Listen to this Issue.
   Give those tired eyes a rest.

Quote of the Week.
   Transporting people?

Completely Changing The Rules.
   Of batteries and vacuum tubes and transistors -- and doing it all again...

There's MORE I Can Do For You!
   Services that may help your business better-embrace tomorrow!

From Out of the Ether...
   "DNA computing is very old hat..."

Storage Update.
   A "storage" killer app?

"Toys For Our Toys" Can Get MUCH More Interesting...
   Household appliances and beer -- do they have things in common?

About "The Harrow Technology Report"

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Quote of the Week.

 

A comment on Star Trek's "Transporter:"

"Perhaps no other piece of technology, save for the warp drive, so-colors every mission of every starship of the Federation. And even those who have never watched a Star Trek episode recognize the magic phrase ["Transporter."]  It has permeated our popular culture.

I recently heard about a young man who, while inebriated, drove through a red light and ran into a police cruiser that happened to be lawfully proceeding through the intersection. At his hearing, he was asked if he had anything to say.

In well-founded desperation, he replied, "Yes, your honor," stood up, took out his wallet, flipped it open, and muttered into it, "Beam me up, Scotty!""

"Beam Me Up an Einstein, Scotty"
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.11/krauss.html
by Lawrence Krauss,
"Ambrose Swasey" Professor of Physics,
Prof. of Astronomy, and Dept. Chair, Physics.
Case Western Reserve University.
Nov., 1995 Wired Magazine
(With thanks to reader Robert Roy!)

That's one way to beat a ticket...

This article was written eight years ago, before "transporting" HAD occurred (although so far only to miniscule bits of information, rather than to the bones and assorted tissues of Dr. McCoy - see http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/
20030310/20030310.htm#_Toc34561029).  Yet I can imagine the author's delight, and I can speculate on how the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry must be grinning, as he looks down and watches his sci fi creations becoming more and more real every day.

By the way, Dr. Krauss' easy-to-read eight-page article (at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.11/krauss.html) provides a fascinating insight into many other issues that may arise as we move toward more sophisticated "transporting."  He finishes by summarizing:

"Thinking about transporters has led us into quantum mechanics, particle physics, computer science, Einstein's mass-energy relation, and even the existence of the human soul."

This article IS worth reading. 

Plus, it demonstrates how people with impressive credentials take science fiction quite seriously, indeed. 

 

How Far We've Already Come...

It's also interesting to note some examples of just how far we've already come in the eight years since the article's publication:

In one section Dr. Krauss calculates the amount of data that defines a human body as 10²⁸ kilobytes -- 16 orders of magnitude more information than is contained in every book ever written.  (Consider that JUST the DNA within one body's cells, if unwound from its double-helix shape, would yield a string six-times the distance from Earth to the Sun!  (NY Times, "DNA: A Revolution at 50"))

Clearly, storing such a vast amount of information was completely beyond our means eight years ago, and still is.  Yet today, the commonly available amount of disk storage has risen more than one order of magnitude since then, while the rate itself of storage density growth continues to accelerate.  We are making a dent.  Although it's currently a very small dent given the size of the problem, our storage capabilities are growing FAR faster than the complexities of our bodies.  So the end-game, even if very far away, seems a shoo-in.

For another example, Dr. Krauss estimates that it would take "2,000 times the present age of the universe...to write the data describing a human pattern to tape."  Although our steadily-increasing "write speed" over the past eight years doesn't make a drop in THAT bucket either, it is interesting to note (as we'll see later in this issue) that we can now store data at an impressively-fast one gigabit/second (inconceivable to many, eight years ago).

 

...And How Far We Have Yet To Travel!

Did Arthur C. Clarke's stories about communications satellites start that ball rolling?  It seems that it did.  Will we later find that Star Trek's Transporter was the embryo of the real thing...?

Don't Blink!

 

Back to Table of Contents

Completely Changing The Rules.

 

Reader Atlant Schmidt recently sent me a pointer to a March 5 ZDNet article; it describes Toshiba's intent to demonstrate a fuel cell that could power a notebook for about five hours, and then be instantly refilled from a small methanol fuel cartridge for another five hours, and so on.  (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-991109.html)

This is certainly something with the potential to warm the hearts of many a portable-packing person (while it lines the pockets of the manufacturers, since they are likely looking towards the "razor blade" potential of selling proprietary containers of fuel for far more than the cost of the fuel itself -- similar to the inkjet printer market.)  Yet many will feel that if this system works as anticipated, that's a fair price for cutting the cord to relatively short-lived batteries.

Between continuing advances in both fuel cell and solar technologies, it seems that the "power roadblock" to becoming untethered will continue to ease.  BUT -- could it turn out that our present batteries offer all the power we need for virtually endless on-the-go computing or communicating?  As improbable as that sounds, This Has Happened Before!

Really?

Yes indeed.  I recall having one of the first portable AM radios.  It was HEAVY, it was fragile, and it didn't run very long on its batteries.  All this because this portable radio used power-hungry vacuum tubes, just like every other consumer electronics device of its day, and it required several different types of specialized batteries to make it work (low voltage for the filaments, higher voltage (around 90 volts) for the "plates," and if I recall correctly, yet a third battery for grid bias and other purposes.) 

(If you'd like to reminisce, or if you find such things hard to imagine, there's an interesting collection of such improbable "portable radios" at http://www.geocities.com/portable_tubes/mycoll.html , plus pictures and descriptions of those early high voltage (and multi-voltage) batteries at http://www.roberts-radios.co.uk/batteries/batteriesframe.htm (scroll down the left-hand list to the "Valve" heading (British for vacuum tube) and choose the battery type of interest.))

 

Changing The Rules.

These radios and their batteries were heavy, clunky, and had rather short run-times.  But if you have a notebook computer, doesn't this sound like a familiar theme passed down through the decades?  In those days of tube radios, "Power" was perceived as THE "portable problem," yet is was NOT a breakthrough in power technology that opened the era of "usable" portable radios and more -- it was a breakthrough that dramatically reduced the power-DEMANDS for portable electronics.  The transistor, and later the integrated circuit. 

Suddenly, what was previously "impossible" (lightweight, long-runtime (by comparison) radios, pocket-sized "walkie-talkies," and far more), thrived on the power technology that was already available.  Not that we didn't want longer life still -- we always have and always will until the power within a device exceeds its useful life.  But the breakthrough from vacuum tube to transistor changed all of the rules.

Today, we're doing astounding things with portable electronics and the portable power sources that are available.  Yet notebooks routinely gasp their last and cell phones become mute until they can be refilled at the nearest electron pump (power socket) or, perhaps in a few years, from a spare methanol cartridge.  Portable power sources ARE getting significantly better.  But a "lifelong" power source for portable electronics is still beyond our reach, in the same way that a long-term power source for portable electronics was unimaginable in the days of vacuum tubes.  Until, that is, transistors "changed the rules."

 

And Again?

So in this context, what could "change the rules" again?  What could again upset the portable power applecart in our favor?

Today, our transistors work by modulating the flow of millions of electrons.  That flow does wonderful things, yet it also wastes power through generating heat, which causes its own set of problems.  But we are continuously shrinking of the size of the transistors that we print onto silicon, with each generation demanding less and less power (although the number of those transistors on a chip grows so fast that the overall power-demand keeps rising). 

But we're also exploring experimental "single electron transistors" that use nanotechnology to let one SINGLE electron do the work of millions or billions of electrons (and hence save power and heat) through carbon nanotubes and Quantum transistors and more.  And there is work being done on how to harness biotechnologies to do "logic" in completely different ways (can you imagine portable "electronic" devices that do their own photosynthesis for power, or perhaps run off of the energy released by chemically splitting DNA's double helix?  See http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/
20030310/20030310.htm#_Toc34561030 and http://www.popsci.com/popsci/computers/
article/0,12543,241609,00.html - courtesy of reader John Matrow.

 

The Promise of NBIC

This potential "changing of the rules" as a result of NBIC research (the convergence of Nanotechnology, Biology & medicine, Information sciences, and Cognitive sciences) holds very real potentials for making the change from vacuum tubes to transistors and ICs, seem like kid-stuff. 

With NBIC devices, today's portable power technology may (again) be more than sufficient for future, exceedingly low-power NBIC devices.  Especially since improvements to existing power sources are already, synergistically, benefiting from early NBIC research (such as batteries with electrolytes and anodes and cathodes that are optimized at the molecular level (see http://www.newswise.com/articles/2003/3/BATTERY.SNL.html courtesy of reader Dana Hoggatt); nano turbines that are ultra efficient at extracting power from fuel; etc.)

I'm certainly not suggesting that such breakthroughs will happen and be commercialized soon, nor am I (at all) suggesting that current research into fuel cells and enhanced battery technologies be abandoned -- they will be very beneficial regardless of if NBIC power-demand-reduction breakthroughs take place.  But I am suggesting that we remember that we've ALREADY been through one major component revolution that significantly shrank our power needs -- similar breakthroughs may yet occur. 

This is a reminder that NBIC holds the potential to change everything, and that one day, we may have forgotten the all-too-common airport rush to find the one available AC socket at a gate (I carry a 3-tap octopus so I can always tap into a full outlet.)  We may yet see the day when our cell phones no longer have to be charged, and when we routinely expect that anything we buy will "just work forever." 

Such "power independence" might certainly stimulate fascinating new products, such as these concept ideas from IDEO (http://www.ideo.com/portfolio/re.asp?x=50165), brought to our attention by reader John Matrow:

Consider the "Ring Phone," which answers a call when you sense its vibrations and naturally assume the universal gesture for talking on the phone.  It would be voice-activated, of course.

Or, how about these bits of "active jewelry" for the foot?

Called "GPS Toes," these would communicate with a special GPS unit on your belt or in your purse.  As the GPS guides you along your route, they will vibrate or otherwise excite your toes to signal when you should turn left or right.  I assume that it could also vary the intensity of the stimulation to give you a sense of how rapidly you're approaching the turn point.  (I won't consider what they might do if you take a wrong turn...)

 

"Impossible" Expectations?

Do you think that the possibility of such change is just hyperbole?  Few people touting those multi-pound, short-lived, tube-and-multiple-battery powered "portable" radios forty to fifty years ago could have imagined today's sophisticated cell phones that can sometime run for a week on a charge.  Just wait until that power lifetime rises to a year, or to a decade.  Couldn't such a change in the power equation spark new generations of "goodies," such as those we've just discussed?

Again, Don't Blink!

 

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From Out of the Ether...

 

Pondering our recent discussion about using DNA molecules as massively powerful computing elements, and/or as ultra-dense organic memory (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/
20030310/20030310.htm#_Toc34561030), reader Colin Ford suggests that we pay attention to how Nature uses these "bits of Life:"

"Jeff, DNA computing is very old hat. I have been doing it all my life! It's rather like the famous answer from the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the question:  "What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?"

"The answer is 42."

So it is with DNA computing; we know the answer, we know the question, but what we don't know is how to ask the question in sufficient terms to make the question relative... 

A dog is a wonderful mathematical calculating device. When you throw a dog a Frisbee, it quickly does the math to calculate the trajectory, velocity, wind drift, etc. The result?  The dog catches the Frisbee in it's teeth!  A wonderful example of a DNA computer in action.

Now if we can only figure how the dog does it we will be much further down the road to properly asking the question: What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?"

Colin brings up a good point.  We've been touching on current investigations into how the lower levels of DNA work, which is a very necessary beginning before we can answer Colin's question.  But once we have a better understanding of DNA's intricacies at the "component" level, the next step might be to better-understand the "systems" that the DNA comprises (sounds like NBIC to me).  Remember -- Nature has already been optimizing those "systems" for millions of years!

 

Back to Table of Contents

Storage Update.

 

We're all-too familiar with the exponentially increasing rate of the price/performance capabilities of disk drives; that's why, as we explored in this issue's Quote Of The Week, just eight years ago a very large disk held ten gigabytes -- a size so small by today's standards that it's hardly available for PCs.

So it shouldn't surprise any of us that Storage will continue to get denser, faster, and cheaper.  But those are just the "evolutionary" changes that we've learned to expect.  What about completely "changing the rules," as Aprilis is doing (www.aprilisinc.com/index.htm), as described in the Feb., 2003 Laser Focus World (http://lfw.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?
Section=ARTCL&Subsection=Display&ARTICLE_ID=
168962&KEYWORD=holographic%20disk&p=12) brought to our attention by reader Michael Pope.

They have apparently developed a holographic medium for "CDs" that will allow storing "hundreds of gigabytes," while reading and writing the data at 1 gigabit per second (FAR faster than today's disks.)

While impressive, that's not the best part.  This disk contains information written in tiny holographic patterns, and because holographic patterns can be read "in parallel," rather than (conceptually) one-bit-at-a-time as in today's storage systems, it's possible to search for matches in the data far more quickly than we can using today's full-search techniques -- because the CPU never gets involved in these searches!  They're carried out in a completely different manner, as described by Aprilis' David Waldman:

"One feature of the Aprilis holographic system that cannot be duplicated in CD and DVD systems (or any serially read system, for that matter) is its fast-search capability. A search for a certain string of data is carried out locally by encoding the read beam. The analog strength of the return signal is in direct proportion to the strength of the match between the encoded read beam and the data on the disk; a simple increase in a photosensor reading signals a match. This is in contrast to an ordinary storage system, which must include its central processing unit in the search for a string of data."

According to John Berg, Aprilis' CEO, "A comparison of the Aprilis drive to an ordinary hard drive, performed by IBM (Armonk, NY), found that the equivalent of a half-hour search on the hard drive, took a few milliseconds on the holographic disk."

He concludes, "For business use, this could be the 'killer app,'"

It could indeed, considering how quickly our data stores are growing, and the importance of our being able to find, access, and meaningfully use that data (think huge databases of customer information, for example.)  And with virtually no impact on the CPU.

Could this be the beginning of an interesting trend towards subsystems that revolutionarily improve performance, while also freeing-up processor power to be used by other tasks?

Just one of many possibilities...

Yet once again, Don't Blink!

 

Back to Table of Contents

"Toys For Our Toys" Can Get MUCH More Interesting...

 

Last issue, we explored how a Japanese toy manufacturer will soon be selling fully operational 1.5-inch TVs destined for the walls of doll houses (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/
20030310/20030310.htm#_Toc34561035), and I wondered if this,

"...might well get out of hand?  Could this set a foul precedent, that we're expected to provide our toys with toys?  What happens when we eventually have domestic robots -- will they demand similar accoutrements?"

Little did I know that Fosters Beer has been thinking exactly along those "domestic-robot problem" lines, and has even given us a hint!

Brought to our attention by Australian reader Grant Perkins, Fosters has made a wonderful commercial that explores some unexpected directions of where autonomous household devices might choose to go; they've made it available on the Web at http://www.fosters.co.uk/ .

(Roll over the "Our Ads" button in the upper-right of the screen and choose "Drink, Think."  Then, roll over either the Modem or Broadband button at the bottom of this second screen and choose "Watch It."  Now, sit back and enjoy.)

For those of you who are video or bandwidth-challenged, the premise is that a young man receives the household robot he recently ordered (actually Honda's robot) and unpacks it from its foam "peanuts" in his living room, leaving quite a mess.

He instructs the robot to clean his apartment, and then he heads off to work.

Expecting great things from his new "servant," he arrives home from work and is surprised to find the mess of the robot's packing peanuts still all over the floor.

So he searches for the robot, where to his dismay, he finds it in bed with the vacuum cleaner!

Which does not faze (phase?) the robot, which leisurely drinks a Fosters in its rosy afterglow.

 

(This is not an endorsement of, nor an advertisement for, the products mentioned. 
But their commercial does deserve an award for originality (or might that be for prescience?)).

So -- miniature TVs gracing doll house walls may turn out to be the LEAST of our "home electronics" problems!

 

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 .

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