Cost of computing is going way, way down

GFLOPS is gigaFLOPS, which is a measurement of computing speed

Note that a gigaflop worth of computing power cost a trillion dollars in 1961, but by March 2011, had gone down to a buck 1.80.

There's a principle that can be applied in case anyone is interested.

Once I read a book about entrepreneurial thinking.  He advocated teaching yourself to think in terms of concepts.   I would say that this is a basic concept that can be applied in more ways than just in computing.

Another example:  books!  Books seem old fashioned these days, but once upon a time, several hundred years ago, they were quite rare and expensive.  Sort of like gigaflops in the early sixties.  The printing press was invented and brought this rare item to a larger and larger circle of people.

Note that this occurred without the need to take this from the rich and give it to the poor.  If books that only the rich could own were confiscated and redistributed to the poor, they wouldn't have survived.  They may have been burned for warmth in the dead of winter.