Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature

Federico Faggin is one of the greatest luminaries of high technology alive today. A physicist by education, he is the inventor of the microprocessor and the MOS silicon gate technology, both of which underlie the modern world’s entire information technology. With the knowledge and experience of a lifetime in cutting-edge fields, Federico now turns his attention to consciousness and the nature of reality, sharing with us his profound insights on the classical and quantum worlds, artificial intelligence, life and the human mind. In this book, he elaborates on an idealist model of reality, produced after years of careful thought and direct experience, according to which nature’s most fundamental level is that of consciousness as a quantum phenomenon, while the classical physical world consists merely of evocative symbols of a deeper reality.

Federico Faggin is a physicist, engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and author. He developed the MOS Silicon Gate Technology at Fairchild and designed the world’s first microprocessor at Intel. Faggin also founded and led Zilog and Synaptics before starting the Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation dedicated to the scientific study of consciousness. He lives in Los Altos Hills, CA.