Computers are the fancy binary abacus(bit registers).

Binary codes are used to speed counting by the powers of 2(data compression).

Then, ascii table compressed words into a single bit in a 8 bit word. So that 8 bit computers are quite adequate to compute and present results.

Then, many data compression languages are tables of redundancy efficiency. All repeated words can be represented in smaller codes to save memory usage.
First approach was the number of sequential 0 or 1s, how they are repeated. Then words, sentences and paragraphs, until a whole book can be compressed into one code, then read out from a table.

The fact that ascii codes are used universally; Intel cpu has branch prediction. A 32 bit instruction is run by the 8 bit register to predict by tables what the 32 bit computation is all about. So, Intel and other cpus are all merely 8 bit computers pretending to be 32 bits or 64 bits.

However, 8 bit data still need 32 bit memory address has to be emphasized. 64 bit memory address is used in mainframe computers. Memory address switching is how you store tables of compressed data to be read out. Each individual 8 bit cpu can pretend to be 32 bit cpu by 21(32 bit) or 23(64 bit) stages of branch prediction in L2 cache.

When we design computers today, we try to avoid mathematical computations, but read everything from a table of sorts. Thus, the invention of search engines. Why compute, just search and you get the results.

So, why 64bit or 256 bit cpu, when you can just have many 8 bit cpus running in parallel? 8 bit cpus can be string together with software shift registers. 100 8 bit can be turned into 800 bit computer. Think of 100 million bit computer that we are building today with one radio channel bus.

The fact that data compression can be compounded by alternating analog compression tables with digital compression tables is the latest trend of invention. We can certainly alternate Mpeg4 and video braille to achieve over 500x data compression ratio.

Footnote:
100 million bit computer is built by edgeQam radio channels with many subcarrier muxes(multiplexers); then Docsis PBX packet switching, then USB hdd and nand flash memory by IPv6 identities.