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Facts of the Matter Richard Brill |
The microchip unleashed
a wave of rapid changeWe are in the midst of a revolution that some people feel will have as profound an effect on the human race as anything that has ever happened, as great as the taming of fire, domestication of plants and animals, the invention of the wheel and the printing press.
The revolution, driven by the microchip, is already so advanced that even if electronic engineering and progress were to cease today, it could take two centuries to assimilate what has happened in the last half-century.
The changes that society is undergoing as a result of this miniaturization has been estimated to be equivalent to the changes caused by the industrial revolution every 18 months, and might turn out to be the most significant technology ever developed.
In his 1968 book, "Future Shock," author Alvin Toffler examined the effects of rapid industrial and technological changes upon the individual, the family and society. His thesis was that post-industrial society finds its capacity to adapt to its own technological developments unable to keep up with by the pace at which these developments occur. Toffler was among the first to recognize that not only change, but the rate of change is increasing at such a phenomenal rate that it is changing people's lives and the structure of society.
Although some critics would say that the world changed more between 1870 and 1970 with the control and distribution of electricity and the changes that it sparked, including the invention of electric lights, mass communication and electrical appliances, the changes brought about by the microchip are less obvious but more striking.
According to some sociologists, the changes that are taking place today, largely driven by the microchip, are roughly equivalent to those of the industrial revolution repeated every 18 months or so.
No single product in history has become as pervasive, rapidly assimilated and had such a profound effect on every aspect of the way people live, work and play worldwide as the microchip. Smaller than a postage stamp, thinner than a credit card and lighter in weight than a dime, practically everything we do would stop working without them, from the cars we drive to the cell phones we use to verify the shopping list while driving, to the stoves and ovens that we use to cook the meal.
Today there are billions of microchips in existence. In an average day more than 100 microchips have affected everyone directly or indirectly in one way or another. The modern world would literally shut down without them, to the extent that asking who has been affected by microchips is like asking who has been affected by air.
Even an individual who doesn't drive, use a cell phone, watch TV, go to movies, shop at a mall or listen to music benefits from the technology of the microchip in one way or another, directly or indirectly. Houses and condominiums are designed with the aid of a chip. Plans are drawn, materials ordered and wood cut by chip control. Paint is mixed at the direction of a chip after its color was matched or coordinated by a chip. Landscaping, although appearing organic, was designed with the help of a chip; the dirt was moved by a machine using a chip somewhere in its construct; and the plant nursery used a chip to determine what plants to buy from a database, maintained by a microprocessor, that kept track of water, heat and light conditions, and how much and what kind of fertilizer to use.
Digital photography changes the look of models and scenery in magazines, as digital rendering in movies and video games make the world of fantasy virtually indistinguishable from reality.
One of the driving forces behind the development of the chip was the necessity for performing calculations of trajectories of long-range guns in World War II. These are complex calculations that take into account wind sped and direction, air temperature and humidity, muzzle velocity, amount of explosive and the mass of projectile, among others.
In 1945 the first electronic computer, Eniac, was built at the University of Pennsylvania. It contained 18,000 vacuum tubes, was hand-wired and failed often, cost nearly half a million dollars (in 1945 terms), took up an entire floor of a building and used 120,000 watts of power, the equivalent of 2,000 60-watt light bulbs.
Eniac used the speed of electrical switches and a form of logic known as Boolean algebra to perform calculations. Boolean algebra had been developed a century earlier, but, like many mathematical innovations, it found little practical use until Claude Shannon recognized in 1940 the similarity between telephone switching circuits and Boolean logic. He is often credited as the father of modern communications theory. Although Boolean operations can perform numerical calculations, they require a great number of steps, and people were simply too slow to make such calculations practicable.
The relationship between Boolean algebra, switching systems and computation led to the understanding that the more switches, the more complex the calculations.
Meteorologists became hopeful that such calculating machines could be used to make accurate weather predictions weeks in advance.
In 1947 the transistor was developed, miniaturizing the process and speeding up the calculations. But even with transistors, the burdensome calculations required for weather prediction were still far beyond the capabilities of the electrical machines.
Jack Kilby, considered by many to be the inventor of the microchip, realized in 1958 that in principle many different transistors could be created from a single silicon chip. It was called an "integrated circuit (IC)" because it contained not only transistors, but also other electrical circuit components, also made from silicon, such as capacitors and resistors.
The first IC had six transistors; a modern microchip has 60 million.
In 1971 the first microprocessor was assembled by soldering microchips onto a board with a printed circuit instead of wires, combined with resistors and capacitors. The first commercial success of a microprocessor came one year later in the video game called Pong, wherein different processors controlled different aspects of the game, a technique still used today in many applications.
Today a microprocessor can be put onto a single chip, and a computer consists of a network of microprocessors working together, each designed for a particular task.
The development of microprocessors appears to follow a rule known in the industry as Moore's law, which states that the computer power of engineered chips doubles roughly every 18 months.
The multitude of ways that the microchip has permeated our lives in little more than three decades is staggering. From that first Pong game in 1972 to the ubiquity of today's uses represents the fastest growth of technology in history and presumably in prehistory as well.
Today the microchip pushes the envelope of entertainment in video games, simulators and special effects in movies and television, and in other, less noticeable ways.
The global communication network has shrink-wrapped the entire planet with more than 50 million cell phones in the United States alone. The Internet grew from 5,000 users to more than 50 million in less than a decade. Thousands of repetitive tasks are performed by robots in manufacturing and other industries as engineers constantly improve the mechanical abilities as well as their "thinking" skills, reaching closer and closer to artificial intelligence in the true meaning of the phrase.
Microprocessors have given law enforcement agencies and the military a whole new repertoire of techniques in fighting crime and fighting wars.
Microchip-driven acoustic sensors can locate gunshots to within a few meters; infrared imaging makes night-vision possible. Gone are the days of the criminal who commits a series of crimes, then moves a few miles away to repeat in a new community, thanks to digital fingerprint recognition, data bases, retinal scans and DNA identifications.
At the same time, it has created a new category of digital crimes that are easier, less messy, less violent and harder to track down, as electronic monetary and ID thefts become significant problems.
Microchips have improved security using fingerprinting and retinal scans, facial scans and voiceprinting. Although these are new technologies, it won't be long before credit cards are verified with a thumbprint or retinal scan instead of, or in addition to, a photograph and a signature.
Although some people feel threatened by the "Big Brother" aspects of electronic surveillance that the microchip portends, in reality the Orwellian vision is also turned around because of the proliferation of digital media. More and more people have smaller and smaller cameras so that Big Brother is also being watched by hoi polloi, as evidenced by the famous videotape of Rodney King being beaten by police in the famous case of a few years back.
Like all technologies of the past, the information revolution that the microchip has spawned will be seen as a tool by some and a threat by others. Science and technology are neutral, neither good nor bad intrinsically. It is the use to which they are put, and into whose hands we grant and entrust their use. The printing press was a threat in its time to those who wanted to control information.
A cold, sterile universe of mindless machines overriding and controlling humanity is not likely to manifest any more than your family car is likely to join others in a neighborhood rebellion and refuse the daily commute.
Like any and all technologies of the past, those who do not adapt will be left behind just as surely as were those who remained illiterate after the printing press brought books to the common man.
It has been said that knowledge is power, and the gathering and distribution of information will make the difference between who is powerful and who is not. The question is, To whom do we wish to grant that power?
Richard Brill picks up where your high school science teacher left off. He is a professor of science at Honolulu Community College, where he teaches earth and physical science and investigates life and the universe. He can be contacted by e-mail at rickb@hcc.hawaii.edu