Listen to this Issue.
   Aren't your eyes tired enough?

Quote of the Week.
   Pocket Power!

Nanotechnology Will Change Everything!
   If I MUST prognosticate...

Storage Update.
   Back to the Future.

There's MUCH More I Can Do For You!
   Check out my other services that can help your
   business or organization benefit from future
   technology directions!

"Think" It So.
   Typing and reading is SOooo slow.

It Just CAN'T Be Done...
   It's so easy to say "no."  But...

About 'The Harrow Technology Report.'

 

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Quote of the Week.

 

"[Soon,] cell phones will be small super computers. Already today we offer processors up to 624 MHz; one GHz is not too far away. This means, processors for the cell phone today are as powerful as a notebook processor in 2000."

David Rogers,
Intel
www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20041006_191440.html

Talk about Pocket Power!

 

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Nanotechnology Will Change Everything!

 

This is an updated version of an article I've recently written for Future Brief (http://www.futurebrief.com/).  Future Brief is published by New Global Initiatives (http://www.ngiweb.com/) and offers brief summaries, commentaries, and other resources to help people, especially those on The Hill who form national policy, to keep up on technological innovations.  But Future Brief adds an important twist -- it "takes one step back and looks at the greater convergence of the accelerating changes in science and technology, with the equally rapidly accelerating changes in society and politics." (http://www.futurebrief.com/about.asp)

 

If you've been a long-time reader of The Harrow Technology Report then you know that I rarely make the "New Year's predictions" so beloved by many publications.  My reasons include that, while some of these publications' predictive articles are informative and thought provoking, we're now so high on technology's exponential curve, driven ever faster by the synergy resulting from our merging technologies through NBIC (the coming together of the previously disparate fields of Nanotechnology, Biology and medicine, Information sciences, and Cognitive sciences), that unanticipated "ah ha" events that spawn new fields of study can make a huge difference.

Nevertheless, when I'm enticed to do so, I am willing to explore some areas that seem so significant, with so much even short-term potential, that it seems almost a no-brainer to pay careful attention; especially where many people have yet to consider a range of perspectives.

So when Future Brief asked me to come up with what I believe will be the most significant technological change during 2005, I couldn't resist.  Here we go, with some of the reasoning behind my choice.

 

For 2005:

Nanotechnology will continue to (slowly) accelerate along a road that will change everything!

As we continue to learn more about, and get better at bending billionths-of-a-meter size particles (which can be individual atoms and molecules themselves) to our will, we're going to find ourselves doing things and building things and using things in the same way, and at the same scale, that Nature has been doing since the beginning of time.

For a few examples of nano-research ongoing during 2005 that may well lead to early end results (most in the labs this year, commercializing beyond 2005), consider:

           

• Multi-terabit non-volatile memory that will change how we use and store data; and computers so fast that today's will seem like turtles.
   
• Bottom-up manufacturing, using techniques such as self-assembly, that will be more efficient and environmentally friendly than today's crude top-down methods.
   
• Materials that are custom made to the attributes needed for a specific application, such as incredibly light and superconductive wires ten-times stronger than steel; nano-sized semiconductors; more efficient solar cells; and wall paint that can illuminate a room.
   
• Nano-combustives, where nano-sized particles of reactants have a far greater surface area than conventionally sized particles and so burn far faster, generating more power for rocket fuel and explosives.
   
• Voluminous breakthroughs in biology and genetics and proteomics and medical sciences that will result in designing drugs by intent rather than through today's hit-and-miss processes; individually personalized drugs that will increase efficacy and reduce side effects; and perhaps the injection of tiny molecular "machines" that are not nano "Roto-Rooter" mechanical monsters, but are tiny drug-carrying spheres that use proteins to seek out and kill individual cancer cells or dissolve plaque.
   
• And far more than we can, today, possibly imagine.
  
   

If this seems an improbable journey, look BACK ten years and see if you could have predicted the very real economic and social impacts that advances in just a few areas have already brought:  faster, cheaper, and pervasive computers; pervasive and higher-speed networks, especially the Internet with its traditional capabilities and recently-popular VoIP services that are changing the very nature of "telephone companies;" instant access to information (the Web and Email) that have radically changed how people shop, communicate for business and pleasure, and even get their "news;" or how Bloggers are rapidly changing the face of traditional journalism and transforming the "Fourth Estate."

Now, try to look FORWARD ten, or even five years, to predict the results of our fledgling nanotechnology prowess - of our harnessing the most basic ways that everything in our world, and we, are built.  If today seemed unimaginable ten years ago, then the world of ten years from now (since breakthroughs are now happening exponentially faster) is elusive indeed.

 

We can't (and shouldn't) stop such progress, but we are going to have to live with the results of massive nano-inspired transformation. 

Thoughtful caution is well advised.  Because Nanotechnology will change everything.

Don't Blink!

 

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Storage Update.

 

Speaking of nanotechnology, you may have run across the term AFM ("Atomic Force Microscope.")  This is a tool that allows scientists to literally push atoms around at their whim.  It (basically) consists of a pointy tip that is atomically sharp -- about as small as the atoms that it's pushing around.  But this same technology can also be used to read the pattern of atoms (or no atoms) in a particular place -- as the AFM tip moves over an area it can sense the difference in charge from when there's an atom under it or not, and hence build up a picture of the data structure underneath its scan pattern.

As described in the March 11, 2005 Tom's Hardware "Hard News" (www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050311_162423.html), IBM has been exploring how to use this technology for data storage for some time, calling the project Millipede.  It uses a similar technique but with a grid of thousands of AFM-like tips that can read and write ten-nanometer sized "pits" in a special plastic sheet; the sheet is mechanically moved under the tips to give them access to an area larger than the array of tips.  (It's interesting that this, in a way, is a "Back to the Future" development -- a mechanical memory device vaguely reminiscent of early relay memories!)  IBM has now shown a working Millipede prototype that can store 1.2 terabits per square inch!  (That's 153 gigabytes per square inch.) 

From a practical standpoint, this can store the contents of 25 full DVDs in an area the size of a postage stamp.  Another way to look at this is that Millipede could store about 100 gigabytes in the size of the diminutive SD memory card that you may use in your digital camera!

As with many prototypes, this technology is still in the lab and not ready for commercialization.  Yet IBM believes that they could bring it to market in the next two to three years which, interestingly, would be about the time that today's Flash Memory (think USB "thumb drives") is expected to reach its practical density limit.

Whatever the outcome, this is a great example of how Moore's Law (the 35+ year old reality of the doubling of the number of transistors within a given space, at the same cost, every eighteen months) seems destined to continue, or accelerate, even as we reach the "limits" of the various technologies we use today.  In my experience, "limits" simply represent the next challenge for innovative people to find a way through, or around them.  We've been doing so on a continuous basis since long before our "Technology Age," and the history of the past few decades easily convinces me that it's going to continue for the foreseeable future.

The bottom line is that whatever bottleneck seems to make your project "impossible," just wait awhile -- often a relatively short while -- and the technological bottleneck will open from the size of a soda bottle to that of a jar of mayonnaise.  In effect, the bottleneck will go away.

Again, Don't Blink!

 

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"Think" It So.

 

I wrote this article for, and it was originally published in, Control Magazine. 
This is an updated version.

http://controlmag.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=
&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=
8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=
A438FCC5316B4675A9C80B9A9CE0BADE

Our computers are VERY fast (at least from the perspective of the last several decades), yet the way in which we interact with them is directly descended from how we worked with mechanical typewriters.  On the input side we tap on keys set in a layout intentionally designed to slow things down so that the mechanical hammers could keep up. For output, we read things off of a screen (page).  Yet even the fastest typists often think far faster than they can type.  And while the human eye can glean vast amounts of information from briefly looking at a scene (what Nature optimized it to do), reading paragraphs of text is a comparatively slow process.

That's a current bottleneck, but the potential for effectively interfacing ourselves with machines is much greater.  Imagine how many car accidents might be averted if we could dramatically reduce the eye-hand-foot coordination times required for an emergency maneuver.  Imagine the "competitive advantages" that instant brain-machine connections could bring to a soldier or pilot.  Or to a professionally-competitive "gamer."  Or, even to a business person who could "read" documents ten or one hundred (or more) times faster than their competitors.  How about a stock trader who could react faster than anyone else to an event that he noticed first?

Some experiments, such as those by Duke University's Dr. Miguel Nicolelis (http://www.nicolelislab.net/NLNet/Load/Abstracts/ab2003_learning.pdf) have already yielded (early) brain-machine interfaces through implanting an array of 300+ electrodes in a monkey's brain -- the monkey could move a robotic arm in place of its physical arm by simply "thinking it so."  It's certainly a start. 

But suppose that this area of research were to wildly succeed, providing a high quality high-speed Input/Output channel for our senses?  That happens to be one goal of Cyberkinetics' "BrainGate" system (http://www.cyberkineticsinc.com/).

"The BrainGate™ System consists of a sensor implanted on the motor cortex of the brain, and a system that measures and interprets [its signals].   It is hoped that the BrainGate™ System might... allow people unable to use their hands to... communicate with a computer using their thoughts."

Even so, most (non-disabled) people might eschew such a brain implant, considering that (currently) an array of 100 or so sharp electrodes are implanted on or within the brain and connected to an external computer via a cable (although miniaturized wireless solutions are being explored). 

 

(Above two images (c) 2004 Cyberkinetics Inc.)

But results of such early interfaces in humans are already interesting as illustrated and described in the Wired article "Vision Quest." 

Currently only commercially available in Portugal, an artificial vision system (http://www.dobelle.com/index.html) system is apparently good enough (although still very crude) that a newly un-blinded patient was able to safely drive a car around a parking lot!

   

 

And as of this writing, Cyberkinetics has successfully brought a similar brain-to-computer interface to paralyzed humans in FDA approved early clinical trials -- the subject is able to (again crudely) move a cursor around a screen, choose commands to change TV channels, and perform other tasks by simply 'thinking it so!'

 

Cutting The Cord.

One of the fastest-growing technologies today is "wireless."  The unregulated 802.11 (WiFi) spectrum of products (originally a grassroots movement that has grown into a rapidly-growing commercial implementation thanks to "users," rather than to "carriers") has proven the demand for, and viability of, wireless data communications.  And if Robert Burke, lead architect of the (now closed) European MIT's Media Lab "MindGames" group has his way, their prototype wireless, non-invasive headset ("Cerebus") might be just the interface key that helps free the brain from its organic peripherals' limitations!

The picture below is a working prototype that enables, literally, mind control of a videogame by wearing a cap without implanted electrodes! 

In this early demonstration the user has to "think" a character's (a 'Mawg's') balance as it crosses a 'high wire' without falling off. 

The helmet wirelessly communicates with the computer running the game via Bluetooth (an increasingly popular low-speed, limited-range wireless connection):

"...The cap monitors electrical signals from the surface of the scalp over the occipital lobes (just above the neck). The occipital lobes are the home of the brain’s visual processing, and they sport an effectively direct connection to the eyes via the brain’s optical nerve. When the participant stares at regions on the screen that are blinking at known frequencies, their brain processes that blinking in enigmatically complex ways. But one side-effect of that processing – an increase in electrical activity at the same frequency as the blinking orb – is sufficiently pronounced that it can be detected in the electromagnetic soup at the surface of the head. These detectable artifacts are called Visually Evoked Potentials, or VEPs.

If the Mawg slips to the right, the participant can help shift the creature’s balance back to the left by staring at the orb flickering on the left-hand side of the screen. The subsequent change in brainwave electrical activity is detected by the system as a VEP, and transformed into a one-dimensional analog control axis that can be used to get the Mawg back on track."

This videogame does seem a simplistic example, but -- it is a fascinating beginning!  (After all, as the saying goes, it's not how WELL the pig sings, but that it can sing AT ALL.)  And this IS just the beginning...

(You'll find a broad overview of this topic at http://www.dailywireless.org/modules.php?
name=News&file=article&sid=2273 .)

 

It's OUR World.

How would the world around us -- how we work, live, and play -- be affected if/when such brain-machine interconnections are paired with the Internet to allow at-a-distance remote control (as has already been demonstrated by Dr. Nicolelis' monkeys)?  How will this impact the traditional "control" industry, as a myriad of control systems might be controlled by a casual thought? 

I can foresee both good and cautionary results.  But the magic is that here's another science fiction staple whose tendrils are now reaching towards reality -- a reality that one day might allow us to reach out and control and interact with the world around us -- VERY quickly.  Almost without thinking...

Once again, Don't Blink!

 

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It Just CAN'T Be Done...

 

Finally, following up on my "predictive" musings at the beginning of this issue, many of the best and most respected experts across all fields of endeavor, throughout the years, have proclaimed what they can do, what they expect can be done, and certainly what CAN'T be done -- the impossible.   And today is no exception -- experts, either through their true beliefs or for less altruistic reasons, continue to decry "the impossible."

Of course as anyone regularly reading this Report knows, yesterday's "impossibility" is today's old news.  And often, those who believe in these "impossibilities" do later, fervently, wish that they had been believers.

The best way to appreciate this is perhaps by negative example, so consider these tidbits from a collection assembled by Aaron at (http://www.aaronscollection.com/jokes/jokes0018.htm):

 

Forecasting Technology  

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'"
-- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in radio in the 1920s

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."
-- Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist for his project to drill for oil in 1859

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
-- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
-- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what ... is it good for?"
--Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
-- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training."
-- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".
-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873

And lastly, advice from the world's richest man . . . .

"640K (of RAM) ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981

And, perhaps my favorite (which I just can't imagine someone in this position stating):

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

 

So the next time that you think that an idea is "impossible," or too expansive to be of value, or you hear someone else say so, do give it a second thought.  And don't necessarily trust the "experts" or the press, as reader Jeff Haber points out:

"I came across an issue of Boy's Life from 1997 which had an article about how technology was getting smaller. 

It contained a mini-article about a new gadget that would let you hear 24 minutes of music without a CD or a tape, but instead use a "little card".... that would cost $1000.

Woohoo! Sound familiar? 

And 1997 doesn't really seem like it was that long ago..."

Indeed, a lot can change in just eight years.

And one more bit of food for thought -- several companies, including Kodak, turned down the offer of a technology that later became known as -- the Xerox machine.

 

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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. 

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