Computer memory.

When I was a little girl my father was already trying to bend computers to his will. I used to call the typewriter in the Maths department storeroom "Teddy's 'puter". I enjoyed unfurling rolls of computer tape down the stairwell in the Rankin Brown Building and my father sometimes set me up to use a terminal near his to write things we could print out later while he was using the big computer. I tell you, that computer was big. It had presence, it filled a room, its lights twinkled and it really gave the impression of working. It would work all night on maths for my father.

But now we live in the far future. I can tell; I was doing a bit of tidying and I found a gigabyte of memory under some tiny undies and a pair of strap-on angel's wings. It was not the size of a city block, it did not fill a room, it was more choking-hazard size and I'd forgotten to pop it into the pda.