Disruption junction: Tracing the origins of the digital revolution

The changes rocking the business world feel abrupt, but were a long time coming.

by Lance Ealey

Why now? Why are so many massive business disruptions occurring at the same time in so many different industries? The Internet of Things, big data, digitization, ubiquitous connectivity, the cloud, automation, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning—the list of breakthrough technologies appears to grow longer every day.

Everyone knows about the impact of Moore’s Law,[i] the ground-breaking work done by Alan Turing and John von Neuman in computer science,[ii] the invention of the integrated circuit[iii] and the contributions of more recent digital savants. Instead, this article focuses on several historical events that either had an impact on the digital landscape or provide insights regarding its evolution. 

Transistor Sister

Arguably the first personal electronic device, the portable transistor radio went mainstream in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Handheld transistor radios enabled on-the-go users—usually teenagers—to listen to their favorite music privately, beyond the censoring reach of parents and other authority figures. They could also use them to receive regular time and weather updates, find out what was going on in the world and learn about new shopping deals and promotions. Sound familiar? You’d have to strap an army-surplus walkie-talkie on one to approximate an early cell phone, but that’s not really the point. 

Instead, the analog transistor radio played a pivotal cultural role in paving the way for the idea of a personal digital space among consumers. With an estimated 7 billion sold during the 1960s and ‘70s, transistor radios rode a confluence of trends that made them the most popular electronic communication device in history.[iv] The music they played made the radios “cool” to the massive baby boomer generation, which had the spending power to buy them. In fact, they became so popular that Freddy Cannon scored a top-40 hit with a song about them in 1961, Transistor Sister.[v]

While sociologists tut-tut about how obsessed people are with their digital devices today,[vi] it’s doubtful we pay more attention to them now than the average pimply faced boomer did to his or her Sony TR-730 back then. Here, in miniature, was the product of a convergence of enablers that in some ways rivaled the digital revolution itself.

Bolstered by the lean, cost-cutting practices of Japanese manufacturers, who caught a massive early assist from Moore’s Law as costs went down and performance spiked, transistor radios became a lifestyle technology whose youthful, sunny aura resounds to this day.

A steam engine out of its time

In contrast, consider the aeolipile, a rotating steam engine invented by Hero of Alexandria in the first century AD. The aeolipile is important to the digital story because of what didn’t happen when Hero created it. The engine spun in an efficient rotational motion, not the herky-jerky reciprocating action that steam engines adopted during the Industrial Revolution some 1,600 years later. What’s more, Hero’s steam engine used direct steam pressure, while the early designs of Thomas Newcomen and James Watt in the 1700s employed steam indirectly to create a partial vacuum that drew the piston down into its cylinder—a less effective method. 

So why didn’t the ancient world adopt steam power? Why didn’t Hero develop and commercialize his admittedly toy-like aeolipile once he recognized steam’s potential to do work? Some contend Hero always viewed the aeolipile as little more than a curiosity, apparently demonstrating an uncharacteristic lack of imagination. Others suggest the absence of advanced metallurgy prevented its commercialization—a problem that also plagued steam engine designers in the Industrial Revolution. Still others argue that given Roman Egypt’s plentiful supply of manpower, little need for such labor-saving devices existed.

All may be true, but at a deeper level, the aeolipile lacked an appropriate industrial base and support infrastructure. In contrast, steam engine developers in the Industrial Revolution could draw on the support of substantial bell-casting and cannon-making industries -- sectors familiar with working with metals that could withstand the shocks and pressures their inventions would encounter. Similarly, the digital revolution depends on a global “meta-ecosystem[1]” of know-how, talent, innovation and entrepreneurial relationships capable of launching and sustaining new offerings.

The first binary computer

The first programmer was apparently born nearly 4,000 years ago and worked with a computer designed for binary code. Today, this long line of code writers endures, and their output has edified truth seekers throughout history. A mythological Chinese emperor named Fu Xi reportedly created this computer, the I Ching, which is the oldest of the so-called books of wisdom. Can a book be a computer? I say yes: in addition to using the binary base-2 number system, it has its own random number generator, database of stored knowledge, and is even associated with a trademark-able logo, the yin and yang symbol for change. 

The story of the unlikely effect this book of divination had on today’s world of digitization started in 1646, as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a polymath and Sinophile, invented the modern binary system used in virtually every computer today.[vii] His seminal article that described the system, Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire, also discussed the I Ching’s use of this number system, thus cementing the connection between the two. [viii] It turns out we humans are very comfortable working with this number system, from Morse Code’s “dot-dash” to the braille system’s “space-dot”[ix] methodologies to the base-2 calculations reportedly made by Polynesians[x] over 600 years ago. You could even argue we’re genetically predisposed to binary thinking—yes/no, stop/go, on/off, fast/slow—it’s how we view the world.

Now, if Fu Xi would just help me program my recalcitrant microwave to bake a potato, the digital revolution would be complete!

Copyright © 2018 Ealey. All rights reserved.

Footnote:

[1] A concept borrowed from the natural sciences, a meta-ecosystem is a set of ecosystems connected by spatial flows of energy, materials and resources (e.g., “talent”) across ecosystem boundaries.

Endnotes:

[i] Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, “Moore’s Law: Computer Science,” Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/technology/Moores-law

[ii] John Naughton, “Interview: The true fathers of computing,” The Observer, February 25, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/feb/26/first-computers-john-von-neumann

[iii] “Integrated Circuits,” ScienCentral, Inc., and The American Institute of Physics, PBS.org, 1999, http://www.pbs.org/transistor/background1/events/icinv.html

[iv] Quentin R. Skrabec, Jr., The 100 Most Significant Events in American Business: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2012, p. 197, https://books.google.com/books?id=2kc69qrid9oC&pg=PA197&dq=%22transistor+radio%22+billion#v=onepage&q=%22transistor%20radio%22%20billion&f=false

[v] John Michaelson et al., “Weekly Top 40, 1961,” https://weeklytop40.wordpress.com/1961-all-charts/

[vi] Kelly Wallace, “Half of teens think they're addicted to their smartphones,” CNN, July 29, 2016, https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/03/health/teens-cell-phone-addiction-parents/index.html

[vii] Piers Linney, “How the world came to be run by computer code,” BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zxsrcdm

[viii] Damien Walter, “The ancient book of wisdom at the heart of every computer,” The Guardian, March 21, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/21/ancient-book-wisdom-i-ching-computer-binary-code

[ix] “Invention of braille,” Royal National Institute of Blind People, 2014, http://www.rnib.org.uk/braille-and-other-tactile-codes-portal-braille-past-present-and-future/invention-braille

[x] Philip Ball, “Polynesian people used binary numbers 600 years ago,” Nature, December 16, 2013, https://www.nature.com/news/polynesian-people-used-binary-numbers-600-years-ago-1.14380