1.
It’s evening in New York. In my Brooklyn apartment’s tiny office, I’m watching an informational video for the third time, and I’m still confused. “All chips start out with a very simple raw material: sand.” So begins “The making of a chip—from sand to semiconductor,” posted by Infineon Technologies, a multibillion-dollar corporation and one of the largest semiconductor manufacturing companies in the world. “Microelectronics usually are hidden to society—however, [they are] a constant companion in our daily lives,” the caption reads. “But what is actually behind this technology?” Infineon’s video is minced by technical jargon that eludes me: phrases like “p-conductive,” “doped wafer,” “crypto chips,” “plasma etching,” “electrically conductive polysilicon.” I shut my laptop and call my brother Nick. “Can you tell me,” I ask in exasperation, “in layperson terms—how computer chips are made?”
I recently turned twenty-seven, and unlike most millennials I am pretty much technologically illiterate. For three years in graduate school—in the first apartment I ever lived in alone—I did not have Wi-Fi. I discovered how to upload my data to the cloud only last year. I don’t use or understand Microsoft’s Track Changes or Dropbox or Excel, and I’ve only recently become fluent in using Google Docs. After years of inaction on my part, my brother Nick sat over my shoulder a few months ago to help me install a basic password manager. My resistance and impatience toward machines is an ongoing joke within my closest relationships. (I have been known to fume at the appearance of any error message and to hit machines; I shove all ill-functioning technological objects in the direction of my brother, demanding: I can’t—can you?)
Everything comes from the earth, but there is something unexpectedly surprising about this claim as it relates to machines.
In part because of my technological illiteracy, I maintain a life largely devoid of the trendy, life-optimizing machines that adorn the homes of some of my closest friends and relatives. I do not own a television, a Kindle, an iPad, an Echo, any smart or surround-sound stereo system, Alexa, an Apple Watch, anything ran a list this year, “The Ten Best Digital Picture Frames Make It Easier to Showcase Life’s Memories,” and boasts that “best of all, most now come with their own email address and connect to your home’s Wi-Fi network for easy sharing.”
