It's an interesting observation that 2^16 = 65K is a number that isn't quite big enough for things it's mostly big enough for, like characters.

And that 2^32 = 4B is similarly awkwardly not quite big enough for global things related to numbers of people, or for second-based timestamps.

But a 9th bit isn't going to solve those things either. The real problem is that powers-of-two-of-powers-of-two, where we jump from 256 to 65K to 4B to 18QN (quintillion), are just not fine-grained enough for efficient usage of space.

It might be nice if we could also have 2^12=4K, 2^24=16M, and 2^48=281T as more supported integer bit lengths used for storage both in memory and on disk. But, is it really worth the effort? Maybe in databases? Obviously 16M colors has a long history, but that's another example where color banding in gradients makes it clear where that hasn't been quite enough either.