I have an editorial about the effect of programmable logic on gizmo design on the front page of today's New York Times Christmas Circuits section:
PLASTIC created the age of whimsical forms. Suddenly a radio could look like a moo cow. A chair could look like an egg. Toy ray guns could bulge and swoop. The exuberant designers of the golden age of plastic explored all the wacky, nonfunctional, decorative shapes that household objects could take.
Now that same plasticity is coming to microcontrollers, the computer chips that act as brains for the chirping, dancing, listening and seeing devices that line our knickknack shelves and dashboards and fill our pockets. The proliferation of cheap and cheerful programmable chips promises a new age of "whimsical logic," chips that power devices whose functions are as delightfully impractical as their forms, the sort of thing you find in a stocking but keep on your desk forever.
