Humans have taken advantage of the technological possibilities made available to us by the properties of materials found on Earth’s surface. Let’s take a look at the foresight in nature that those properties seem to bespeak.

One of the hallmarks of our culture today is our pervasive use of electronic technology, which we could say began with telephone communication via land lines almost 150 years ago.

In 1877-78, the first telephone line was constructed, the first switchboard was created and the first telephone exchange was in operation. Three years later, almost 49,000 telephones were in use.

By 1948, the 30 millionth phone was connected in the United States; by the 1960s, there were more than 80 million phone hookups in the U.S. and 160 million in the world; by 1980, there were more than 175 million telephone subscriber lines in the U.S.¹

A further impact of electronics on our daily lives in the West came with simple radios able to tune in a few broadcasting stations.

Radio broadcasting was the cheapest form of entertainment, and it provided the public with far better entertainment than most people were accustomed to. As a result, its popularity grew rapidly in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and by 1934, 60 percent of the nation’s households had radios.²

Something About the Medium 

The rapid popularization of radio programming indicates that something about the medium resonated strongly with the human psyche. Further development in electronic technology led to the availability of television, which held our fascination by enabling us to see a recorded or real-time, front-row view of events taking place anywhere in the world.

Television replaced radio as the dominant broadcast medium by the 1950s and took over home entertainment. Approximately 8,000 U.S. households had television sets in 1946; 45.7 million had them by 1960.³

A common feature of each of these traditional uses of electronics is the elimination of isolation. Almost wherever a person may be on the planet, communication with the outside world has become possible. We’ve become used to this now, especially with the advent of cellular phones. But I still remember my amazement, when sometime in the late 1970s a friend of mine, who was on a climbing expedition on Mount McKinley in Alaska, was able to reach his wife in Washington State on the phone, while he was bivouacked in a small tent on the side of the mountain during a blizzard.

A Different World

Imagine what a different world it would be without the ability to stay connected with people anywhere, anytime, using our cell phones. Wait a minute! Many of us grew up in a world like that. Were we starved for lack of relationships? Not exactly. Ironically, with today’s vastly enhanced communications technology, a sense of isolation still affects many people.

Today, United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released a new Surgeon General Advisory calling attention to the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately half of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness.⁴

Instead of talking with another, we text. Instead of meeting in person, we have remote Zoom meetings. Instead of going to the movies with a friend, we find our entertainment online. Remote communication, which was meant to serve us when face-to-face communication wasn’t possible, has ended up depriving us of authentic relationships. 

The point here is not the negative social impact of the Internet or smartphone use. I don’t think that any of us would trade away all the benefits that electronics offers us. As a tool, the ability to call someone, access the Internet from our smartphones, send an email, listen to music, or watch a video is convenient, to say the least. 

Requirements and Properties

What we use so extensively, however, can easily be taken for granted. Let’s consider for just a minute the physical requirements and properties of materials necessary for our comprehensive use of electronic devices. The flow of electric charge (electrons) in response to a voltage requires a conducting material, and most metals are available as good conductors. However, in the practical use of electricity, insulating materials with a high resistivity are just as important as conductors. Fortunately, natural and synthetic insulators are also readily available.

The range in resistivity of natural materials available on Earth is remarkable, covering at least 21 orders of magnitude! For example, the resistivity of rubber is a billion times a trillion times greater than the resistivity of copper. Electronic circuit boards typically use copper for their conducting paths and a fiberglass-epoxy substrate for the insulating material separating the conductors. The high resistivity of the substrate (similar in value to rubber) keeps the electric current from “leaking” across the board from one conductor to another.⁵ This near-absolute barrier between conductors allows for the miniaturization of electronic circuit design with spacing between conducting paths on a printed circuit board as small as 0.003 inches.⁶ Without the enormous difference in materials with regards to their resistivity or conductance properties, electronic circuits would not be possible.

All electronic devices today use semiconductor materials for their circuit elements, such as logic gates, processors, and solid-state memory. The principal semiconductors are silicon and germanium; silicon’s abundance in the Earth’s crust is second only to oxygen (sand is mostly SiO₂),⁷ while germanium is scarce but available in sufficient quantities.⁸

Influenced by the quantum properties of countless atoms in proximity, solids develop a so-called band structure (not a musical arrangement) that determines the energy levels of electrons and whether or not they can roam freely through the solid. In conductors, one or more electrons from each atom are free to wander through the material like diplomatic travelers on an unlimited expense account. The electrons of insulating materials are not free to move unless they are torn from their moorings by an excess of energy. Semiconductors have a band structure that only loosely holds electrons, and a small inducement (low voltage) can cause a migration of electrical charge. 

Key Circuit Elements

Manipulating the electrical properties of semiconductors allows for the production of key circuit elements such as transistors and diodes (including light-emitting diodes and solid-state lasers). Without the unique and unexpectedly rich properties of semiconductors, our familiar world of powerful, portable electronic devices would not exist.

Much more could be said about the almost unbelievable advancements in electronics technology over the last half century. These advancements have come as a result of our ability to uncover means of advantageously exploiting the subtle properties of materials on Earth that seemed to be awaiting our investigation. In conjunction with the discovered realm of the quantum properties of materials, computational power and memory storage capacity have been dramatically increased over the last few decades. Computing power (measured by the transistor count in a microprocessor) has exponentially increased by a factor of 1,000 since about 1990. Hard drive storage has increased by a factor of 6,000 since the mid 1990’s. The resolution available in digital cameras has improved by about 40 times in the last 30 years.

Evidence of Intelligent Design

Does the phenomenal success in the development of electronic devices suggest any evidence of foresight in making all this possible? A planet lacking sufficient semiconductive elements would definitely hamper the possibility of technological development. We can be thankful for the right materials with the right properties that have allowed us to move beyond a 1950s-level of technology. But a word of caution is also in order, since as we have seen, too much of a good thing can also work against us.

Notes

1. https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/time-capsule/150-years/back-1870-1940 .
2. Carole E. Scott, “The History of the Radio Industry in the United States to 1940,” https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-history-of-the-radio-industry-in-the-united-states-to-1940/ .
3. 1920s – 1960s: Television | Imagining the Internet | Elon University .
4. https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html .
5. fr-4.indd (laminatedplastics.com) .
6. PCB Tolerances – PCB Thickness Standards | Advanced Circuits (4pcb.com) .
7. Silicon | Element, Atom, Properties, Uses, & Facts | Britannica.
8. Germanium | Properties, Uses, & Facts | Britannica.