One artifact of having been around for the start of the home computer business (back when we called them “microcomputers”) is that I have certain memory sizes stamped into my brain. 143K, 400K, 800K, 1.4M: the amount you could fit on various disks back in the days no one had hard drives.

I get a small dose of future shock whenever I see sustained Internet throughput at (one old disk) per second. Today I hit 800K downloading an Apple update, and I had this sudden image of a toaster-like device, with Apple and Comcast logos on it, firing 3.5″ floppies across the room while my laptop danced and pirouetted to catch them flawlessly.

I remember when downloading a 143K disk image was a “leave the computer on all night” endeavor. Now I’m wondering how long it will be before I get 800Kbps over a cell phone.