IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Summer 2020 - 7

A SSOC IATE EDITOR'S VIE W

Marcel Pelgrom

Standing on Shoulders

From an evolutionary point of view,
monkeys are the closest relatives to
the human species. Research shows
amazing similarities: monkeys use
tools, have a group culture, and communicate. On short-term memory
tests, they easily beat humans. More
than 95% of their DNA is identical to
ours, and a discussion has materialized about whether this high correlation should lead to equal rights for
monkeys. The old and sore problem
regarding what differentiates humankind from "animals" pops up. In my
view, one of the best answers to this
question is the human ability to pass
information from one generation to
the next. Newton caught the essence
of that process when remarking, "If I
have seen further, it is by standing on
the shoulders of giants."
The evolution of information
transfer has involved many steps: the
development of writing, communication by sending letters, and publishing of newspapers. The invention of
book printing during the early 15th
century was followed by a strong
acceleration of technical and scientific progress. People could learn
from distant colleagues and different generations, such as the ancient
Greek philosophers. Humankind
advanced to new levels of insight. Not
only science progressed; new ideas
were developed about how society
should be organized. The ultimate
example of that is Karl Marx's Das
Kapital, and the ultimate sign of
social barbarism became book burnDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2020.3002139
Date of current version: 25 August 2020

ing. Nobody doubts that books are
the foundation of our civilization,
but who is still writing them?
"No books written? You must be
blind, dude!" you might say. There are
more books printed than ever before,
from serious novels to pulp fiction
and from travel guides to kilograms
worth of art books. But where are
the real books, the ones that enable
the next generation to stand on our
shoulders and see farther? Where are
the books that reflect on, select, prioritize, and summarize our knowledge base? Where are the authors
who offer a consistent buildup of
competencies and focus on the most
important insights with a balanced
view on interesting side paths?
After the rollout of the Internet,
those books have vanished. In our
field, there are the classical textbooks: Meyer and Gray, Laker and
Sansen, Sze, Razavi, and a few more.
These books cover the entirety of
their field in a consistent manner
and in great depth. The classical
texts are updated every decade or
so, but where is the next disruptive view of our field, something
that is desperately needed after this
dazzling journey from 10-micron
devices to nanometer electronics for
quantum computing?
Writing a state-of-the-art book
focused on a scientific discipline is
a prolonged undertaking. Collecting
the relevant background, evaluating many publications, and gluing
the bits and pieces into a consistent
and accessible storyline take years,
a period during which commercial novelists produce a handful of

blockbusters. A book requires the
sale of several tens of thousands
of copies to break even in terms of
the resources spent on writing, editing, production, and printing. That
is doable for a travel guide and for
popular fiction; for a specialistknowledge-carrying book taking
years of work, however, the margins
are (too) slim. And in this efficiencydriven society, where researchers
and professors are accountable for
every hour, it has become almost
impossible to find the time to author
a profound 600-page textbook.
The Internet cannot fill that gap:
it is ideal for searching for travel
destinations and finding a recipe for
tonight's dinner, but it does not present an accessible and consistent overview of the state of the art in a field
of knowledge. There are certainly
valuable and interesting webpages in
our field, but most are at the educational level of a newstand magazine.
There is no selection of relevancy, let
alone any consistency in content and
style. Any real good stuff is as hidden as a tree in the forest.
The Internet has changed a lot
in this world and most certainly in
the book-publishing business. Hardcopy sales are irrelevant. Any new
scientific book is part of a package
deal between large distributors and
academic libraries. This business
model cannot compensate for years
of minute labor summarizing and
explaining a scientific domain. Science needs books to see farther: in
the Internet age, that means books
need a publishing business model
to survive.

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