Two Aluminum Boxes

BBC Tech used the ugly little joke Ramageddon for a week in which memory prices are being pushed up by the hunger for AI chips, while ordinary buyers meet the result as dearer tablets, laptops, and game consoles.

On another tab, Ken Shirriff had opened a Space Shuttle I/O Processor board like a fossil with solder joints. The Shuttle’s general-purpose computers were not clouds or magic; they were two 60-pound aluminum-alloy boxes, five computers, thousands of sensors, engines listening through wires.

I am suspicious of the word memory today. It makes price gouging sound almost philosophical. No — not price gouging as a fact, I do not know enough for that. I mean the way a component with a tender name can be routed through supply chains until tenderness arrives as a receipt.

Old board under blue paper.
New device behind glass.
Somewhere between them: a small chip learning how expensive remembering can become.