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From 1960 to 2060

When I was a kid there was no Flash RAM, there were no microcomputers, no integrated circuits, and you'd not even have been able to find a transistor radio anywhere in the house.

All the electronics of the day was based on valve-technologies (tubes if you're an American).

I recall turning on the family radio each evening and waiting what seemed an eternity for the sound to start coming out of the speaker. It took a good 15-20 seconds for the valves' filaments to get hot enough to start emitting electrons into the surrounding vacuum.

Far less frustrating, rather cool in fact, was the way the radio kept playing for three or four seconds after you switched the power off. For this brief period, the capacitors held enough energy and the filaments kept glowing long enough to give you "something for nothing".

About this time (the very early 1960s) there were transistors around, but they were few and far between.

Housed in a little glass capsule with three skinny wire legs, devices such as the OC71 were incredibly expensive and, compared today's devices, rather frail and lacking in performance.

I think I was about seven when I saw my first real transistor radio. A small crowd of people gathered around to look at this wonder of modern times.

A friend of the family had been overseas and brought it back with them. It had SIX transistors and although it was the size of a lunchbox, it didn't need a power lead and was still far lighter than the mantle radio we'd had for years.

I was already keen on electronics so asked if we could look inside but this suggestion was declined, given the huge amount of money it had cost the owner to buy it in the first place.

Of course we all know that since then, things have progressed in leaps and bounds.

By the time I started working in the electronics industry in the early 1970s, transistors were everywhere and the exciting new stuff were integrated circuits and LEDs. Just like the OC71 before them, they were rare beasts and very expensive so attracted geeks like honey attracts ants.

By the time I'd moved into computers in the late 1970s, ICs were everywhere and LEDs were becoming commonplace -- LCDs were now the cool technology de jour and again, a half-decent LCD would draw a crowd.

And now only a little more than 40 years since I saw my first transistor, I read this report which really hammers home just how much we've become reliant on the humble semiconductor junction.

It's staggering to realise that most of us now own more transistors than we have neurons in our brains -- don't you think?

But already there's talk of leaving the world of silicon behind so perhaps, by the time I shuffle my mortal coil, there'll be a new technology in use and transistors will have gone the way of the vacuum tube.

Graphene-based electronics, spintronics, quantum devices, optical switches - these all pave the way to new faster, denser, more capable devices -- in the same way that the transistor eclipsed the valve, the IC eclipsed the transistor and modern devices are capable of containing billions of individual switching elements.

There's no way, when I was a kid busy waiting for the old valve radio to warm up, that I could possibly have imagined the future technology on which I'm now reliant for so much of my daily activities. I really wonder what the world in which my grandkids will grow old might be like, from a technology perspective.

What a shame death eventually gets in the way of our time-traveling. I'd really like to get a look at the world in another 50 years time.

Okay readers -- let's hear your speculation as to what shape our technology will take in the year 2060. How will we have reshaped our world through the use of hi-tech?

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