Communication technologies that will change our lives.

• Author: Molitor, Graham T.T.
• Position: Science & Technology

COMMUNICATION ERA undertakings dominate postindustrial economies. Since the late 1970s, knowledge, information, education, and entertainment enterprises in the U.S. have accounted for over 50% of all jobs. Today, this group of activities generate about 66% of jobs and Gross Domestic Product. These calculations vary, depending upon what is counted. One thing about this era is clear, though--brains, not brawn, have become the key resource.

Computers, ranging from massive supercomputers to ubiquitous handheld "personal assistant" PCs, are the economic linchpin. The current information revolution ushered in a vast new range of services: pay cable TV; interactive television; teleconferencing; video recording; electronic funds transfer systems, shopping, and mail; facsimile newspapers and specialized magazines on video; electronic plebiscites on vital public policy issues; automatic home security services (fire, police, flood, storm, etc.); special services for the handicapped; and home computers to handle a vast growing range of activities.

Solid-state devices, microelectronics, computers, and communications equipment of all kinds are today's economic mainsprings. Computer household penetration rose from 27% in 1990 to 51% in 2001. Integrated circuit chips fashioned from flyspecks of rare earths and traces of silicon marshal knowledge and information that can change the fate of a business or an empire.

Better communication means have been introduced throughout history. Improved methods of communication displace the less-effective and become the dominant mode. Spoken words preceded the handwritten word, which gave way to the mechanically printed word, that was eclipsed by the telegraph and telephone. Four major communication modes, each one more efficient than the preceding one, dominated eras of American economic growth over the past century: the low-cost "penny press," which made inexpensive mass-circulation newspapers and periodicals available to an increasingly literate populace; regular radio broadcasting that began during the mid 1920s; television, starting in the 1950s; and computers that flooded consumer markets by the late 1970s.

Computers of the 1960s and 1970s were big, costly, few in number, and limited to top-management use. During the 1980s, desktop PCs lopped off middle-management paper-pushers, and decentralized decisionmaking. Takeoff during the 1990s greatly enlarged computer networking, and the Internet provided access to the fund of human knowledge.

Science constantly seeks faster, better, more-efficient, less-costly, and more-streamlined technologies. Communication advances can be categorized into at least seven successive stages of development:

1. Physical/mechanical. Thomas Alva Edison's primitive phonograph utilizing a mechanically vibrating pickup and diaphragm to reproduce sound, commercially introduced in 1877, exemplifies this introductory stage. Forerunners of modern computers can be traced back to the hand-manipulated abacus. Later on came Charles Babbage's calculating engine that was partially constructed between 1822 and 1871.

2. Electromechanical. Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, introduced in 1876, demonstrates this type of innovation using electric pulses to vibrate a diaphragm or open and close an audible circuit. Computer antecedents are characterized by Herman Hollerith's electrically operated tabulator, which utilized printed punched cards, that was used to process 1890 census data.

3. Fully electronic. Guglielmo Marconi's first wireless telegraph signals (precursor to the radio), demonstrated in 1895, represent this principle. The earliest numeric analog computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), was developed in 1946.

4. Electro-optical. This development is characterized by telephone analog switching systems converting signals to photonics.

5. Optical/photonic. Light transmission is the latest communications frontier. Light changes polarity one-quadrillion times per second. Scientists already have succeeded in switching light 100 trillion times per second (terabits). Emerging evidence that the speed of light may be exceeded by a factor of 10-1,000-fold suggests future threshold potentials.

6. Bioelectronic. Some foresee organic semiconductor devices and biocomputers as the next stage of potential development. Crude experiments already have demonstrated these possibilities,

7. Extrasensory. Much more speculative are the possibilities inherent in development of extrasensory perception (ESP). Clairvoyance, precognition, prodigals, "tongues," telepathy, faith healing, hypnotic states, out-of-body experiences, etc. suggest such potentials. Dismissed as "quackery" ESP might become the preferred communication mode.

Doing more with less

Smaller, faster, and cheaper are hallmarks of communication technologies. Their advances wrest more and more from basic raw materials.

The first programmable computer (ENIAC) filled an entire room. It included 17,468 vacuum tubes and semiconductor diodes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 6,000 switches, and 1,500 relays, and weighed 30 tons. Standing 10 feet tall and occupying a space 80 by 30 feet, ENIAC's dimensions were equivalent to an oversized 18-wheel tractor trailer. Electrical consumption was enormous--140-174,000 watts per second--enough to provide power to an average home for more than a week. This enormous machine which cost $450,000, performed 5,999 basic mathematic operations per second. By the 1950s, computers shrank to refrigerator-size. Recently, massive mainframe computers filling an entire room have been reduced to PCs with "footprints" the size of a telephone book or even smaller ones that slip into a shirt pocket. Now, computers involve postage-stamp dimensions with research and development focused on quantum computers the size of a pinhead!

Fiber optical cables, fashioned from silicon, replace (and/or complement) vast tonnages of copper wires. The first copper transmission lines, measuring about one-fourth of an inch in diameter, carried but a single message. Coaxial cable voice channel capacity rose from 48 in 1955 to 4,200 by 1976. Fiber optics boosted the number of voice channels from 8,000 in 1988 to 16,000 during 1991, and to about 500,000 around 1998. Fiber optic cables with 10-terabit capacity were developed in 1998, and others carrying 10 trillion bits per second have been demonstrated. Photonic transmission rates will reach 100 terabits per second by 2004, and transmissions at 200 trillion bits per second are projected.

Science typically starts out using cruder and larger dimensions. Inevitably, step-by-step as mastery is accomplished, artifacts become better, faster, and less resource intensive. Moore's Law, which anticipates computer capabilities doubling every 18 months, is easily understood in terms of the basic parameters of packing density and speed. Smaller scales increase packing density, involve shorter travel distances, and enhance speed. Electrons have a certain speed, and photonics have still-more-diminutive dimensions. Knowing the range of those parameters leads to a basic set of limitations that indicate transmission potentials.

Integrated circuits etched using extreme ultraviolet lithography can create features that are smaller than 0.1 micron (about one five-hundredth of a hair's width). This development can increase microchip capacity by 1,000-fold and boost speed of the fastest chips currently available by 100 times. Lithographic chip etching will reach a limiting...