Guest Editorial Special Section on the 2016 SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference

The past year has brought many reminders that we live in an increasingly digital world. Technology shapes and enhances our lives each day on several fronts. * Shopping from the comfort of our homes. * Ready access to a multitude of information using our smartphones or other kinds of wireless devices, often accessed with the help of voice technology and digital assistants. * Smart control of our homes and offices, saving power, improving comfort, and enhancing our security. * Active driver assistance and accident avoidance features now commonplace in today's cars. * Development of new, useful, technologies and services such as cyber currency, easy point-of-sale transactions, and the self-service kiosks we use at the supermarket and airport. And there are trends that many of us consider troubling. * Worrisome levels of telephone attachment in today's teens. * Election hacking and manipulative social media engineering. * Cyber crime such as the WannaCry virus. * Stolen identities.