image of chuck morehouse taken with hp PhotoSmart 912 digital camera 23 embedded computing In the buildings that once housed hp headquarters, Bob Rau, Stan Williams, Chuck Morehouse and others spend a lot of energy in their labs working on making computers, custom chips and storage technologies as small as atoms, and affordable to produce. Why the obsession with nanotechnology? Because these breakthroughs will form the foundation of a much more interactive environment—a world in which any information appliance (a PDA, a cell phone), network infrastructure, or object with an embedded microchip (an alarm clock, a dashboard) can perform tasks by operating on its own, or by teaming up and linking to e-services over the Net, in order to get things done. 