This is one entry in a huge number of answers to the question: What did you change your mind about last year? "Now, clock speeds aren't rising quite as quickly, and the progress that is made doesn't seem to help our computers start up or run any faster. The traditions of the computing industry, some going as far back as the first digital computers built by John von Neumann in the 1950s, are starting to grow obsolete. The slower computers seem to get faster, and the more deeply I understand the way things actually work, the more these problems become apparent to me. They really come to light when you think about a computer as a business."