When imagining the future, it’s hard to see how radically different technologies will integrate into our lives or how different cultures will influence their development. For over 60 years, transistors have been at the core of all our modern devices, so imagining a future without them seems impossible. So, let’s explore something closer to home, an alternate present where transistors never existed.
A World Without Transistors | University Project | 2020
Context
This project was a university project exploring speculative design. The brief was to explore the possible futures presented by emerging technologies through the design of an object/service/system existing within a future context. Rather than taking the standard approach of taking the present and extrapolating into the future, I instead changed the past and extrapolated into the present.
Tools Used
The Alternate Present
In this alternate future, following the end of the Second World War, a global pandemic caused the nations of the world to close their borders stopping globalisation and the transistor from developing.
Several decades have past and the world has reformed into three regions with each developing their own technology.
In the Asia Pacific region, developments in bioengineering allowed for the invention of Silicon Rice, a type of rice that produces a glass shell.
This new rice allowed for the production of micro vacuum tubes, allowing the rice growing nations of Asia to advance technologically and form the Silicon fields.
The less wealthy regions of the world following the pandemic were unable to make any new technology. Rather they used classic vacuum tubes to build large super computers.
These computers are too large and costly for home use. So, the government has made them into public resources.
The US, USSR and their allies were competing in the Space Race. The race required them to find the next small-scale powerful computer. This led to the development of the Artificial Brain. A small organic neural network capable of fast computation. However, due to its organic nature, its subject to upkeep and death.
The コンピューター, 电脑 or simply computer, is the word used to describe a folding tablet device used throughout the Asia Silicon Fields. Built from the Silicon Rice grown in the region, these devices are not as powerful as our transistor-based devices but are exceptionally good communication devices, allowing the people to form a massive peer-to-peer communication telecommunications network.
This network not only allows the people to communicate but to also share computational resources. This sharing of resources enables the device to overcome its computational shortcomings and allows individuals to access the community’s resources to perform more complex tasks such as gaming or photo and video editing.
Big Tech refers to the National Computer Networks which dominate specific regions of the world. The NCNs are large supercomputers distributed across a nation and are publicly accessible via the terminals located throughout the nation.
The NCN enables the people to access all the government resources such as the health, tax and police departments as well as search the nation’s libraries for information. Other uses are also available such as the sending of digital mail or reading the news. Transferring files is also possible via the drivebay. As pieces of public infrastructure, terminals are designed for all citizens. They’re wheelchair accessible, ambidextrous and accessible 24/7.
Following the invention of the Artificial Brain, Organic Computation is the predominant type of computing used in North America and Europe. These computers are powerful and portable but in exchange they require continual maintenance and care. Artificial brains require periodic feeding in the form of nutrient solution and have a short life span. For feeding, the laptop can dock into the desktop and fluid can be poured into the top of the desktop. To cope with the short lifespans, computers always feature a back up brain that is a different age to the other brain. Despite these quirks, these devices are most similar to our computers, fulfilling the exact same use cases as our computers.
