1 extra (literally) odd bit would require a lot of changes... What if instead of using single bytes, we used "doublebytes"? 8-bit software continues to work,

1 extra (literally) odd bit would require a lot of changes... What if instead of using single bytes, we used "doublebytes"? 8-bit software continues to work, while new 16-bit "doublebyte" software gets 256x the value capacity, instead of a meager 2x. Nobody will ever need more byte space than that! Without requiring any changes to CPU/GPU, RAM, SSD, Ethernet, WiFi ... Magic. :)