The Long Way Back to Ourselves

9.1

Computing Power and Semiconductors

This episode shows how closely semiconductors are tied to this century's power question: a single Dutch company makes practically all the equipment without which the most advanced chips cannot be exposed. Through the 1986 oil price collapse, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the rise of a Taiwanese contract manufacturer in the 1980s, you see how the basis of power moved from land to coal and oil to computing power. The episode corrects the assumption that shared resources can only be protected by nationalization or privatization, using Elinor Ostrom's work on Swiss alpine cooperatives. A closing comparison with the banking house of the Fuggers shows how today's concentration of technology differs from earlier forms of power.