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Samsung starts work on throw-away computer |
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Innovation
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Written by Peter Warren
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Sunday, 13 February 2000 |
Bought and published by Scotland on Sunday, February 13, 2000
The computer is dead, long live the computer Two months into the 21st
century and the computer company Samsung has announced that it has
started work on the ultimate manifestation of the consumer society, the
disposable PC.
Intended to exploit public resentment of the high-tech industry, which
has seen manufacturers forcing those trying to keep abreast of the
technology wave to upgrade their systems around once a year at a cost
of around £1,000, the throwaway PCs are expected to retail at around
£120 when they reach the high street in a year’s time.
The move to the disposable PC brings the computer into line with the
quartz watch, an earlier counting cousin that is now fighting an uphill
battle to rebuild its image as a desired artifact.
Built around a new technology about to be launched by the giant chip
manufacturer Intel, known as ‘system on a chip’, Samsung intends to
ensure the thowaway PCs will be impossible to upgrade by completely
sealing the units.
“Because they will under the £120 price point the PC has no need to be
upgraded – it will simply be replaced,” said Bob Eminian, vice
president of marketing for Samsung’s US-based semi-conductor subsidiary.
The Intel system, dubbed Timna, will place all of the parts of the
computer the population at large have only just managed to get to grips
with on one sliver of silicon, building the Central Processing Unit
most people call a chip, the memory manager and graphics all into Timna.
Ironically, the demotion from cutting edge status symbol to same
standing of a plastic toy is all part of the revolution the computer
has unleashed according to a spokeswoman for the social commentator
Peter Yorke.
“The driving force for this is the speed of change. Stonehenge probably
stayed fashionable for thousands of years but now a building becomes
dated almost from the moment it is finished. The whole point nowadays
is that there is no reason for anything to last.”
A built in obsolescence afflicting leading edge technology more than
any other product, and a particular curse for the PC market which is
now being driven by the demand for better and better games graphics.
A development that in its turn has sparked a new market for
increasingly sophisticated internet web sites and the new craze for
developing ‘avatars’, computer generated models of real people that
will populate cyberspace.
Samsung’s work on the disposable PC is designed to take advantage of
both trends by trying to revive the early home computer market
popularised by Sir Clive Sinclair. A market expected to become a retail
battleground with the imminent arrival of the much hyped Sony
Playstation.
And due to the sheer pace of technological change the future innovation of throwaway computers is not expected to slow.
Work already being carried out at Cornell University on the development
of new semi-conducting materials is predicted to result in the creation
of the much fabled air-screens and air-keyboards. Designed to produce
ridiculously cheap and powerful electronic systems all of the
electronic circuitry involved would be contained in a thin film of
polymer that would be dropped on top of a wafer of silicon removing the
need to etch components into the material.
Once mastered the technology should lead to computers so small they can
be folded up like sheets of paper and carried in wallets. Capable of
being plugged into a phone socket, the theory behind the polymer layer
is that once it wears out it will be thrown away a new system being
bought from a corner shop.
Making possible the computer’s final metamorphosis into systems so tiny
they can be incorporated into food wrappings, a humiliation that not
even the quartz clock was lowered to.
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