Data rate technology comparrisons

A useful Wikipedia article on various data technologies and their transmission rates, some with year of introduction

Performance Curve Database

Need data showing how the performance of something has changed over time?  Head over to the the Santa Fe Institute's Perforance Curve Database site that has graphs and data describing such things as the historical performance of photovoltaic cells (think efficiency,  cost per watt, etc).
Below is the graph of Hard Drive storage over time