The economist Mariana Mazzucato has made a list of twelve key technologies that make smartphones work. One: tiny microprocessors. Two: memory chips. Three: solid state hard drives. Four: liquid crystal displays. Five: lithium-based batteries. That’s the hardware. Then there are the networks and the software. Continuing the count: Six: fast-Fourier-transform algorithms. These are clever bits of math that make it possible to swiftly turn analog signals such as sound, visible light, and radio waves into digital signals that a computer can handle. Seven—and you might have heard of this one: the
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