EDITOR'S PAGE

Getting the jump on the new age

Thanks to the imminent onset of the new millennium, the media have been full of wrap-ups, best-of lists, and other timescale-inspired intellectual and pseudointellectual cogitation. Of course, as any self-respecting engineer or scientist knows, this is actually the dawn of the last year of the second millennium—that old, old thing. But pop culture's insistence on starting the new age a year early has won out. Instead of fighting against the prevailing popular winds, I thought I'd take advantage of the current trend of talking about milestones and mention a few MICRO-specific ones.

This is our largest issue ever, due in large part to a phenomenal response from companies who wanted to be part of our annual Buyers Guide. The Y2K version includes close to 1000 companies, way up from last year's count of 700 or so. Our easily searchable online version of the guide, found at www.micromagazine.com Buyer's Guide, also contains the updated list. If for some reason the company you were looking for was left out of the guide—or if you're a supplier and your own company didn't make it in—contact us and we can add you to the Web site directory.

We've also made a major change to the way we handle reader service with the introduction of RequestLink. This service allows you to get the information you need about the products and services you see in MICRO's advertisements and Product Technology News items via the World Wide Web. You can now go to www.micromagazine.com Request Link, then follow the instructions for using the service to have additional information sent to you via e-mail, fax, or snail mail. We believe this quick and efficient method for connecting supplier companies with their customer base will benefit both parties in the 21^st-century commercial equation.

Another landmark in this issue is the MICROutlook 2000 feature beginning on page 14. Senior editor John Conroy talked to deep thinkers and prime movers in the semiconductor and advanced microelectronics communities about trends and hazards they see hovering out over the horizon of the next century. The participants' observations read like a primer on major challenges facing the industry over the next decade and beyond, raising many head-scratching questions. Will contact metrology go the way of the buggy whip? Is what's good for the environment good for the processes? Will some usable form of high-aspect ratio inspection emerge victorious in the trench warfare against the invisible defect? Will factory tool sets become more harmonized in terms of throughput and other performance metrics? There's even a dog-bites-man quip from the fab realm. Our hope is that the Outlook piece will stir your imagination and fuel discussions about the future of the chip world in fabs and brainstorming sessions around Silicon Planet.

Speaking of the future, I've been reading The Technology Machine: How Manufacturing Will Work in the Year 2020 by Patricia Moody and Richard Morley, published by the Free Press. Since it's the season for millennial prognostication, I thought I'd close with an excerpt from this fascinating book. The authors believe that the organizational structure of manufacturing companies in 2020 "will resemble a multilayer printed circuit boardÉ. The image of manufacturing as an electronic circuit implies a vast network of independent, sometimes connected, sometimes circling, sometimes re-forming enterprises like what we see from x-ray astronomy of the galaxies. Suns form and burn out, taking their planets with them, or sometimes they in turn spin out new formations. The customer will be the sun and your partners' orbits will maintain perfect alignment for as long as they feel drawn to you." Here's to your companies' continuing planetary alignment with your clients' stars.

Tom Cheyney
Editor

tom.cheyney@cancom.com
http://www.micromagazine.com

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