OPPORTUNITY’S UNEXPECTED TURNS By Michael S. Malone
Two stories from history . . .and a third story that we are living through at this very moment.
First story: The transcontinental railroad was one of the greatest – perhaps the greatest engineering achievement of the 19th century. But what is surprising to note is that when the great Union Pacific/Central Pacific line finally linked the two coasts of the United States in May, 1869, the achievement was most celebrated for what it meant to trade and travel outside the country, rather than within.
Here’s a description of that thinking from Stephen Ambrose’s Nothing Like it in the World:
“Throughout the building of the [rail]road, its proponents had predicted that the China-Japan-India trade from the East Coast of America and with Europe would pass through San Francisco and then over the transcontinental railroad to points east, or to be shipped to Europe via New York. The first through-car on the transcontinental line carried a shipment of India tea, forerunner of the future.
“But trade with Asia didn’t happen, certainly not to the extent that people hoped. . .”
Instead, the real impact of the transcontinental railroad was upon trade and migration within the U.S.; indeed, it opened up continental America to everyday citizens, not just intrepid pioneers. Meanwhile, the much promise international trade instead found its way through another new engineering marvel: the Suez Canal.
Second story: The microprocessor, perhaps the single most ubiquitous and influential invention of the 20th century was invented by a team of four scientists – Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, Stan Mazor and Masatoshi Shima – at the end of that annus mirabilus, 1969. The microprocessor, it almost goes without saying, went on to sell by the billions, and transform every corner of modern life, from cars and planes to personal computers and cell phones to medical equipment to games to the World Wide Web. In the process, as the leading supplier of microprocessors, Intel quickly became a hugely wealthy company – and justly described as “the world’s most important company.”
Less well known is the fact that, at first, Intel wasn’t even sure it wanted this so-called ‘computer on a chip.’ Intel had been founded just a couple years before as a memory chip company and had done extremely well in that business. Indeed, the microprocessor project had been merely a way to help one of Intel’s calculator clients – Japan’s Busicom – build a competitive product that would, it was hoped, help sell more Intel memory chips in the future. In fact, when Busicom complained about the project taking too long, Intel agreed to a lower fee, but demanded ownership of the technology, believing that it could be used to sell Intel memory chips to other companies.
Now, with the Intel 4004 and 8008 microprocessors completed, Intel found itself not only with a fast-growing existing business, but owning the most celebrated new chip technology on the planet. The Intel leadership troika of Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove were smart enough business people to know that a young company had neither the workforce nor the resources to tackle two exploding businesses at the same time. So, the growing consensus inside the company was to stick to what Intel knew – memory – and license way the microprocessor.
But within Intel, there were two true believers in the future of the microprocessor. One was marketing director Ed Gelbach, who began vigorously promoting Intel’s microprocessors in speeches and ads even as the rest of the company was having second thoughts. The other was the company PR person, Regis McKenna, who would go on to become Silicon Valley’s most famous marketer. Regis, for his part, was so convinced of the importance of the microprocessor that, on his own, he prepared a series of notebooks showing potential applications for the new device.
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21 Comments
1. Pajamas Media » Opportunity’s Unexpected Results in Iran:[...] Read the rest of the story here. [...]
Jun 19, 2009 - 11:20 am 2. Self-hating Boomer:I wonder if Gore regrets inventing the internet. That’s where all of his “deniers” blaspheme.
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:07 pm 3. Steve:Great article. You might say the thing we lack most is imagination.
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:48 pm 4. bubblehead:After Pres. Hussein destroys the American economy and enslaves the American population with chains of regulation and debt, WHO will invent the technologies of the future that will be needed to drive the economies of the future???
Freedom drives the American economy, and the American economy drives the world economy.
I see dark days ahead.
Jun 19, 2009 - 2:21 pm 5. stuart Williamson:Before we get ourselves too excited about the wonders Facebook and Twitter are accomplishing for freedom in Iran, we should pause to remember that what is being accomplished is essentially rable-rousing, working up an unstructured prolotariat of anti-administration believers – a mob. Mob violence and mob rule are hardly desirable, and almost inevitably lead to consequences worse than what generated them. I would be much more optimistic of a good outcome in Iran if there was some evidence of a well-organized plan behind it, and less reliance on Twitter.
My reaction in what Facebook has achieved would be more joyous if I was not aware of the great boost it has given to pornography, perversity, overt juvenile sexuality, and crime.
Unexpected results can just as readily be negative and destructive as beneficial. The Facebook/Twitter success may eventually contribute to even greater opression and suppression of human rights. It is somewhat early to celebrate the victory of the uprising.
Jun 19, 2009 - 2:39 pm 6. Brian:Good piece and i agree!My thoughts and prayers are with the Iranian people this night.
Jun 19, 2009 - 5:51 pm 7. MiamaMan:Mr. Malone, great article, thanks. Very interesting information.
5. stuart Williamson:
Yes, the Boston tea partiers were also rabble rousers. The pics from Iran do not show the faces of a mob, you wrote:
“Mob violence and mob rule are hardly desirable, and almost inevitably lead to consequences worse than what generated them”
Yes, let the people of Iran make an “application” for change. They sure will get it.
The fact is, the world is moving towards Oneness. All these technological advances are a manifestation of that stirring. They, as the mind and intellect, can be used for good or bad.
Jun 19, 2009 - 7:22 pm 8. Instapundit » Blog Archive » MICHAEL S. MALONE: Great technologies are typically sold, incorrectly, on applications we know - bu…:[...] MICHAEL S. MALONE: Great technologies are typically sold, incorrectly, on applications we know – but succeed on applica… [...]
Jun 20, 2009 - 5:16 am 9. Vinny Vidivici:Good observation, one made often in James Burke’s great series on the history of technology, ‘Conections’. He explains how the development of things we now see as self evident — barometric pressure, computing, use of the internal combustion engine in automobiles — often follow broken and unpredictable paths lasting centuries. It’s not always a ‘eureka’ moment, and development appears inevitable only in hindsight.
Jun 20, 2009 - 5:40 am 10. Ashcat:Good article, and got me thinking of another example within your story.
The Iranians’ ability to continue communicating, thanks to the relentless peripheralization of intelligence via the microprocessor, relies less on Intel than on ARM. ARM itself is an example of a technology company finding a role far different from their initial plan.
Acorn RISC Machines was an early competitor in the personal computer space, but lost out to Wintel. Despite this defeat, they continued on with a new strategy: licensing their designs for microprocessor cores, and collecting royalties of only 5-10 cents per core produced. ARM cores proliferated with the ascendancy of the cellphone, in which ARM has roughly 80%, maybe more now, of the market.
By 1998 they were rolling, having “shipped” about 50 million cores that year. But, since then, how have they done? ARM has moved down-market into the microcontroller space, gaining ground up-market in the netbook space, and continuing to dominate in cellphones/smartphone/iPod (many of which have several ARM cores per product). As an example, in the 4th quarter of 2008 alone, ARM “shipped” 1.2 Billion cores—in a single quarter 24,000 times what they shipped in all of 1998. (That they have not tried [or been able] to maintain the same nickel or dime per core, but have now dropped to perhaps a few pennies per core, has so far made them a less than stellar investment vehicle over the past decade )
Without this proliferation of ARM-based products, by which the periphery has become intelligent with microprocessors embedded in cellphones and iPods and smartphones and GameBoys in individual hands, the robust information tether of ordinary Iranians to each other, and to the outside world, to which we are witness, would not be happening.
Who knows if they will use this capability to transform themselves from a mob to a coordinated organism working for liberty—but at least now it’s possible that they will, thanks to the technology they have in their hands.
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:02 am 11. SteveM.:So the human shields that went to Iraq to protect the Iraqi’s from the USA should now head on over to neighboring Iran to protect the protesters. Who knew they were ahead of their time too!
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:37 am 12. Self-hating Boomer:The upside to this uncontrollable media is obvious. The potential downside is that a totalitarian regime may figure out how to astroturf their own message. This time, the mullahs got caught flat-footed. Don’t be surprised though, if someday the Chinese figure out how to turn this technology to their advantage.
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:56 am 13. The world has changed……… « The Right Cup of Tea:[...] link: Edgelings.com » Opportunity’s Unexpected Turns [...]
Jun 20, 2009 - 10:33 am 14. Vinny Boombots:I can’t help but laugh at all the attention paid to Iran’s election simply because people don’t like the outcome. Where’s the proof that it was rigged other than the complaints of the losers? Yet, few people said anything when Bush stole the election, using his stormtroopers to attack and intimidate African-Americans from voting and then using his father’s appointees to the Supreme Court to rig the recount in Florida to give him more votes so he could be President. Show me that kind of proof in Iran, and maybe I’ll come over to the other side. Until then, I will believe what I see, that the Iran people want a strong, powerful Islamic Anti-American government to rule them.
Jun 20, 2009 - 10:53 am 15. Edgelings.com » Opportunity's Unexpected Turns | Iran Today:[...] post: Edgelings.com » Opportunity's Unexpected Turns Tags: eyes, facebook-, highly-controlled, morph-before, other-new, social-networks [...]
Jun 20, 2009 - 3:29 pm 16. BirdDog:Hey, #5 stuart Williamson, yousaid:
Before we get ourselves too excited about the wonders Facebook and Twitter are accomplishing for freedom in Iran, we should pause to remember that what is being accomplished is essentially rable-rousing, working up an unstructured prolotariat of anti-administration believers – a mob. Mob violence and mob rule are hardly desirable, and almost inevitably lead to consequences worse than what generated them.
Yeah, like the American Revolution. Paul Revere should probably have just stayed home and written letters.
Jun 20, 2009 - 6:17 pm 17. A. C.:You wrote: “The Mullahs are faced with the unsolvable dilemma that in order to make Iran a regional and nuclear power they have to put in place the same sophisticated digital infrastructure that will keep Iran from ever again being a closed society.”
North Korea is a counterexample of this claim. While they are not a regional power, being dwarfed by China, Japan the U.S. and now South Korea, they certainly are a nuclear power now, and without the widespread dissemination of cell phones in North Korea.
I do not believe the mullahs really care who wins, because both candidates were approved by the mullahs. Even if Ahmadinejad is forced from the presidency, the mullahs will retain their power over the Basij, the Quds and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. There won’t be a successful revolution unless the mullahs are overthrown, it will not be enough to throw out Ahmadinejad. If Mousavi somehow drives Ahmadinejad from office, he will still answer to the Supreme Council. That is what makes this a real tragedy for the Iranians on the street, dupes of Mousavi.
Jun 20, 2009 - 7:13 pm 18. World focus on Burma (19 June 2009) « Save Burma:[...] Edgelings.com [...]
Jun 20, 2009 - 10:18 pm 19. Opportunities with unexpected turns « Creative Cultures:[...] The Future Arrived Yesterday will be reviewed here
Jun 22, 2009 - 7:12 am 20. Delia:It’s sorta akin to McCain or Obama.
Ain’t it?
Jun 22, 2009 - 12:48 pm 21. eon:Another example of a technology that changed the world in a highly unexpected way is radar.
RAdio Detection And Ranging was originally developed in the 1930s, after some U.S. Navy radio technicians operating a radio direction finder and transceiver pair across the mouth of Hampton Roads, VA, noticed that when a ship passed between their transceiver on one side and the RDF receiver on the other, the transmitter’s signal was bounced back at its receiver. Radar was soon in use as an aid to ranging for gunlaying, i.e., aiming the guns of battleships and cruisers for surface actions, thus eliminating the problems of reduced visibility that had decided major fleet actions by default in the past (Google “Battle of Jutland”).
Within a few years, this idea had been extended to detecting aircraft in flight, and in Great Britain resulted in the Chain Home radar system that was critical to the RAF winning the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940. It seems obvious now that an object up in the air could be “seen” much farther away than one on the surface, but it wasn’t at the time.
What was even less obvious, so much less so that no one realized it until the middle of World War Two, was that a system that could detect incoming enemy planes in any conditions of night, fog, what-have-you, could also detect your own planes as they tried to find one of your airfields and land safely in the same sort of nasty conditions. The result was the Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) system, first used by the RAF in 1943, and subsequently adopted worldwide.
It was followed, of course, by the Enroute Control System, now better as Air Traffic Control, which allows commercial airliners to operate in all weather, under positive ground control around major hubs, etc.,- and without which the modern international air transport system could not exist, because without ATC, there would be no safe way to have that many planes in the same airspace at the same time.
I’m sure those Navy radiomen on the opposite sides of the estuary where the U.S.S. Monitor and C.S.S. Virginia had fought seventy-odd years earlier had no idea what they were starting, either.
cheers
eon
Jun 23, 2009 - 2:09 pm