You can't fold a common piece of paper 42 times without very specialized equipment and likely causing an explosion.  I'll presume, however, you're already aware of that. 

Exponentiality is a basic, critical concept in math.  It's also, not surprisingly, fundamental in computer science.  The most basic datapoint in silicon computing is a bit which either has a value of 1 or 0.  It could also be "unset", otherwise known as "null" but that is the absence of value.  "Null" cannot be added to, multiplied with, divided by nor used in any practical operation.  It is the abstract representation of "Nothing".

A byte is comprised of 8 bits; this isn't arbitrary but it is a prisoner of the culture of it's invention; that was the necessary size to accommodate the English Language.  Had the choice been made in another culture with other language requirements (or wherein it's likely been made on other terrestrial spaces) it may well be 10, 12 or even 20 bits.  The "byte" is the most basic encapsulating structure of information in the silicon world.  A "thing" is either true or false, or it has no known value.

Human knowledge depends on predecessors.  

As such, the byte becomes the basis from which silicon data extends.  8 bits becomes 16, becomes 32, becomes 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc.  Bits become bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes and soon humanity-ending algorithms.

If you could fold a piece of paper 42 times, it would stretch near, perhaps past, the surface of the moon, from the earth.

This is the power of exponentiality, equally described by the ascension of the byte-universe.  The byte-universe is the predecessor to artificial intelligence.

There are 52 cards in a modern deck of cards, this composition dates to sometime in the late 1400s, early 1500s, likely at the direction of Henry VII, the inaugural king of the age of the Tudors.   Dealers shuffle them to alter the order unpredictably.  Statistically speaking, not only are there combinations of stacking order that have never happened in the 500+ years of the 52 card deck, it's equally likely that humanity will disappear before all possible combinations are expressed.

Chaos theory is frequently expressed by the notion of a butterfly's wings creating a hurricane. A pebble dropped in the ocean at sufficient height, could possibly create a tsunami. 

Exponentiality is a helpful reminder of just how tiny we humans are and how massive the universe is.  It's also a scary reminder how dangerous mob mentality leads to chaos in the absence of order.