The Silicon Eye
Microchip Swashbucklers and the Future of High-Tech Innovation
“Infectious. Proof that the spell of the Valley, after decades of booms and busts, is alive and well” —David Kushner, Washington Post
Cameras can now be found in PDAs, phones, and anything else that will fit an imaging chip and a lens. Battling for a share of this two-billion-dollar market is a company called Foveon with an innovative—some say superior—chip. George Gilder tracks Foveon’s founders, IT genius Carver Mead and Federico Faggin, inventor of the CPU, as they struggle with the unpredictable mix of genius, drive, and luck that can rocket a startup into the Fortune 500 or leave it as roadkill on the side of the information superhighway. The Silicon Eye is a rollicking narrative of some of the smartest—and most colorful—people on earth and their race to transform an entire industry.
“Like Foveon’s founders, Mr. Gilder wants to understand vision, albeit of a different kind: the vision of innovators . . . The unpredictable disorder of markets is, in Microsoft parlance, not a bug but a feature. That’s the lesson Mr. Gilder’s book drives home.” —Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Wall Street Journal
“Gilder is a competent, eloquent guide . . . the ride is electric”—Publishers Weekly