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The Harrow Technology Report
Insight,
analysis, and commentary on the
Copyright © 2001-2005, Jeffrey R. Harrow. All rights
reserved.
Molecule By Molecule...
LISTEN To This Issue.Do you prefer to let your ears do the work of keeping you in-touch with, and thinking about where technology is taking us? If so, "The Harrow Technology Report" is also available in an audio-on-demand, Web-based, MP3 version. If you have an MP3 player on your system (and most do, such as Window's Media Player, RealPlayer, etc.), clicking on the link below will either stream the file to you, or, depending on how your system is configured, it might download the file before playing it. Alternatively, if you specifically want to download the file, simply right-click on the link, and choose "Save Target As..." So, if you wish, just click on the following link to listen to this issue! www.TheHarrowGroup.com/articles/20011022/20011022.mp3
Quote of the Week.
The "Consumer Electronics Mentality," which I believe applies across the board: "It has to be easy, it has
to be fun, and most of all, it can't be boring." by Steve Mollman, (This is also an excellent article to help us understand why Japan's iMode is so successful.)
Where-away Nanotech?
As we experience the early rumblings of nanotechnology and molecular self-assembly, we might be tempted to shrug and say, "What does this really mean to me?" But now, based on an Oct. 17 disclosure from Bell Labs (http://www.bell-labs.com/news/2001/october/17/1.html) brought to our attention by reader Sander Olson, the answer is becoming clear: these new technologies have created a transistor so small, that the space between its electrodes (the "channel length") is but one molecule long!! Although still very much a prototype, Zhenan Bao, Hong Meng, and Hendrik Schon have used molecular self-assembly techniques to convince a transistor to form with features 100 times smaller than those that we produce using today's most advanced lithography techniques! The distance between this transistor's electrodes is 100 times smaller than in today's smallest transistors -- about 1.3 nanometer, which is the size of a single molecule! Compare that size of 1.3 nanometer, or .0013 micron, with the size of today's newest commodity chip lithography process: 130 nanometers, or .13 micron - http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-7570458.html?tag=dd.ne.dht.nl-sty.0 . Quite a difference. Another way to look at this is that the 42 million transistors in today's Pentium 4 are still made using the previous .18 micron, or 180 nanometer process. That means that this new molecular-scale transistor sports features 138-times closer together. 138-times smaller (hence faster)... What this means, is that a molecular-scale transistor has now demonstrated both the switching and the amplification characteristics that make transistors so useful. In fact, these scientists have brought two of these molecular-scale transistors together into a functional "voltage inverter" circuit! It boggles the mind -- a complete voltage inverter circuit made out of two molecular-scale transistors!
Putting These Tiny Tinker Toys Together... A great deal of the magic in this announcement is in how these molecular-scale transistors are built. Not by ever-more carefully etching away at layers on a substrate, as we do today, but by convincing a layer of organic molecules to self-assemble just where, and just how, they were needed! In a beaker. Without a clean room. (This process is explained a bit in the Oct. 18 New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/18/science/18TRAN.html ). Also, these molecular transistors are not made out of silicon -- they're made out of carbon-based organic molecules. The same class of molecules that make up -- us! (Additional insights are at http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,47661,00.html?tw=wn20011018 .)
Looking Forward... Of course, I do have to reign in my enthusiasm just a bit; this is currently just a successful laboratory proof of concept. But the inventors do see their "manufacturing process" as being scaleable towards commercial yields. Even at this early stage, this is still a very exciting and real reminder that, Things Will Not Always Be The Same. Will we one day grow our computers on-demand? Will the line between things that are clearly inanimate (silicon-based circuits), and new things built of carbon-based organic molecules (sound familiar?) become less clear? Just remember how Bell Labs' first transistor invention, back in 1947, changed our world. Could they do it again?
Wireless Computing -- of a Very Different Kind.
When most of us think of wireless computing, we see visions of Internet-connected PDAs and notebooks and cell phones. But an Israeli company, Given Imaging Ltd. (http://www.givenimaging.com/), is taking these PC-driven technologies in another direction -- making it possible for us to contemplate our own navels, from the inside!
Well, not our navels, exactly -- but this tiny high-tech pill actually delivers pictures of our intestines as it takes its journey from, er, input to output. Not only is this a painless procedure, eschewing the anesthesia and hospital visit that goes with a traditional colonoscopy, but according to Given this mighty mite even provides detailed diagnostic pictures from areas of the intestines that can't normally be imaged. Your doctor can prescribe this high tech "pill," and it will do its thing as you continue with your daily activities. If you've ever gone through a traditional colonoscopy, you'll appreciate just how significant a step forward this merging of technology and medical science can be! In this case, the patient wears a belt containing an array of non-invasive sensors and antennas. He or she then pops the pill, which contains a miniature color video camera, lights, a battery, and a wireless transmitter. During the next few hours as the pill wafts its way through the digestive system, it takes its digital snaps every few seconds and wirelessly transmits them to the belt-mounted receiver and storage unit. At the same time, the antenna array maps the 3D progress of the pill through the body, annotating the exact location of each picture. Once the pill has finished its day-long "Fantastic Voyage," it's "naturally excreted" (and it's disposable, so there's no need to try to recover it.) Once the patient returns the belt-mounted equipment back to the doctor's office, the data from the storage unit is downloaded into a PC, where the images, along with a map showing each image's position, are available to the physician as both a series of still images and as a video clip. Based on the information from Given, this technique opens up a new world of comparatively inexpensive diagnostic procedures that can help identify GI bleeding and other problems, far earlier than before. Additional information is at http://www.givenimaging.com/ftp/FAQSaug5usa.pdf . This isn't "nanotechnology" -- at least not yet. But it is a stunning example of how common, off-the-shelf technology can be refined to do extraordinary things. And this is only the beginning... Don't Blink!
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A Dye To Die For -- Data Preservation Thoughts...
Or, Data Safety and CDs (and more), Revisited -- Several issues ago, we found that the seemingly ageless CD
that an increasing number of us use to backup critical data,
isn't, as we might have believed, quite as invulnerable as
Superman (http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc/ Next comes a reflective layer, typically made of aluminum or gold foil, which is glued to the plastic disk. Then, a layer of organic dye covers the foil. Finally, a plastic or paper label goes over the foil (this is the "top," or "back" side of the CD -- the "business end" is the other, or clear side). When you write to a CD-R, the reasonably strong "write
laser" melts tiny pits in the dye in just the right places
to represent your data. When
you later go to retrieve your data, the lower-powered
"read" laser can determine the difference between a
spot in the dye that had been zapped, and adjacent spots that
have not. This
allows the CD reader to recreate the ones and zeros of your
digital detritus.
'Dem Dyes... There are three common dyes in use today: "Cyanine," the
blue-green dye used in many less-expensive CD-Rs, has a lifespan
of between 10 and 75 years, which puts it at the bottom of the
dye-lifetime scale. In a word, if you use these CD-Rs, be
"conservative" in how long you expect it to last. As we can see, the type of CD-R we buy can significantly affect the longevity of our data -- but you may have noticed that few CD-R packages disclose their chemistry! So aside from the inexact art of eyeball color matching, how can we tell what type of dye a given disk contains? One answer comes to us from the Aug. 30 LangaList (http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-08-30.htm#9), which points us to a free utility from G&M called "CDR Identifier" (http://www.gum.de/it/download/english.htm). In many cases, this little program will read the information block that is factory-written to the CD-R disk, returning an indication if the CD-R is designed for short or long term storage. (CD-RW: Although I haven't yet seen definitive figures for the lifetime of CD-RW disks (those special disks that you can RE-write up to 1,000 times), you might be interested in how they work compared to a write-once CD-R. Brought to our attention by the Sept. 29 Stavance Newsflash, the "working layer" on a CD-RW disk is made up of silver, indium antimony, tellurium, and other rare earths, which have the ability to change from a crystalline state (which reflects the laser as if no data were written to a spot), into an amorphous state (which reads back like a "pit" of data in a conventional CD). The laser can "write" a spot using high power, and then "erase" a previously-written spot (causing it to return to the amorphous, or "no data" state) using a medium power. Hence, on CD-RW disks, we can write -- erase -- and write again and again... http://www.scientificamerican.com/askexpert/computers/computers14/ ) Of course, nothing is exact in the data preservation game. Any one CD, even with the most long-lived of dyes, might suffer from a manufacturing problem or from a bad dye lot, and the problem might not show up until long after your backup software completes its full "verification pass" (you DO configure your backup software to do a read-after-write "verification pass," don't you?) So be sure to keep your really critical data backed-up onto multiple media, storing them at different sites! (You can find more about CD-R and CD-RW CDs -- a LOT more -- in Andy McFadden's excellent "CD-Recordable FAQ" at http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq.html).
The Data Recovery Debacle... But there's much more to consider about preserving your data, regardless of the CD dye type, or any other media that you may use. For example, do you have any old backup tapes that you made, say, ten years ago? Or do you have some old 5.25-inch or 8-inch floppies? Assuming that their data is still viable (a poor assumption after all these years), do you still have the tape or disk drives that you need to actually read the media? Do those old drives still work? Do you still have the software drivers those old tape or disk drives need to operate under your contemporary operating system? If you haven't tested the recovery process recently, you can't really be sure that the entire end-to-end recovery will work... Even if you CAN recover the data successfully, do you still have that old word processor, or spreadsheet, or proprietary application that you need to INTERPRET the data once it's recovered from the backup media? For these reasons, if you're serious about being able to recover your data in the future, you might want to preserve a PC, complete with the drives, operating system, drivers, and applications, that you know will allow you to recover and read your data when needed. And, you might want to consider regenerating your critical data onto new media, such as CD-R, as technologies continue to change. It's poetic justice, perhaps, that paper (or stone tablets) may still be the best backup media "for the ages..."
Too Small, Those CDs Are! The 650 megabyte CD was once considered by some to be a resource so large, that it would never be filled. Of course, that view of the storage world didn't last too long, as text documents gave way to graphics, sound, and video, and racks full of CDs sprouted up next to PCs. Although there are some attempts to increase the capacity of the CD by about two-times, this probably won't cut it since hard drives are growing to hold hundreds of gigabytes, and HDTV video makes even today's DVDs seem anemic. The good news is that help is on the way in the form of rewritable DVD drives; they work similarly to the rewritable CD drives discussed above (although using different dyes). The bad news, though, is that with a few exceptions that have already hit the market, rewritable DVDs are not quite yet ready for prime time -- unless we understand the ins and the outs of the growing number of incompatible writable DVD formats. Let's review this DVD alphabet soup:
Ah, for the 'good old days,' when a DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) was a no-quiche DVD, without today's bewildering (often incompatible) series of letters following its name, such as: DVD Video (movie DVDs); DVD-ROM (read-only disks storing computer files); write-once DVD-R and DVD+R; and the rewritable DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, and DVD+RW formats. Let's lay these evolving DVD secrets bare, based in part on information in the Oct. 9 PCWorld.com (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,63404,pg,1,00.asp): This all began with the "standard" DVD-ROM drive, a device that reads data at the "DVD 1X" speed of 1.38 megabytes/second, or faster (compared to a standard, or "1X" CD drive that reads at 150 kilobytes/second). There are millions of these drives installed today, which can all read DVD Video disks and DVD-ROMs, as well as "some" DVD writable formats. But that "some" is the compatibility kicker, as we're about to see.
-
DVD-RAM is a standard for read/write DVDs backed by the
"DVD Forum" (http://www.dvdforum.com/forum.shtml),
which turns a DVD into a virtual hard disk as large as 4.7
gigabytes (this may double in the future).
This is often integrated into the computer's file system
so that files can be read and written just like any disk drive.
A DVD-RAM disk can be re-written about 100,000 times, and
it has a predicted lifetime of between 30 and 100 years (does
"backup" come to mind?)
Media costs about $17 for 4.7 gigabytes of storage.
-
DVD-R is another child of the "DVD Forum,"
which is a 4.7 gigabyte "write-once" format analogous
to CD-R, in that once you write a byte on the disk, it's there
to stay. This has
obvious benefits as a relatively secure (unchangeable) backup
medium, but its real strength lies in its compatibility -- many
DVD movie (TV) and DVD-ROM (computer) players can
"see" the dye in DVD-R disks.
-
DVD-RW is another rewritable format with a capacity of
4.7 gigabytes. It
has a write speed of 1.385 megabytes/second, and a disk can be
rewritten up to 1,000 times.
-
DVD+RW is the latest rewritable format, championed by the
"DVD+RW Alliance" (http://www.dvdrw.com/),
due to hit the shelves this fall in the guise of a new drive
from HP. It can
also read and write 4.7 gigabytes per disk, but it can write at
a faster 3.32 megabytes/second (2.4X), up of 1,000 times.
And this drive can also write CD-R and CD-RW disks.
A DVD+RW disk costs about $15. How long will these DVD disks last? When you rush out to buy your very own copy of Shrek, it will probably be readable for between 50 and 300 years. DVD-R and DVD+R write-once disks are expected to have a lifetime similar to CD-R disks, from 40 to 250 years. And the re-writable DVDs should last between 25 and 100 years - http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#4.3.1 . So -- whether you need these silvery platters for moving huge amounts of data, or as a more realistically-sized backup media for your constantly growing hard disks, it seems likely that DVDs, of one format or another, are likely to send CDs chasing after 8-track tapes down the halls of history. Of course there's much more to understanding what makes DVDs tick, and if this discussion has whet your appetite, check out "DVD Demystified" at http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html .
Data-Deadly Dumpsters. Speaking of using these inexpensive silvery disks as storage and backup media, it's worth remembering just how much of our business and personal data can be easily left lying around, or tossed into the trash, on outdated or partially recorded CDs and DVDs. Reader John Boufford reminds us to take care: " We forget how much data is stored on those $.50 disks, and that they are not the easiest thing to break. (The cases we store them in are easier to break than the disks!) The best tools to use are a heavy duty scissors, or a pair of gardening shears." Besides -- cutting up old CDs or DVDs just might be good therapy -- we can take out our frustrations while we have to wait for our PC to reboot after its next crash!
Make Like An Elephant! Preserving our data is a combination of art and science,
mixed with a large measure of "looking forward" to
assure that we can indeed "look back" when the need
arises. It's worth
thinking about this (and reviewing our backup policies every few
years) to make sure that, like the proverbial elephant, we won't
"forget" our stored data.
Because our governmental, and business, and personal
history -- would be a terrible thing to waste! From Out of the Ether...
Repurposing Expertise -- Commenting on our exploration
of how surgeons are now performing operations by reaching across
oceans (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20011008/ "I think the bigger
potential for this type of technology is training - imagine
being shown exactly what an expert would do in a given
situation." Mix the data that defines all aspects of a successful operation with simulation software, and any number of docs-in-training could "learn from the master," as a "3D video game" demonstrates exactly how the students' attempts differed from the expert's. Which could be a big help for doctor and patients alike...
DO Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth...
Finally, it seems that in Taiwan, if you have something to hide from your spouse or business partner, you might want to look very carefully if you receive a cell phone as a gift. According to an article that was once available on the Straits Times web site (http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,1870,59002,00.html?), $1,800 will let your significant other (or your boss, or your business competitor!) buy you a rather specialized cell phone. It's special, because they can later call the phone using a special number -- and it won't ring. Instead, it will silently answer and let the caller eavesdrop on what's going on around you! Ouch. The gift -- that keeps on giving...?
About
"The Harrow Technology Report"
"The Harrow Technology Report" explores the innovations and trends of many contemporary and emerging technologies, and then draws some less than obvious connections between them, to help us each survive and prosper in the Knowledge Age. "The Harrow Technology Report" is brought to you by Jeffrey R. Harrow, Principal of The Harrow Group. http://www.TheHarrowGroup.com . Where To Find "The Harrow Technology Report:"
Copyright (c) 2001-2005, Jeffrey R. Harrow. All
rights reserved.
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