The Silicon Jungle

May 6, 2009 · Posted in At the Micro Shop, Computers and Humour

The Times colour supplement on Saturday (02/05/09) did a fascinating one page feature “to give an insight into the pulse of the nation”. It was a graph showing how many stories containing particular words were printed in its pages in each year from 1985 to the present, For example, the word “organic” has shown about a five-fold increase over this period, as we become increasingly neurotic and faddish about so-called healthy diets. The word “Terrorism”, which was already doing pretty well up to 2000, suddenly went hyper when 11/9 happened, (yes, I’m a Brit, and I’m sorry, but I use the more sensible day/month/year format!), since which it has tailed off considerably. And then there’s “Google” of course, whose graph is non-existent until 1999 and then shows, not surprisingly, a steep upward curve.

“Organic”, “terrorism” and “Google” were among seven key words chosen for this feature. One of the words not on this list, and one which should have been there is “silicon”. Yes, silicon, the element, which has been around since the dawn of time. But it was only towards the end of the 20^th century that its usage took an upturn, starting with “silicon chip” and moving on to “silicon valley”, “silicon jungle”, and let’s not forget “silicon implant”! This ubiquitous substance, (Wikipedia describes it prosaically as “the most common metalloid”) has become the most important element in our lives ever since somebody discovered it could actually be quite useful in the manufacture of semiconductor devices.

Silicon, if you think about it, is what spawned the microcomputer, (both the artefact and the word). Computers were no longer the size of sky-scrapers and jam-packed with old-fashioned vacuum-filled valves.

You may have guessed that today’s cartoon has something to do with silicon. Well-spotted! This one appears under the chapter “At the Micro Shop” in Microholics.

silicon upgrade

I said at the outset that I would, from time to time, try to give you an insight into the strange workings of the mind of the cartoonist. Ask any cartoonist to show you the work they are proudest of, and chances are they will mostly contain cartoons without captions. Like this one. The reason is simple. The joke IS the picture, and you don’t need the “add-on” of the caption. Job done!

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