Programmers think of a bit as the smallest addressable unit of memory. Nothing else, nothing in-between. Intel now says, on the contrary, that a bit may store gradations of charge. And that's just to start. If a bit can hold four values, it can hold eight, and if eight then perhaps sixteen, and so on to some as yet undisclosed limit.
Earth is no longer at the center of the solar system.
And Moore's Law, a longstanding axiom of the computer age, is no longer true. Soon, perhaps, with flash technology fermenting it, memory will be swelling constantly instead of at decent intervals that can be counted off in months. With all this pressure, flash and otherwise, put to bear on memory, it would seem only a matter of time until every obstacle to its indefinite expansion buckles and gives way. Well, memory like that is history now. Memory's everywhere, or will be soon.