This is not a Chip War book review

As I had no friends to hang out with this Christmas, I started to read Chip War.

I was fascinated. Weirdo girls and boys, don’t worry, I’m not an expert at chips, so I’m throwing chip knowledge on you, but I’m fascinated by the story of innovation and how it has unfolded in history.

Dedication

Shockley was furious that his colleagues had discovered an experiment to prove his theories, and he was committed to outdoing them. He locked himself in a Chicago hotel room for two weeks over Christmas and began imagining different transistor structures, based on his unparalleled understanding of semiconductor physics. By January 1948, he’d conceptualized a new type of transistor, made up of three chunks of semiconductor material.

I can feel my heartbeat when I read the sentences. This seems to be the life that I dream to have. Isolating myself, and hyper-focusing on solving problems I care about like a scientist. Coincidentally, I am alone this Christmas because my roommate goes on a two-week traveling today. What if I just try to imagine, innovate, and experiment with ideas for learning?

Collaboration

The entire book is full of similar stories. Though I don’t fully understand how semiconductor works. All the people involved in ideations, and networks, collaborated to build the best technology during the Cold War arms race.

For instance, this is Sony (Japan) and Texas Instruments (America) collaboration after lots of green tea.

Japanese executives were no less committed to making this semiconductor symbiosis work. When Texas Instruments sought to become the first foreign chipmaker to open a plant in Japan, the company faced a thicket of regulatory barriers. Sony’s Morita, who happened to be a friend of Haggerty, offered to help in exchange for a share of the profits. He told TI executives to visit Tokyo incognito, register at their hotel under false names, and never leave their hotel room. Morita visited the hotel clandestinely and proposed a joint venture: TI would produce chips in Japan, and Sony would manage the bureaucrats. “We will cover for you,” he told the Texas Instruments executives. The Texans thought Sony was a “rogue operation, something they meant as a compliment. With Morita’s help, and after much red tape and green tea, Japan’s bureaucrats finally approved TI’s permits to open a semiconductor plant in Japan.

How fun is that? Imagine that you go to a secret hotel to collaborate. The adventure attracts me. Translating it to my context, I feel seduced by the lifestyle that I can every day thinking about how to accelerate human learning every day, but do some secret work that society or countries don’t allow or understand but push forward for larger scale changes.

Revolution

Industry outsiders only dimly perceived how the world was changing, but Intel’s leaders knew that if they succeeded in drastically expanding the availability of computing power, radical changes would follow. “We are really the revolutionaries in the world today,” Gordon Moore declared in 1973, “not the kids with the long hair and beards who were wrecking the schools a few years ago.

This is from Moore (yes, the one who invented Moore’s law). I love this passage because it reminds me of how we define “cool.” In school, cool is equal to rebellion, so it’s easily associated with bad kids. However, only with enough intellect and knowledge, we can really revolutionize the world fundamentally instead of those who throw eggs at the parliament.

Taiwan

Lastly, as a Taiwanese, I need to mention Taiwan haha.

Kwoh-Ting Li, Taiwan’s economy minister in 1968 hated the idea of intellectual property when he met the Americans, he thought it was something that “imperialists used to bully less-advanced countries” However, with the intensity of China rises, and America lost the Vietnam war, he started to change his mind. He figured maybe semiconductor is a good way to foster a real relationship with America. Back then, because of the Vietnam way, most Asian countries start to lean toward communism. However, with the bloom of the semiconductor industry, people get related jobs and stabilize their lives, while the semiconductor supply chain forms a protection net from communism.

I wrote this not in a way to glorify America or democracy. I’m just fascinated by the use of technology to power the economy and future stabilize the politics. As Taiwanese, we all know that under the risk of China’s invasion, semiconductor is the most important industry in Taiwan.

Silicon Valley

When reading this book, I finally understood where Silicon Valley comes from, and how Palo Alto, Bell Labs, and all the things connect with each other. South Bay used to be a manufacturing center for semiconductors! But nowadays are full of VCs and rich tech workers. People like to say San Francisco is dead now, but when I go to the AGI house or some hackathon, I still see lots of books and ideas from machines, philosophy, neuroscience, and technology, that people read in depth to build ideas upon to innovate, like augmenting human intelligence.

This post is a messy dot of ideas because I’m still reading the book and haven’t formed many ideas and thoughts yet. Imagine AI will be published like this kind of story after 50 years. How interesting will it be like when you see the life you experience as technology develops, becoming a part of history too?

See you! I need to continue my reading now!