| Digital Revolution |
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| The Digital Revolution written 12/05/2006 Modern technology has been so integrated in our daily lives that we can hardly think of life without it. Internet has become our tool for a variety of tasks - from keeping in touch with friends and family to shopping to retrieving information about almost anything with just a few taps on the keyboard. Mobile phones have become a necessity for a majority of people, not a luxury anymore. Online shopping is on the rise. Email has become the preferred mode of communication. People from every corner of the globe are instant messaging each other in Internet chat rooms. The world has truly become smaller, thanks to the technological advances of our times. What many people do not know and care less is that all these technological innovations have their roots in years and sometimes decades of scientific research. Thus, science has a direct impact on our daily lives, although it may not seem so. As an example we can take the case of semiconductors, which are the building blocks of all modern electronic devices. Had it not been for the breakthrough in semiconductor research, we would not most probably be carrying those slim and trim cell phones and all those miniaturized trendy electronic gadgets. Most of us have heard about silicon as in "Silicon Valley". Silicon is a semiconductor, which is used to build integrated circuits (IC's) and other active electronic components, e.g. transistors, diodes etc in electronic devices. Before the groundbreaking research by physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley in transistor effect and coming up with the first semiconduntor transistor in 1947, all electronic devices were driven by vacuum tubes and mechanical relays and so forth. A computer nowhere comparable to today's modern machines in processing power would take up an entire room. The birth of the semiconductor transistor revolutionized the technological world. The introduction of Integrated Circuit (IC) technology was another milestone in technology. Integrated circuits are silicon chips (such as your computer microprocessor, e.g. Pentium 4) that have full functioning electronic circuits in a single die. The Internet can also be traced back to the scientific world. Internet, long before it was known to the general public, was used by physicists from different parts of the world to trade their research data and findings. The way technology has transformed our lives could be appropriately called the Digital Revolution. Where do we go from here? Today, we can see that there are new technologies and gadgets coming out at a breathtaking rate. Tech companies are trying to outdo eachother in terms of coming up with the latest gadgets. Take for example, Intel and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), two of the companies that produce x86 microprocessors for PC's, that are competing with each other for market share. When AMD came out with dual core processors, Intel caught up with its own dual core processors. Recently, Intel introduced quad core processor (it's like 4 processors in one chip) and in no time AMD unveiled it's version of quad core processor. It is said that in the future, microprocessors will have hundreds of cores in a single chip. We can only imagine the power of the computers powered by those chips. Increasingly, the computing power limited to research labs are being brought into our homes. It is noteworthy that as the computing power of computers increases, their prices correspondingly fall down. Isn't that sweet? This trend of increasing computation power with time closely follows what is known as Moore's Law. Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel corporation, observed in 1965 that the density of transistors in Integrated CIrcuits doubles every two years, which later was dubbed Moore's Law. The more transistors in a chip, the more powerful it is. Microprocessor manufacturers such as Intel and AMD have been successful so far at making Moore's Law still hold. But, somewhere down the road, we will have to explore new ways to increase the processing power of computers. Researches are underway in the field on quantum computing and carbon nanotubes, which will fuel the next wave of digital revolution. They will be radically different approaches leveraging on the researches in quantum physics. Today, we have almost all the information in the world in our fingertips. It just takes typing in the search item in an Internet search engine, such as google, and in fraction of a second the information is on your screen. According to news reports few days back, doctors are using Google to successfully diagnose rare cases. Google, which was started by two enterprising and innovative Stanford University computer engineering PhD students as a research project in 1996 has been catapulted to more than a $100 billion company. Google has become a household name. Internet startup companies started by young tech-savvy people are doing well in the Web 2.0 world. Recent success stories of web 2.0 are that of MySpace.com and YouTube.com. Internet made considerable number of millionaires in it's hey days, when tech boom was at it's height. The development of next-generation Internet, called Internet2, which is expected to be the internet of tomorrow is ongoing with a collaboration of 200 US universities, industry, and government. The exciting times are right ahead! Here, I remember thoughts shared by my mathematics professor in college. He said that the next technological revolution will be the optical revolution. Our age is electronic age, that is to say that the information is carried by the electrons. In optical age, information will be carried by light, which is considerably faster. Nothing in the universe travels faster than light. When information is carried by light, it will open up a whole range of possibillities since it is free from constraints of electronics. Let's take an example of fiber optics. Optical fibers are essentially glass that transmit information with light. It is much faster than conventional copper wires and free from unwanted signal interference. Implications of technology Without question, technology has simplified our lives as well as made us more productive. But, at the same time, it has the potential to reduce our social interaction. When everything can be done online, people will have less tendency to do things the conventional way, such as shopping. More and more universities are offering online courses. Internet dating is on the vogue. With Internet chat, people are getting to know and having conversations with someone from another corner of the planet, yet they don't know their next door neighbor. Are we slipping towards a mechanized world, where someday we will be talking to intelligent machines instead of live humans? That's a question to ponder. While embracing technology is vital and inevitable in modern society, it is equally important not to be slaves to the machines. There are certain things which can and should still be done the good old ways no matter how technologically advanced society we may become. -Himalaya Kakshapati Salt Lake City |
| himalaya kakshapati |