Reflections on the computer age

The future on the head of a pin continued

ap plications. The Sw iss may have been excell ent watchmakers, bu t the game changed when the hi ghl y accurate electro nic watches appeared. Yo ur automobil e, any e levator you ride, yo ur TV and audi o syste ms, your telephone, and every Y2K problem in the world all depend on ICs. Thi s great inventi on has created the informat ion age that has revoluti o ni zed the way we li ve. While e-commerce growth rates are astou nding, that sector represents less than I percent of the $9 trillion U.S. economy. It is also estimated that the in fo rmati on technology revo luti on is impacting our nation's infla tion, lowering it by I percent this year.

Where are we headed? Moore's law has been o ffi ciall y replaced with the Intern ational Tech nology Roadmap fo r Semiconductors, w hi ch pred icts microprocessors wi ll contain 76 million transistors each in 2002 and 200 million apiece by 2005. Dynami c RAM memory passed the bi II ion transistor level several years ago. Ultim ate ly there are physical limits to how closely together circuits can be etched with li ght onto the surface of a silicon chip, with an end to Moore's law by 20 12.

But last summer sc ienti sts announced a breakthrough in research in mo lecul ar structures th at seem to behave li ke dig ital switches . These researchers fo resee molecul ar-scale e lectron ics (moleclronics) and computers that would be 100 billi on time as fast as today' s fa stest PC - and 100 o f the process ing circuits coul d be pl aced on the head o f a pin . They predi ct smart materi als used fo r new types of coatings , for exa mpl e, that would enab le a surface to be " painted" with co mputer-like sensors. Researchers at UMR are already working on applications o f these smart mate ri als th at will change our li ves o nce again.

Qur cha ll enge as we enter the 2 1 st century is to increasing ly make our des igns and syste ms people-o ri ented, so that techno logy does not ru n our li ves, bu t instead increases our producti vity and our qual it y o f li fe. Today' students have their work cut out for them.

Robert Mitchell is dean of the UMR School of Engineering and a professor of electrical and computer engineering.

12

I Winter 1999 BV Aria" R. DeKock (adekock@umr.edu)

Reflections on the computer age continued

CompUlers calclliation methods at UM R in the late 1960s. Studellls key-pllnch in their prograllls, which are then processed by an IBM 360 centni/ processing unit. Photo from 1969 Rollamo.

attached to them. Even though the campus still had only one computer, now many people spread out across campus could be interacting w ith the mac hine simu our ow n personal des kto p machines that were nearly powerful enough to do something usefu l. Most heavy duty computer users pa id very little attenti on to the PC , however, because it was clearly a toy. It only had 32KB (kilobytes) to 128 KB o f memory, no hard dri ve, a fl oppy dri ve or two, and a bl azing speed of 4 MHZ (megahertz) to I MHZ. It was a home hobbyist's device, no doub t. T he PC was merely fo r those techies w ho had already built a stereo and a telev ision and now wo uld step up to a new challenge. M ost of us d id not be li eve the futuri sts who said that one day we wo uld have on our deskto ps a personal computer as powerfu l as the ma inframes that sat in the computer rooms three decades ago.

We were wrong.

It is now 1999. O n my des k is my ow n personal 450 MHZ Pentium . [n about LO minutes, that computer can perfo rm the di ssertati on ana lysis that required more than 300 hours in 1967.

The changes that have taken place in the intervening 32 years are so dramati c th at they almost de fy the imag in ati on. It is obvious that today 's computers are fas ter, sma ll er and cheape r. And computers have become so tin y th at we can' t even see that they surroun d us in almost a ll as pects of our lives . But the real change is the ro le that computers pl ay in our lives.

There are computers under the hoods of our cars. Compute rs scan our purchases as we check out o f the supermarke t. Instead o f going to the computer center, computers have come to us in our offi ces and our homes, and the Internet brin gs us the world. If we are to believe the futuri sts of 1999, computers w ill become ubiquitous - everyw here present. In our appli ances, in the locks of our doors, in the li ghting of our homes - everyw here. We w ill talk to them and they will Jj sten and talk back to us - hopefull y, with respect.

As an ex periment, and an illustrati on of our technologica l advancement, I have written this article by talking into a little mi cro phone headset that looks like the kind of dev ice te lephone o perators used to wea r. The computer program, Naturall ySpeaking, turns my wo rds into printed tex t on the screen exactl y as if I had typed at the keyboard. (Well , almost exactl y. When I spoke the preceding sentence, it o ri ginaJl y came out as, "NarurallyS peaking turned my words in 2 printed tex t ... ") A nd if that isn' t remarkable enough, the program also attempts to learn . The second time I spoke the preceding sentence the computer actuall y produced the correct wo rds.

Tn answer to the questi on, " How has the computer changed your li feT I wo uld answer, " What was first a cumbersome, un wie ldi ly data processor has become an integral and essenti al part of my life, impacting nearl y everything I do, and in a pos iti ve manner. I started my associati on w ith computers by going to the computer (center); then via personal computers they came to me; and now vi a the Internet the entire world is be ing brought to me." U C 0 Arlan R. DeKock is a professor and former chair of computer science at UMR.

Answers to Miner Crossword (page 56) H A L A

H 0 C K A N K N E R

I S I K E

E L P L E A RT BA N

A L E R D E R S

E S E Ne E LI T E

14 MSM -UMR ALUMNUS I Wintcr 1999