One Digital Day: How the Microchip is Changing Our World [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

YA-Sponsored by the Intel Corporation, this series entry is written in veneration of the microprocessor. More than just a humble chip of silicon, it has become a sometimes invisible but indispensable feature of daily life in the global community. According to the introduction, "Today there are nearly 15 billion microchips of some kind in use-the equivalent of 2 powerful computers for every man, woman and child on the planet." Photos illustrate their uses in everything from laptop computers to automobiles, from telephones to refrigerators. One interesting picture shows illiterate elderly South Africans receiving government pensions following identity verification by fingerprint scan. Another shows businessmen in traffic-strangled Bangkok completing their work in mobile taxicab offices, then delivering finished products by cellular-dispatched motorcycle messengers. The volume records countless other uses for the microchip from entertainment to medicine, with more advances being developed hourly. With such a dizzying rate of technological evolution, this beautiful photo-essay will soon become little more than a glimpse into the archaic past. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating and thought-provoking glimpse.
Robin Deffendall, Bull Run Regional Library, Manassas, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Photojournalist Smolan and partner Erwitt (creators of the "Day in the Life" series and 24 Hours in Cyberspace, LJ 11/1/96) are back for a bow with One Digital Day, born on July 11, 1997, when 100 professional photographers scoured the globe to document how the microchip has transformed human culture with great speed and pervasiveness. Smolan and Erwitt have achieved their goal in grand style, using many full-page photos and spare text to ease that premise home. Favorite moments include the electronic dressing rooms of the New World Department Store in Shanghai and the amazing and very bionic Oklahoma City volunteer fire chief Ken Whitten, but for pure glee nothing quite matches the shot of Army Lieutenant Frank Holmes, mugging for his wife and newborn, linked by computer from his station in Bosnia to the desktop of his loved ones in North Carolina. Recommended for all public libraries.?Geoff Rotunno, "Tri-Mix" Magazine, Goleta, CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 223 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business; 1st edition (April 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812930312
• ISBN-13: 978-0812930313
• Product Dimensions: 14 x 10 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,360,678 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 22, 1998

By A Customer

The San Diego Union-Tribune 05/12/98 by Robert Hawkins

Real miracle of microchips: What people do with them

I remember when my father first brought a handful of microprocessors home. He was the new engineer responsible for improving their production. They weren't attached to anything, just processors. Defective ones at that. At the dinner table, my father excitedly traced the circuitry paths through the bed on which the microchip -- the "brains" -- would lie, explaining to me just what it was a microprocessor did, from an engineering perspective.

And it was impressive. But it also seemed so right, so natural, so logical, so within the reach of the bright minds of science. Impressed, yes. But I was not awed.

I've always had great faith in the technological process, how things are accomplished. I find it interesting that a single microchip today can hold 20 million transistors. And I'm fully confident that the number will continue to rise until it runs smack into the laws of physical nature. So be it.

There are now 15 billion microchips in use today around the world. OK, that's interesting. But what does it mean?

Over this past weekend I learned the answer, or part of it.

It means that Army Lt. Frank Holmes, stationed in Sarajevo, Bosnia, can talk face to face with his wife, Amanda, and baby daughter, Morgan, 5,000 miles away at Fort Bragg, N.C.

It means that 320,000 itinerate and functionally illiterate pensioners in the KwaZulu region of South Africa will get their monthly checks because a computer can read their fingerprints.

It means that 5-year-old Amy Stewart, blind since birth, can keep up with other students in her first-grade class because a computer converts her lessons into Braille. It means that Sigrid Cerf was able to phone her husband and hear his voice for the first time in their 35-year marriage because research she conducted on the Internet led to a cure for the hearing ! impairment she's had since childhood. (Ironically, her husband is Vint Cerf. He co-wrote theTCP/IP protocol, earning the title "father" of the Internet.) It means that Mike Ward, an Intel engineer, was able to design a computer system that would enable him to continue working as his body gradually deteriorated from Lou Gehrig's disease.

See? This is what I get excited about. Not how a microchip works, but what it can do. And to what new uses our imaginations can put it. These examples and hundreds more are found in a new book that will be available May 28. It is called "One Digital Day: How the Microchip is Changing the World."

If you are familiar with Rick Smolan's hugely popular coffee-table books, the "Day in the Life" series, you'll grasp the nature of this one. Smolan's specialty is assembling hundreds of the best photographers in the world and throwing them at a single subject for one intense shutterbugging day. California, Japan, Hawaii, America, Vietnam have all been topics. Smolan sent 100 photojournalists out into the field for this one on July 11, 1997. Their objective was "to depict intimate and emotional stories of how this tiny chip -- a square of silicon the size of a fingernail, weighing less than a postage stamp -- has transformed our human culture forever.

And, yes, the project was underwritten by the largest maker of microprocessors in the world, Intel Corp., to celebrate its 30th birthday. But so what? In 30 years I've never heard a soul complain about the way Absolut Vodka has corrupted, commercialized and trivialized the art world with its "masterpiece" bottle ads.

"One Digital Day" is a brilliant illumination. It is both an explication and a justification of digital technology. The argument it presents, that our lives have been irrevocably changed by microprocessor technology is nearly impossible to refute.

Evidence? Check out Philip Quirk's photo of an aboriginal woman in ! the Australian Outback using a hand-held ATM machine. Or Lori Adamski-Peek's photo of an implant pump, smaller than a contact lens, that can dispense medication with precision.

One of the most celebrated of recent technological feats is featured: Sojourner, the 22-pound Mars rover with the ancient Intel 80c85 processor and 9,600 baud modem. This mighty little robot sent back spectacular pictures of the Mars terrain.

Anyone who insists that they have nothing to do with computers should take a close look at Peter J. Menzel's composition of a San Anselmo, Calif.,home. All of the products from within the house which run on microchips are spread across the front lawn. It is a very crowded front lawn. Menzel's photo is both whimsical and sobering.

3.0 out of 5 stars Pictures from the revolution, September 21, 2006

By	Newton Ooi (Phoenix, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: One Digital Day : How the Microchip is Changing Our World (Hardcover)

Of all the things changing in the world today, few are as accepted globally by more people than the microchip and the electronic devices powered by microchips. Yes there are those we do not own a computer, and vow never to own one, but even those individuals use the microchip as part of their everyday life; whether it be in the car they drive, their household appliances, the electronic doors at their work, or just waiting at an intersection for the cross sign to change. This book documents, with big pictures, the extant to which computer chips are used in various facets of life around the world; and not just in rich countries, but in poor ones as well. The text is fairly easy to read, and gives just enough information on how microchips are made to convery the basic ideas. Overall, a good book, and better than other books of this type.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Digital Day "optically elegant, a feast for the eyes.", February 11, 1999

By A Customer

It's been said a picture is worth a thousand words. If that's true, then perhaps the 200 photographs in ONE DIGITAL DAY: HOW THE MICROCHIP IS CHANGING OUR WORLD by Rick Smolan are worth millions of microchips.

In 24 hours, Smolan's team of the world's best photojournalists canvassed the world and captured pictures and accompanying stories which illustrate just how one little microchip -- something that didn't exist 30 years ago -- has changed, influenced and altered our world.  In so doing, the invention of the tiny microchip has succeeded in bringing the globe to us inside our homes and offices.

In the introduction, Michael Malone gives us a rundown on the microchip and how it is moving closer and closer to "the center of our lives." Malone estimates close to 15 billion microchips are currently in use.

Malone reminds us that, even though we might not have a PC in our home, should the microchips we use daily be stricken from our lives, we would be dumbfounded. Quite simply, we take their existence in our lives for granted in many ways.

Got a microwave? A telephone? A television for watching that Sunday football game? How about that streetlight outside? Without the microchip, your car wouldn't even start, writes Malone. Pretty amazing for a "tiny square of silicon the size of a fingernail," indeed.

What's it all about, Alfie? For all its wonder, the microchip is made up of metal, fire, crystal and water. During manufacturing, Malone notes a single speck of dust can mean disaster. In fact, he writes, the water used to rinse the surfaces of finished chips is more pure than water used for open heart surgery!

Past the fascinating introduction, readers will find a graphic photograph of just how many microchip-related items we could find in our homes if we tried. One family's home in San Anselmo, California is emptied, literally on the front lawn, and featured in a two-page layout with the home in the background and various

possessions, appliances and electronics, etc. are displayed on the lawn.

From Hong Kong, China to Bristol, Connecticut or from Rostov, Russia to Memphis, Tennessee, it doesn't really matter which country you choose or even what city or town -- you'd be hard-pressed to find a spot that the microchip hasn't touched.

In bold, dashing fashion, DIGITAL DAY takes the reader on a virtual tour<pun intended> of each place in rapid succession. The photographs are so clear, the captions so informative, you could easily lose hours poring through this book.

For instance, in Tokyo, Japan we discover there is a word for computer-crazed youths who can't get enough of technology: otaku. One photo features an otaku by the name of Masakazu Kobayashi, who clearly has his cyberlife wired to the max.

His microchip-driven bounty includes not one PC, but seven networked PCs, six video game systems, a palmtop, a laptop, and a motherlode of peripherals to boot.  Instead of having a room littered with comic books, magazines, CDs and other youth-driven materials,Kobayashi's room reeks of technology run amok.

But microchips and PCs aren't all for fun or convenience -- sometimes those thin slivered devices can mean the difference between life and death. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, DIGITAL DAY photos introduce the reader to new helmets worn by the city's firefighters.

These helmets, equipped with small digital video screens and infrared sensors, actually allow

firefighters to see through smoke.  When searching for victims amid smoke, unbearable heat and soaring flames, these helmets can mean saving lives instead of searching frantically in near-blinding conditions.

Worlds away, in South Africa, readers are captured in a surreal moment as a cheetah is scanned for identification purposes. Yes, scanners aren't just for groceries and department store purchases anymore!

More poignant, yet just as thrilling, is the photograph taken on Father's Day, 1997, of a young mother and her child making a video conference connection with the husband/father, a jubilant Army lieutenant stationed in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Whether in the field of sports, business, science, health, or in your own backyard (situated in Bangor or Bangalore), this book makes clear through stunning, meticulous photographs,how microchips and technology coexist peacefully and practically amid our daily routine. 

At the end of DIGITAL DAY, readers will find a bonus in the section which introduces each of the book's photographers and offers a biography for each. It's rewarding not only to see the magnificent photos they've taken, it's equally as rewarding to read about the person, the artist, behind the photograph.

DIGITAL DAY is more than a dormant coffee table book. It's a book you'll find yourself going back to over and over -- and taking to work to show your friends. It's crisp, fresh, hip, blazing with color and vibrancy as this 24-hour microchip-laden tale is recounted for the reader.

If you're looking for a classy addition to your book collection that mixes modern tech with classic photography, DIGITAL DAY is the book for you.

The information and pictorial displays housed within make for a virtual feast that's fascinating, optically elegant and intellectually easy to digest.