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Originally Posted by Penforhire
Oh, I remember those times well. Just before that era I was hobby-programming microprocessors using dip switches and single multi-segment LED for the output. I completely understand how Bill Gates felt when he said that and I agreed with him. Turns out we were both wrong in an epic manner.
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Oh, it was more or less correct at the time. It simply ignored the process of development. At the time, you largely
could get along in 640K. For that matter, before the IBM PC, people largely got along in 64K, that being what the previous generations of microprocessors could access.
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I can't say what the bandwidth and memory requirements of software will be like twenty years from now. But I am imagining uploaded consciousness (at least lobsters, lol) or complete telepresence and those will take stunning amounts of bits or qubits or whatever form the data will take. I often wonder if we'll go back to analog. 
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Isaac Asimov did a story where he speculated about "notched molecules" and "nudged molecules" as storage media, because of the enormous demand for storage capacity.
And what we're seeing now is mixed development, with new generations of processors having digital and analog processing circuitry on the same die.
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Dennis, isn't popping the hood one of the basic requirements of hard SF?
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Yes and no. It depends upon what hood you need to pop. "Hard" SF is normally considered SF whose science is one of the physical sciences, usually physics, though chemistry occasionally takes a bow. But even there, how often do you actually pop the hood and explain the hardware in detail? The critical parts of the story revolve around what the hardware will let you do. Exactly how it does it may not be critical.
"The development of the Fraublisher Freneticizer made possible the creation of wormholes between a ship and it's destination, dramatically increasing the range and speed of interstellar travel..."
"All stations, status report!"
"Engineering reports Freneticizer nominal, Captain."
"Astrogation has completed plotting the coordinates of the destination, Captain. Downloading to Freneticizer now."
"Communications reports clearance to depart from base, Captain."
"Very well. Prepare to engage the Freneticizer on my mark for transit to Beta Omicron III."
There may be some hand waving in there about the new discoveries in physics that made the Freneticizer possible, but none of it requires popping the hood on the Freneticizer - only that you have it, and can use it to get from here to there instantly where here and there are an arbitrary distance apart.
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Dennis