Here’s to you, Mr. Robinson:
Sifting through the ashes for tech bargains

by Michael Riska

For the last forty years, the biggest advances in computer chips have been in the amount of transistors that can fit onto a single silicon wafer. Thin film transistors (TFTs) precisely layer and orient crystallized silicon on a glass substrate. The drawback to these methods is that you’re dealing with fragile materials that must be processed one at a time. Also, decreasing the size of chips and increasing the amount of transistors they can hold hasn’t really brought the price of making them down at all.

Thin film battery technology is already pretty far along, in the form of amorphic photovoltaic cells. And all the manufacturing can be done on giant rollers — the same way newspapers are printed.

Computing by the square foot
So imagine this: You fire up the presses at the computer printing plant. Instead of front page, business section, lifestyle section, etc., you print the back cover, thin film batteries, microprocessor, video interface, audio interface, memory, display, keyboard, and cover. At the end of the line, it’s all cut and folded and ready to go. And the next fully formed computer is right behind it. They’re the size of your morning newspaper and they cost less than US$20.

Like most drastic advances, this step forward is going to seem like two steps back at first. The new computers will be much slower than what we’re used to for a while. The display has a long way to go. But hey, they’re made out of plastic and for all intents and purposes will be disposable.

Personal computing
But what’s really emerging here is an altogether different concept of computing, in which people will have tens, even hundreds of computers instead of just one. These computers will be capable of processing in tandem whenever necessary, or will function individually.