新編大學英語第四冊unit9 Text B: Microchips
UNIT 9 AFTER-CLASS READING 1; New College English (IV)
Microchips
1 No invention in history has so quickly spread throughout the world or so deeply touched so many parts of human existence as the microchip. Today there are nearly 15 billion microchips of some kind in use. In the face of that fact who can doubt that the microchip is not only changing the products we use, but also the way we live. Will it finally change the way we view reality?
2 If we were to take away the microchip from every application in which it is now used, we would be both stunned and frightened by the loss. The modern kitchen would become nearly useless, since the microwave, the dishwasher, and most other appliances would become unworkable. The television and VCR would fade to black, the stereo would become quiet, and most of the clocks would stop. The car wouldn't start. Airplanes would be unable to leave the ground. The phone system would go dead, as would most streetlights, thermostats, and, of course, a half-billion computers. And these are only a few of the most obvious applications. Every factory in the industrial world would also shut down, as would the electrical grid, stock exchanges, and the global banking system. Pacemakers would stop too, as would surgical equipment and various monitoring machines used in hospitals. All because of the loss of a tiny square of silicon the size of a fingernail, weighing less than a postage stamp.
3 The modern microchip contains as many as 20 million transistors, and each finished chip is the product of processes more complicated than those used in building the atomic bomb. Yet despite an extraordinarily sophisticated manufacturing process, microchips are mass-produced at the rate of more than a billion a year. To put this complexity in perspective, imagine that within each tiny microchip there exists a structure as complex as a mid-size city, including all of its power lines, phone lines, sewer lines, buildings, streets, and homes. Now imagine that throughout that same city, millions of people are racing around at the speed of light and with perfect timing in an intricately planned dance. That is just one chip.
4 Of all the stunning statistics used to describe the world of the microchip, none is more extraordinary than this: the total number of transistors packed onto all of the microchips produced in the world this year (1998) is equivalent to the number of raindrops that fell in the state of California during that period. Faced with such astounding numbers, it becomes even more difficult to ask what it all means for us and for the generations to come.
5 What is remarkable, and perhaps a little frightening, is that by all indications, we are only halfway through the story of the microchip. It is not far-fetched to suggest that it will take another century of humankind to realize all of the implications of this revolution. Thus, all the miracles we see around us today resulting from the microchip may be but a tiny fraction of all the wonders that will derive from this device well into the next century.
6 It is not merely an invention, but a meta-invention, which enables us to create yet other inventions. Thousands of new devices and products have been made possible by the existence of the microchip and by the embedded intelligence it offers.
7 Packed in a microprocessor, the microchip is not only giving us power over our own lives, it is also the greatest instrument for accessing information ever invented. It is allowing us to reach out from our desks, to grasp and share knowledge that was beyond the reach of the wealthiest man in the world just a century ago. It is freeing us to work at home, wherever we choose our home to be.
8 By the middle of the next century, the typical microprocessor may have more computing power than today's fastest supercomputers. It will talk, and more important, it will listen. The relationship we have with it will change in almost unimaginable ways. Yesterday, the microprocessor was a tool. Today, it is a partner and who knows what role it will play in our lives in the years to come? Just a few years ago who would have thought that in Shanghai, China, customers of the New World Department Store could try on clothes without undressing? A video camera takes a customer's picture, the image is digitized, and changes of outfits or colors are as simple as point and click. In Baltimore, Maryland, prospective astronauts simulate weightlessness by floating in water at the University of Maryland's Space Systems Lab pool. Buddhist monks in Thailand also have found important uses for computers. They use them to perform traditional tasks as well as to study the teachings of Buddha.
9 For hundreds of years, humankind has searched for the philosophers' stone, the magical object that turns ordinary metal into gold. Who would have thought it would turn out to be a little sliver of crystal with etching on its surface? The microchip, in the time of a single generation, has developed from a clever technical novelty to a tireless, almost invisible partner of humanity. Today there is no place on, above, or below the Earth that it has not reached.
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