> As powerful as current computer technology can be, there are a few hard limits to it. Data is encoded into just two states – one or zero. And this data is sto

> As powerful as current computer technology can be, there are a few hard limits to it. Data is encoded into just two states – one or zero. And this data is stored and processed in different parts of a computer system, so it needs to be shuttled back and forth, which consumes energy and time. This kinda reads like someone who doesn't know how storage works. Storage is rarely encoded as "one and zero" in the form you see it, say, in a hex editor. In fact that's what's it decoded to. Storage schemes vary, to limit run length, add error correction, and in some cases includes analog states like the ones described in the article, to make more efficient use of charge and material state. This is trivial, because actually the smallest unit you work with in a computer is not a bit, but a byte. And often in fact a word, which is typically 16 bytes (64 bits), or 64 bytes (512 bits) the size of a cache line, or even 4096 bytes, the size of a typical memory page or disk sector. So we have plenty of leeway to comfortably encode these larger units however we wish, and the rest can stay as-is.