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computer power than mainframe computers of the previous decade. The Sony PlayStation of today, which costs $300, has the power of a military supercomputer of 1997, which cost millions of dollars.
    We can see the difference between linear and exponential growth of computer power when we analyze how people viewed the future of the computer back in 1949, when
Popular Mechanics
predicted that computers would grow linearly into the future, perhaps only doubling or tripling with time. It wrote: “ Where a calculator like the ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1½ tons.”
    (Mother Nature appreciates the power of the exponential. A single virus can hijack a human cell and force it to create several hundred copies of itself. Growing by a factor of 100 in each generation, one virus can generate 10 billion viruses in just five generations. No wonder a single virus can infect the human body, with trillions of healthy cells, and give you a cold in just a week or so.)
    Not only has the amount of computer power increased, but the way that this power is delivered has also radically changed, with enormous implications for the economy. We can see this progression, decade by decade:
     
    • 1950s. Vacuum tube computers were gigantic contraptions filling entire rooms with jungles of wires, coils, and steel. Only the military was rich enough to fund these monstrosities.
    • 1960s. Transistors replaced vacuum tube computers, and mainframe computers gradually entered the commercial marketplace.
    • 1970s. Integrated circuit boards, containing hundreds of transistors, created the minicomputer, which was the size of a large desk.
    • 1980s. Chips, containing tens of millions of transistors, made possible personal computers that can fit inside a briefcase.
    • 1990s. The Internet connected hundreds of millions of computers into a single, global computer network.
    • 2000s. Ubiquitous computing freed the chip from the computer, so chips were dispersed into the environment.
    So the old paradigm (a single chip inside a desktop computer or laptop connected to a computer) is being replaced by a new paradigm (thousands of chips scattered inside every artifact, such as furniture, appliances, pictures, walls, cars, and clothes, all talking to one another and connected to the Internet).
    When these chips are inserted into an appliance, it is miraculously transformed. When chips were inserted into typewriters, they became word processors. When inserted into telephones, they became cell phones. When inserted into cameras, they became digital cameras. Pinball machines became video games. Phonographs became iPods. Airplanes became deadly Predator drones. Each time, an industry was revolutionized and was reborn. Eventually, almost everything around us will become intelligent. Chips will be so cheap they will even cost less than the plastic wrapper and will replace the bar code. Companies that do not make their products intelligent may find themselves driven out of business by their competitors that do.
    Of course, we will still be surrounded by computer monitors, but they will resemble wallpaper, picture frames, or family photographs, rather than computers. Imagine all the pictures and photographs that decorate our homes today; now imagine each one being animated, moving, and connected to the Internet. When we walk outside, we will see pictures move, since moving pictures will cost as little as static ones.
    The destiny of computers—like other mass technologies like electricity,paper, and running water—is to become invisible, that is, to disappear into the fabric of our lives, to be everywhere and nowhere, silently and seamlessly carrying out our wishes.
    Today, when we enter a room, we automatically look for the light switch, since we assume that the walls are electrified. In the future, the first thing we will do on entering a room is to look for