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The Harrow Technology Report
Insight,
analysis, and commentary on the
Copyright © 2001-2005, Jeffrey R. Harrow. All rights
reserved.
Magic
May Be Magic No More... Listen
to this Issue.
Quote of the Week.
The Web - Tomorrow
And Today...
Paint-On Power?
There's MUCH More I Can Do For You!
Magic May Be Magic
No More...
Where Might It Lead? 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, MP3 version. If you have an MP3 player on your system (and most do, such as Window's Media Player, RealPlayer, etc.), 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 use the right-hand mouse button on the link, and choose "Save Target As..." Also, find out how you can listen at whatever speed is most comfortable for you through the FAQ at http://www.theharrowgroup.com/help.htm .
Here's where to listen to
this week's issue!
Quote of the Week.
"It took two centuries to fill the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. with more than 29 million books and periodicals, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 57 million manuscripts. Today it takes about 15 minutes for the world to churn out an equivalent amount of new digital information. It does so about 100 times every day, for a grand total of five exabytes annually. That's an amount equal to all the words ever spoken by humans, according to Roy Williams, who heads the Center for Advanced Computing Research at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena. While this stunning proliferation of information underscores the ease with which we can create digital data, our capacity to make all these bits accessible in 200 or even 20 years remains a work in progress. In an era when the ability to read a document, watch a video, or run a simulation could depend on having a particular version of a program installed on a specific computer platform, the usable life span of a piece of digital content can be less than 10 years. That's a recipe for disaster when you consider how much we rely on stored information to maintain our scholarly, legal, and cultural record and to help us with, and profit from, our digital labor. Indeed, the ephemeral nature of both data formats and storage media threatens our very ability to maintain scientific, legal, and cultural continuity, not on the scale of centuries, but considering the unrelenting pace of technological change, from one decade to the next."
"Eternal Bits" The preservation of our diverse digital data, which form has rapidly become the default method for storing virtually everything about how we work, live, play, govern, and more, is rapidly approaching a societal precipice. Especially given the mind boggling volume of new information and its rate of growth, this is not a "sometime in the future" problem but one that is already, and will constantly become more-so, a critical element of our future, and past. Indeed, the problem is already
FAR greater than indicated above, once you add in
information sources such as telephone, Voice Over
IP, radio and TV content, motion pictures, and more.
For example, in 2003 we generated enough data to
fill a half-million Libraries of Congress -- that's
five-million terabytes, or 5 exabytes. In just
one year! (See
www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/ Imagine if we had lost the writings of ancient Rome and Greece, or even the business records and news reports of one hundred, or even 50 years ago. Our digital history would be a terrible thing to waste!
The Web - Tomorrow And Today...
I was recently interviewed for an article in a large newspaper, with the reporter asking me these three questions about the Web. Here are my answers:
1. What will the Web be like in 2015? During the past five years the Web has evolved from a rather 'surface' information environment to a broad and deep resource that feeds the information, research, shopping, support, and social needs of millions of people throughout the world. All this in just five years! But such a widely-used system that is ever-faster expanding its user base, content, searchability and the services it offers takes on a life of its own as it grows exponentially. This means that the Web of today will become MUCH more valuable as the months and years go by, as new technologies, new ideas, new content, and an ever-expanding critical mass of users build upon the shoulders of every previous advance. Because of this type of growth and the innovations and content yet to come, it's almost impossible to envision what the Web will be ten years from now (after all, it's only about ten years old today!) Yet we can assume that the breadth and depth of information accessible through the Web will expand greatly. The numbers and types of services offered, the companies that provide them, as well as those who consume them will expand greatly. Most businesses will be at a severe competitive disadvantage, to the point of extinction, if they don't do business and offer support over the Web. Long before ten years from now - in fact already today in many cases - the Web (is) will be as critical to business success as being listed in the paper tomes of the "Yellow Pages" used to be. Education will become dependent on the resources of the Web, and one of the most critical skills needed by students will be expertise in how best to access, find, winnow, and validate a world's worth of information at their fingertips. Perhaps most importantly, by ten years from now the Web will be such an essential resource that we'll have forgotten how we could have ever conducted our business or lived our lives without it. Just ask any teenager, today.
2. What's the one thing you wish you could do online today, but can't? A more "intelligent" Web that will "do what I mean" rather than "do what I say." In today's paradigm, that would be significant improvements in search engine technology to get rid of the sometimes hundreds of thousands of "hits," plus the search engines gaining access to the "deep Web" (data hidden in databases until they're asked for, such as when you search a shopping site for a particular product.) In many ways the Web is all about its "food," which is information, and our ability to glean what we want. This has to, and will, get better.
3. What's your favorite Web site? (Not counting your own!) It's got to be Google, in part because it's rare not to find something about my interest. Also, because Google's techniques of prioritizing returned "hits" based on how often people access those hits, plus other methods, are a first increment towards providing the best and most focused responses to my needs.
Those were my responses -- what do you think?
Paint-On Power?
That's what seems to be the
goal of an invention by University of Toronto
professor of electrical and computer engineering,
Ted Sargent, and his team. Brought to our
attention by reader Andy Kegel in the Jan. 9, 2005
CTV
(www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/ Today, typical solar cells are hard, fragile, and only convert about six percent of the sunlight striking them into electricity, but these eminently flexible new nanocells, which are sensitive to the infrared light that is also usually indoors, convert an impressive thirty percent of this light into electricity. Given that there's enough natural light striking the Earth each day to provide at least 10,000 times the power that we globally consume, efficient and flexible and (hopefully) inexpensive electricity-generating surfaces could go a long way towards supplementing our mined energy resources, not to mention providing a great way to keep our growing plethora of portable electrical devices charged and happy as they sit in our pockets (or on our "Batman Utility Belts.") While this might seem to be in the "too good to be true" category, respected venture capital firms such as Josh Wolfe's Lux Capital can visualize this material in production and doing its thing within five years, and making a significant impact: "When you have a material advance which literally materially changes the way that energy is absorbed and transmitted to our devices... somebody out there tinkering away in a bedroom or in a government lab is going to come up with a great idea for a new device that will shock us all." "When the Internet was created nobody envisioned that the killer app (application) would be e-mail or instant messaging.'' And boundless electricity as well will surely be harnessed in fascinating, "unintended" ways. I wish Dr. Sargent well; I can't wait until my walls "light up my life" while cutting the traditional (and expensive) energy cord!
BEGIN Self-Serving Advertisement There's MUCH More I Can Do For You!
You may not realize it, but there's much more to The Harrow Group than just "The Harrow Technology Report." For almost twenty years, as I've been sharing my research on the ever-faster-moving and converging technologies that are changing how we work, live, and play, I've also been working directly with businesses and organizations, large and small, to help them understand and address how these changes may affect them, their customers, and their customers' businesses, through a series of:
·
Presentations -
Highly engaging, interactive, multimedia,
constantly-updated presentations and keynote
speeches to individual businesses, internal groups,
and trade organizations, helping participants to
viscerally understand and appreciate how technology
has brought us to where we are today, and where it's
likely to lead us tomorrow.
·
Workshops
- Beginning with the presentation described above
(to give all participants a common understanding and
insight), the workshop further engages attendees to
explore how this march of technology might affect
their individual businesses and organizations, and
their specific needs.
·
One-On-One Consulting
-
Individualized consulting services, available via
phone or in-person, to help you explore the topics
and trends discussed in The Harrow Technology
Report, and related issues. Please continue at http://www.theharrowgroup.com/consulting2.htm for additional information. Then, contact me at Jeff@TheHarrowGroup.com with any additional questions, to discuss fees, and to schedule a consulting event. I look forward to working with you! End Self-Serving Advertisement
Magic May Be Magic No More...
This is 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)
The new Harry Potter book recently hit the shelves, and flew off them at an unprecedented rate -- not on broomsticks but in the hands of millions and millions of adoring fans young and old. One of the reasons for Harry Potter's popularity is that these stories transport readers into (some say) an alternate existence where Wizards and Witches have learned to tap energy and capabilities denied to "normal" people (muggles). Harry's world, like ours, can sometimes be mundane, such as having to deal with family problems. Of course magic gives Harry unique abilities to deal with these issues - abilities that you and I might wish for on occasion. For example, the ability to turn annoying relatives into balloons and watch them waft away on a gentle breeze...
This is something you and I can't do (probably a good thing.) But there are many other magical things that Witches and Wizards in Harry's world take for granted that may NOT be so far out of our reach:
Invisibility Cloak. The "Invisibility Cloak" is certainly useful, helping Harry to explore the off-limits areas of Hogwarts to learn important clues, and to take appropriate actions, literally under the noses of those who have fallen to the dark side. (We'll assume that Harry only uses his invisibility cloak for "greater good" purposes, of course...)
But Harry's cloak is now falling to OUR "magical technology!"
This
picture above isn't a shot from Harry's next movie,
but shows a working prototype of "Optical
Camouflage" from the lab of Susumu Tachi, Professor
of Information Physics and Computing of the Graduate
School of Info. Science & Technology, University of
Tokyo (http://www.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~tachi/)!
(You can get a much better feel for how this works
by playing the short MPG movie at
http://projects.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/projects/ According to Dr. Tachi, "[This invisibility cloak] is made of retro-reflective material so that the coming light is reflected back to the same direction that it comes from. Microscopic beads on the surface of the coat have the function of retro-reflection. A half mirror makes it possible for a spectator to see virtually from the position of the projector. An HMP projects an image of the background scenery captured by the video camera behind the camouflaged subject. A computer calculates the appropriate perspective and transforms the captured image to the image to be projected on the subject using image-based rendering techniques. Since the cloak the subject is wearing is made of a special retro-reflective material which reflects the incident light [in] the same direction it comes from... an observer looking through a half mirror sees a very bright image of the scenery [behind the subject] so that he [becomes] virtually transparent." Additional details are at http://projects.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/projects/MEDIA/xv/VRIC2003.pdf . So, the magical invisibility cloak is, er, fading, to the reality of our science.
Marauder's Map. Another example of Harry's magical toys is his Marauder's Map; it displays his location, as well as those of Hogwarts' other denizens, in real-time.
But -- wait a minute. You and I might not be able to float annoying relatives away but we certainly do have real-time moving maps that track the location of people, cars, planes, and the like (tracking broomsticks, however, requires a special add-on.) In fact, our moving maps can work as well as Harry's Marauder's Map with the exception that GPS doesn't have the magic to work inside most buildings (or within Hogwart's dungeons). At least not yet. Because a number of technologies are maturing to allow us to peg location without having a good view of the sky. We all know that our cellular phones, by dint of how cellular networks work (a dense mesh of cellular sites that can triangulate any phone's location to a greater or lesser degree, depending on many factors), leave our location footprints across the cellular log files. This technology can easily identify which building we're in, and depending on the cellular coverage in a given area even inside building to a limited extent. (http://www.vtt.fi/tte/tte35/pdfs/CELLO-WP2-VTT-D03-007-Int.pdf) Cellular signals, though, are relatively weak which limits their range and penetration. Local broadcast TV and radio stations however, pumping out hundreds of thousands of watts and specifically designed to penetrate building, will often work indoors. Apply a few modifications to encode precise time signals (similar to GPS) into these penetrating broadcast signals, and location information could be gleaned in areas where cellular signals fear to tread. (http://www.rosum.com/rosum_tv-gps_indoor_location_technology.html) There
are also investigations into the potential of
launching a new breed of far more powerful GPS
satellites whose signals might break through many of
their current limitations.
(http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/ So Harry's map isn't quite as mystical as it might seem at first blush -- with the important exception that unlike Harry, we can't fold our moving maps into the pockets of our robes. Yet...
Harry's Pictures. Several technologies are in the labs or being tested in the marketplace that seem likely to let us, too, fold our "magical" electronic displays as Harry can. Take, for example, Harry's "pictures" which, in whatever form, move and exhibit a life of their own even if folded into a pocket or rolled into an issue of the Daily Prophet newspaper.
Of
course we already do have "moving pictures" that can
be displayed in tabletop frames,
(http://www.shortcourses.com/how/
on wall displays such as LCD TVs when they're not being used as a TV (http://www.temple.edu/ispr/examples/ex03_11_05.html),
and even on pocket media devices such as this Archos Gmini 400 (http://www.archos.com/products/prw_500637.html).
Still though, if we were to fold any of these displays as Harry does, we'd hear that awful cracking sound as the fragile, rigid display displays its last. But it's clear that even Harry's foldable displays may become commonplace in less time than we might imagine. For example, in 1999 E-Ink tested several elegantly flexible wirelessly updatable signs in J.C. Penny stores.
More
recently, Fujitsu has demonstrated a lab
implementation of a flexible display which retains
its sharpness even when bent
(http://www.digitaltechnews.com/news/
Similarly, Bridgestone has developed "Electro Liquid Powder" based e-Paper for, initially, live price tags for retail store shelves (http://www.bridgestone.co.jp/english/news/020325.html),
and SiPix is already producing an active matrix (fast response time) version of e-Paper (http://www.sipix.com/products/active_matrix.htm).
So yet again, Harry's magic may soon be magic no more.
Time Machine. Finally, let's explore Time Travel. In Harry's world some wizards can, to some extent, travel through time. In our world, time travel has been a most fertile ground for both Science Fiction and Fantasy writers to explore the fascinating 'what ifs' and paradoxes that time travel might uncover. But in many peoples' minds time travel is perhaps LAST on their list of "magical" capabilities that might ever come true. We don't yet have a viable time machine. But Amos Ori, professor of physics at Israel's famous Technion University believes that the laws of physics as we currently know them do NOT PROHIBIT time travel! He says, in a July 27 article in USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-07-27-time-travel_x.htm), that: "'I write (the situation) mathematically. That doesn't mean that I know how to implement it practically.' However... if inhabitants of some highly advanced civilization could set up the conditions... they might be able to travel in time." He has written a mathematical model that, he says, defines the conditions under which time travel could occur. Note that unlike most other time travel theories, Ori's is not presupposed on finding arcane things such as "negative energy." Instead, he just requires, "...absolute emptiness -- a vacuum. ... That means that, in principle, a closed, timelike curve could even happen naturally, possibly through cataclysmic astronomical collisions in the abyss of space." Without some currently unexpected breakthroughs, time travel does not appear to be in our near future. Yet even without such breakthroughs, if something CAN be done then I truly believe that incredibly brilliant people will continue to worry such a problem like a bone -- until it IS done. It does seem improbable. Yet this interpretation of our universe seems to open that very door -- for stepping forward or back.
So It Has Been, And So Shall It Be... These continuous transitions from Science Fiction and Fantasy, to reality, represent a centuries-long and accelerating trend. Yet only in the past hundred years and ever more-so in the past 35 years, have so many new realities shown up so quickly that the trends have become obvious within a lifetime (and now within a few years). Consider the telephone; electricity; airplanes, spacecraft; walking on the Moon; sending robots to Mars; plastics; computing; nanotechnology; medical advances; the Internet. These advances and many more are straining Sci Fi and Fantasy authors' imaginations. But that's a good thing, since as they dream up ever-new fictional, "impossible" ideas their stories continue to shape the people who will later 'make them so.' If we were able to show ANY of today's realities noted above to the most educated and far-thinking scientists of only 150 years ago, they'd quickly laugh us out of the room. Similarly, if we brought one of those folks into our time, the world around them would, indeed, be magic. Arthur C. Clarke put it so well: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Indeed, what seems to be magic today and tomorrow will continue to fall from that lofty perch into our businesses, our homes, and our pockets. Whatever governmental and business policies that we can implement to foster such developments will help cement our global competitive advantage during the coming decades. It's a matter of staying at the top of the global pecking order. Or not... Don't Blink!
Where Might It Lead?
Finally, if you've seen the movies iRobot or War of the Worlds, or read the innumerable books that explore how inimical robots might threaten you and I (physically, not by job-replacement), then you're SURE to enjoy this video of how Business might respond to the threat. Originally produced for Saturday Night Live, it's a great irreverent extrapolation of business addressing a need. Click on this hilarious video at http://www.robotcombat.com/video_oldglory_hi.html and fasten your seatbelt so you don't laugh yourself right out of your chair!
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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