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I recently was involved in a discussion for my current humanities class. This specific class is all about technology and how it has impacted society and culture. The instructor asked the class about what impact the microchip has made to society. I actually was rather proud of my response so I figured I would share it:
I think the microchip had a much deeper impact than that of a direct impact on society specifically. How many different things has the microchip ushered in that allowed more and more businesses to flourish and ‘pop up’ around that technology and do more and more things with it?
One thing that makes this evident is a graph of stock prices over the last 40 years:
http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/
Look at the DJIA, see how rapidly it began to climb in the mid 80′s when Microsoft and Apple were just unveiling their products? And then another market sprung up around technology specifically: the NASDAQ. In mathematical terms you can sort of think of the NASDAQ as the technological derivative of the DJIA. The growth rate of the NASDAQ after its conception could essentially have contributed to the exponential growth of the DJIA. Sort of like how acceleration relates to velocity in terms of physics. If acceleration (NASDAQ, technology) grows linearly then velocity (DJIA, industry in general) will grow exponentially.
I’m more technically, mathematically, and physically savvy than I am business savvy so my bit at the end relating the graphs to math and physics was my way of making sense of the data 
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-noreply Dec 30 2010 - 1:04 pm
But what about the impact of the microchip on home appliances like, for example a washing machine or a microwave?
Cale Jan 13 2011 - 9:50 pm
Good point. I think that the microchip has given appliances in the home a great deal of ‘intelligence’. One example that I can think of is a case where a washing machine can tell a dryer how the load of clothes was washed and sort of ‘prep’ the dryer for drying that load. IE: Use higher temperature and run the cycle longer if the load is coming out wetter than usual.
Another example, and I have personal experience with this one: A toaster with which you can specify how the food is to be toasted. The toaster I have actually has buttons on the front which I can use to tell it what type of food I am putting in whether it be a pastry or normal toast. I can then continue to tell it if the item is frozen or not.
Pretty neat
-noreply Jan 15 2011 - 3:27 pm
yeah it is
thanks