If you try to build a mechanical computer, the main thing stopping you 
from running it faster is inertia. Components have to have connecting 
rods to transmit mechanical force from one component to another, and the 
further apart these components are, the larger and heavier the 
connecting rods. So you have to waste power accelerating them, and then 
waste power bringing them to a halt again. The faster you want to 
compute, the more force you end up needing to use, and the more power 
you waste.

Now consider trying to build an electronic computer. Now the problem is 
that the long connections from component to component act as tiny 
capacitors, each one a low-pass filter trying to filter out your 
high-frequency data signals. And the only way to overcome this, it 
seems, is to use higher and higher voltages.

Inertia verses capacitance. Mechanical force verses voltage. It's in 
interesting parallel...

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