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66 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2025 Mind-tapping Into The Future Flexbile Thinking by Joe Fjelstad, VERDANT ELECTRONICS It's January again, and our beleaguered planet has completed yet another trip around the sun. e Romans named January in honor of their god Janus, who is usually depicted as a bearded old man with two faces—one looking back to the past and the other looking forward to the future. People venerated Janus as the god of beginnings and endings, transitions, and the passage of time. With that in mind, I'll look 10 years into the future—hopefully with a bit of inspiration from Janus—and prognosticate what might be happening in electronic design. As I have oen said here on my little soap- box (with a tip of the hat to the ancient phi- losophers, especially Heraclitus), change is the only constant, and predicting the future is a bit of a fool's errand. My crystal ball is likely to be no more accurate than the next individ- ual's. Renowned computer scientist Alan Kay said, "e best way to predict the future is to invent it." However, to do that, we need to use today's tools and look back, because whatever we invent must be built on today's foundation. PCB design was originally the domain of mechanical drasmen provided with sche- matics that defined where connections were required, and a list of components and their physical descriptions and pin assignments that they needed to connect. As time passed, mechanical design alone was insufficient, and