TLDR;
the metrics that we are missing as an industry are:
- how much computing power is needed to present a single useful bit of information to the user;
- how much computing power is needed to process a single useful bit of information;
- how much total data transfer is needed to transfer a single useful bit of information.
of course to answer the above questions you need to give the definition to the term "useful single bit". And the hint here is: if we agree that - say - rainbow has 7 colors then the information about all 7 colors would take just 3 bits of data, wouldn't it?..
long story below:
this questions pops up at least twice every year by someone completely frustrated by the current state of things in the computer industry. And if you think it is limited to only software side of things, then well... ignorance is bliss.
Think of it from the incentives and rationale perspective.
Whenever you encounter a bloated piece of software or an over-engineered hardware box put yourself into the shoes of the author of this. Once you delve into the details of why and how was any specific tool or technology created you can understand why it looks so bad.
Some notorious examples of most hated programming languages were created in a very short period of time without any strategic thinking involved by people who had not had any experience with designing programming languages.
And people continue with this pattern in all types of software driven by business requirements rather than their engineering and scientific aspirations and talent (or lack thereof) most of the time.
In other words, bloated software is the result of time limitations imposed on developers. Efficiency, size, quality, stability and security go out of the window when you need to pursue other, more "important" goals.
"We need to go ahead of the competition and the time to market is our priority. We'll cut corners and burn cash. No thorough think through, just do it."
Another perspective is resource limitation. You as a developer have access to virtually unlimited computing, networking and storage resources. Remember this "memory is cheaper than developer's time" mantra?
Now put yourself in the shoes of a NES game developer. You need to squeeze in the whole universe into 32kb, with graphics, music and gameplay that will look attractive and responsive running on a 1.8MHz single-core 8-bit CPU.
Or put yourself into the shoes of the Voyager 1/2 team whose objectives are to keep a small piece of metal afloat in hostile environment for the next 50 years. With remote debugging capabilities, over-the-air software updates and continuous telemetry transmission back to Earth.
If Brendan Eich had not been given just 10 days to draft the javascript specs would we see something different in the frontend world today? Or we'd still see the 10MB garbage being downloaded by every other website just for the sake of keeping the cables busy?
And here is one of my favorite quotes by Alan Kay:
"Think about it. HTML and the Internet has gone back to the dark ages because it presupposes that there should be a browser that should understand its formats. This has to be one of the worst ideas since ms-dos, this is really a shame. it's maybe what happens when physicists decide to play with computers."