I looked around my apartment this morning and began to wonder about the amount of computing power that exists in this one bedroom space.
I calculated that there is about 10GB of RAM and a variety of processor speeds floating around this apartment, across a multitude of devices.
I wanted to put this in perspective, so I looked up the computing power of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. The on board computer was sporting a whopping 64Kb of memory, the equivalent of a pocket calculator.
Now this is cocktail napkin math but…
That means that my apartment has roughly 171,875 times the computing power of the 1969 spacecraft that left our planet and safely landed human beings on the surface of the moon and then re-entered our atmosphere and returned them home safely.
So there you have it, the computer power in my living space is technically sufficient, many times over, to get me safely to the moon and back (provided I had a rocket and all of the other accessories necessary for space survival).
If the only thing we’re doing with these devices is watching FAIL videos, cat gifs, and sending duck face selfies, are we really taking full advantage of the opportunities we have? Let’s go to the moon and back.