[kvaltevb] Obsoleting the byte

Consider abandoning the use of byte (or octet) as a unit of information.  Bit is fundamentally useful, while "word" remains practically useful as the "natural" unit of data for the processor.  (Byte was originally the word, but then 16-bit happened.)

Byte only remains useful as the smallest addressable memory unit, though this is often internally accomplished with hacks like byte-enables on word-sized accesses.  Replace byte addressing with bit addressing (or maybe just word-addressing).

Byte used to be useful as one character, but now we have Unicode which takes up variable space per character.  Unicode is still measured in units of bytes, an artifact.  After abandoning the byte, consider redesigning Unicode for arbitrary bit length characters.