> Perhaps it's because I don't work in that sort of industry. All this
> sounds kind of abstract to me. I don't see how going to 10x is "harder"
> than going to 2x. I'm not saying it isn't, I'm saying I don't understand
> why.

Short answer: Go and research how ICs are made.

Long answer: Think of something you could teach yourself to make (eg an 
origami bird or something) and imagine making those and selling them. 
Now consider how hard it would be to make them 2x smaller, a few folds 
might be a bit tricky, but you'd probably manage after a few tests.  Now 
consider if you had to make them 10x smaller, suddenly some folds might 
become impossible unless you use tweezers or something, you might need 
to buy different paper, change the design slightly, it is going to take 
orders of magnitude longer to teach yourself how to reliably make them 
repeatedly, and while you're doing that you're not making the bigger 
ones so you're not getting any money.

If you instead started making the 2x smaller version and got happy with 
that, you could then go 2x smaller again, maybe having to make 1 design 
change.  At each step you have far fewer problems, if you try and jump 
10x or 20x you're just going to give it up because it won't work and you 
won't be able to figure out why.

> 30 years ago, cars could do 70 MPH. Today, cars can do 70 MPH. As far as
> I know, there's little to no improvement in acceleration either.

The problem with speed is that for most people buying a car, price and 
economy comes before top speed, and especially in most countries it's 
illegal to drive much above 70 or 80mph.  So obviously car companies 
have concentrated on keeping price low and reducing fuel usage rather 
than top speed.  But then saying that, if you want to you can easily buy 
a cheap family car that will comfortably go well above 100 mph without 
shaking itself apart - how many cars could do that 30 years ago?

> Expensive cars were always faster than cheap cars, but other than that,
> not much change in three decades. Braking is the only thing I can think
> of which might have improved; we have ABS now.

All the other things I mentioned too, particularly MPG is the main one 
that is top of most manufacturers list of things to improve.

> Cars do seem to have more "gadgets" now than they used to. Once upon a
> time, if you wanted electric windows, you'd have to buy a luxury sports
> car. Today it's hard to find a car /without/ electric windows. I'm not
> sure how or why that happened, BTH.

Same for air-con, electric mirrors, information displays, immobilisers, 
CD players, navigation etc.  All stuff starts out on the 
top-of-the-range models and works it way down to standard on the 
cheapest ones.

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