I can remember what my life was like living in the 1970's BC (Before Computers). I prefer the 1990's AD (After Digital). The microprocessor is the brain behind the computer and they are being used everywhere. They have revolutionized how we live and work. However, do they always have a positive result?

Have you tried contacting your phone company or power utility lately? Don't you just love getting that impersonal phone system designed to "improve" customer service. It takes nearly five minutes to run down a menu of items you're not interested in!

Of course, if there was a real person on the other end it would only take a few seconds to get routed correctly. This is a good example of what microprocessors should NOT be used for! I love computers but there is a limit to my patience.

A while back I had Rick Smolan on my radio show, Inside The Net. Rick published a book called One Digital Day, documenting through photos how the microchip is changing the world and our daily lives. What he found shocked him.

There are about 15 billion microchips being used right now in a myriad of products. In fact, if we stopped using microchips this very second, much of present day society would simply stop working.

Before it's time to eat lunch you come into contact with almost six dozen microprocessors (and photographed 40 times without your knowledge but that is a future column). Here is a brief list to make my point taken from an average American home : CD player/walkman, video game (Nintendo), TV, personal computer, dishwasher, microwave, VCR, (the remote too!), refrigerator/freezer, clock radio, telephone, answering machine, toaster, juicer, blender, pager, cell phone, digital watch, digital camera, cordless phone, stereo system, fax, car's ignition, remote garage opener, calculator, your kid's voice activated toy, washer & dryer, and camcorder. I bet you can come up with a few not on my list!

We could live just fine if we didn't have any of them. Afterall we have been on the planet for a few million years and could make it to the second millennium without them, right?

What makes all this so ironic is we humans walk the planet feeling pretty smug and on top of the world (and food chain). We are in control, or so we think. And yet, if you really think about it, our entire existence is based on the synergy of a few of nature's basic raw materials.

These microchips we hold as modern miracles are nothing more than wafers of silicon, an element which makes up 25.7% of the earth's crust by weight, and is the second most abundant element on the planet (topped only by oxygen). On that wee piece of silicon is 20 million transistors - little on and off switches - that allow pulses of electricity to ebb and flow at blinding speed (our brain is faster). Along with these chips, our entire societal infrastructure is based on wood, bricks (fired clay), and iron and steel, the byproduct of smelting a few stones. In a nutshell, we are pretty much beholding to the planet.

And yet, microprocessors have been a boon in medicine, research, education, entertainment, and just about all aspects of life. The cost of this technology gets cheaper while it gets faster and more powerful.

You can buy a greeting card for a buck that has a microprocessor in it that is more powerful than the world's largest computers of 1971. You can now purchase a "supercomputer" from Apple for $1600 (a good refrigerator costs more). That means it can perform a billion calculations in a second. Almost as fast as my two year old plotting on how to get the TV remote away from my eight year old.

But are we putting too much of our life in the hands of the microchip? Scientists have recently learned how to turn atoms on and off, the basic building block of computers. We are not so far off that microprocessors made out of atoms will be injected into the blood stream to diagnose illness or cure diseases. Will we have an atomic size cell phone imbedded in our head so all we need to do is "think" the number and carry on a discussion by thought instead of words? Will we have given up all chances of privacy when we carry digital ID cards around that can be "traced" by the government, or anyone who can tap into your digital number?

These and other digital issues will be on the front burner of discussion as we enter the brave new world of the next millennium.

As much as I enjoy computers, I keep thinking about the couple who erroneously trusted their new car's GPS (global positioning system) device as they drove off -- and straight into a canal. The GPS device worked fine. Someone forgot to update the maps!