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Flexible Thinking: Looking Back and Looking Forward

The month of January is upon us once again. The month is named after the Roman god Janus. According to Wikipedia, Janus is the?god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces: one on the front of his head, and one on the back since he looks to the past and future.
 
The electronics industry, like every other industry, needs to recall its past even as it looks forward to its future. Guidance can be found and should be taken from the past. As George Santayana warned, “Those you don’t remember history are condemned to repeat it.” However, while history can provide a measure of guidance as to the past, it is not infallible. It does not predict the future with certainty. Things happen that are not always predictable. 
 
The universe has, for the last 14 billion years or so, been about never-ending change. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus clearly understood this, having said, “There is nothing permanent except change.” 
 
Change is not always welcome but can be reasonably predictable as we connect dots from the past and extrapolate them into the future. However, in virtually every field of human endeavor and experience, there are inevitably found some rare events that defy experience and prediction by simply arriving on the scene, seemingly out of nowhere. This is the theme of the book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It is a topic I have explored in the past, but it is also one that needs to be revisited from time to time so that the lessons of history are not forgotten. 
 
The term “black swan” is a reference that has been traced to the Roman poet Juvenal who wrote, “A good person is as rare as a black swan.” While not necessarily a misanthrope, it is evident that he was at least a reasonably well-studied observer of human nature and would likely have taken the current political situation in Washington D.C. as predictable. 
 
Fast forward a couple of thousand years, and the use of the black swan analogy as a reference to something exceedingly rare surfaces in 16th century London, at which time the term was used to describe an occurrence or event deemed impossible. This can be attributed to the fact that the commonly held perception at the time was that all swans were white and that black swans did not exist. However, that perception was eventually proved wrong. There are indeed black swans, just not all that many. 
 
The Black Swan explores and examines the disproportionate effect of rare and largely unpredictable events that have ultimately wound up redirecting and even fundamentally reshaping science, technology, and history itself. Taleb also discusses the various human psychological biases that blind us to the very existence of uncertainty and even conspire to make us sleepily unaware of the impact of such rare events even as they are occurring right under our noses. 
 
Interestingly, when they are finally recognized for what they are, the events are then typically viewed retrospectively as predictable, with many suggesting that they knew all along that the event was bound to happen. It conforms well to the adage “Hindsight is 20/20.” Thus, while such events are rare, in general, they often play a larger role in reshaping or redirecting the arc of progress than routine or normal evolutionary events.
 
Consider the following events in our world of electronics. Switches were always mechanical until they were electrical, and they were then based on vacuum tube technology until they were based on transistor technology. What might be next? People are working with photonics now, for example. 
 
Electrical connections were originally made point to point using wires, and then they made using printing technology and conductive inks, followed by them being etched; now, they are increasingly being printed again. Things cycle. But what might be next? With the continuous reduction of semiconductor devices and the rise of wireless communications and IoT, the spaces that surround us in everyday life could represent the next generation of connection.
 
Further, through-hole component technology was overtaken and replaced by surface-mount component technology. Peripheral leaded components are being supplanted by area array components that use board area more efficiently. Then came stacking and 2.5D and 3D package structures. Again, what might be next?
 
Chiplets is the latest topic of high interest. It is a concept I have a personal interest in having proposed “disintegrating circuits“ almost a decade ago to fit into the Occam process concept. Positing the prospective benefit of enabling designers to execute their designs using the least number of transistors possible, and even using early nodes of semiconductor technology, helped to make electronics much more reliable than the ones being made today. 
 
First proposed in 2007, the Occam process represents a potential electronics industry “black swan” technology, quietly being developed and refined. It is one that could greatly and positively impact the cost, reliability, and environmental friendliness of electronics manufacturing by simply eliminating the soldering process. The concept has proven intriguing to many over the last several years, but new concepts are not always openly welcome because of their disruptive nature. For those interested, download Solderless Assembly For Electronics: The SAFE Approach—a free, educational book on the subject.
 
Nature may favor evolution, but business tends to favor stability. Still, when new technologies ultimately prove their ability to deliver on their promises—whether it’s cost reduction, improved performance (e.g., the integrated circuit), or some other positive attribute—they can have a compelling and profound effect on the industry. 
 
Summary
To summarize, Taleb suggests that black swan events are events that meet three basic criteria. First, they are surprises and not generally viewed as predictable by the average individual. Second, they normally have a  ?significant and even profound effect on any given group, from a society to an industry. Third, their occurrence is normally rationalized by hindsight, and it is often treated as if it was expected. In short, if we expect the unexpected, when change arrives, we can all say, “I was certain change was coming. I just didn’t know when.”
 
This column originally appeared in the January 2020 issue of Design007 Magazine.