Technology trends may push Silicon Valley back to the future. Carver Mead, a pioneer in in

tegrated circuits and a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology, notes there are now work stations that enable engineers to design, test and produce chips right on their desks, much the way as editor creates a newsletter on a Macintosh. As the time and cost of making a chip drop to a few days and a few hundred dollars, engineers may soon be free to let their imagination soar without being penalized by expensive failures. Mead predicts that inventors will be able to perfect powerful customized chips over a weekend at the office — spawning a new generation of garage starts-ups and giving the US a jump on its foreign rivals in getting new products to market fast. "We've got more garages with smart people. " Mead observes, "We really thrive on anarchy. "