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In the past decade, the amount of data that could be put on a silicon chip has doubled every year while the price has been cut in half. In 1960, a high-quality transistorcost several dollars. Today a chip with the capacity of 4 million transistors costs about a tenth of a cent per transistor.
最近十年中，集成電路片的信息儲(chǔ)存量每年要翻一番，而其價(jià)格則每年要減一半。1960年，一個(gè)高質(zhì)量晶體管價(jià)格要若干美元，而今一個(gè)容量相當(dāng)于400萬(wàn)個(gè)晶體管的集成電路片的價(jià)格約為每個(gè)晶體管1/10美分。
Transmission-putting that information into the hands of everyone who wants it-is also much more efficient. Until now, data have been sent as a series of electrical signals along wires or cables or through the air as radio waves. But as the amount of data and the demand for them have increased, these electronic highways have become clogged. The solution: fiber optics.
信息傳輸--將信息輸送到每個(gè)需要者手中--的效率也有了很大提高。直到現(xiàn)在，信息一直是以一連串電子信號(hào)的方式通過(guò)電線傳輸或以電波的形式通過(guò)空氣傳輸。但隨著信息量和信息需求量的增多，這些電子運(yùn)輸公路已形成堵塞。解決問(wèn)題的辦法是使用光纖電纜?！ ?/div>
Both of these developments are possible because of digitalization , a mathematical scheme that translates data into the simplest form. Called binary formatting, the sys-tem expresses numbers and letters in a code using only 1 and 0. The letter A, for example, could be 00000. Z would be 11001. Originally, this code was stored as on-or-off electrical charges along the standard wires and cables; now it can be transmitted as pulses of light on the fiber-op-tic cables. Bringing high-speed computers into the loop means that much more complicated information can be digitized: combinations of sound, still images, video and text. Multimedia is the wrong word, says MIT's Negroponte. Everything has now become digitized, he says. We have created a unimedia, really. Bits are bits.
這兩方面的發(fā)展提高全賴于數(shù)字編碼技術(shù)的應(yīng)用。數(shù)字編碼技術(shù)是將信息轉(zhuǎn)換成最簡(jiǎn)單的數(shù)字形式的數(shù)學(xué)方法。這種方法稱作二進(jìn)制數(shù)字排列法，任何數(shù)字或字母都可以通過(guò)一個(gè)由1和0組成的編碼來(lái)表示。比如，字母A可用00000表示，字母Z可用11001表示。起初，這種編碼是以時(shí)斷時(shí)續(xù)通過(guò)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)導(dǎo)線或電纜的電荷存儲(chǔ)于計(jì)算機(jī)里的，而現(xiàn)在則可以光波的形式通過(guò)光纖電纜傳送。只要將高速計(jì)算機(jī)接上光纖電線，就可以用數(shù)字編碼方法來(lái)處理復(fù)雜得多的信息：聲音、靜止圖像、電視畫(huà)面和文字相結(jié)合的信息。麻省理工學(xué)院的尼格羅邦特認(rèn)為，多媒體一詞用得不當(dāng)。他說(shuō)，現(xiàn)在什么都可以用數(shù)字編碼表示了。我們其實(shí)是創(chuàng)造了一種單媒體。數(shù)字可不能混淆。
