Book ID: CBB672178064

The Long Arm of Moore's Law: Microelectronics and American Science (2016)

unapi

Mody, Cyrus C. M. (Author)


The MIT Press


Publication Date: 2016
Edition Details: Book Series: Inside Technology
Physical Details: 304 pages
Language: English

How, beginning in the mid 1960s, the US semiconductor industry helped shape changes in American science, including a new orientation to the short-term and the commercial.Since the mid 1960s, American science has undergone significant changes in the way it is organized, funded, and practiced. These changes include the decline of basic research by corporations; a new orientation toward the short-term and the commercial, with pressure on universities and government labs to participate in the market; and the promotion of interdisciplinarity. In this book, Cyrus Mody argues that the changes in American science that began in the 1960s co-evolved with and were shaped by the needs of the "civilianized" US semiconductor industry. In 1965, Gordon Moore declared that the most profitable number of circuit components that can be crammed on a single silicon chip doubles every year. Mody views "Moore's Law" less as prediction than as self-fulfilling prophecy, pointing to the enormous investments of capital, people, and institutions the semiconductor industry required -- the "long arm" of Moore's Law that helped shape all of science. Mody offers a series of case studies in microelectronics that illustrate the reach of Moore's Law. He describes the pressures on Stanford University's electrical engineers during the Vietnam era, IBM's exploration of alternatives to semiconductor technology, the emergence of consortia to integrate research across disciplines and universities, and the interwoven development of the the molecular electronics community and associated academic institutions as the vision of a molecular computer informed the restructuring of research programs.

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Reviewed By

Review David C. Brock (October 2021) Review of "The Long Arm of Moore's Law: Microelectronics and American Science". Technology and Culture (pp. 1260-1262). unapi

Review Rebecca Slayton (2018) Review of "The Long Arm of Moore's Law: Microelectronics and American Science". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 232-233). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB672178064/

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Authors & Contributors
Kevles, Daniel J.
Con Diaz, Gerardo
Joy Marie Lisi Rankin
Mote, C. D.
Adam Fisher
Velosa, Alfonso
Concepts
Technology
Computers and computing
Computer science
Computer industry
Semiconductors
Software
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
Places
United States
Silicon Valley (California)
Great Britain
Zurich (Switzerland)
Slovakia
Russia
Institutions
Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium
Intel Corporation (firm)
Dartmouth University
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (University of California, Berkeley)
RAND Corporation
United States. National Bureau of Standards
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