One Digital Day: How the Microchip Is Changing Our World

Released as the Internet boom was accelerating upwards, One Digital Day now seems like a work from another era. Picking it up today, one can't help but think it rather irrelevant, and one can't help but think of the shattered California economy that is the remnant of the corporate hubris of the boom times. Still, it is a very nice book to look at, which is the whole point of course. A wag has put up a parody web site at anotherdigitalday-dot-com.

It's been said a picture is worth a thousand words. If that's true, then perhaps the 200 photographs in ONE DIGITAL DAY: HOW THE MICROCHIP IS CHANGING OUR WORLD by Rick Smolan are worth millions of microchips.In 24 hours, Smolan's team of the world's best photojournalists canvassed the world and captured pictures and accompanying stories which illustrate just how one little microchip -- something that didn't exist 30 years ago -- has changed, influenced and altered our world.  In so doing, the invention of the tiny microchip has succeeded in bringing the globe to us inside our homes and offices.In the introduction, Michael Malone gives us a rundown on the microchip and how it is moving closer and closer to "the center of our lives." Malone estimates close to 15 billion microchips are currently in use.Malone reminds us that, even though we might not have a PC in our home, should the microchips we use daily be stricken from our lives, we would be dumbfounded. Quite simply, we take their existence in our lives for granted in many ways.Got a microwave? A telephone? A television for watching that Sunday football game? How about that streetlight outside? Without the microchip, your car wouldn't even start, writes Malone. Pretty amazing for a "tiny square of silicon the size of a fingernail," indeed.What's it all about, Alfie? For all its wonder, the microchip is made up of metal, fire, crystal and water. During manufacturing, Malone notes a single speck of dust can mean disaster. In fact, he writes, the water used to rinse the surfaces of finished chips is more pure than water used for open heart surgery!Past the fascinating introduction, readers will find a graphic photograph of just how many microchip-related items we could find in our homes if we tried. One family's home in San Anselmo, California is emptied, literally on the front lawn, and featured in a two-page layout with the home in the background and variouspossessions, appliances and electronics, etc. are displayed on the lawn.From Hong Kong, China to Bristol, Connecticut or from Rostov, Russia to Memphis, Tennessee, it doesn't really matter which country you choose or even what city or town -- you'd be hard-pressed to find a spot that the microchip hasn't touched. In bold, dashing fashion, DIGITAL DAY takes the reader on a virtual tour of each place in rapid succession. The photographs are so clear, the captions so informative, you could easily lose hours poring through this book.For instance, in Tokyo, Japan we discover there is a word for computer-crazed youths who can't get enough of technology: otaku. One photo features an otaku by the name of Masakazu Kobayashi, who clearly has his cyberlife wired to the max.His microchip-driven bounty includes not one PC, but seven networked PCs, six video game systems, a palmtop, a laptop, and a motherlode of peripherals to boot.  Instead of having a room littered with comic books, magazines, CDs and other youth

From Kirkus: The ubiquitous microchip is celebrated in some 200 color photographs, taken in the course of one day (July 11, 1997) by approximately 100 photojournalists scattered around the globe. While we may take it for granted that the microprocessor has infiltrated and altered almost every element of life having to do with technology, it's still startling to see how pervasive its influence is. A portrait of Thai monks gathered `round a computer to study the teachings of the Buddha, of a Chinese sailor steering his junk and blithely chatting on a cellular telephone, or of a group of rural South African pensioners lining up at a computer that will identify them by their fingerprints before issuing a monthly check are likely to surprise even a jaded technophile. Much of the book, however, focuses on the specific ways in which the microchip is expanding life's possibilities, with a heavy stress on how microchip-driven technology is helping to cure disease and enhance the lives of those with a variety of disabilities. The upbeat message throughout is hardly surprising, given that the project was sponsored by the Intel Corporation. Still, as a primer on cutting edge work in health, the environment, And other sciences, and as a vivid tour of the world's obsession with all things technological, One Digital Day is breezily effective. (First serial to Fortune, CNN TV special) -Kirkus Reviews END

The San Diego Union-Tribune 05/12/98 by Robert Hawkins Real miracle of microchips: What people do with them I remember when my father first brought a handful of microprocessors home. He was the new engineer responsible for improving their production. They weren't attached to anything, just processors. Defective ones at that. At the dinner table, my father excitedly traced the circuitry paths through the bed on which the microchip -- the "brains" -- would lie, explaining to me just what it was a microprocessor did, from an engineering perspective. And it was impressive. But it also seemed so right, so natural, so logical, so within the reach of the bright minds of science. Impressed, yes. But I was not awed. I've always had great faith in the technological process, how things are accomplished. I find it interesting that a single microchip today can hold 20 million transistors. And I'm fully confident that the number will continue to rise until it runs smack into the laws of physical nature. So be it. There are now 15 billion microchips in use today around the world. OK, that's interesting. But what does it mean? Over this past weekend I learned the answer, or part of it. It means that Army Lt. Frank Holmes, stationed in Sarajevo, Bosnia, can talk face to face with his wife, Amanda, and baby daughter, Morgan, 5,000 miles away at Fort Bragg, N.C. It means that 320,000 itinerate and functionally illiterate pensioners in the KwaZulu region of South Africa will get their monthly checks because a computer can read their fingerprints. It means that 5-year-old Amy Stewart, blind since birth, can keep up with other students in her first-grade class because a computer converts her lessons into Braille. It means that Sigrid Cerf was able to phone her husband and hear his voice for the first time in their 35-year marriage because research she conducted on the Internet led to a cure for the hearing ! impairment she's had since childhood. (Ironically, her husband is Vint Cerf. He co-wrote theTCP/IP protocol, earning the title "father" of the Internet.) It means that Mike Ward, an Intel engineer, was able to design a computer system that would enable him to continue working as his body gradually deteriorated from Lou Gehrig's disease. See? This is what I get excited about. Not how a microchip works, but what it can do. And to what new uses our imaginations can put it. These examples and hundreds more are found in a new book that will be available May 28. It is called "One Digital Day: How the Microchip is Changing the World."If you are familiar with Rick Smolan's hugely popular coffee-table books, the "Day in the Life" series, you'll grasp the nature of this one. Smolan's specialty is assembling hundreds of the best photographers in the world and throwing them at a single subject for one intense shutterbugging day. California, Japan, Hawaii, America, Vietnam have all been topics. Smolan sent 100 photojournalists out into the field for this one on July 11, 19