Shrinking Costs, Growing Memory
Just to underscore another powerful trend, a number of manufacturers announced new camera and camcorder memory cards at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, and the Washington Post covers several. Being a tech person old enough to remember spending $1,000 for 1 megabyte of computer memory, it boggles my mind that Panasonic will be coming out with an SD (Secure Digital) card that has a capacity of 32 gigabytes. In one of those little camera chips about the size of a postage stamp, you’ll be able to store eight hours of high-definition video. Prices haven’t been announced, but I would guess that little bitty chip will be in the $1,000 range. Not even accounting for inflation, that’s buying 32,000 times more memory for the same cost.
Another way to look at it - in 1985, a megabyte of memory cost $1,000. Today, it costs 3 cents. At that rate of change, in ten years it will cost .04 cents, or four hundredths of a cent. Free, for all intents and purposes.
This is a challenge we haven’t really addressed in our planning for educational technology. We still focus on how costly things are, and often plan for resource-starved settings. How would we plan if we operated on the assumption that the technology will eventually be free? Back in December Guy Kawasaki shared a video looking at that exact concept - planning for when technology will be free. It’s a presentation by Chris Anderson from Wired Magazine, and it’s an overview of a new book he has coming out. It’s pretty challenging, but I think his message is very important, and one we need to start considering sooner rather than later.