The Silicon Eye: Microchip Swashbucklers and the Future of High-Tech Innovation (Enterprise) [Paperback]

George Gilder (Author)

Book Description

Series: Enterprise | Publication Date: May 17, 2006

Technology insider George Gilder delivers a "compelling" (Wired) look under the hood at a genius-fueled startup.

Thanks to the digital technology revolution, cameras are everywhere—PDAs, phones, anywhere you can put an imaging chip and a lens. Battling to usurp this two-billion-dollar market is a Silicon Valley company, Foveon, whose technology not only produces a superior image but also may become the eye in artificially intelligent machines. Behind Foveon are two legendary figures who made the personal computer possible: Carver Mead of Caltech, one of the founding fathers of information technology, and Federico Faggin, inventor of the CPU—the chip that runs every computer.

George Gilder has covered the wizards of high tech for twenty-five years and has an insider's knowledge of Silicon Valley and the unpredictable mix of genius, drive, and luck that can turn a startup into a Fortune 500 company. The Silicon Eye is a rollicking narrative of some of the smartest—and most colorful—people on earth and their race to transform an entire industry. 13 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Known for weaving engrossing stories from material knotted with numbing complexity, Gilder (Telecosm; Microcosm) delves once again into the world of high-tech business, this time focusing on the company Foveon and its efforts to develop a device that will allow digital machines to see as the human eye does. "Computers can perform instantaneous calculus... and search the entire contents of the Library of Congress in a disk-drive database," he writes. "But they cannot see. Even today, recognizing a face glimpsed in a crowd across an airport lobby, two human eyes can do more image processing than all the supercomputers in the world put together." The book traces a circuitous path in its investigation of Foveon's "silicon eye"-leading through discussions of the magnetic codes on paper checks and of notebook computer touchpads-but Gilder is a competent, eloquent guide. Moreover, the journey is populated with richly limned characters like Dick Merrill, who, with "wire-rim glasses, long white coat, electromagnetic blond hair, a bright feral glint in his skyblue eyes," resembles Doc Brown from the Back to the Future films, and Michelle Mahowald, who decorates her lab walls with "artsy-dispsy posters" and releases "random analog beasts of prey from their safe digital cages." While some readers will find Foveon's saga half-fulfilled, Gilder sees its fulfillment as inevitable. "Foveon," he writes, "can do for the camera what Intel did for the computer: Reduce it to a chip and make it ubiquitous." Whether or not readers are believers by the end of this narrative, the ride is electric.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Gilder, author and knowledgeable Silicon Valley insider, tells the fascinating tale of Caltech's Carver Mead, his influences and associates. They sparked a revolution that aims to supplant the digital "eyes" of our cameras and high-tech phones with a silicon eye based on a human model; theirs is the first imager in cameras based on the serious study of the human retina and neural system, called the Foveon X3. The author traces the 20-year journey of Mead, his team, and their company, Foveon, as they create a new age combining the digital and biological world, aiming to make all current computers, cameras, and cell phones obsolete. They expect the Foveon device to evolve into functioning in some way both as an eye and as a brain. Gilder observes, "Foveon will do for the camera what Intel did for the computer: Reduce it to a chip and make it ubiquitous. Dismantle it and disperse it across the network. Render it wireless, wanton, and waste-able." Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (May 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393328414
• ISBN-13: 978-0393328417
• Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 5.2 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #467,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gilder successfully chronicles an important technology advance, August 1, 2005

By 

David S. Hirschman (Frisco, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Silicon Eye: How a Silicon Valley Company Aims to Make All Current Computers, Cameras, and Cell Phones Obsolete (Enterprise) (Hardcover)

In "The Silicon Eye" George Gilder relates another colorful story of a significant technology breakthrough, namely, a camera imaging chip that is greatly superior to everything else out there. Standard imagers work by separating the three primary colors, throwing away 2/3 of the color information at each point in the visual field, and must use software processing to interpolate the missing data. The Foveon chip is a major advancement because it can collect 100% of the color information at each point using a single-chip solution that will provide smaller and cheaper imaging that is of both higher quality and lower power consumption. The photo samples on Foveon's web site are truly astounding.

But Gilder's book over-hypes the significance of the technology. It will not "Make All Current Computers, Cameras, and Cell Phones Obsolete." Cameras, yes. And cell phones and computers will benefit greatly from the smaller, lighter, cheaper, lower power consumption, and higher image quality aspects of the Foveon chip. But the Foveon chip is not a "Silicon Eye" as Gilder suggests. The chip does not "see" the way a biological eye does - it merely records images as all cameras do. The story of Foveon's initial forays into AI and producing silicon chips that mimic brain functions is fascinating, but as Gilder describes, Foveon finally had to abandon such speculative research in favor of a viable commercial product.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story, but a hard slog to read for the non-specialist, January 28, 2009

By 

Thomas H. Burroughes "Bookish" (London) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Silicon Eye: Microchip Swashbucklers and the Future of High-Tech Innovation (Enterprise) (Paperback)

I got a copy of this book as I have been a fan of Gilder's previous books on supply-side economics in the 1980s and since. It was interesting to read about how visual imaging technologies have developed. We take for granted such amazing technologies such as digital cameras and so on. I am afraid that for all Gilder's skills as a writer, I found some of the details of how this material works hard to follow. Specialists might find it interesting, but I struggled with it.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Questionable accuracy, April 25, 2007

By 

A. Sparks (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Silicon Eye: Microchip Swashbucklers and the Future of High-Tech Innovation (Enterprise) (Paperback)

My company was working with Foveon chips, so I was interested to read this book. The book itself was fine, but my distributer said it was so inaccurate that Foveon won't even comment anymore. Foveon chips take great pictures, by the way.