Microchips And Biochips

Read in Red Herring....

COLORADO SPRINGS -- As the chief technologist for NASA, Samuel Venneri is charged with "developing integrated, long-term, innovative agency-level technology for aeronautics and space," which includes creating partnerships with companies working in the free markets. When he stood up to address 2,000 top technology executives at Governor Owens' Colorado Tech Summit last week, he looked every bit the mad scientist. Working without notes, he painted a compelling picture of the future: a networked world, standardizing on open Internet protocols, that will see information technology and biotechnology converge.

"Today the IT industry is where the television industry was in the 1930s," Mr. Venneri said. Driving IT into the next era will be "nanophase materials that are stronger than steel, but one-sixth the weight," he predicted. In this world that will combine the principles of nanotechnology and biotechnology, systems will be able to "morph, grow, and heal themselves"; for example, he envisioned airplanes that could self-heal cracks. Innovations like that will not only completely change the aerospace industry, but will also "rekindle our excitement about the future."

Part of Mr. Venneri's premise was that we are basically "reaching the limit in the number of chips we can fit on a silicon wafer," he said. At this point, I leaned over to Intel chief Craig Barrett and whispered, "Does this mean we will be seeing Intel manufacturing biochips in ten years?" He waved his hand dismissively, as if to say "not anytime soon."

With that response, I couldn't help but ask Mr. Barrett what he thought were going to be the new innovations that were going to get us excited again. And like a good public-company CEO, his answer was more focused on the near term. "I don't think it is going to be any single big thing," he said. "But more complex electronic commerce applications and multitasking in general are going to drive demand for more computing power."

To support this, Mr. Barrett noted that while a lot of computers were upgraded for Y2K, the average PC bought during that time was only 200 MHz to 300 MHz. He added that he just got a 1.7-GHz box put on his desk at work, and "a team of horses couldn't pry that box away from me."

In the Angler's view, if nanotechnology and e-commerce don't get people pumped about new computers, then Internet games, video-on-demand, and pornography are going to drive us to upgrade. Hey, it worked for VCRs.