Bit-field packing is exactly how compact binary formats like Protocol Buffers' varint-adjacent encodings and network protocol headers (TCP flags, IP headers) squeeze multiple small fields into a handful of bytes to save bandwidth, and it's why V8's hidden object 'Maps' pack type tags into a few bits alongside pointers. The same principle scales up to columnar databases, where packing a billion-row column into the minimum bit width per value is the difference between a scan fitting in RAM or spilling to disk.