digital society

week 3: digital hardware

part a: introduction
Learning objectives

• describe the main components of digital hardware

• explain the origins and significance of Silicon Valley
• explain the environmental impacts of computers
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 digital society
week 3
part b: Silicon Valley to China’s “Bay Area”
vacuum tube amplification
to control circuit

Anode

heater

Evacuated glass
tube
What is a semiconductor?
point contact
first transistor
transistor business

Commercial transistor
Transistor devices

TRADIC, the first

fully transistorized
computer, 1954

Nike-Ajax missiles,
transistorized digital
command and control
systems

Transistor radio, 1954

Silicon Valley
Frederick Terman

David Packard and William Hewlett’s garage

regional advantage
• Weather and natural beauty

• Military

• Integration with Stanford

 West coast style
“Corporations in the East adopted a feudal approach to
organization… There were kings and lords, and there were
vassals, soldiers, yeomen, and serfs, with layers of protocol and
prerequisites, such as the car and driver, to symbolize
superiority and establish the boundary lines… Noyce… rejected
the idea of social hierarchy at Fairchild… Everywhere the
Fairchild engineers went, they took the Noyce approach with
them. It wasn’t enough to start up a company; you had to start
a community, a community in which there were no social
distinctions, and it was first come, first served in the parking
lot, and everyone was supposed to internalize the common
goals. The atmosphere of the new companies was so
democratic, it startled businessmen from the East.”

-- Tom Wolfe
Fairchild Semiconductor
Julius Blank

Victor Grinich

Jean Hoerni

Eugene Kleiner

Jay Last

Gordon Moore

Sheldon Roberts

Robert Noyce
The integrated circuit
 Intel

Gordon Moore Intel 1103 memory circuit

Outsourcing
 OEMs

Supplier
Retailer

Supplier
OEM
Retailer

Supplier

Retailer
Supplier
Foxconn
China’s Greater Bay Area
 digital society
week 3
part c: an environmental history of computing
resource extraction
data centres
e-waste
digital society
week 3
part d: conclusions
hidden places of the digital

Superfund sites
hidden labor
of the digital

E-waste site, Agbogbloshie, Ghana