More fun with philosophy math, following up on two earlier posts: Why life is 255 times better now than in 1800 and Why life in America is 40 times better than in 1900.
Focusing on innovations in music technology, Russ Roberts notes:
“In 1979, Sony introduced the Walkman, the first portable music player. It weighed 14 ounces and cost $200. It could play a cassette that could hold about 90 minutes of music. It was a little bigger than a cassette. It was pretty ugly.
“A new nano from Apple was announced yesterday. It weighs less than an ounce. The 8GB model is $149. It holds about 60 hours of music. It is smaller than a matchbook. It is very beautiful.
“So it is cheaper (even without accounting for inflation), weighs 1/15th as much, and holds about 40 times more music of higher quality. I can’t get over how beautiful it is.”
So cool: the nano’s price is better by 25%, it’s more portable by a factor of 15, and its quantity of music is greater by a factor of 40.
1.25 x 15 x 40 = 750.
[But no matter how rigorous the math, I am not giving up my old 1990 Kenwood, still going strong after all these years, and which I wrote about here.]
