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What if you could someday put the manufacturing power of an
automobile plant on your desktop? According to Neil Gershenfeld,
the renowned MIT scientist and inventor, the next big thing is
personal fabrication-the ability to design and produce your own
products, in your own home, with a machine that combines consumer
electronics and industrial tools. Personal fabricators are about to
revolutionize the world just as personal computers did a generation
ago, and "Fab" shows us how.
The 20th century witnessed two digital revolutions. Computing power
has revolutionized every industry, from finance to agriculture to
pharmaceuticals. We've got computers at work and at home, in our
pockets and our bags, on our wrists, and even embedded in the
architecture of our houses. At the same time a revolution in
digital communication unfolded, which has forever altered our
lives-work, social, and private-by enabling a world in which we're
never impossible to reach and have nearly limitless power to
express ourselves. But no one saw the downsides of these: powerful
computers threaten to displace human labor from a range of jobs,
both blue and white collar, and, after an election in which the
Internet played such a pivotal role in spreading disinformation-not
to mention the simple problem of never being able to escape our
jobs if our email goes with us everywhere-the possible pitfalls of
free communication become clearer. And now, as Neil Gershenfeld,
Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, and Alan Gershenfeld make clear, we are
in the early years of the third digital revolution: from
computation and communication comes fabrication. Fabrication
includes everything from 3D printing to laser cutters to machines
that can assemble anything, including themselves, by precisely
controlling the placement of individual atoms. We will soon be able
to program matter the same way we can now program a computer. This
may sound outlandish, but just as the smartphone is the logical
conclusion of trends in computing that began in the 1960s, so is
this fabrication technology of the future the extension of today's
trends in manufacturing. Neil Gershenfeld, an MIT professor, is at
the forefront of making it a reality, through his scientific work
as well as his championing of Fab Labs, a sort of low-cost personal
factory. In Designing Reality, he and his brothers Alan and Joel
explore not just the promise but the perils of this revolution in
fabrication. On one extreme, it promises self-sufficient cities,
the end of work, and the ability for each of us to design and
create anything we can imagine. On the other, it could lead to the
concentration of wealth in very few hands. Neither guaranteeing
utopia nor insisting that our worst nightmares are about to come
true, the Gershenfelds are trying to anticipate the future and
teach us how best to prepare for it, personally and as a society,
across education, employment and more. The first two digital
revolutions caught us flat-footed, and there has been a heavy price
to pay. Let us prepare for the future, not simply react to it.
The Physics of Information Technology explores the familiar devices
that we use to collect, transform, transmit, and interact with
electronic information. Many such devices operate surprisingly
close to very many fundamental physical limits. Understanding how
such devices work, and how they can (and cannot) be improved,
requires deep insight into the character of physical law as well as
engineering practice. The book starts with an introduction to
units, forces, and the probabilistic foundations of noise and
signalling, then progresses through the electromagnetics of wired
and wireless communications, and the quantum mechanics of
electronic, optical, and magnetic materials, to discussions of
mechanisms for computation, storage, sensing, and display. This
self-contained volume will help both physical scientists and
computer scientists see beyond the conventional division between
hardware and software to understand the implications of physical
theory for information manipulation.
This 1998 book, about the nature and techniques of mathematical
modeling, is oriented towards simple efficient implementations on
computers. The text is in three sections. The first covers exact
and approximate analytical techniques; the second, numerical
methods; the third, model inference based on observations; and the
last, the special role of time in modeling. Each of the topics in
the book would be the worthy subject of a dedicated text, but only
by presenting the material in this way is it possible to make so
much material accessible to so many people. Each chapter presents a
concise summary of the core results in an area, providing an
orientation to what they can (and cannot) do, enough background to
use them to solve typical problems, and pointers to access the
literature for particular applications. The text is complemented by
extensive worked problems.
The Physics of Information Technology explores the familiar devices that we use to collect, transform, transmit, and interact with electronic information. Many such devices operate surprisingly close to very many fundamental physical limits. Understanding how such devices work, and how they can (and cannot) be improved, requires deep insight into the character of physical law as well as engineering practice. The book starts with an introduction to units, forces, and the probabilistic foundations of noise and signaling, then progresses through the electromagnetics of wired and wireless communications, and the quantum mechanics of electronic, optical, and magnetic materials, to discussions of mechanisms for computation, storage, sensing, and display. This self-contained volume will help both physical scientists and computer scientists see beyond the conventional division between hardware and software to understand the implications of physical theory for information manipulation.
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