Key fobs and interstellar space

From JPL scientist Rich Terrile:

In everyone's pocket right now is a computer far more powerful than the one we flew on Voyager, and I don't mean your cell phone-I mean the key fob that unlocks your car.

These days technology is equated with computer technology. For example, the other day I heard someone talk about bringing chemical engineering and technology together, as if chemical engineering isn't technology. If technology only means computer technology, then the Voyager probes are very low-tech.

And yet Voyager 1 has left the solar system! (Depending on how you define the solar system.*) It's the most distant man-made object, about 20 billion kilometers away. It's still sending back data 38 years after it launched, and is expected to keep doing so for a few more years before its power supply runs too low. Voyager 2 is doing fine as well, though it's taking longer to leave the solar system. Surely this is a far greater technological achievement than a key fob.

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* Voyager 1 has left the heliosphere, far beyond Pluto, and is said to be in the "interstellar medium." But it won't reach the Oort cloud for another 300 years and won't leave the Oort cloud for 30,000 years.

Source: The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission