October 13th, 2007
Checking Out the Almanac
This is the time of year to learn a lot and have some fun checking out the latest world almanacs. Many ideas and insights can be gleaned about electronics, and everything else, by browsing over these thousand-page tomes that regularly show up just before New Year.
The New Year’s weekend snowstorm that blanketed the New York region left me some idle time in the house to do just that. The week before, I had carefully scrutinized the various offerings at the local bookstore before picking the one I usually get, the latest edition of The World Almanac and Book of Facts from World Almanac Books. It has claimed to be “the authority since 1868,” the year it was first published by the New York World. I particularly like its colorful flags, maps and photos.
While much of the same information can be found in other reference books or on the Web, I like finding all sorts of interesting and thought-provoking stuff along the way while heading for the map of Asia to check the spelling of Kuala Lumpur.
Among the first things I look at in a new almanac are the major news events and pictures of the previous 12 months. Almanacs are usually put to bed around mid-November, in time to include October’s World Series and early November’s election results, and still be ready for Christmas shoppers and the start of the New Year. While the Yankees’ victory over the Mets was amply documented, last year’s presidential election proved particularly challenging for the almanacs. The election also underscored the power and immediacy of the Web. Editors of my almanac, and others I looked at, all solved their presidential crisis the same way, running extensive articles and pictures about Bush and Gore, describing the inconclusive election night and raging Florida controversy, then providing readers with a Web site to learn later developments, like who won.
Accounts and pictures of other news from last year in the 2001 almanac brought many thoughts to mind. A smiling Bill Gates is seen arriving on Capitol Hill in April to tell his side in the government’s antitrust suit, which later resulted in a federal court ordering Microsoft to split up, a decision now under appeal. Will Gates still be smiling when the appeal is over?
A page depicting how the world greeted 2000 shows the stunning photo of the Eiffel Tower surrounded by fireworks, a picture duplicated in every almanac I checked. Kudos to France for the world’s coolest millennium celebration. Speaking of that momentous day and associated Y2K anxiety, I guess we’ll never really know if tremendous foresight and planning averted disaster, or the risk was way overblown. My feeling is better safe than sorry. My almanac, while citing the advance preparations, noted that “concerns that the Y2K computer glitch would cripple businesses and governments … proved unfounded. Some $350 billion had been spent globally to address the glitch.” I think a calamity was averted because for every single dollar out of those hundreds of billions, a dollar’s worth of problems was solved. That’s my productivity analysis and I’m sticking to it.
The pain and glory associated with great endeavors in science and electronics is reflected in some of the other items. It is sad to see Russian sailors lighting candles for 118 comrades lost on the nuclear submarine Kursk. Those 118 join the countless others throughout history who paid the ultimate price to further technology.
The depiction of human genome developments spotlights the tremendous potential for biotechnology to improve life expectancy and the quality of life. And remember, future biotech wonders will also likely mean big bucks for electronics firms.
A glimpse of the International Space Station reminded me of the tremendous potential and challenges of space, both for our industry, and society. Rockets and space travel will be dominant themes of the next 100 years, just as airplanes and air travel have been defining forces in the past 100 years. And extensively moving beyond Earth will require massive outlays of electronics.
I suspect all sorts of human activities will ultimately be conducted in space, from commerce, art, travel and leisure to defense. President-elect Bush apparently agrees on the coming importance of space-based defense. Reports out of Washington suggest that a key reason he chose Donald H. Rumsfeld to be secretary of defense was Rumsfeld’s strong support for a strategic defense initiative — Star Wars-type missile program. Space-based defense will be as crucial in the future as having an air force is today. Of course, threats of chemical and biological warfare can be mounted surreptitiously from inside the country, but these weapons of mass destruction can also be launched from outside with missiles, and we must guard against all future possibilities.
Getting back to airplanes and air travel, it actually all started just under 100 years ago. According to the almanac’s list of notable aviation firsts, it was Dec. 17, 1903, to be exact, near Kitty Hawk, N.C., where brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first human-carrying, powered flights. Developers of games and other electronic products take note: start working up cool stuff to celebrate the 100th anniversary of aviation in 2003.