU.

------
ddmma
Amazing prediction... A11 bionic chip then was alien science fiction and might
be considered privacy issue in real life considerations such as rise of
communists or power consumption issues. Still is not an argument on Apple X
high price.. I like more Raspbbery Pi analogy

------
IncRnd
Well, okay. But the monopoly would have also kept costs down. Yes - all
iPhones would have looked identical, but everyone would have had one!

Another plus - the software stack would have been far smaller. You wouldn't
need a 32 Gig phone just to install some apps. All processing would have been
done in the cloud, on the mainframe. The apps would all have been dumb and
only screen viewers for the mainframe.

:)

------
tdbgamer
Honestly, who cares. A ton of modern inventions would've cost way more money
in 1956. I'm not gonna go to the store and say, wow this microwave would've
cost millions in the 50s, that's a super reasonable price. Compare 2017 phone
prices to other 2017 phones.

~~~
aplummer
I think it is interesting, particularly how GDP changes and quality of life
indexes don't reflect things like this.

Our quality of life in the first world changes for the better somewhat, but we
had 150 trillion dollar equivalent devices we carry around?

I also think one of the comments is interesting, that indoor plumbing is so
cheap but provides such an insanely greater improvement to QoL.

