A man who left almost 60 years ago from the Italian province with a lot of wit and talent in his suitcase, capable of opening up the computer industry to the general public with his greatest idea: the microprocessor. His name is Federico Faggin, an inventor never too well known to the general public and a true "Pioneer of the Future", who between successes and disappointments has restarted many times in his professional and personal life, often in unexpected ways.

From Silicon Gate technology to the buried contact, from the CPU in a single chip to the historic Zilog (produced for 48 years from 1976 to 2024, for home computers, arcade games, consoles and embedded systems, including military ones) Faggin is credited with the first giant steps that computer hardware took at the dawn of Silicon Valley, the place where the engineer had moved, contributing first-hand to the birth of a completely new industry.

So much so that today, in the 4.0 era, microprocessors are present in almost every "smart" device connected to the Net and the "foundries" that produce them are at the centre of complex geopolitical strategies. But in the meantime, Faggin’s interests have also expanded on a much broader, deeper and spiritual level. Since 2011, the Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation has aimed to fund researchers on the “science of consciousness” and investigates topics such as technological development, scientism and the growth of artificial intelligence, which can be very useful, provided it is always accompanied and guided by human intelligence.

Pioneers of the future - A podcast series by Infra The Mundys Journal

Pioneers of the future is the podcast of Infra The Mundys Journal. The second season is a six-episodes journey through some of the most relevant innovations of the last 30 years, trying to hypothesize their impact over the next 20. As always, featuring the lives and adventures of the innovators who are shaping our present and even the future.

How is a breakthrough invention conceived? Which challenges had its creator to overcome? What are the needs, the fears and the beliefs of these pioneers in thought and imagination? Pioneers of the future collects the stories of the masters who are shaping the course of our times, through a podcast narration made of voices, anecdotes and interviews.

Men and women, well known and less well known, who stay faithful to their ideals and intuitions, even when nobody else was able to see along with them. Their ideas still pose many questions to us, but at the same time they are a promise to improve our lives, capable of lighting up our way of living, communicating, moving and traveling. All around the world.