As part of a 3-year study to identify emerging issues and trends in technology for special education, this paper addresses the implications of very large scale integrated (VLSI) technology. The first section reviews the development of educational technology, particularly microelectronics technology, from the 1950s to the present. The implications of very high computational power available at low cost are then examined for the fields of education, medicine, assistive devices for individuals with disabilities, home electronics, business, management information systems, music, defense applications, space programs, industrial applications, and super computing. The second section then briefly considers future applications of new technologies including gallium arsenide technology, fuzzy logic, and neural networks. A high level of technological integration is predicted for the 21st century based on the immense power of VLSI-based automation. An appendix outlines, through text and figures, the fundamentals of VLSI. (Contains 25 references and 5 figures.) (DB)