Technology

Short answer: It's because of binary.
Computers are very good at calculating with powers of two, and because of that a lot of computer concepts use powers of two to make calculations easier.

1024 = 2^10^

Edit: Oops.. It's 2^10^, not 2^7^
Sorry y'all.. 😅

Harvard's CS50 has a great explanation on it. Makes a ton of sense. In fact CS50 should be required for high school, people would have a much better understanding of how software works in general.

I believe it's because you always use bytes in pairs in a computer. If you always pair the pairs, you would eventually get the number 1024, which is the closest number to a 1000.

The logic is like this:

2+2 = 4

4+4 = 8

8+8 = 16

16+16 = 32

32+32 = 64

64+64 = 128

128+128 = 256

256+256 = 512

512+512 = 1024

"Kilo" means 1000 under the official International System of Units.

With some computer hardware, it's more convenient to use 1024 for a kilobyte and in the early days nobody really cared that it was slightly wrong. It has to do with the way memory is physically laid out in a memory chip.

These days, people do care and the correct term for 1024 is "Kibi" (kilo-binary). For example Kibibyte. There's also Gibi, Tebi, Exbi, etc.

It's mostly CPUs that use 1024 - and also RAM because it't tightly coupled to the CPU. The internet, hard drives, etc, usually use 1000 because they don't have any reason to use a weird numbering system.