If Your Toaster Had a Brain 　　　　　　Echelon pushes chi  for everything from trai  to beer ta . 　　　　By Art Kleiner 　　　　　　 　　  　　　　Back in 1983, when A. C. (Mike) Markkula was A le"s chairman, he and Steve Jo  recruited John Sculley to head the company. Markkula volunteered to educate the new chief executive about the industry, and drew a chart showing how every time the price of computers dro ed 10 percent, sales multiplied tenfold. 　　　　Personal computer prices were a roaching $1,000, and 10 times as many personal computers were selling as when workstatio  had cost $10,000. "That is interesting," Sculley said. "But what ha e  when they hit $10?" 　　　　Markkula said he didnot know. "There will probably be some clever invention that will make somebody a lot of money." 　　　　Today, Markkula is trying to make his own prophecy come true, through a new company called Echelon. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Echelon makes what it calls "neuron chi " - actually board-like modules about the size of index cards, comprised of three microproce ors each. Each board is one small component of giant computers that will, should Markkula"s vision turn real, surround us someday. 　　　　"If you put 1,000 intelligent, distributed nodes i ide a building, and you add up all their computing power and memory," Markkula said, "you end up living i ide the equivalent of a very powerful central computer. But it would be impo ible for a single computer to do as many things at once as this network could do." 　　　　Echelon actually represents the third stage in Markkula"s career. A da er man in his 50s who slightly resembles Jimmy Carter, he became a millionaire marketing chi  for Fairchild and Intel in the 1970s. After retiring in his mid-30s, he was known in Silicon Valley as "the third Steve," the man who bankrolled Jo  and Steve Wozniak to help found A le (and who, among other things, persuaded Wozniak that flo y disks were worth using). 　　　　In the mid-1980s, while trying to wire his house for a "smart" lighting and entertainment system, Markkula remembered his remark to Sculley about the market-reach of $10 computers. Commanding devices around the home had been a longstanding dream, but the results always turned out half-baked and cumbersome. A digital machine couldnot easily manipulate the analog knob of a toaster or TV. 　　　　But if you attached a $10 digital controller to that a liance, Markkula reasoned, and made it as programmable and customizable as a personal computer, the difficulties might evaporate - e ecially if the chi  could cue each other over power lines, radio waves, telephone wire, or infrared beams. He called the chi  "neuro " - not after neural networks, which they vaguely resemble, but after the independently active, inter-related neuro  of the human brain. 　　　　This year, products containing the chi  are just begi ing to a ear commercially. Their implicatio  go far beyond merely automating homes. Echelon"s tools, in fact, may never automate many toasters, but they could reshape industrial society. 　　　　"Among the makers of microcontrollers, Echelon has the broadest potential influence," said David Mason, who follows the future of information technology at Northeast Co ulting Resources in Boston. "They have a completely organized view of their chi  as not just an isolated device, but a brand name for an idea of fitting them together. A house is just one example. People might ha ily buy into one use for the chi , and that will be a Trojan Horse for the whole Echelon system." 　　　　A demo tration of the neuron-chip system begi , in fact, with Trojan Horse-like simplicity. You twirl an ordinary dimmer switch, and a light bulb, mounted nearby on the same panel, brighte  and dims. Then you reach beneath the dimmer switch and tap a small button. Now, when you turn the dial, two lam  brighten and dim. With more ta , you add another switch to the circuit; now both switches adjust the same lamp"s brightne . Then you rip the second switch off the wall (to which it is attached with Velcro), and move it three feet to the left. It still dims the bulb, sending its commands over a radio link. Wouldnot it be nice, you think, to be able to move around and reprogram all my own light switches this easily? 　　　　"If you think about how dimmer switches work," said the Echelon engineer who guided me through the demo, "you realize you couldnot do this in an ordinary house." Two dimmers, wired in sequence to add resistance to the wire, canot operate one bul  if the first switch squeezed the current to a trickle, how could the second release a torrent?