Byron Dorgan: “The breathtaking changes in telecommunications and in the telecommunications industry in recent years have been quite…”

“The breathtaking changes in telecommunications and in the telecommunications industry in recent years have been quite remarkable. No one could have anticipated what we would see in technology and in opportunities that exist from the changing technology. I, in a speech some while ago, held up a vacuum tube, a small vacuum tube that we are all familiar with, and then I held up next to it a little computer chip that was about one-half the size of my little fingernail, and I said, ``The little computer chip equals 5 million vacuum tubes.'' Sometimes we forget to equate what is happening in these little chips and in their power and in their capability, but it is really quite remarkable what has happened to speed, storage density, memory and all the other things that relate to these breakthroughs.”