The Power of Two
Copyright © 1999 by Dave Badtke
What is it that has one voice yet crawls on all fours and then walks tall on two feet before ignominiously vanishing with ten legs?
Not sure about this variation of the Sphinx’s riddle? Then consider this.
In 1965, Gordon Moore, an engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor who would co-found the Intel corporation in 1968 with Robert Noyce, predicted that the density of memory-chip components would double every year, and, because shorter paths in chips would mean shorter transit times for electrons, processing power would also double at about the same rate.
For the past 34 years his oft-quoted prediction has qualitatively captured our sense that computer technology is advancing at a break-neck pace. It’s interesting to note, however, that as early as 1989 Intel was falling behind Moore’s prediction and changed the Law to an 18-month to two-year doubling time. With the introduction of Intel’s next generation of chips, even this revised Law will be far in excess, at 170 million transistors, of the 10 million transistors the chip will actually contain. But to most of us this is a technological nuance that obscures our feeling that computers advance perpetually beyond our grasp.
Many of us did not sense that such rapid change was afoot until 1984 when Apple announced its Macintosh computer to the world during Super Bowl XVIII (LA Raiders 38, Redskins 9). At the time of Apple’s Orwellian advertisements, few had computers at home, and those of us who had PCs in our offices seldom turned them on. I paid about $3000 for a Mac that my older son used for school, and, until I purchased an external 20-megabyte hard drive for $800, he spent most of his time listening to the ker-chunk, ker-chunk sound of the floppy disk. Today, a brief 15 years later, I can purchase a usable PC for $500 and micro-controllers are so cheap and reliable that they are essential to everything from toys and appliances to automobiles, airplanes and spaceships.
Nonetheless, Moore’s Law is the technological canary that confirms that computer performance is increasing geometrically, and when innovation increasingly falls short of the Law, scientists worry that the beginning of the end of the incredible shrinking computer is nigh.
But not to worry!
In July, Hewlett-Packard and UCLA announced they had designed logic gates, the fundamental building blocks of computers, that were the thickness of a single molecule, a 100-fold decrease in the putative lower limit of current fabrication techniques! Yale and Rice Universities have further improved the gate, and Hewlett-Packard is working on wires that are 12 atoms wide.
In other words, the future of the incredible shrinking computer seems bright and limitless. Who knows what wonders will await our children and our children’s children and all children to follow?
But if the past is any measure of the future, we should reflect on the ideas presented in Susan Faludi’s important new book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, in which she renders a disturbing portrait of men and their sons who came of age after WWII during the reign of Moore’s prophesy. Interestingly, she uses the allegorical movie based on Richard Matheson’s novel, The Incredible Shrinking Man, to illustrate the diminishing role American men play in a society in which technological advances, competition and profit take priority over skill development, job continuity, family and community.
When a skilled worker is replaced by a computer controlled machine, what is he supposed to do, work the assembly line? And when the assembly line is moved overseas, should he sell insurance? And when insurance is sold over the internet, should he sell houses? And when houses are sold virtually, should he sell hamburgers?
Can we imagine the impact the internet will have as computer performance doubles at rates even faster than Moore’s Law? One can envision a time when every business that does not critically depend on brick and mortar will become virtual: Books, newspapers, automobiles, goods and services of all kinds will be efficiently sold over the internet. Where thousands were previously employed, only a few will be needed. And what will everyone else do?
When Matheson’s movie was released in 1957, I was eleven. I still vividly remember the scene in which the shrinking protagonist trapped in the basement of his own house uses a sewing needle to defend himself against a spider. He wins the battle and continues to shrink. But what would have happened if he had been attacked by one spider after another, each smaller and more determined than the next?
The predatory downsizing-retraining cycle that has and will stalk so many in our society is like an incredible shrinking spider that first captures the incredible shrinking man in his web and then grasps him tightly as they shrink together, their legs intertwined, into oblivion.
Surely, Oedipus, the answer to my riddle is now clear: Man consumed by progress.
- Dave Badtke is founder of the developing Carquinez Review literary journal. Find him on the web at www.CarquinezReview.com.
Contact him at:
Dave@CarquinezReview.com or Dave@Badtke.com