[gvkuwdvx] Cheaper xor more powerful

Hypothesize that each new generation of computers -- especially consumer computers -- could be cheaper or more powerful, but cannot be both: economies of scale and network effects prevent both from simultaneously happening.  The industry must commit to one or the other.  Will market forces choose the socially optimal alternative?

Inspired by, the communication tasks that consumer computers do so much these days could be done almost as well by a i486 laptop with a passive matrix monochrome display.  What would the world be like if such computers were prevalent among consumers and incredibly cheap?

For communication tasks, more powerful computers have allowed an easier task for developers (using higher level languages which emit less optimized code) and have allowed computational effort to be spent on presentation thus allowing (software) product differentiation.