| The recent boom in technological
advances, formation of new businesses, and personal {{U}}(1) {{/U}} is
the third, and most dramatic, such wave {{U}}(2) {{/U}} by the computer
industry in the last twenty-five years. The first wave {{U}}(3) {{/U}}
tangible products—"hardware," as {{U}}(4) {{/U}} the computer programs
that {{U}}(5) {{/U}} software. In the 1960s and 1970s companies in the
Santa Clara Valley, between San Jose and San Francisco, produced silicon memory
chips for computers— {{U}}(6) {{/U}} the name Silicon Valley.
Then they produced silicon logic chips, {{U}}(7) {{/U}} direct a
computer's operation. Then many produced computers {{U}}(8)
{{/U}}. The great {{U}}(9) {{/U}} from the hardware era include those of the Hewlett and Packard families, of Hewlett-Packard, which started {{U}}(10) {{/U}} money in the presilicon era, with scientific instruments. The Packard Foundation, with {{U}}(11) {{/U}} of ＄10 billion, recently {{U}}(12) {{/U}} the Ford Foundation as the nation's third-largest private foundation The {{U}}(13) {{/U}} hardware company of the 1990s is Intel, {{U}}(14) {{/U}} Pentium and other processing chips are used in most personal computers {{U}}(15) {{/U}} the Macintosh. The second {{U}}(16) {{/U}} of wealth creation involved software—"application" software that people use for work or recreation, like word-processing programs or computer games, and "systems" software used to {{U}}(17) {{/U}} businesses or, very often, computer networks {{U}}(18) {{/U}}. The difference between software and hardware provides a classic illustration of {{U}}(19) {{/U}} economists mean by "increasing returns to scale." Because the cost of producing additional units of software—the "marginal cost"- is extremely low, {{U}}(20) {{/U}} you become the market leader in a field, your profits grow astronomically. |