Couple of Quotes from "Turings Cathedral"

Despite the title, Turing's Cathedral, by George Dyson, isn't primarily about Alan Turing.  Rather, it focuses on John von Neumann, another giant in computer history.  A couple of interesting quotes:

The speed of fiber deployment

Thirty years ago, networks developed for communication between people were adapted to communication between machines.  We went from transmitting data over a voice network to transmitting voice over a data network in just a few short years.  Billions of dollars were sunk into cables spanning six continents and three oceans, and a web of optical fiber engulfed the world.  When the operation peaked in 1991, fiber was being rolled out, globally, at over 5,000 miles per hour, or nine times the speed of sound: Mach 9.  (emphasis added).

Global computing efficiency

Among the computers populating this network, most processing cycles are going to waste.  Most processors, most of the time, are waiting for instructions.  Even within an active processor, as Bigelow explained, most computational elements are waiting around for something to do next.  The global computer, for all its powers, is perhaps the least efficient machine that humans have ever built.  (emphasis added)

Given how power hungry data centers are, this is a sobering number.