Inside the black box

Engineers describe a system whose input and output behavior are known and whose inner workings are otherwise mysterious as a black box. Bruno Latour describes the black box as:

the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become. Continue reading

How transistors think

The parts of the computer that do the “thinking” are mostly made of little electronic switches called transistors. If you connect two wires to a transistor, you can use the voltage on one wire to control the voltage on the other. What’s especially handy for engineering purposes is that the presence or absence of a small voltage on one wire can control a wide range of voltages on the other wire. When voltage on the control wire changes, the transistor opens or closes the other wire to the flow of electricity in much the same way that a faucet controls the flow of water in a pipe.

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