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This is like praising the reliability of modern automobiles while decrying the distance we have to travel for everything. You wouldn’t have fast computers without slow software.

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That doesn't feel correct. I think we push the boundaries on hardware because we aspire to scale up computation. If all those aspirational computations were faster we'd still develop faster hardware and have bigger ambitions. Unnecessarily slow software has no redeeming features.

I think you have it backwards. We get away with longer distances because of faster automobiles.

But imagine for a moment what would happen if we had faster automobiles and shorter distances: things would just be better.

They are both cause and effect: we accept longer distances because cars are reliable and we insist on reliable cars because they are necessary. You can’t get one without the other.

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