system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What are transistors and how does having more create more computing power?
gpt
A transistor is a switch that can be turned on or off by electricity.

Two switches can make a logic gate, six can store a bit of data.  These are the building blocks from which computers are created.

Early switches were mechanical relays or vacuum tubes...large, slow, and took a lot of power.  The computers that used them were the size of buildings, and might have had 10-20,000 switches.  Modern processors pack nearly a billion into the size of a thumbnail.