Your future, today

Lollipop ladies and backlash watch

Futurizon update — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:00:00 +0000

The papers this morning feature lollipop ladies with head-cams so that they can record video in case they fall victim of road rage. Part of me says that this is a good use of such technology, protecting good people from abuse. Another part sees annoyance at another step towards the surveillance society. Or more appropriately, the Stepford Society, because it is another piece of technology to force rule-compliance on ordinary people.

At face value, there is nothing wrong with a nice lady (it is decades since I saw a lollipop man) using a camera to video someone who has made her an innocent victim of their road rage. Where she is a genuinely innocent victim, I would support her to the end with any technology possible. But looking deeper, and replaying some personal experiences, the face value glance is just too simplistic and the video will present a very one sided story. It won't record, for example, whether the lady has interrupted the traffic flow for every individual child, even long before they get to her, so that they won't have to wait a second to cross, even though there is a long jam of cars trying to get past, just trying to get to work on time. Those innocent victims who arrive late at work because of an overenthusiastic lollipop lady will have no video evidence and no ear in the authority even if they had. And the video won't record her personality, whether she takes great pleasure from wielding power over car drivers, or makes insulting faces or gestures at them as she stops them.

And it is the latter that I really think is the problem here. While most people doing this job are sensible and will wait until there are several kids before forcing a line of cars to stop, there are others for whom power goes to their heads. And we see the same stories everywhere when a degree of one-sided authority is given to people. Traffic wardens whose love of giving out tickets extends well beyond professionalism, bin-men who love to fine householders if the bin is slightly open, or road planners who seem to take great delight in creating traffic jams by redesigning a junction where previously there was no real problem, or of course the lollipop lady who really just hates cars and does her best to inconvenience them as much as she can under the banner of helping kids cross the road safely. The ability to wield power over other people is a primary career driver that takes people to director level in big companies, but at lower levels, it can just as easily attract the wrong types of people to a job. Lack of proper accountability and even misguided performance incentives give power-hungry people who can't make it to senior management posts another route to indulge in power-wielding.

Technology in such hands just amplifies the problem, because it can provide the evidence they need to show that their decision could be considered right. But without the other half of the evidence, their victim's side, this technology creates asymmetry.

Each time we hear new uses of technology to amplify the asymmetry that exists between the authorities and the people they are meant to serve, we are one step closer to a backlash. Ultimately, government exists to serve the people, and if the people are abused too much and too long, they will eventually take back the power from an abusive government and install one that promises to serve their interests again.

tourist overload

Futurizon update — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:50:00 +0000

We are just back from Paris, and like everyone else, we wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triumphe, Pompidou Centre and so on. At all these places there were huge queues, far longer than the last time I was there as a tourist 18 years ago. I've written before that eventually there will be so many people who can afford to travel that many places will be overrun with tourists and we will have to see rationing to protect the exhibits. I think Paris demonstrates this well now. It has reached the limit of how long I am prepared to queue to see anything. Standing 75 minutes to get into the Louvre is no fun, especially when most of the delay is caused by administrative idiocy (another story). While most of the building was fine, the crowd viewing the Mona Lisa was huge.

With India and China developing quickly now, we will see far more people who can travel than even today. With many tourist hotspots already at saturation point, rationing is inevitable, and soon. Just as we have seen an explosion in food prices caused partly at least by increasing wealth in China (and of course partly by the stupidity of using agricultural land to grow biofuels), we will see an explosion of entry prices for many sights. We may also have to see ticket lotteries and advance booking. One thing is certain. The days of easy travel to see famous sights are almost over. Demand is already outstripping supply but is set to grow rapidly. If there is something you desperately want to see before you die, go now! You might not get another chance. Within a couple more years, the only way you will be able to visit some places is to be great, good, rich, very lucky, or go in cyberspace.

active contact lens, video tattoos and patents

Futurizon update — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:05:00 +0000

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2008/01/30/43036/contact-lens-led-array-aims-for-in-eye-display.htm

I love to say I told you so, and this one goes right back to 1991 when I invented the active contact lens (see http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.pearson/web/future/contactlens.htm). Back then, it looked like Moore's law would make it feasible around 2030, but then mid 90s Texas Instruments invented their micromirror, and I redesigned the lens to use a group of three lasers and a raster scanner mirror. This one in EW looks nothing like that, but still demonstrates the general principle of using a contact lens as a display platform. I still think my basic design will eventually win out.

A related topic is the active skin concept, http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.pearson/docindex.htm, which includes the idea of video tattoos. Today I learned about http://www.core77.com/competitions/GreenerGadgets/projects/4673/ which replicates our video tattoo idea pretty well.

I have no idea whether the owner of this saw the idea on my site and re-hashed it or started it from scratch. Both happen often, and I am now well used to students passing off my work as their own and even asking me to do it for them. But actually, I think that most inventions are independently invented many times. We are all exposed to the same sorts of information and we then make deductions from that, and our creativity as engineers is almost always built on that of our predecessors, just as Rutherford (I think), the great physicist, said that he could only see great things because he was standing on the shoulders of giants.

For that reason, I think that the patent system has now outlived its purpose. People will invent stuff all over the world now within weeks of each other, and there is no longer a need for financial incentive to do so. The idea that someone should now have an exclusive right to an idea just because they got to the patent office first seems wrong now. I think that the system needs adjusting at least. I think that if someone files for a patent, it should stay secret for a period of say 6 months after filing, and if anyone else files or discloses a similar idea, or publishes one anywhere independently, even informally in a blog, then the idea should be considered a public domain invention and no-one should be given exclusivity. Such a system would prevent a great many abuses that we have seen such as one-click ordering, which are blindingly obvious to everyone, except apparently the US patent office.

data growth

Futurizon update — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:20:00 +0000

http://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/expanding-digital-universe.htm is a wonderful page by EMC2 that estimates the amount of data in the world. 100 exabytes this year so far!!

I reckon that means we now have about a zettabyte (10^21 bytes) altogether. That's a bit less that I would have thought, since I calculated we had about that much in 1992, but maybe they're right. Or maybe they left some sources out. Either way, it's still a lot.

data storage and transmission

Futurizon update — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:57:00 +0000

Mark Fowler recently sent me some stuff (thanks!) on an IDC report that says 280 exabytes of data was created, stored and replicated last year. That's 75% more than the year before, which in itself is interesting. They go on to say that we can't store all that because the figure exceeds storage capacity, but that doesn't matter because most of the data isn't worth storing.

So the amount of data in the world was doubling every 13 months when they wrote the report. A few years back it was doubling every 18 months, so even the rate of relative growth is increasing. Very soon it will double every year, and in ten years, it will probably double every month.

As I wrote earlier today, 1 exabyte is transmitted on the net every month now according to Cisco, 30EB/month by 2011 and up to 200EB/month by 2012. As data production rate accelerates, so will the amount of network capacity needed. Doubling network capacity every month seems ridiculously difficult to achieve.

This implies that we will start to see data crystallisation, with local creation, storage and transmission going through the roof but network capacity lagging so far behind that it will be impossible to replicate this data in other locations, and impossible to collect it globally, or even to index it globally.

I guess the real question is whether this matters. If the data is low grade stuff like local video footage or sensor data, perhaps there is no real problem if we can't network it all globally. But it certainly does put a technological damper on globalisation when we realise that the information world will start to crystallise down into ever-shrinking cells.

Robotic insect spies

Futurizon update — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:51:00 +0000

There is a great article in New Scientist 8/3/8, 'the fly who bugged me', about insects that have had their nervous systems hijacked by IT to make them into tiny remote controlled spies. It even explains how devices can be incorporated into isects by adding them durung the pupa stage so that they make strong connections to nerves and muscles as the tissues develop.

There have been a few articles over the last few years about such technology, which has apparently been progressing nicely. Implants can be linked to nervous systems to allow remote control of a wide range of creatures, not just insects. In conjuction with tiny spy cameras, such developments are very interesting.

Electronics is shrinking all the time. It will be possible to incorporate a lot of surveillance equipment into a fly in a few years time, without making it look any different to a casual observer.

The military are of course leading the development so that they can spy on the enemy, and police will of course find many uses for tackling drug dealers and the like. But the biggest market will eventually be ordinary people wanting to spy on other ordinary people for a multitude of reasons with varying degrees of morality.

Data growth

Futurizon update — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:57:00 +0000

Cisco says that global IP traffic will reach 1 exabyte (Ebyte) per month this year, and 29Ebyte per month by 2011. By 2012 it could be as high as 200Ebyte per month if the last mile could keep up, but it won't, so it won't!

The last mile has always been the problem, and the cause is that the providers don't believe there is enough demand. Although many engineers understand the virtuous circle linking available rates and demand, their senior managers rarely get it, asserting rather stupidly that there is no proven demand. Of course there isn't, when the available offerings are far too slow to do what people want to do. When rates increase, people magically find that they use the net more and more. This will always be the case, and whatever capacity is provided, it will fill up.

The internet is about personal networking and communication. People want to share their stuff with each other, as evidenced superbly by the fact that there are now over 115 million blogs out there, even though most people still don't know how to set one up. Blogs mostly share text, but many share photos and video. With video cameras moving to more computer-convenient storage formats such as memory cards, we should expect far more video blogs.

If cameras can record HD video, that's what people will want to share. And the cheaper and more compact the cameras are, the more widespread they will be, the more people will use them, and the more content will need to be uploaded, stored, distributed and downloaded. And the more use of HD webcams we will see. And asTVs become more computer friendly, people will want the webcam image to fill the screen, in full HD. And then as video visors start to replace the TV, they will want all that in 3D wraparound chat so they can network with several friends at once.

Meanwhile, video from online services such as Youtube, which already accounts for 4% of all intrenet traffic, is making it onto our big TV screens via the PC connector. HD screens give enough resolution to do other computer stuff, so the convergence will go all the way. We will soon demand the ability to download any HD channel in the world onto our home TV, and can offer the old Sky subcsription as payment, since we won't need that any more if broadband access is fast enough. So at least another £20 a month is available on top of today's broadband rates.

In addition, as crime increases and the cost of equipment falls, we will want more personal CCTV systems, and of course we are all familiar with just how bad the images are from conventional systems, and how it is hard to recognise anyone from the footage we regularly see on TV. With HD cameras, or super HD cameras, recording 24/7 and sending the video to on-line storage, demand will increase dramatically. I might want to record two or three views of the front, and the back of the house. So 5 or 6 streams of super HD video per home might not be unrealistic, and that's just for home security. Black boxes in cars or even our lapel pins might also record video and audio all the time.

So, with high def being standard for all video, and numerous parallel streams coming into and out of the house all the time, internet traffic demand will go throuhg the roof.

But if executives in the providers continue to insist there is no demand and don't put in the capacity, no-one will be able to do any of this and the demand won't materialise, proving the executives right. Self-fulfilling prophecy has always been a key part of the nature of the telecomms industry. If it were led by visionaries, the world would be be a very different place indeed. While it is led by risk-averse accountants, it will continue to develop painfully slowly.

Lunacy and lunar ark

Futurizon update — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:12:00 +0000

It is always fun reading the sunday papers. First we have Ken Livingstone proposing that we should put all the cash into railways instead of airports and motoroways, because he fears millions will die because of global warming. Maybe they will, but it will be because of such idiotic environmental policy. Traditional railways are not the solution. We need to ge rid of traisn and replace them with smaller automatically driven vehicles that go on both road and rail, then we can increase capacity dramatically and reduce congestion. Only by leaving the past behind and moving towards advanced technology do we have a hope in hell of solving climate change. Environmentalists who want to take us back to Victorian transport solutions are one of the biggest environmental threats we face. The best thing Ken can do to help the environment is to retire, along with other poloticians who pander to environmental dogma rather than daring to offer leadership via radical technology based change.

A couple of pages later, I read about a lunar ark, where human knowledge could be deposited in case of earthly catastrophe such as nuclear war. As a member of the Lifeboat Foundation, I agree entirely with the principle, but it needs to go further away if it is to give us safety. The solution proposed, of a lunar transmitter that can send data to earth via protected receiver stations, and a deposit of DNA from important organisms, is great. But I think it would be better still if as well as that, we also make a backup on an asteroid or comet. The reason being that some of the threats we face would extend to the moon too, such as solar storms. Electronic devices on both the earth and moon could be destroyed by the same solar eruption. If we also have a backup on an asteroid or comet, it is likely that it will be well clear of the same eruption, so would still function happily even if all the electronics on earth and its moon was destroyed.

And girls are catching up on the net too. The net started off as a tool for scientists to exchange knowledge, then became a business tool, a games platform, a shopping street, and now it is finally maturing into what it was always going to become, a general purpose communication network, letting people do what people most like to do, to communicate with each other. The only reason it has taken this long is the technology development took a while and it took society even longer to understand what the net is and for the tools and techniques to become simple enough for ordinary people to bother with. From now on, it will stay a communications platform, and gradually become enriched as every part of our human culture adopts it.

I have lectured frequently now on how women will take the lead in coming years as the economy becomes more about human emotional skills than intellect. As girls sharpen their networking in chat rooms while boys sharpen their reflexes and strategy on games sites, the polarisation that results will see men focused on areas that will be automated while women focus on areas that won't.

Feeling mischievous today

Futurizon update — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:39:00 +0000

Thinking of print security gave me another idea. How about printing surveillance electronics onto paper such as gift vouchers? People like gift vouchers and happily put them in their wallets and purses, or on the kitchen pinboard.

Moore's law isn't going to stop any time soon. Your eyes can only see items bigger than 0.1mm, that's 100 microns. Electronic components are hovering around the 0.65 micron level today. So you need 75 of these in a row (plus gaps) to be visible to the naked eye, i.e. 5625 in a nice square as small as the smallest dust particle you can see - if you're looking for it. And you probably aren't. That's a lot of electronics. The Apple 2's processing chip, the 6502 - ah, I remember it well - had about 9000 transistors. So a coup,ke of tiny specks of dust on a voucher, or inside a voucher, could easily conceal such power. And a nice little aerial using very thin wire could be printed in the voucher too.

So, someone gives you a gift voucher, or better still, sells you it so that you trust it. From then until you use it, it sits in your wallet, picking up your voice and intercepting any electronic communications you make. Maybe even the signal from the processor in the cash machine or credit card pad as you type your PIN. And of course, sitting right next to your credit card, it can also read the magnetic strip. And when you use the voucher, it also collects your fingerprint. And having got all this, even if it didn't send it by radio already, the voucher is eventually returned to the people who made it, who then sell all this information to the highest bidder.

Strange thing is, this isn't futurology any more, it is all entirely possible today, with today's technology. Yikes! Hope you are worried too.

Ian

Printing Security

Futurizon update — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:28:00 +0000

It is obviously illegal to photocopy banknotes and to try to pass the copies off as real. In any case, notes are designed especially to thwart attempts to do so, relying on printer technology limitations and using features that will not copy well, and also using special paper.

It seems to me that the rest of business is not keeping up so well. While big stores sell reasonably secure gift wouchers, many also give out discount vouchers that appear to be on standard paper , easily copyable, with no obvious security at all. While some vouchers are intended purely as an incentive and the sale will still cost in even if the voucher is cashed, some are more of a reward type
and would make a loss for companies if too many are used. As copiers get better and better, this risk will grow.

However, it is now possible to print electronic components and circuits using special inks in conventional inkjet printers. It is surely time for companies to start using such technology to print vouchers that are partially electronic. These will not be so easy to copy or forge. Even simple inductive circuits would be a big improvement in security compared to the dumb vouchers of today. Certainly, for gift vouchers and higher value items, it is time to start using smarter paper by printing electronics on it.

Not that I would ever think of taking advantage.

Ian

Futurizon update — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:42:00 +0000

Up and running at last!

Futurizon update — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:25:00 +0000

I guess that now I have left BT, I'd better get my blog running on the Futurizon site.

The BT share price has plummetted since I left half way through December. I wonder if there is a connection? Perhaps not. Back in the real world, the Futurizon web site is now up to speed and I'm pleased to say the company is still going well now that it has extended from a speaker agency into a full-service futures institute.

The first significant paper I have produced is called Carbon and is already making a nice splash on the Business Weekly pages at:

http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/2008022731482/environmental/the-voice-of-technology-should-be-heard-in-climate-debate.html

You can download the paper free from http://futurizon.net/articles/carbonfeb08.doc

I also had another interview recently about the future of work and the office. You can read it at http://www.internalcommshub.com/open/news/2028.shtml

till next time

Ian