Regularly Expressing

Category: future

  • Privacy is Dying

    Privacy is becoming an increasingly problematic concern for everyone. With the advent of drones, inexpensive cameras, etc., surveillance is becoming easier for governments and corporations. Inevitably, the temptation for governments and industry to acquire intelligence on all of us may become (or already is) irresistible. Most of us fear the “surveillance state” and feel that it represents an unjustifiable encroachment on our liberty.

    The question is, what can be done about it? My theory is that the struggle to maintain privacy will only cause governments and corporations to be secretive about what they’re doing. Data is power. If we want to equalize ourselves with the collectors of data, we should accept our lack of privacy, and work on legislating the means by which the data is accessed, used, sold, and protected. Our data should be stored in distributed trusted servers, possibly in encrypted form, to defend against it being withheld or tampered with. Data on politicians should be public, since most of their misdeeds seem to come from efforts to cover things up. Anyone wanting to run for office should be required to air their dirty laundry at the start, and should accept that as the price of running for office.

    Eventually, I think, we are going to be watched every moment of our lives from cradle to grave. As frightening as this is, many benefits might accrue from making this step. Crime will be reduced. Not simply because it will make it easier to catch criminals, but because most people will behave better if they know they are being watched.

    In addition, we will be able to prove we are innocent. While “innocent until proven guilty” is supposed to be a basic right, it only applies to criminal proceedings. Simply being accused of rape is often enough to end a person’s career, or take their money through lawsuits. Indeed, the fact that this is possible gives the unscrupulous a tool by which they can defeat any honest person. A deeper embrace of the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” could remedy this situation, but make it easier for rapists to escape justice. Only removing privacy solves both problems.

    In addition, our health will be improved. Once medical data is more widely shared with researchers, the diagnosis, and treatment of numerous diseases should be improved.

    Yes, we might be judged for mistakes we’ve made, but if we do our hypocrisy will be exposed. I think the end result will be that everyone is more tolerant of failures, and many of the things we suffer for trying to hide our failings will go away.

    Is there really any serious downside to our coming loss of privacy?

  • The Most Secure Network Ever Built

    FirstNet. A dedicated network for firemen, medical professionals, and law enforcement. They say it will be the most secure network ever built. Regardless of how secure they make it, I expect there will be criminals hacked into it from the start.

    I expect that this technology will save lives, but it will erode our notion of privacy even further. However, I think the loss of privacy is an inevitable consequence of technology.

    It’s a great irony that while the Bible predicts a judgment day when everyone’s deeds are revealed publicly, it is modern technology is on the verge of making it happen.

  • Magic made real by Technology

    We’re rapidly entering an age where science fiction becomes fact on a daily basis. Who’d have thought that by 2013 we’d all have tricorders, but call them iPhones? But sometimes, fantasy is also becoming real. This particular example is fun for me because it ties to my own work. In the book my wife and I wrote, Sword and Illusion, we created a fabric called “silken steel.” When the protagonist from that story, Moonrazer, the Exalted Warrior of the Sarl, took a husband we wanted to give her a way to embrace the softer feminine side of her nature without giving up her identity as a warrior. “Silken steel” was a kind of armor that was as light and shimmery as, well, silk. Now, it seems, something similar has been created, although this is apparel for men. The bullet proof suit will set you back twenty grand, but for the medieval warrior turned urbanite, it may be worth it.

  • The Political Issue No One Is Addressing

    People are worried about jobs. The problem is, many of them are going away and they aren’t coming back. It’s time to start planning for the obsolescance of the American worker.

    The question is, can we make the transition without first creating massive poverty and unemployment? My theory is that we can offer tax credits to the businesses for employing poeple. As automation increases, so do the tax credits until the point where the only reason an employee is needed is to provide the tax credit.

    But what will people do once their labor isn’t needed?

    When Machines Do Your Job

    A New Wave of Adept Robots is Changing Global Industry

  • Blurring the Line Between Fantasy and Science Fiction

    Fantasy and Science Fiction are lumped together on the bookshelves, but they are clearly distinct. Science Fiction is usually a fanciful prediction of the future and fantasy is sheer escapism. Probably every science fiction author’s dream is to be an accurate prophet of future technology. How does our mental picture change when Lord of the Rings predicts future technology?

    What am I talking about? There have been a number of efforts in the recent news to use animals, either in robot or cyborg form, as spies:

    Cyborg Moths Robot flies

    As you may recall, the Fellowship of the Ring had to hide from a flock of birds that it feared to be spies of Saruman. In the very near future, you may either be comforted or terrified to know that ‘Big Brother’ is watching over you through the eyes of the animal kingdom.

  • Virtual Possessions

    I was thinking about the future of display technology. I imagine that it will become cheap enough, at some point, that we will cover our walls, ceilings, and tables with displays (possibly 3D displays). One consequence of this would be that we’d have practically zero possessions. Most of what we have — decorative items, books, games would all become virtual.

    The only things you would need:
    1) Items for food preparation: The kitchen might contain just a food printer / heater / cooler — eliminating the need for a variety of appliances, gadgets, and tools.
    2) Furniture – All of this would be infinitely customizable, your household 3D printer could make/remake what you needed. You would probably need to supply your own cushions (unless someone figures out how to print those as well).
    3) Plumbing.

    In this brave new style of dwelling moving would be simple. Just transfer your “desktop” to a new location. Probably many of you will chafe at this idea, finding it too cold and impersonal. In reality, though, it’s just the opposite. Your dwelling/environment will be tuned to you and radically customized. A hotel will feel much more like home.

  • Hydrogen From the Gas Pump with Nanotech

    Is there a future in hydrogen powered vehicles? Toyota announced a new car with a 516 mile range [guardian.co.uk]. It uses a single tank of fuel stored at -22 degrees Fahrenheit. But is this practical or dangerous? Would Americans ever be willing to drive one of these vehichles?

    Maybe not, but hydrogen power is already coming into use in American buses and trucks by means of hydrogen fuel injection (HFI). Electrolysis is used to split hydrogen and oxygen from water and fed directly into the intake of a diesel engine, increasing efficiency and decreasing pollution [foxbuisiness.com]. Similar technology, delivering more power and an extra 5mpg, is under development for gas engines [ky3.com].

    Are these two developments a sign that we will move to hydrogen powered cars? And if we do, what will become of our existing gasoline distribution infrastructure?

    Glass microspheres [ceramics.org] can be used to safely transport hydrogen and can be made to flow like a liquid. This means you could potentially get your hydrogen fuel from existing pumps.

    However, some alterations would need to be made. This new system would require you to empty your tank of the spent glass microspheres before you could refuel.

  • Curing Cancer

    I’m generally optimistic that cancer will be eradicated in a decade or so — based on the frequency with which interesting potential cures are reported. Just today there were rather two (possibly synergistic) ideas that surfaced in my news reading. The first is a method of delivering cancer-killing drugs selectively, and deep inside the tumors. The second is a new type of cancer-killing drug. I like to imagine the combination as a one-two knockout punch, but time will tell.

    Salmonella Bacteria Turned Into Cancer Fighting ‘Robots’ – University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers are turning Salmonella bacteria into tumor killing “robots” that use their flagella to go deep into tumors where conventional chemotherapy can’t reach, and once in place, manufacture drugs that trigger cancer cells to kill themselves. Normally, mice with tumors all die within 30 days. After receiving this bacterial system and getting a dose of radiation, all the mice in their lab tests survived beyond the 30 days, which could translate into months or years in people. [link]

    First evidence that blocking key energy protein kills cancer cells – The researchers analyzed tissue samples from breast cancer patients and found for the first time that the surface of breast cancer cells contains high levels of ATP synthase. In cell studies, exposing breast cancer cells to a substance that blocks ATP synthase killed the cancer cells but did not harm normal cells, the researchers say. The findings suggest that ATP synthase inhibitors may represent a new approach for fighting breast cancer and other cancer types, they say. [link]

    Update…. Just a day later, and another really interesting bit of anti-cancer research. The “nanoimpeller” does not move about like the salmonella virus, but it does have a nice light powered chemical release device. I imagine that you’d have to be kept out of bright light after receiving drugs in this form.

    UCLA researchers design nanomachine that kills cancer cells – Researchers from the Nano Machine Center at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA have developed a novel type of nanomachine that can capture and store anticancer drugs inside tiny pores and release them into cancer cells in response to light. Known as a “nanoimpeller,” the device is the first light-powered nanomachine that operates inside a living cell, a development that has strong implications for cancer treatment. [link]

  • Infinite Sunshine Computing

    I have been thinking about the struggle to build large computing systems. The major challenges of the current age of computing are power, cooling and scalability. The machine room and energy costs are dwarfing everything else. This concern has even spawned the creation of a new ranking of supercomputers, the Green 500, which ranks machines by compute power per watt rather than simple compute power.

    Imagine a single computing node that is self-contained and sealed. Each has its own storage and set of processing cores, a solar panel of some sort for power (many advances have been made in solar power recently), some kind of power storage (maybe even capacitors). For cooling, it could use the solid state heat pumps from Cool Chips and/or circulating fluids. Each of these nodes could be connected to its four nearest neighbors by some network — a 2D mesh is not the best network one can design, but it is infinitely growable. Alternatively, one could make a hexagonal mesh.

    Imagine this computer, allowed to grow in some wide flat country, stretching for miles in one all powerful matrix :). It would, in theory, be infiinitely scalable and require no machine room at all. You would probably mount it on some kind of rack a few feet above the ground so that people (or robots) could travel beneath it and fix or replace nodes. The system administrators would be like farmers, harvesting the compute cycles to feed the hungry scientists of the world.

  • Thursday Thirteen: Tech predictions for 2040 AD

    We are heading for a brave new tech world. Most of these predictions are things that could probably happen in ten years, but I’m giving them a little extra room to be on the safe side. Some of these predictions are rather scary when taken in combination — some are even scary by themselves.

    It is important to remember, when thinking about future technologies, that almost every area of technology is currently on an expontential growth curve. Things are accelerating.

    1. Passwords are Obsolete: Improvements in face recognition and other biometrics will make them unnecessary.
    2. Displays Everywhere: Flexible, transparent displays could cover many surfaces: clothes, tables, or even cover the walls of your house.
    3. The End of Paper: I know, you’ve heard this one many times before and are skeptical, but once you can make displays that are as easy to read and convenient to carry as a book, books will go.
    4. Cyborg Animals: This is like a page from “Lord of the Rings,” Saruman uses birds to spy for him.
    5. A Cure for Obesity: A host of medical problems will be solved by 2040, and obesity is one that we’ve already made significant scientific progress toward curing.
    6. Self-driving cars: I’m not talking about the use of special tracks in the road, but cars that drive with humans on the same roads.
    7. A cure for cancer, one current avenu for progress in this area gold coated nano-particles. However, there are many such promising advances.
    8. Creating new organs on demand: Imagine you can just print organs! But there are a number of technologies that could give us new supplies for organs. Some think that pig stem cells will be used to grow them for us.
    9. Brain Interfaces (without surger), also this. But most importantly, a paralysed man can walk through a 3D virtual world just by thinking about it — and we can do this now. This may also mean we someday have infallible lie detectors.
    10. Computers will be 1,000,000 times faster and have 1,000,000 times more storage: This just assumes computers keep doubling in speed every 18 months (Microsoft Word, however, will continue to feel slow and consume your entire hard drive). Soon we will be able to record our whole lives, carrying a camera wherever we go. I believe this is probably my safest prediction.
    11. The space elevator gets off the ground: LiftPort answers objections. Actually, some other cheap method of transport to orbit might make this obsolete.
    12. Death Rays: The old mainstay of science fiction will finally come to pass. It is close to happening already.
    13. Terraforming of Mars — OK, I don’t really think this one will happen. But maybe we’ll get started. It’s more of a stretch goal, something to hope for. In the meantime, however, you can always get a job on the moon.