INDUSTRY NEWS

The big picture

Gnawing your knuckles in despair over the recent (mis)fortunes of the semiconductor industry? You may want to visit your local bookseller and find a copy of One Digital Day. Rick Smolan, the creator of the renowned "Day in the Life" series of photography books, was hired by Intel "to capture the human face of the computer revolution during a single 24-hour period," as Andrew Grove, the chipmaker's chairman and CEO, writes in the foreword. Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, the series director, dispatched 100 photojournalists around the world to visually document the IC's impact on everything from farming to medicine, from baseball to endangered species.

"Rick had a sign in the office saying 'Show me the microchip,'" recalls Katya Able, general manager of Against All Odds Productions, Smolan's company. In more than 200 pages, the coffee-table tome depicts ICs in an array of applications—illiterate pensioners in South Africa using fingerprint-sensitive biometric sensors to collect their pensions every month; a delighted U.S. Army lieutenant in Bosnia beaming at the live video image of his family in North Carolina; and surgeons in Uzbekistan transplanting a cornea using digital cameras attached to their instruments.

The 200 images from that day in July 1997 add up to a big picture account of the positive effect of the IC on everyday life. They may even act as a tonic in these days of the DRAM glut and the fab shutdown.

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