Amazon wants to deliver packages to you in 30 minutes via drone. While the convenience might be pretty awesome. I'm not sure how good of an idea this is going to be. I also think that this points to a broader push for Amazon. In the past Amazon has mentioned how they had plans to sell groceries locally and deliver rapidly. This is currently in beta test with only two cities involved, LA and Seattle. Depending on the size of these drones this will make delivery of groceries much easier and reduce the risk for goods to thaw while waiting for the resident to come home and get the groceries. Furthermore, if these drones are really good, Amazon could time the delivery of the groceries based on when the customer wanted them to arrive at their home. Let's say you place the order in the morning, but know you won't get home until around 6:30, you could ask Amazon to deliver the goods around 6:30 so you could just bring them in the house and start cooking.
A few years ago there were some rumors that Amazon was planning on going to brick and mortar stores while everyone else is going more web, web, web. These drones that are in the video do not look like they have the farthest range in the world, which means for a place like my home town about an hour north of Pittsburgh by car and if there was a distribution center in Pittsburgh (there's not, but there is one in Allentown), the drone would need to fly close to 120 miles per hour. That doesn't seem likely for these things. They don't look like they have the speed, they are clearly designed for shorter ranges than that. Additionally, implementing these drones would require significantly more distribution centers throughout the US. Distribution centers work best when there is a need for high volume, high speed, and high variety at least in many distribution models. However, if Amazon were to use retail stores as part of their distribution network and looked to use the stores as the location where the drones would send goods from, this makes a lot more sense. Retail stores aren't really there to be retail stores, but micro distribution centers.
This would impact the types of items that would be a candidate for Air Prime in many locations, for instance cities with Stores only would have a much smaller list of applicable items. Cities with distribution centers near by would likely have any item up for Air Prime that would fit on the drone.
This is still 4-5 years out from being deployed, so why is Amazon showing this off now? Well, bad press recently. There have been several articles that came out this past month about how horrible the distribution centers are in the US.
All said though, I think these drones point to continued interest in providing different approaches to brick and mortar stores as well as grocery stores. I think it will start out small and grow from there. Amazon will likely build out some stores first with a similar function to Best buy where you can pick up in the store. In later store deployments they will have options for Air Prime and pick up in store for certain items. It will certainly change things for Amazon workers and will change the way the distribution centers are managed. They may simply become hubs with a lot more being pushed out closer to the end customer.
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
3D Printed Gun, Robots, and the future of food pricing
Recently there's been a company based here in Austin Texas called Defense Distributed, which has been garnering a lot of attention. This is due to the fact that first, they developed a 3D printed magazine for an AR15. Then the decided to develop 3D printed versions of portions of the gun itself. These parts are being printed in plastic, so it seems unlikely that a plastic gun would work right? Well, the lower receiver for the AR15 can survive shooting 600 rounds. That's a big deal. The first version was able to shoot one, the second only 7. As of yesterday they released a fully printable handgun. Due to restrictions in the US gun code a gun must have a certain minimum weight of metal to be detectable by metal detectors (125g). I think that this will have major ramifications - I'm not even talking about gun rights, or gun ownership or gun whatever. I'll discuss those in a later post. Below is a video of the "Liberator" in action.
How is this a big deal in other ways than just Gun rights? Well, several months ago a book came out called "Race Against the Machine" which argues that we need to figure out how to work with robots and computers in an effective way to maximize the returns for both workers and for the owners of the computer/robots. One of these robots they discuss is a $25k robot called Baxter. This robot is extremely easy to program and control. It offers a lot of the capabilities that a low skill employee could offer and more than many expensive robots. In fact we're seeing this in re-shoring efforts from companies like Tesla and Apple. They won't be bringing back the old school manufacturing jobs. There will only be technician jobs related to fixing broken equipment, which will be significantly fewer jobs. Even if Baxter only lasts 3 years, it more than paid for itself in being able to operate for 24/7 for 25k in total rather than paying four people more than that each year.
Add in the capability for people to download designs for guns and many other things from Thingiverse which can be printed from home and how cheap it is to send designs to companies like Shapeways - where you can print in metal, these changes are going to radically change our current manufacturing infrastructure and distribution system. We aren't prepared for this and it's going to reduce the number of low end jobs in existence.
Which brings me to the next point. Food prices are high. When people can't feed themselves there are riots and revolts. We've seen this twice already in the past 5 years and we're poised for more violence by August of this year. According to a study published two years ago food prices are near the threshold level of the Arab Spring. If these prices are still as high as predicted then we could see some serious issues in the next few years unless we radically begin rethinking our economic models.
We'll be seeing massive disruption and opportunities in the manufacturing space. This will likely have massive ramifications on our supply chain, which has huge numbers of employees. The ability to print your own cheap plastic products could impact toy sales and the retail industry.
Is this bound to happen, no, certainly not. However, 3D Printers are now available for sale at Staples for $1,300 prebuilt, they've come pretty close to mainstream. The next step are going to be more advanced printers that are able to print faster, cool faster, print more complex designs with less structure, and eventually we might be able to print metal products on a printer that costs $1300. A lot of people won't want to do this, but there will be enough where it could have a serious impact on the economy.
What do you think? Am I overreacting?
How is this a big deal in other ways than just Gun rights? Well, several months ago a book came out called "Race Against the Machine" which argues that we need to figure out how to work with robots and computers in an effective way to maximize the returns for both workers and for the owners of the computer/robots. One of these robots they discuss is a $25k robot called Baxter. This robot is extremely easy to program and control. It offers a lot of the capabilities that a low skill employee could offer and more than many expensive robots. In fact we're seeing this in re-shoring efforts from companies like Tesla and Apple. They won't be bringing back the old school manufacturing jobs. There will only be technician jobs related to fixing broken equipment, which will be significantly fewer jobs. Even if Baxter only lasts 3 years, it more than paid for itself in being able to operate for 24/7 for 25k in total rather than paying four people more than that each year.
Add in the capability for people to download designs for guns and many other things from Thingiverse which can be printed from home and how cheap it is to send designs to companies like Shapeways - where you can print in metal, these changes are going to radically change our current manufacturing infrastructure and distribution system. We aren't prepared for this and it's going to reduce the number of low end jobs in existence.
Which brings me to the next point. Food prices are high. When people can't feed themselves there are riots and revolts. We've seen this twice already in the past 5 years and we're poised for more violence by August of this year. According to a study published two years ago food prices are near the threshold level of the Arab Spring. If these prices are still as high as predicted then we could see some serious issues in the next few years unless we radically begin rethinking our economic models.
We'll be seeing massive disruption and opportunities in the manufacturing space. This will likely have massive ramifications on our supply chain, which has huge numbers of employees. The ability to print your own cheap plastic products could impact toy sales and the retail industry.
Is this bound to happen, no, certainly not. However, 3D Printers are now available for sale at Staples for $1,300 prebuilt, they've come pretty close to mainstream. The next step are going to be more advanced printers that are able to print faster, cool faster, print more complex designs with less structure, and eventually we might be able to print metal products on a printer that costs $1300. A lot of people won't want to do this, but there will be enough where it could have a serious impact on the economy.
What do you think? Am I overreacting?
Monday, February 25, 2013
Looming battle: Content providers vs. service providers
In my last post about the PS4, I discussed how the PS4 is a long term play and that over time the product will move away from playing directly on the PS4 towards utilizing servers to stream the game to the user. This was an argument to counter many PC gamer's disdain for the specs for the system. Sure, the specs aren't great, but they are a huge advancement over the PS3, which is still able to play, rather well, new games.
Most of the feedback I got on the article basically went "well that's great and all, but the infrastructure isn't there for this in the US." This is extremely valid feedback. AOL still records $500 Million in revenue from dial up connections. The US rates among the worst in developed world for internet speeds and penetration. Of course there's the argument that our country is so much larger, well, the EU as a whole tops us, it's not uniform across the EU, but that still makes it a valid comparison. The other thing to remember, the console won't just come out in the US. Many of these features will work better in Korea and Japan than in the US. Typically Sony has released different features by region and will likely experiment with the sharing features in Japan before rolling it out to the US, where Sony knows it will have infrastructure difficulties.
This discussion raises additional concerns though, infrastructure isn't just about the lines in the ground, but also the structure of the service providers that allow access. In the case of the US, not only does quality and speed of the connection vary wildly but we also have more restrictions on the amount of data we can download than other countries. For a typical family you end up buying the internet 2 or 3 times at the minimum (smart phone access per family member and then the main house connection). Each of these connections likely has a different maximum for downloading or uploading with fees for going over this.
This creates a lot of difficulties as we don't always know how much bits a specific file will use as we access it. In many cases, it likely drives consistent under utilization of the service do to excessive fees and user dissatisfaction for those hitting the cap. Americans are starting to cut the cord in record numbers, my wife and I don't have TV, just cable internet; I have a lot of options without Cable. This is going to start increasing the rate of frustration users have with caps. I typically watch live streaming video in 720p while my wife surfs the net and watches a show on Hulu.
I have absolutely no idea how much bandwidth is being consumed on a typical night. There is no easy way for me to measure this or plan for getting close to a cap. Furthermore, both my wife and I use our phones to access the internet, listen to music, watch videos, and play games on our phones. Again, all of these use bandwidth and likely push us against our cellular plan. Sure there's meters for these, but they are notoriously inaccurate.
This issue with be further exacerbated by the proliferation of cloud services like Drop Box, video sharing on YouTube, streaming new services all the time, and the eventual goal of offloading computing power to the cloud. The measurement of these services will be extremely difficult and planning for how much data these services will require will be absurdly difficult at best for the average user. It is likely that these services will push users over the usage caps on a monthly bases.
I think that we need to start looking for another solution. I think that Google Fiber is a start, it would make sense for Netflix, Amazon, Dishnetwork, Microsoft, Intel, and other content providers to join a consortium that will introduce a new service provider to attack the incumbents. I have heard that Dish is currently working on creating their own system with Google or some other company, I think that this could potentially shake up the industry and allow users more options. There are going to be a wealth of new services that require more and more bandwidth and higher speeds. If these content providers want users to be able to access and enjoy their services they need to challenge the status quo to enable their customers.
Most of the feedback I got on the article basically went "well that's great and all, but the infrastructure isn't there for this in the US." This is extremely valid feedback. AOL still records $500 Million in revenue from dial up connections. The US rates among the worst in developed world for internet speeds and penetration. Of course there's the argument that our country is so much larger, well, the EU as a whole tops us, it's not uniform across the EU, but that still makes it a valid comparison. The other thing to remember, the console won't just come out in the US. Many of these features will work better in Korea and Japan than in the US. Typically Sony has released different features by region and will likely experiment with the sharing features in Japan before rolling it out to the US, where Sony knows it will have infrastructure difficulties.
This discussion raises additional concerns though, infrastructure isn't just about the lines in the ground, but also the structure of the service providers that allow access. In the case of the US, not only does quality and speed of the connection vary wildly but we also have more restrictions on the amount of data we can download than other countries. For a typical family you end up buying the internet 2 or 3 times at the minimum (smart phone access per family member and then the main house connection). Each of these connections likely has a different maximum for downloading or uploading with fees for going over this.
This creates a lot of difficulties as we don't always know how much bits a specific file will use as we access it. In many cases, it likely drives consistent under utilization of the service do to excessive fees and user dissatisfaction for those hitting the cap. Americans are starting to cut the cord in record numbers, my wife and I don't have TV, just cable internet; I have a lot of options without Cable. This is going to start increasing the rate of frustration users have with caps. I typically watch live streaming video in 720p while my wife surfs the net and watches a show on Hulu.
I have absolutely no idea how much bandwidth is being consumed on a typical night. There is no easy way for me to measure this or plan for getting close to a cap. Furthermore, both my wife and I use our phones to access the internet, listen to music, watch videos, and play games on our phones. Again, all of these use bandwidth and likely push us against our cellular plan. Sure there's meters for these, but they are notoriously inaccurate.
This issue with be further exacerbated by the proliferation of cloud services like Drop Box, video sharing on YouTube, streaming new services all the time, and the eventual goal of offloading computing power to the cloud. The measurement of these services will be extremely difficult and planning for how much data these services will require will be absurdly difficult at best for the average user. It is likely that these services will push users over the usage caps on a monthly bases.
I think that we need to start looking for another solution. I think that Google Fiber is a start, it would make sense for Netflix, Amazon, Dishnetwork, Microsoft, Intel, and other content providers to join a consortium that will introduce a new service provider to attack the incumbents. I have heard that Dish is currently working on creating their own system with Google or some other company, I think that this could potentially shake up the industry and allow users more options. There are going to be a wealth of new services that require more and more bandwidth and higher speeds. If these content providers want users to be able to access and enjoy their services they need to challenge the status quo to enable their customers.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Business Cash Reserves and Innovation
I found an article on MarketWatch that discussed the fact that the private sector is, in fact, doing just fine. As the author mentioned, this didn't go over very well whenever Obama mentioned it a few weeks ago. However, he's right. Companies as a whole are doing extraordinarily well (see graph below), but normal people aren't seeing it. I've discussed this before in a Future of Employment post.
As you can see from the graph Corporate profits are at an all time high. We also know that investments are still occurring in new equipment. We know from the numbers that companies aren't hiring. I think that the GOP would argue that this is because of regulation uncertainty, which they are contributing to. From what I've seen the Democrats don't really have any sort of good explanation for the lack of hiring. The author of the MarketWatch article claims that companies aren't spending money on new employees because they are returning most of it to stock holders through dividends or stock buybacks. The data supports this perspective to some extent. Part of it could be the fact that many companies are automating, outsourcing and offshoring all contribute to some level or another.
I think that it's a combination of these factors plus one other factor. This was added as something as a throw away at the end of the article, but it really stuck with me. "Corporations may be intensely profitable, but they have no profitable ideas about what to do with the vast sums they earn." This comment is extremely important, especially when you couple that with the article that the Washington Post just published about the difficulty of PhDs finding jobs.
These researchers are the core of the future for innovation at companies. If companies aren't hiring these scientists, despite the fact that many claim there are skill gaps, then they are unlikely to innovate moving forward. My old roommate in the Netherlands, Brian, told me that the Holst Centre where he worked created 3 jobs for every employee at their research center. I've seen similar numbers in one of my courses as well.
In this case the trickle down effect actually works. You hire researchers and they need to have technicians building equipment, which needs to order parts and raw materials to build those components. Which requires additional labor elsewhere. While 3 for 1 may not seem like the greatest ratio, those other workers typically make good money and will end up spending money elsewhere.
Innovation drives the economy. Companies need to look at how they manage risk, especially if they are sitting on huge reserves of cash. Putting more money into research for their field can lead to huge disruptions in technology and could lead to an increase in market share.
I will talk more about these risks in my next blog.
I think that it's a combination of these factors plus one other factor. This was added as something as a throw away at the end of the article, but it really stuck with me. "Corporations may be intensely profitable, but they have no profitable ideas about what to do with the vast sums they earn." This comment is extremely important, especially when you couple that with the article that the Washington Post just published about the difficulty of PhDs finding jobs.
These researchers are the core of the future for innovation at companies. If companies aren't hiring these scientists, despite the fact that many claim there are skill gaps, then they are unlikely to innovate moving forward. My old roommate in the Netherlands, Brian, told me that the Holst Centre where he worked created 3 jobs for every employee at their research center. I've seen similar numbers in one of my courses as well.
In this case the trickle down effect actually works. You hire researchers and they need to have technicians building equipment, which needs to order parts and raw materials to build those components. Which requires additional labor elsewhere. While 3 for 1 may not seem like the greatest ratio, those other workers typically make good money and will end up spending money elsewhere.
Innovation drives the economy. Companies need to look at how they manage risk, especially if they are sitting on huge reserves of cash. Putting more money into research for their field can lead to huge disruptions in technology and could lead to an increase in market share.
I will talk more about these risks in my next blog.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Evolution and Innovation
Apparently I published this before I meant too. Anyway, today in Techdirt, they published a discussion on copying, innovation and evolution. Basically, a biologist argued that we are evolutionarily predisposed to copy and use group learning to develop new tools. What this means is that instead of going out and developing something out of the blue we first have to see what someone else has done and then we copy whatever they did, then in a parasitic way, make marginal improvements on the original. We're nothing but freeloading copiers that make things a little better.
Techdirt completely disagreed with this point of view. They argued that simply copying something or a part of something doesn't mean you're freeloading. You can add a great deal to something to the point that whatever you copied simply becomes a part of a larger whole.
Anyone should know from my writing that I support Techdirt's perspective. This comes from several several different arguments. The first is from the evolution of technology. If you ignore some of the human motivation behind the changing technology itself and focus on the selection process, you can see that technology changes through incremental adjustments. These changes are selected by the market or in primitive societies by the end result of an improvement. Spears that last longer, less energy expended on making new spears, spears that can be thrown farther, less danger from the animal being killed, or sharper shovels, less energy spent gathering food - more food. This selection process is a very natural process. Additionally, there would be some specialization of skills even at this point in our history. Some people would have been better at making spears and in a collaborative environment, because there were no patents and sharing was for the best of everyone, many people could experiment with new spear designs. This innovation while based on copying is a very real form of innovation that likely lead to gradual improvement over a great deal of time.
The second argument that supports innovation after copying is the argument of Cesar Hidalgo, which argues that looking at what countries are currently producing you can see a relationship with their innovative ability. By looking to see what technologies they import and export you're able to see how well they have developed scientifically and in the manufacturing world. For example you can expect to see more advanced products come out of a country if they got into producing fertilizer very early in modern times. This typically leads to a general chemical industry which can lead to pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Why? Well developing a strong base in chemistry with fertilizers can be expanded into drugs and as a base for semiconductors.
How do new countries move into these fields? Essentially, they have a knowledge transfer from a country that is already doing it. This can be done in two ways, one is the easy way: have a multinational company set up a manufacturing then R&D facility in your country. This allows a direct flow of knowledge on how to manufacture the material, which increases the rate of copying. Would allow the country to be a fast follower but will still require significant time for them to eventually innovate on that technology. Having an R&D facility would increase this rate, because local scientists would have already been trained on how to innovate in that field. They would have already been doing research in that industry and would more easily be able to innovate if a spin-off was created (or if the state nationalized that part of the multinational). The second manner is much slower: repatriating of knowledge workers. This is essentially what has happened in Taiwan and India. Educated Indians or Taiwanese returned from the US and created spin-offs and became professors at the local universities. This isn't always successful.
Saudi Arabia is trying to develop a third way, which is having some success. They are recruiting experts from around the world to develop their own universities and companies. This is having mixed results and education and industry needs to pay attention to these attempts to see how well it plays out in the long run.
Copying is extremely important in education and is required to develop new industries in a country. Technology evolves through copying previous technology, recombining with new learning from other fields and from experimentation within the current field. Without copying there cannot be innovation. The more people participating in an economy where innovation through copying is rewarded, the greater our culture and the greater or technological evolution will be. Biology needs to take a lesson from Evolutionary economics.
Techdirt completely disagreed with this point of view. They argued that simply copying something or a part of something doesn't mean you're freeloading. You can add a great deal to something to the point that whatever you copied simply becomes a part of a larger whole.
Anyone should know from my writing that I support Techdirt's perspective. This comes from several several different arguments. The first is from the evolution of technology. If you ignore some of the human motivation behind the changing technology itself and focus on the selection process, you can see that technology changes through incremental adjustments. These changes are selected by the market or in primitive societies by the end result of an improvement. Spears that last longer, less energy expended on making new spears, spears that can be thrown farther, less danger from the animal being killed, or sharper shovels, less energy spent gathering food - more food. This selection process is a very natural process. Additionally, there would be some specialization of skills even at this point in our history. Some people would have been better at making spears and in a collaborative environment, because there were no patents and sharing was for the best of everyone, many people could experiment with new spear designs. This innovation while based on copying is a very real form of innovation that likely lead to gradual improvement over a great deal of time.
The second argument that supports innovation after copying is the argument of Cesar Hidalgo, which argues that looking at what countries are currently producing you can see a relationship with their innovative ability. By looking to see what technologies they import and export you're able to see how well they have developed scientifically and in the manufacturing world. For example you can expect to see more advanced products come out of a country if they got into producing fertilizer very early in modern times. This typically leads to a general chemical industry which can lead to pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Why? Well developing a strong base in chemistry with fertilizers can be expanded into drugs and as a base for semiconductors.
How do new countries move into these fields? Essentially, they have a knowledge transfer from a country that is already doing it. This can be done in two ways, one is the easy way: have a multinational company set up a manufacturing then R&D facility in your country. This allows a direct flow of knowledge on how to manufacture the material, which increases the rate of copying. Would allow the country to be a fast follower but will still require significant time for them to eventually innovate on that technology. Having an R&D facility would increase this rate, because local scientists would have already been trained on how to innovate in that field. They would have already been doing research in that industry and would more easily be able to innovate if a spin-off was created (or if the state nationalized that part of the multinational). The second manner is much slower: repatriating of knowledge workers. This is essentially what has happened in Taiwan and India. Educated Indians or Taiwanese returned from the US and created spin-offs and became professors at the local universities. This isn't always successful.
Saudi Arabia is trying to develop a third way, which is having some success. They are recruiting experts from around the world to develop their own universities and companies. This is having mixed results and education and industry needs to pay attention to these attempts to see how well it plays out in the long run.
Copying is extremely important in education and is required to develop new industries in a country. Technology evolves through copying previous technology, recombining with new learning from other fields and from experimentation within the current field. Without copying there cannot be innovation. The more people participating in an economy where innovation through copying is rewarded, the greater our culture and the greater or technological evolution will be. Biology needs to take a lesson from Evolutionary economics.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Facebook, IPO and valuing a company
This week we've been hearing about the debacle that was the Facebook IPO.Which has revealed that some of the underwriters for the IPO were doing shady things. Matt Taibbi believes that this indicates that there are essentially two markets. One for the insiders and one for the schumcks, the every day investors.
Why is this important? Well, based on the discussions I've read online, there's a lot of concern of the validity of the whole IPO process, the valuation methods of companies and how investors think of companies. The valuation of Facebook had a great deal of discussion before the final IPO price of $38/share, this was partially driven by two articles that came out. In the first one it was mentioned that GM was pulling it's account because "Facebook ads don't work." The other article of note relates that researchers found that 44% of Facebook users will NEVER click an ad. This research is important because some of the valuation is based on the conversion rates of ad views to ad clicks. On average Facebook was only able to earn around $4.34 per user. The valuation of $100 billion puts the life time earning potential per user at $100 (at 1 billion users). This is pretty low, but at the same time, if only 560 million users ever click ad, that pushes means the people that do click ads need to be earning Facebook roughly $200.
MIT Technology Review discusses how this is an unsustainable growth model for Facebook. Essentially, Facebook will begin to drive down the cost per view for their advertisers to try to increase their total revenue. This falls into the race to the bottom mentality that crushes industries. Advertisers will be able to say to any website, why should we pay you x amount per ad when we only pay Facebook y there is no way that you can get me more views than Facebook. The only way that a site could get more revenue if they can show data for a higher click through and conversion rates than Facebook. That might be tough. The Review article argues that this will eventually kill Facebook and a lot of the ad driven website business models.
The other aspect of the IPO is a difference in the way that business and technology media are reporting on Facebook. Things have shifted from all the non-business related activities to focusing solely on this aspect of Facebook. This will likely shift over time, but I believe that these considerations will be discussed in any article related to Facebook. If Facebook wants to remain a haven for activists it will be difficult if there are potential suits over people being activists. There will be an increase of risk aversion within the "owners" of the company as there will be influence from investors.
Zuckerberg has said that he plans on doing what is best for the long term and try to ignore the demands of investors. He might be able to do that because he still owns 57% of the voting rights for the company. However, it will be difficult for him to avoid the influence of the discourse of media outlets. Even if he gets all his news from his friends on Facebook, there will likely be articles posted that will give him news about the company and things that he probably won't want to read.
Essentially, discussions will shift from being about the risk of privacy for users to how changes to Facebook will impact investors bottom line. I don't think this is healthy for businesses, consumers of Facebook or the general public. There are other things companies do that are unrelated to investors that are important for society as a whole. The Facebook coverage really indicates that we don't look at businesses in a long term sustainable manner. We need to change this if we want to save capitalism.
Why is this important? Well, based on the discussions I've read online, there's a lot of concern of the validity of the whole IPO process, the valuation methods of companies and how investors think of companies. The valuation of Facebook had a great deal of discussion before the final IPO price of $38/share, this was partially driven by two articles that came out. In the first one it was mentioned that GM was pulling it's account because "Facebook ads don't work." The other article of note relates that researchers found that 44% of Facebook users will NEVER click an ad. This research is important because some of the valuation is based on the conversion rates of ad views to ad clicks. On average Facebook was only able to earn around $4.34 per user. The valuation of $100 billion puts the life time earning potential per user at $100 (at 1 billion users). This is pretty low, but at the same time, if only 560 million users ever click ad, that pushes means the people that do click ads need to be earning Facebook roughly $200.
MIT Technology Review discusses how this is an unsustainable growth model for Facebook. Essentially, Facebook will begin to drive down the cost per view for their advertisers to try to increase their total revenue. This falls into the race to the bottom mentality that crushes industries. Advertisers will be able to say to any website, why should we pay you x amount per ad when we only pay Facebook y there is no way that you can get me more views than Facebook. The only way that a site could get more revenue if they can show data for a higher click through and conversion rates than Facebook. That might be tough. The Review article argues that this will eventually kill Facebook and a lot of the ad driven website business models.
The other aspect of the IPO is a difference in the way that business and technology media are reporting on Facebook. Things have shifted from all the non-business related activities to focusing solely on this aspect of Facebook. This will likely shift over time, but I believe that these considerations will be discussed in any article related to Facebook. If Facebook wants to remain a haven for activists it will be difficult if there are potential suits over people being activists. There will be an increase of risk aversion within the "owners" of the company as there will be influence from investors.
Zuckerberg has said that he plans on doing what is best for the long term and try to ignore the demands of investors. He might be able to do that because he still owns 57% of the voting rights for the company. However, it will be difficult for him to avoid the influence of the discourse of media outlets. Even if he gets all his news from his friends on Facebook, there will likely be articles posted that will give him news about the company and things that he probably won't want to read.
Essentially, discussions will shift from being about the risk of privacy for users to how changes to Facebook will impact investors bottom line. I don't think this is healthy for businesses, consumers of Facebook or the general public. There are other things companies do that are unrelated to investors that are important for society as a whole. The Facebook coverage really indicates that we don't look at businesses in a long term sustainable manner. We need to change this if we want to save capitalism.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Continual improvement, Innovation and Modularity
I've been reading Internet Architecture and Innovation which has gotten me to think a great deal about system's architecture and innovation (shocking I know), but it has also gotten me to think about continual improvement as well. The perspective that Schewick takes for innovation in a system is actually based off of stock options. If you aren't aware there are two types of options. Each is used in a different circumstance to sell at a certain price or to buy at a certain price. This has been used in some innovation theories for a while it's called real options, or taking financial options and using them in a similar situation in real life. The differences is that it's a go/no go choice instead of buy/sell. In terms of innovation it would be a choice between pursuing a new innovation in a system or not. For example. Let's say you have a watch and you are trying to improve the time on the watch. Using the reals option approach you could figure out how much money you'd have to have for a return on your investment in the innovation, per watch, and figure out how many different types of crystals you would test to improve the timing mechanism. Another example could be a car, where you're trying to reduce the drag on the car, which could dramatically change the full shape of the car. Whereas with a watch you may only be changing the crystal.
Essentially, what this means is that you have two different ways of innovating within a system. Change the full system (car) or change a single module of the system (watch). Reducing the drag on a car could require a full system overall, because you'll be changing the size of the front end, which could impact the maximum size of the engine (or shape of the engine), or could impact the maximum headroom of the vehicle. So, you could have a radically different looking vehicle from model to model. In fact we can see this if we look at the evolution of the car (below). This change is extremely expensive and requires a huge amount of work. It's not likely that a company would pursue multiple designs beyond the drawing board or initial mockups. It would simply be too expensive to build multiple prototypes that are fully functional.
 |
| Evolution of Lamborghini |
With watches you could have the exact same watch with several different materials to ensure the watch keeps proper time. In terms of watches there have been several radical innovations, including the wristband and digital. However, if the watch is not digital, the changes in some parts of the watch are extremely easy to test and compare on the market. For instance many pocket watches use rubies to protect the metal pieces in a watch from rubbing against each other. In this case it's possible to test many different gems to protect the components, it's also extremely cheap and if something fails completely it would never move into production. However, you could test hundreds of types of gems (sizes or whatever), at a significantly lower cost than testing many different full system designs.
So what's the difference between the two? In this case we're changing a full system compared to a module within the full system. Of course changing the gear structure of a watch would require a full redesign, but there are many parts that can be changed independently. In many aspects this can happen with a car, but there are limitations as well.
This modularity allows designers to innovate on separate aspects of the product without decreasing the quality of the overall system. This same idea can be applied in other business settings in terms of rapid and continual improvement processes. Many business processes are systems that integrate many different groups and aspects. Splitting the system into modular components allows continual improvement on many different aspects of the system at the same time. This modularity decreases the cost of improving individual aspects of the system as well as allows for more improvement projects throughout the system.
Why would the costs be lower? Well, as I mentioned with the watch, it's cheaper to test different components for the gems, time keeping crystal and face glass than to test a change in drag for a car. The change in drag could require changes to the seat heights, new design for the windshields, possibly an entirely new chassis. In the case of reduced drag, if the design works you may have to redesign all these other components. In the case of the watch finding out that the new glass face doesn't work wouldn't impact which crystal works best. This reduces the costs for testing the improved system.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Evolution and Synthetics
An amazing scientific announcement has recently occurred, we have been able to show that synthetic DNA, XNA, is capable of evolving. This is interesting for several reasons. First, it's just more evidence of evolution, which should be a rather no brainer at this point. Second, it shows that there are other materials that can function similarly to DNA and RNA. Finally, we can make these structures and they will behave in a similar fashion to DNA and RNA.
If we can create something that evolves under stress, it indicates that evolution is still extremely robust. If this type of material did not evolve, it would have made scientists look at both that material itself and check a few things. First, would we expect this material to evolve. Second, if yes, why doesn't it evolve. If we are developing a material that is expected to mimic DNA/RNA, it is likely that we would expect it to evolve in a similar fashion. If it doesn't evolve, then this could have serious consequences. This would not disprove evolution, as DNA/RNA both evolve, it would indicate that either we have the wrong material or that only DNA/RNA can evolve. It would explain why only DNA/RNA have been found on earth and not any other type of xNA material.
Since this material can evolve it leads to interesting questions itself. Did evolution occur between DNA/RNA and other xNA's? Did the RNA/DNA combination beat out every other stain of xNA's? This would be interesting to understand. If RNA/DNA did evolve because it was better suited to Earth's early environment does that mean that our current environment still suits it best? Could we evolve completely new life forms based on these structures? Only time and more research will allow us to answer these questions. But we do know that these new strains could allow us to develop treatments and other solutions to biological problems.
One way we could answer these questions is if we discover alien life that is based off of non-RNA/DNA combination. This could be in the form of anything from bacteria to full blown organisms. At this point, it is more likely we'll find a bacteria life form based on another XNA than anything else as they are capable of surviving exposed space transportation, such as on an asteroid.
The fact that we're able to create XNA is an amazing accomplishment. It indicates that we understand biochemicals required for life to an extent that we are able to create new enzymes that mimic RNA/DNA. We also understand that the most important metric for this experiment is not the fact that we could make a stable XNA, but that it must evolve. A stable or static XNA would not be interesting as it would have no ability to adapt in an environment where there is competition. The ability to change as the conditions change is what separates RNA/DNA from other proteins and enzymes. Only the best combinations are able to change and develop over time.
I'm excited to see how these changes will impact us. I think there are some significant long term implications for this, but at this time I'm not sure what they are. The fact that we're capable of doing this is an incredible step.
If we can create something that evolves under stress, it indicates that evolution is still extremely robust. If this type of material did not evolve, it would have made scientists look at both that material itself and check a few things. First, would we expect this material to evolve. Second, if yes, why doesn't it evolve. If we are developing a material that is expected to mimic DNA/RNA, it is likely that we would expect it to evolve in a similar fashion. If it doesn't evolve, then this could have serious consequences. This would not disprove evolution, as DNA/RNA both evolve, it would indicate that either we have the wrong material or that only DNA/RNA can evolve. It would explain why only DNA/RNA have been found on earth and not any other type of xNA material.
Since this material can evolve it leads to interesting questions itself. Did evolution occur between DNA/RNA and other xNA's? Did the RNA/DNA combination beat out every other stain of xNA's? This would be interesting to understand. If RNA/DNA did evolve because it was better suited to Earth's early environment does that mean that our current environment still suits it best? Could we evolve completely new life forms based on these structures? Only time and more research will allow us to answer these questions. But we do know that these new strains could allow us to develop treatments and other solutions to biological problems.
One way we could answer these questions is if we discover alien life that is based off of non-RNA/DNA combination. This could be in the form of anything from bacteria to full blown organisms. At this point, it is more likely we'll find a bacteria life form based on another XNA than anything else as they are capable of surviving exposed space transportation, such as on an asteroid.
The fact that we're able to create XNA is an amazing accomplishment. It indicates that we understand biochemicals required for life to an extent that we are able to create new enzymes that mimic RNA/DNA. We also understand that the most important metric for this experiment is not the fact that we could make a stable XNA, but that it must evolve. A stable or static XNA would not be interesting as it would have no ability to adapt in an environment where there is competition. The ability to change as the conditions change is what separates RNA/DNA from other proteins and enzymes. Only the best combinations are able to change and develop over time.
I'm excited to see how these changes will impact us. I think there are some significant long term implications for this, but at this time I'm not sure what they are. The fact that we're capable of doing this is an incredible step.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Book Review: Idea Factory, the history of Bell Labs
Yea, I know I've just been doing book reviews.
This book was amazing. I had no idea of all the different things that Bell Labs produced from the mid 1920's until the 1970's and later. The book focused on the high point of Bell Labs innovation run. It followed the career of several, at the time, famous and prominent scientists that were employed at Bell Labs. Please such as Mervin Kelley (vastly improve the vacuum tube and was a long running director, VP and President of the Labs), William Shockley (inventor of the transistor) Brattian (inventor of a different kind of transistor), Claude Shannon (inventor of the field of Information Science), John Pierce (inventor of passive and active satellite). These there were many others, however, they each had significant impacts on how our modern society works.
The book does an excellent job in explaining some of the basics of how the research was conducted, what work needed to be done to make it work on an experimental level, the method of transferring the invention into innovation or a full product and the goal of each of these inventions. Mervin Kelley was famous for saying that to implement a change in AT&T's network the new technology must be "better or cheaper or both." This prevented a great deal of frivolous technologies from being implemented into the telephone network. Additionally, this was required to ensure that AT&T was always able to work towards reducing rates for subscribers as they were a "natural" monopoly.
This was a time when research was done to ensure that the network would be operational for 30 years without malfunction. This required huge investments in quality control and required that additional costs were built into the network for redundancies and protection. In fact Statistical Process Control was invented at Bell Labs to ensure proper quality.
How did all of this work? Well, there were two factors going on here. First, Bell Labs was able to hire the best and brightest to work on interesting problems. Second, the scientists had a continually evolving project that always needed more innovation. These two combined with a freedom to explore allowed the scientists to delve into basic and applied research. In some cases they did not know how or why something would work, but felt that it would improve the quality of the telephone network.
One of the goals of AT&T was to create a coast to coast network with universal service. This required the company to figure out how to address signal decay due to distances over several miles. To address this the company developed the vacuum tube repeater, which significantly increased the distance a voice call could travel. The manufacturing of a tube was extremely difficult and expensive. Bell Labs felt that there had to be a different way to create a repeater. Over the next 20 years they investigated off and on (with a break for WWII) how to make semiconductors work as a repeater. Bell Labs was capable of making this sort of investment because it had a guaranteed revenue stream and a mandate to continually improve the network. These two together allowed the Labs to do work that they otherwise would not have been able to investigate.
This is a very different model for innovation than we currently have in any organization. Universities come close, but they fall short in the fact that the professors are continually required to apply for more money and seek permission from someone to pursue their work. Bell Labs was much more relaxed about this.
This innovation method is also very different than some of the historic events in the US, such as the Manhattan Project or the Moon Landing. Those were single goals which allowed the focus of a great group of minds.There was never any intention of keeping those minds together for the next big project. Bell Labs had the ability to do this.
There are some organizations that should be able to do something like this. The National Labs are one, but there's no direct business need so even this doesn't exactly work. An organization like TNO in the Netherlands, which focuses more on practical matters could increase the amount of basic research they conduct in various different areas. TNO is structured differently than the National Labs in the US, because they are expected to work closely with both industry and universities. This gives each of the groups a strong business focus and could serve as a pipeline from basic research into business activities for the companies that work with TNO. However, at this point TNO does not perform these activities.
I give this book a 4.5/5. It was extremely well written, well organized and dealt with some amazing subject matters.
This book was amazing. I had no idea of all the different things that Bell Labs produced from the mid 1920's until the 1970's and later. The book focused on the high point of Bell Labs innovation run. It followed the career of several, at the time, famous and prominent scientists that were employed at Bell Labs. Please such as Mervin Kelley (vastly improve the vacuum tube and was a long running director, VP and President of the Labs), William Shockley (inventor of the transistor) Brattian (inventor of a different kind of transistor), Claude Shannon (inventor of the field of Information Science), John Pierce (inventor of passive and active satellite). These there were many others, however, they each had significant impacts on how our modern society works.
The book does an excellent job in explaining some of the basics of how the research was conducted, what work needed to be done to make it work on an experimental level, the method of transferring the invention into innovation or a full product and the goal of each of these inventions. Mervin Kelley was famous for saying that to implement a change in AT&T's network the new technology must be "better or cheaper or both." This prevented a great deal of frivolous technologies from being implemented into the telephone network. Additionally, this was required to ensure that AT&T was always able to work towards reducing rates for subscribers as they were a "natural" monopoly.
This was a time when research was done to ensure that the network would be operational for 30 years without malfunction. This required huge investments in quality control and required that additional costs were built into the network for redundancies and protection. In fact Statistical Process Control was invented at Bell Labs to ensure proper quality.
How did all of this work? Well, there were two factors going on here. First, Bell Labs was able to hire the best and brightest to work on interesting problems. Second, the scientists had a continually evolving project that always needed more innovation. These two combined with a freedom to explore allowed the scientists to delve into basic and applied research. In some cases they did not know how or why something would work, but felt that it would improve the quality of the telephone network.
One of the goals of AT&T was to create a coast to coast network with universal service. This required the company to figure out how to address signal decay due to distances over several miles. To address this the company developed the vacuum tube repeater, which significantly increased the distance a voice call could travel. The manufacturing of a tube was extremely difficult and expensive. Bell Labs felt that there had to be a different way to create a repeater. Over the next 20 years they investigated off and on (with a break for WWII) how to make semiconductors work as a repeater. Bell Labs was capable of making this sort of investment because it had a guaranteed revenue stream and a mandate to continually improve the network. These two together allowed the Labs to do work that they otherwise would not have been able to investigate.
This is a very different model for innovation than we currently have in any organization. Universities come close, but they fall short in the fact that the professors are continually required to apply for more money and seek permission from someone to pursue their work. Bell Labs was much more relaxed about this.
This innovation method is also very different than some of the historic events in the US, such as the Manhattan Project or the Moon Landing. Those were single goals which allowed the focus of a great group of minds.There was never any intention of keeping those minds together for the next big project. Bell Labs had the ability to do this.
There are some organizations that should be able to do something like this. The National Labs are one, but there's no direct business need so even this doesn't exactly work. An organization like TNO in the Netherlands, which focuses more on practical matters could increase the amount of basic research they conduct in various different areas. TNO is structured differently than the National Labs in the US, because they are expected to work closely with both industry and universities. This gives each of the groups a strong business focus and could serve as a pipeline from basic research into business activities for the companies that work with TNO. However, at this point TNO does not perform these activities.
I give this book a 4.5/5. It was extremely well written, well organized and dealt with some amazing subject matters.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Content and implicit threats
I'm reading "consent of the Networked" right now. The book is about digital rights, privacy, government and the internet. Once i finish I will write a review for the Urban Times. I found out about the book through TechDirt's book club. One of the major points the author makes about repressive regimes is the activities of pronationalist actors that are not truly part of the government.
These actors are typically regular people and act as hackers, journalists or progovernment rally organizers. They are found in many countries including China, Iran, the former regime of Tunisia and Libya. In a way these groups are a counter weight to "organizations" like Anonymous, dissent groups and the "liberal" media. However, these organizations are unlikely in the US and Europe right?
Well according to the author now. These groups do exist in the US and in some cases are formal business like HBGary. Some of them actually work for the US government and others do with a wink and a nod. These groups help monitor internet users and potential members of groups like Anon. In many cases this extends the impression of continual  observation by the government and other actors, which can lead to self censorship and self selection for activities.
Has this happened to me? You bet it has, but I didn't really think much of it at the time or how it could really impact me. One of the times happened during a Facebook conversation about Wikileaks, which I was supporting. The person I was discussing doesn't like me much and thinks I'm "a rube." He suggested that I should get a job which requires security clearance so I would get an understanding of how things actually work and that I was niave. Of course I disagree with the fact that I'm niave and I view the world in a much more complex manner than his black and white view. However, I had been thinking of applying to a government type position and he told me I should be careful what I say, which he is correct. This then led me to rein in my views and self censor. This had serious implications on how I discussed topics for some time.
The other times are slightly different and after I started blogging. For one my brother is in the Boarder Patrol which gives him clearance and my sister does stuff she can't talk about. So, to some extent, I don't want to negatively impact their ability to work either. This does have a moderating affect as well.
The final source was actually my dad writing to me about my post about anonymous and my discussion of using DDoS as potentially a source of public demonstration on the internet. I was not surprised that he suggested I be careful, he did retire as a Major in the Army Reserves. However, when responding I told him I was already being careful with my wording due to self censorship. I already expect that I'm likely to have my material spring up on someone's radar due to the content I write about. So, I do try to be careful.
In a democracy where these threats should be minimized we have to worry about it. Why should the rest of the world be different or any less oppressive?
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Can technology Save us? A wrap up
In my last three posts I've asked the question if technology can save us from many of our own problems. I've discussed several technologies for each topic, water, energy and food. These technologies are not all of the ones out there by any stretch of the imagination. These are the technologies I'm aware of at this point. I wouldn't say I've done an exhaustive search for technologies either. I hope to have made it obvious that technology alone cannot save us. We need to make a concerted effort to change the status quo and that won't be easy to do.
We have some major problems adopting new technologies. First, we have incumbents interests that have no desire to see the current energy regime change. We have problems of ownership of technical problems. Why should the US invent new ways to extract water when Mexico is the country that will suffer? How do we know that a given technology is going to be the best, or even good enough for our needs? What happens if all our best efforts turn out to actually make things worse?
These aren't easy questions to answer. We have to make a choice as a society to decide what constitutes a good investment for research. In one Urban Time article I posit that the EU can over take the US in terms of scientific research in the upcoming decades. This should terrify people. This is what has driven the US economy since the 40's and to some extent earlier. The shifts in capitalism have driven our company goals toward shorter and shorter returns on investments and less visionary goals. The ability to experiment in companies and use government funds to experiment with deploying new energy systems has floundered.
This should be cause for concern. We've seen the result of poorly managed technology in the past few years. Simple things like a software glitch that caused Toyota's to accelerate out of control, flash crashes on the stock markets from high frequency traders and other complex systems like Fukashima. We don't always have proper controls designed into our technologies to protect us from it.
Personally, I'm optimistic about the future of technology and what it can do for us. However, there are plenty of Sci-fi authors out there that are very pessimistic. I love reading the dystopian future and post-apocalyptic books as much (or more) than anyone and we need to realize that without requiring proper controls on our technology and production of our material goods these results could happen.
Technology alone cannot save us from ourselves. We may be able to use technology as a tool to fix problems we've created, but we have to do the dirty work. Technology doesn't design and make itself (yet).
We have some major problems adopting new technologies. First, we have incumbents interests that have no desire to see the current energy regime change. We have problems of ownership of technical problems. Why should the US invent new ways to extract water when Mexico is the country that will suffer? How do we know that a given technology is going to be the best, or even good enough for our needs? What happens if all our best efforts turn out to actually make things worse?
These aren't easy questions to answer. We have to make a choice as a society to decide what constitutes a good investment for research. In one Urban Time article I posit that the EU can over take the US in terms of scientific research in the upcoming decades. This should terrify people. This is what has driven the US economy since the 40's and to some extent earlier. The shifts in capitalism have driven our company goals toward shorter and shorter returns on investments and less visionary goals. The ability to experiment in companies and use government funds to experiment with deploying new energy systems has floundered.
This should be cause for concern. We've seen the result of poorly managed technology in the past few years. Simple things like a software glitch that caused Toyota's to accelerate out of control, flash crashes on the stock markets from high frequency traders and other complex systems like Fukashima. We don't always have proper controls designed into our technologies to protect us from it.
Personally, I'm optimistic about the future of technology and what it can do for us. However, there are plenty of Sci-fi authors out there that are very pessimistic. I love reading the dystopian future and post-apocalyptic books as much (or more) than anyone and we need to realize that without requiring proper controls on our technology and production of our material goods these results could happen.
Technology alone cannot save us from ourselves. We may be able to use technology as a tool to fix problems we've created, but we have to do the dirty work. Technology doesn't design and make itself (yet).
Monday, March 26, 2012
Can technology save us: Food production?
In 1768 Thomas Malthus wrote the Principles of Population, which posited that eventually all populations are held in check by disease and famine. This theory argues that any population that grows to sufficient size will outstrip the resources in that the population requires, which will result in famine disease and population crash. While, this is likely true in a Darwinian sense (he used this as to help develop the theory of evolution) it is not true for populations that are able to innovate and provide additional food resources.
Innovation allows the human population to develop new techniques for providing additional food in the same area of space. In some ways this happens through domesticating crops such as corn or bananas and increasing the size of the produce until it hardly looks like the wild version of the produce, which can be seen below for the banana. For a fruit that is roughly the same size an individual will receive a great deal more energy than with the wild fruit.
Obviously bigger fruits and vegetables aren't the only product that we've seen increase in density of calories. Cattle are being breed to be larger and provide more meat on a single cow. In the extreme case, the Belgian Blue, they are so large they are unable to reproduce without human assistance and are taller than most cattle at the shoulder.
In many cases our cattle, pigs and chickens are being raised in some pretty terrible living conditions. These living conditions cause pollution of our land, cause diseases and can be smelled for hundreds of miles away from the farm. The production of the meat isn't healthy for the animals nor for the people that live near them. However, for most people it's out of sight out of mind, or they can't afford to pay the market for humanely raised animals (grass fed beef or free range chickens).
In the US there's child hunger, but there is famine in other parts of the world. Part of this is due to poverty, water shortages or powerful people withholding the food that is available. What technologies are out there that may be able to address some of these problems?
One of the most interesting me to me is Lab Grown Meat. This would remove the requirement of using killing animals to provide the meat and proteins we need to survive. Currently, these meats don't taste all that great and most people would likely be against eating it. However, it could actually lead to a lot of other benefits. For one, if we are able to get cow meat to taste right, that means that we have the muscle and fat ratio correct. This could also allow us to use the same method to rebuild muscle mass for people who have been injured. Other benefits for people with special diets, like vegetarian or vegan, may be able to eat the meats because they aren't coming from animals.
Labs devoted to growing animal meat would reduce the amount of corn and grains going to cattle and would increase the general supply of these foodstuffs. Additionally, the area required to grow animal meat would be a lot smaller than that to raise a herd of cattle. We won't be able to replace every source of meat with this, but it is likely that it could replace a lot of it.
Another interesting idea is called the Vertical Farm Project. Instead of a farm taking up huge tracts of land, the farm could be contained in a single structure. It could take the idea of local to the extreme. There could be different floors for each type of crops and the crops could be grown using hydroponics or in a more traditional method if desired. These towers are planned to help power themselves through wind and solar power collectors. The crops would receive both artificial and natural sunlight through large windows and UV lights.
It is also likely that aside from simply providing crops the lower levels could also be used to house a version of grass fed cattle. The number of cows in the herd would have to be very small, but the manure could provide the nutrients some of the crops require. Additionally, since the air would be filtered it would reduce the impact of the smell of the cattle in the surrounding areas. The air circulation equipment could also filter out methane that the cows release and use that as an additional power source by burning it. The idea of a vertical farm like that would essentially ensure that all the material within the farm would be reused and maximize the sustainability of the farm.
At this point these ideas aren't yet proven to work. It is going to be some time before these technologies are going to be fully workable and deployed to the general public. They could work in both the developed world and the developing. The vertical farm could seriously help the sub Sahara countries in Africa as it is likely that a vertical farm like that would be able to provide crops that normally would not grow outside of the farm. Additionally, the vertical farm could have a water collector on the top and use sun light to convert ocean water into drinkable water through a evaporation and collection.
Innovation allows the human population to develop new techniques for providing additional food in the same area of space. In some ways this happens through domesticating crops such as corn or bananas and increasing the size of the produce until it hardly looks like the wild version of the produce, which can be seen below for the banana. For a fruit that is roughly the same size an individual will receive a great deal more energy than with the wild fruit.
 |
| Source: Wikimedia |
In many cases our cattle, pigs and chickens are being raised in some pretty terrible living conditions. These living conditions cause pollution of our land, cause diseases and can be smelled for hundreds of miles away from the farm. The production of the meat isn't healthy for the animals nor for the people that live near them. However, for most people it's out of sight out of mind, or they can't afford to pay the market for humanely raised animals (grass fed beef or free range chickens).
In the US there's child hunger, but there is famine in other parts of the world. Part of this is due to poverty, water shortages or powerful people withholding the food that is available. What technologies are out there that may be able to address some of these problems?
One of the most interesting me to me is Lab Grown Meat. This would remove the requirement of using killing animals to provide the meat and proteins we need to survive. Currently, these meats don't taste all that great and most people would likely be against eating it. However, it could actually lead to a lot of other benefits. For one, if we are able to get cow meat to taste right, that means that we have the muscle and fat ratio correct. This could also allow us to use the same method to rebuild muscle mass for people who have been injured. Other benefits for people with special diets, like vegetarian or vegan, may be able to eat the meats because they aren't coming from animals.
Labs devoted to growing animal meat would reduce the amount of corn and grains going to cattle and would increase the general supply of these foodstuffs. Additionally, the area required to grow animal meat would be a lot smaller than that to raise a herd of cattle. We won't be able to replace every source of meat with this, but it is likely that it could replace a lot of it.
Another interesting idea is called the Vertical Farm Project. Instead of a farm taking up huge tracts of land, the farm could be contained in a single structure. It could take the idea of local to the extreme. There could be different floors for each type of crops and the crops could be grown using hydroponics or in a more traditional method if desired. These towers are planned to help power themselves through wind and solar power collectors. The crops would receive both artificial and natural sunlight through large windows and UV lights.
It is also likely that aside from simply providing crops the lower levels could also be used to house a version of grass fed cattle. The number of cows in the herd would have to be very small, but the manure could provide the nutrients some of the crops require. Additionally, since the air would be filtered it would reduce the impact of the smell of the cattle in the surrounding areas. The air circulation equipment could also filter out methane that the cows release and use that as an additional power source by burning it. The idea of a vertical farm like that would essentially ensure that all the material within the farm would be reused and maximize the sustainability of the farm.
At this point these ideas aren't yet proven to work. It is going to be some time before these technologies are going to be fully workable and deployed to the general public. They could work in both the developed world and the developing. The vertical farm could seriously help the sub Sahara countries in Africa as it is likely that a vertical farm like that would be able to provide crops that normally would not grow outside of the farm. Additionally, the vertical farm could have a water collector on the top and use sun light to convert ocean water into drinkable water through a evaporation and collection.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Can technology save us from Water problems?
In my last post I decided I was going to write a series about technological fixes that will have major ramifications on issues that result in social problems. In this post I'm going to discuss some problems with water uses and some technological solutions that may be able to fix them.
We are seeing water issues all over the world where there simply isn't enough access to fresh drinkable water. Last summer there was a horrible drought in Texas which caused wild fires to burn only 30 miles or so away from Austin. The area is still technically in a drought, although there is a glimmer of hope because there has been a decent amount of rain so far this spring.
In the US southwest there are serious disputes over water rights to the Colorado river. This dispute isn't just between Arizona and California but also between California and Mexico. Because of the population growth in those areas if left unchecked it would be likely that the Colorado would never reach the Pacific Ocean and there would be no water to reach Mexico.
In the developing world, a major problem is clean drinking water. Water that isn't clean carries a great deal of diseases and as we saw in Haiti only a few years ago can lead to large number of deaths. However, there's a difference between the dispute over access to water in the US and Mexico and access to water in the developing world. It is more likely to cause wars and civil unrest.
There seem to be two major causes for water issues that we're having. The first is pretty obvious, overpopulation in areas where water is already scarce. It's been shown that the lower level of education and higher level of poverty leads to higher birth rates. In places that are already under stress a continually growing population makes things worse. However, in the US the cause is migration to these areas, such as Phoenix, San Diego and Austin. The second factor is climate change. With less snow fall on mountain ranges and shorter winters there is less water to flow in rivers that are caused primarily by snow melt. This change over time will lead to new areas that will be under water stress in the future.
There are some technologies that can alleviate the problems. One of them is desalination, which removes salt from water. This would allow cities near the coast to use the ocean as a source of water. The process requires the water to be boiled and moved into several different chambers for evaporation. The process produces extremely high salt concentrations in the remaining water. Most of which is pumped back into the ocean in the same area as the water is extracted. This continually increases the salinity in the area and can cause problems for the local flora and fauna.
This method provides clean drinkable water however, it is extremely expensive and the price of the water is extremely high. This makes it unlikely for the water to be affordable for the developing world and the developed world likely won't want to pay for the advancement of the technology. In addition to this, it's been suggested that nuclear energy be used to power the desalination plants. However, this has additional risks in war torn regions in the developing world. These plants may be attacked in an attempt to procure the nuclear material within to make weapons.
However, desalination seems to be the most likely method of alleviating water problems. If the technique was improved to the point that enough water could be piped to different parts of water stressed regions it could improve conditions in those areas and improve the amount of crops that were produced annually. This would reduce starvation and improve the general living conditions in those areas.
Unfortunately, this will take time and will need support from national level governments, supranational agencies like the UN and EU, local governments and research labs. However, in the current state of affairs governments do not seem to be in any sort of position to actually invest in this technology. The explanation of climate change would not be received well in the US as the vast majority of the Republicans believe that it is a hoax.
Instead of framing the discussion in terms of climate change the discussion needs to be framed in terms of the populations of large cities like San Diego and Phoenix. They need to be framed in terms of foreign policy. The issue between the US and Mexico is a perfect example of that. Improving the ability to desalinate water in the US will ensure that the US is able to use less and less of the Colorado and allow Mexico to use more of the water. Water should be considered a "tragedy of the commons" as it is easy for each member using the water source to use just a bit more until there's none left for anyone else. A solution to a tragedy of the commons is to create a continually growing commons.
California, Mexico and Arizona should work together to create a consortia to develop the technology. Creating new systems to power the desalination plant would be useful. It's expensive to power the plants, but if it is powered through a combination of solar energy, wind and nuclear the price will drop and water will be more plentiful.
We are seeing water issues all over the world where there simply isn't enough access to fresh drinkable water. Last summer there was a horrible drought in Texas which caused wild fires to burn only 30 miles or so away from Austin. The area is still technically in a drought, although there is a glimmer of hope because there has been a decent amount of rain so far this spring.
In the US southwest there are serious disputes over water rights to the Colorado river. This dispute isn't just between Arizona and California but also between California and Mexico. Because of the population growth in those areas if left unchecked it would be likely that the Colorado would never reach the Pacific Ocean and there would be no water to reach Mexico.
In the developing world, a major problem is clean drinking water. Water that isn't clean carries a great deal of diseases and as we saw in Haiti only a few years ago can lead to large number of deaths. However, there's a difference between the dispute over access to water in the US and Mexico and access to water in the developing world. It is more likely to cause wars and civil unrest.
There seem to be two major causes for water issues that we're having. The first is pretty obvious, overpopulation in areas where water is already scarce. It's been shown that the lower level of education and higher level of poverty leads to higher birth rates. In places that are already under stress a continually growing population makes things worse. However, in the US the cause is migration to these areas, such as Phoenix, San Diego and Austin. The second factor is climate change. With less snow fall on mountain ranges and shorter winters there is less water to flow in rivers that are caused primarily by snow melt. This change over time will lead to new areas that will be under water stress in the future.
There are some technologies that can alleviate the problems. One of them is desalination, which removes salt from water. This would allow cities near the coast to use the ocean as a source of water. The process requires the water to be boiled and moved into several different chambers for evaporation. The process produces extremely high salt concentrations in the remaining water. Most of which is pumped back into the ocean in the same area as the water is extracted. This continually increases the salinity in the area and can cause problems for the local flora and fauna.
This method provides clean drinkable water however, it is extremely expensive and the price of the water is extremely high. This makes it unlikely for the water to be affordable for the developing world and the developed world likely won't want to pay for the advancement of the technology. In addition to this, it's been suggested that nuclear energy be used to power the desalination plants. However, this has additional risks in war torn regions in the developing world. These plants may be attacked in an attempt to procure the nuclear material within to make weapons.
However, desalination seems to be the most likely method of alleviating water problems. If the technique was improved to the point that enough water could be piped to different parts of water stressed regions it could improve conditions in those areas and improve the amount of crops that were produced annually. This would reduce starvation and improve the general living conditions in those areas.
Unfortunately, this will take time and will need support from national level governments, supranational agencies like the UN and EU, local governments and research labs. However, in the current state of affairs governments do not seem to be in any sort of position to actually invest in this technology. The explanation of climate change would not be received well in the US as the vast majority of the Republicans believe that it is a hoax.
Instead of framing the discussion in terms of climate change the discussion needs to be framed in terms of the populations of large cities like San Diego and Phoenix. They need to be framed in terms of foreign policy. The issue between the US and Mexico is a perfect example of that. Improving the ability to desalinate water in the US will ensure that the US is able to use less and less of the Colorado and allow Mexico to use more of the water. Water should be considered a "tragedy of the commons" as it is easy for each member using the water source to use just a bit more until there's none left for anyone else. A solution to a tragedy of the commons is to create a continually growing commons.
California, Mexico and Arizona should work together to create a consortia to develop the technology. Creating new systems to power the desalination plant would be useful. It's expensive to power the plants, but if it is powered through a combination of solar energy, wind and nuclear the price will drop and water will be more plentiful.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Can technology save us?
We live in a time where technology is everywhere. Most people cannot survive without their cell phone these days. We look for technological solutions to nearly all our problems. We look to address behavioral problems with medicine and we used to use techniques like frontal lobotomies and shock therapy to address extremely disturbed persons or criminals. However, in many cases these are not the correct remedy. In many cases simply understanding what is causing a child with behavioral problems can alleviate them without actually need to resort to extreme measures such as medicine, which likely will not fix the root cause of the problem and are merely band aid remedies to the symptoms.
In other cases we use technology to solve problems that technology created, such as pollution. We are developing tools like Carbon Sequestering which is intended to capture carbon from the atmosphere and then store it underground. However, even though this seems like a fantastic solution, there are serious difficulties with applying a purely engineering based solution. A lot of people are deeply concerned about the impact of captured carbon sequestering on their property value or health of residents living in the area.
In my next few blog posts I plan to explore different challenges facing the world in the next few years or decades and discuss some potential socio-technical solutions to the problems. Technology alone cannot save us from ourselves. There needs to be a combination of education, choice of technologies applied and open discussion and inclusion to affect real change.
Each of the posts that will be in this series will discuss different topics and I'm going to focus on three major technology fields that will have a huge impact in the future development of our society. The first I'm going to look at is water. Water is important because in arid regions it's in very short supply. There is a huge demand in regions like the US southwest and of course many areas within Africa.
The second will be energy. This of course is a very contested technology field. There are many different competing technologies for the next big energy source. It's under debate whether we've reached peak oil or not, if nuclear power is safe and if we should actually shut down coal plants.
The final technology will be food production. There's a big debate over the humanness of slaughtering animals and the environmental impact of large pig farms. In many areas of the world there are shortages of food supplies. In much of Africa there is brutal starvation, there is starvation in the US and developing the right technologies to can alleviate the problems.
I hope to put forth different ranges of technologies that will solve these problems as well as potential social arguments that will make the changes easier to implement.
In other cases we use technology to solve problems that technology created, such as pollution. We are developing tools like Carbon Sequestering which is intended to capture carbon from the atmosphere and then store it underground. However, even though this seems like a fantastic solution, there are serious difficulties with applying a purely engineering based solution. A lot of people are deeply concerned about the impact of captured carbon sequestering on their property value or health of residents living in the area.
In my next few blog posts I plan to explore different challenges facing the world in the next few years or decades and discuss some potential socio-technical solutions to the problems. Technology alone cannot save us from ourselves. There needs to be a combination of education, choice of technologies applied and open discussion and inclusion to affect real change.
Each of the posts that will be in this series will discuss different topics and I'm going to focus on three major technology fields that will have a huge impact in the future development of our society. The first I'm going to look at is water. Water is important because in arid regions it's in very short supply. There is a huge demand in regions like the US southwest and of course many areas within Africa.
The second will be energy. This of course is a very contested technology field. There are many different competing technologies for the next big energy source. It's under debate whether we've reached peak oil or not, if nuclear power is safe and if we should actually shut down coal plants.
The final technology will be food production. There's a big debate over the humanness of slaughtering animals and the environmental impact of large pig farms. In many areas of the world there are shortages of food supplies. In much of Africa there is brutal starvation, there is starvation in the US and developing the right technologies to can alleviate the problems.
I hope to put forth different ranges of technologies that will solve these problems as well as potential social arguments that will make the changes easier to implement.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Biting the hands that feeds it
Yesterday I read an article which explained that a Republican Congressman berated the head of the National Science Foundation for high gas prices. This is pretty distressing because it shows a clear lack of understanding of the goals of the NSF, the role of industry in innovation, consumers and the policies the Republican party and the US government has in place in regard to fuel usage.
First of all, the NSF is an organization that funds cutting edge research that expands the frontier of science. The goal is not to pick winners at that early of a stage. Picking a technology specifically to reduce the cost of fuel would be that. The goal is to pick the best ideas in a broad range of topics and fund several ideas within the same topic to get competing technologies and research groups. They groups can look at the same problem with a different perspective and lead to very different results, which together could lead to a huge break through (if they each don't get their own break through or the same one). The goal is to create variety. I'm sure there are tons of projects that are focused on creating alternative fuels and increasing the efficiency of our combustion engines. However, the research isn't going to be commercializable for 10 to 15 years. That's just how long it takes. The research we're funding today will be driving our economy through the next decade.
If the Congressman wants a better target to go after, he should look to the car companies. There has been research for a large number of years on engine technology, however not all of it has been used to actually improve efficiency. Some times it's used to increase the power of the vehicle. They do this because that's what the consumer wants. Americans love their big powerful cars. There's no reason why my mother in-law NEEDS to drive the extended Tahoe, but she does - she feels safer in her "Battle wagon." However, the vehicle gets very low gas mileage, which of course is a double whammy when the prices increase. Huge tank and high prices make it expensive. The more gas the vehicle uses the higher the prices will be going. In Europe the gas prices Americans are complaining about are absurdly low. In the Netherlands it's something like $8/gallon, around $3 of that is in taxes. However, in those countries there are much more fuel efficient vehicles because they have to be. Many of those countries don't really want people to be driving.
The same car manufacturers that complain about putting minimum fuel economy standards on cars are able to meet higher standards in Europe. The US government could easily play a role in increasing the standards for new vehicles. They may not be doing enough. Continually increasing the standards with higher gas prices will increase the incentives for manufacturing those vehicles. Especially if the US government provides a customer for those cars. This would ensure that the car companies will be able to sell a minimum number of the vehicles without fear of a complete flop of the technology.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Entitlement for copyright owners
Business Insider had an article today about Reddit's FIA. In my article in the Urban Times last week I addressed some of these issues before he wrote this article. However, he raises points that I don't mention there and I feel that it's extremely important to discuss them.
First he says that the law would make the internet "Hugely Difficult to monitor." This raises a few questions. What does he mean by the internet? I helped define that in FIA, which I defined it as any data network including the web, social networks, FTP, peer to peer, email and a slew of other things. If he means this; then do we want the web to be easy to monitor? He trots out the case against it as child pornography of course, which I addressed in my Urban Times article. It's a powerful argument because it hits upon two competing sets of social norms, rights of privacy and abhorrence to child abuse.
The use of child porn is a technique that is designed to end the conversation and shut down dissent. It places supporters of privacy in a position that is not congruent with their belief system. Additionally, the connection between copyright and child porn mixes different issues and seriously different belief systems. This difference is extremely important as there have become two different competing sets of norms. The incumbent belief that copyright is stealing, and the one new that has been developed by Web Kids.I strongly suggest reading the previous link as it provides powerful arguments for the changing sets of norms that my generation and younger entail. (I'd be on the rather old side of that generation).
Using a somewhat bad analogy, we're using the "internet superhighway" and like the real highway people don't want everyone driving by to know what you have in your car. Even if you aren't doing anything illegal, do you want the cops to know that you have 5 cases of beer in the back and are going to be floating down a river all day? Probably not, cause they have no reason to know what you're doing. Now, our data is similar to those cases of beer. Using encryption puts that into the back of the trunk where a cop is required to have justifiable cause (in the US) to inspect it's contents. The person looking at the data would know the general direction your going and some of the ways you're getting there, but nothing more. Yes, it makes it more difficult to identify bad stuff, but it's difficult to do that on a real highway too. Just ask boarder patrol, and they have the right to inspect whatever they want.
Second, he essentially argues that copyright owners should have their content monitored by others. This is a huge subsidy for the copyright industry that will be paid for by other services. I'm going to use a physical world comparison, it doesn't work perfectly but it works reasonably well. Let's say that YouTube is similar to a Wal-Mart, or even Amazon.com. The author is arguing that YouTube needs to monitor as soon as the video is put on the web to ensure it is not infringing on copyrighted material. This would be similar to requiring Wal-Mart or Amazon.com to search for patent infringing technologies.
Why does this analogy work? In both cases these rights are state sanctioned monopolies. In both cases they are protecting a manifestation of an idea. Something that needs protection because it is extremely easy to protect. However, in Patent suits things are extremely different. The owners of the patent are required to sue companies that infringe on the patent. Wal-Mart and Amazon.com are both protected from the suit.
If Apple was allowed to sue Wal-Mart for the fact that an infringing technology is being sold there, Wal-Mart would have to bear the cost of policing their inventories for infringing material. In addition it would be in their benefit to be overly caution and remove potentially infringing products before anyone can see them. Part of the cost of owning a patent is the cost of policing products that may be infringing. By removing that burden from the copyright industry we are reducing the cost of the ownership of copyright and placing it on services like YouTube. This stifles innovation in services like YouTube because they have to include the extra cost of policy copyrighted material. A competitor to YouTube has a huge hurdle to overcome before they can even open.
Finally, he argues that the bill supports file sharing. I don't think that it does other than being based off of a different set of norms. I'd argue that the bill supports innovation over old business models. You can disagree with me on this, however it's been shown in several studies and some anecdotal evidence that increasing legal access to copyrighted content reduces pirating. If it is easier for a company to create interesting ways to provide access to content while paying the copyright industry then everyone wins. However, as Falkvinge puts it, "I don't care about industry profits." Realistically, I don't care about most companies profits, because I'm only dealing with the company to buy a product or service I want at a price that I believe is reasonable. If all the legal sources that are available to me to watch a show or listen to a song when a person wants to, it is not unreasonable for them to look for it elsewhere and then try to find it legally later if they liked it.
If the company is making bad choices for their business, why should the law change to improve their business model's chances of surviving? Anyone that supports free market capitalism should be horrified by this sort of industrial policy making. Essentially, these companies are being faced with disruptive technologies and working to push the government to protect them. It's similar to what has happened with the auto industry in the US.
In closing, FIA represents a dramatic change from the current norms and aligns more directly with a younger generation. This generation does not understand why companies prevent them from viewing content that they want to see. While being an open generation on Facebook, they also understand the importance of protecting the data that has been given to companies. They choose what information they share and with whom. They want an open internet so they have the ability to innovate like their parents generation. They believe that it should be a fundamental human right to have access to data and communicate with whoever they want. An industry that is not innovating should not have the ability to destroy the internet.
First he says that the law would make the internet "Hugely Difficult to monitor." This raises a few questions. What does he mean by the internet? I helped define that in FIA, which I defined it as any data network including the web, social networks, FTP, peer to peer, email and a slew of other things. If he means this; then do we want the web to be easy to monitor? He trots out the case against it as child pornography of course, which I addressed in my Urban Times article. It's a powerful argument because it hits upon two competing sets of social norms, rights of privacy and abhorrence to child abuse.
The use of child porn is a technique that is designed to end the conversation and shut down dissent. It places supporters of privacy in a position that is not congruent with their belief system. Additionally, the connection between copyright and child porn mixes different issues and seriously different belief systems. This difference is extremely important as there have become two different competing sets of norms. The incumbent belief that copyright is stealing, and the one new that has been developed by Web Kids.I strongly suggest reading the previous link as it provides powerful arguments for the changing sets of norms that my generation and younger entail. (I'd be on the rather old side of that generation).
Using a somewhat bad analogy, we're using the "internet superhighway" and like the real highway people don't want everyone driving by to know what you have in your car. Even if you aren't doing anything illegal, do you want the cops to know that you have 5 cases of beer in the back and are going to be floating down a river all day? Probably not, cause they have no reason to know what you're doing. Now, our data is similar to those cases of beer. Using encryption puts that into the back of the trunk where a cop is required to have justifiable cause (in the US) to inspect it's contents. The person looking at the data would know the general direction your going and some of the ways you're getting there, but nothing more. Yes, it makes it more difficult to identify bad stuff, but it's difficult to do that on a real highway too. Just ask boarder patrol, and they have the right to inspect whatever they want.
Second, he essentially argues that copyright owners should have their content monitored by others. This is a huge subsidy for the copyright industry that will be paid for by other services. I'm going to use a physical world comparison, it doesn't work perfectly but it works reasonably well. Let's say that YouTube is similar to a Wal-Mart, or even Amazon.com. The author is arguing that YouTube needs to monitor as soon as the video is put on the web to ensure it is not infringing on copyrighted material. This would be similar to requiring Wal-Mart or Amazon.com to search for patent infringing technologies.
Why does this analogy work? In both cases these rights are state sanctioned monopolies. In both cases they are protecting a manifestation of an idea. Something that needs protection because it is extremely easy to protect. However, in Patent suits things are extremely different. The owners of the patent are required to sue companies that infringe on the patent. Wal-Mart and Amazon.com are both protected from the suit.
If Apple was allowed to sue Wal-Mart for the fact that an infringing technology is being sold there, Wal-Mart would have to bear the cost of policing their inventories for infringing material. In addition it would be in their benefit to be overly caution and remove potentially infringing products before anyone can see them. Part of the cost of owning a patent is the cost of policing products that may be infringing. By removing that burden from the copyright industry we are reducing the cost of the ownership of copyright and placing it on services like YouTube. This stifles innovation in services like YouTube because they have to include the extra cost of policy copyrighted material. A competitor to YouTube has a huge hurdle to overcome before they can even open.
Finally, he argues that the bill supports file sharing. I don't think that it does other than being based off of a different set of norms. I'd argue that the bill supports innovation over old business models. You can disagree with me on this, however it's been shown in several studies and some anecdotal evidence that increasing legal access to copyrighted content reduces pirating. If it is easier for a company to create interesting ways to provide access to content while paying the copyright industry then everyone wins. However, as Falkvinge puts it, "I don't care about industry profits." Realistically, I don't care about most companies profits, because I'm only dealing with the company to buy a product or service I want at a price that I believe is reasonable. If all the legal sources that are available to me to watch a show or listen to a song when a person wants to, it is not unreasonable for them to look for it elsewhere and then try to find it legally later if they liked it.
If the company is making bad choices for their business, why should the law change to improve their business model's chances of surviving? Anyone that supports free market capitalism should be horrified by this sort of industrial policy making. Essentially, these companies are being faced with disruptive technologies and working to push the government to protect them. It's similar to what has happened with the auto industry in the US.
In closing, FIA represents a dramatic change from the current norms and aligns more directly with a younger generation. This generation does not understand why companies prevent them from viewing content that they want to see. While being an open generation on Facebook, they also understand the importance of protecting the data that has been given to companies. They choose what information they share and with whom. They want an open internet so they have the ability to innovate like their parents generation. They believe that it should be a fundamental human right to have access to data and communicate with whoever they want. An industry that is not innovating should not have the ability to destroy the internet.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Did yesterday's internet black out save the internet?
I've seen a lot of commentary about how the web may have been saved because of the internet's "abuse of power." How parts of the internet shut down for a day. I'm sure this impacted a great deal of people, may have actually hurt our economy a little bit. However, one day of action won't save the internet.
I'll agree it made a huge impact as support for SOPA/PIPA has plummeted. Yes, this round of attack by the MPAA and RIAA may have been twarted, but this is just the beginning of the fight for the internet. Ars Technica, has an excellent write up for a plan for how to address some of the concerns of copyright holders in a much better fashion. A manner which would not destroy the internet like SOPA/PIPA.
However, I think that this is a case of industrial policy legislation that is picking winners. In several blogs and posts at the Urban Times, I have written in favor of using some policies to enact changes of behavior. However, in these cases it's because a novel technology isn't being adopted that leads to benefits for the social good. In the case of copyright holders, these policies aren't for the common good, but are being put into place to protect an aging business model that is not innovative. The policies I recommend are to help innovators compete against the status quo.
Data has shown that increasing the availability or decreasing the availability impacts the rate of piracy for television shows. Which indicates to me, policies should be striving to push companies to increase access to copyrighted material, not to go after pirating website. The responsibility for dealing with pirates should be with the copyright holder. They have the means to actually reduce piracy through reducing the amount of licensing fees and increasing accessibility.
We should be pushing our government leaders to put initiatives in places that require massive concessions from copyright holders, if they abuse their copyright position, including losing that copyright. Subscription services like Spotify and Pandora allow users to get access to content either free, with ads, or for a small price. However, these services don't allow users to access everything. This leads to frustration. If I was able to listen to whatever on Spotify, there'd be no reason to pirate.
What does this mean? Well, we can celebrate the change in positions of congressional members, however this isn't over yet. OPEN act may be the next step in this battle. Free internet should be our goal, free as in speech not beer. However, people are willing to pay and I think in this case, business models need to catch up with technology.
I'll agree it made a huge impact as support for SOPA/PIPA has plummeted. Yes, this round of attack by the MPAA and RIAA may have been twarted, but this is just the beginning of the fight for the internet. Ars Technica, has an excellent write up for a plan for how to address some of the concerns of copyright holders in a much better fashion. A manner which would not destroy the internet like SOPA/PIPA.
However, I think that this is a case of industrial policy legislation that is picking winners. In several blogs and posts at the Urban Times, I have written in favor of using some policies to enact changes of behavior. However, in these cases it's because a novel technology isn't being adopted that leads to benefits for the social good. In the case of copyright holders, these policies aren't for the common good, but are being put into place to protect an aging business model that is not innovative. The policies I recommend are to help innovators compete against the status quo.
Data has shown that increasing the availability or decreasing the availability impacts the rate of piracy for television shows. Which indicates to me, policies should be striving to push companies to increase access to copyrighted material, not to go after pirating website. The responsibility for dealing with pirates should be with the copyright holder. They have the means to actually reduce piracy through reducing the amount of licensing fees and increasing accessibility.
We should be pushing our government leaders to put initiatives in places that require massive concessions from copyright holders, if they abuse their copyright position, including losing that copyright. Subscription services like Spotify and Pandora allow users to get access to content either free, with ads, or for a small price. However, these services don't allow users to access everything. This leads to frustration. If I was able to listen to whatever on Spotify, there'd be no reason to pirate.
What does this mean? Well, we can celebrate the change in positions of congressional members, however this isn't over yet. OPEN act may be the next step in this battle. Free internet should be our goal, free as in speech not beer. However, people are willing to pay and I think in this case, business models need to catch up with technology.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Billions and trillions
One of Carl Sagan’s books that I really like is “Billions and Billions”, where he wrote about the importance of exponentials, the connection
between hunting and football, the true size of the universe, the decline of
our planet, government and even abortion. Though I read it in English, I once, in a friend’s house, found a Spanish translation of the book and I was surprised
when I realized the translated title: “Miles de Millones”, which means
“Thousands of Millions”. If you are a native English speaker you might be
thinking “Why were you surprised? A billion is a thousand millions, in other
words it is 109”, and that is the main reason I decided to write
about this because in most Spanish speaking countries the term “Billion” means
a million of millions, i.e. 1012, and probably now you understand my
surprise.
Historically, the term billion in English was first used to
design 1012 following the French numbering system and it was introduced
in the 15th century[1]. Now
that meaning is part of the denominated long-scale system where a trillion is
1018, meanwhile in the short-scale system, used in most of the
English speaking countries, a billion is 109 and a trillion is 1012.
Surprisingly, the short-scale meaning was introduced also by France in the late
17th century even
though they officially use the long-scale system nowadays. In the past, England
used the long-scale system for a long time but they changed to the short-scale
one, meaning that when reading old documents from England you must be careful
about the meaning of billion and trillion.
If you are used to the exponential notation, then this whole
discussion might be pointless since you use an unambiguous way to describe
large quantities that doesn’t need the confusing terms billion and trillion. In
that sense, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) suggests to
avoid the use of billion or trillion since their meaning is language dependent and I
think that scientists that publish or communicate their work should be aware of
this language ambiguity and avoid it or at least be clear about the scale they
use. As a recent example, we have the news about the MIT camera that is able to
capture video at the speed of light, where
they use in the title the sentence “one trillion frames per second” and they
even use the word trillion over all the official website of the project, I
couldn’t find a footnote or an explanation of the scale they are using and,
therefore, after my first excitement about having a camera capturing data at 1018
frames per second I had to use my common sense to realize that they are talking
of 1012 frames per second since their results have time lengths of
nanoseconds (10-9 seconds) and hundreds of picoseconds (100 times 10-12
seconds). I’m not saying that their results lost importance because the camera
works just at 1012 fps, that’s still very impressive if we take into
account that most of the video cameras we had commercially don’t go further
than 30 or 60 fps and that the fastest video camera I have worked with has a
maximum frame rate of 1000 fps. I’m just saying that at first I imagined the
amount of data captured and the transfer and storage capacities needed to work
with it but later everything looked a little bit smaller because my reference
frame was using the large-scale system.
In a globalized world, where communication between people
from different countries and languages is a common thing, we need to have
standards to communicate our ideas unambiguously and we must try to allow
everyone to fully understand the information we are sharing with them, even
though their common sense should be enough for them to understand us. Since
there is not a chance that we have an standard meaning for billion and trillion
in the world, I invite everyone to avoid their use or at least to give an
explanation of the meaning of those words in their work.
[1]
Smith, David Eugene. History of Mathematics. Courier Dover
Publications. pp. 84–86. ISBN 978-0486204307.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Owning your data
Yesterday Facebook and the FTC came to an agreement on privacy settings. This will require Facebook to undergo privacy audits twice a year by a third party firm. In Europe Facebook users are already able to download their data as I mentioned in a previous post. I think we're living in an age where users will need to be well educated on the impact of the privacy policies of websites on the users personal data. However, how can we do this? I personally never look at the privacy policy on a website. Why? Because I don't really trust them. Effectively, just by going to the website I agree to these policies and effectively whatever is stated in the privacy information I'm bound to. However, I have to go to the website before I can read it, thus creating a catch-22.
If I did disagree with something written in the privacy policy, I've already agreed to accept their terms and if they said "we're going to steal all your cookies and sell them for profit" and I object to that it's too late. They already did it.
This puts us users in a bind. We enjoy the benefits of cookies. We don't have to always remember our passwords, we automatically get logged into our favorite websites. Personal settings pop up as soon as we log in. There are plenty of benefits from using cookies. We lose all of these as soon as we use services like Incognito from Google Chrome. Some of my readers have commented that they have switched to using an Incognito window, but it's much more of a pain to log into Facebook and they have actually started using the service less. In terms of Facebook to compensate I use TweetDeck which pulls my news feed from both twitter and Facebook. However, it doesn't get everything including messages from friends, which is annoying, but not the end of the world.
To deal with these privacy issues, the EU is proposing a pan-European standard for privacy policies that a website has to get approved. Companies like Facebook are actively fighting against this rule. I think that this is a great step. I know a lot of people don't like new government regulations. However, in this case the public is woefully uninformed and find getting informed on these topics cumbersome. A lot of money is being made off of people's ignorance. Now, many people would say that's their fault for not properly investigating this topic.
There are a few resources out there to help with getting a better understanding of how to protect yourself. The EFF has an entire section of their website devoted to privacy issues. The ACLU has a Technology and Liberty section which includes topics like privacy.
So why should we care about this? If you aren't doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about. I'm sorry, but this is a really naive way of looking at privacy issues. Some of you readers out there have fences in your back yard. Many of them are called privacy fences, if you aren't doing anything wrong why do you have a fence? Others will have a safe to store valuables and important documents, why do you need a safe, if you aren't doing anything wrong you shouldn't need a safe.
Putting this into a physical context highlights the absurdity of the not doing anything wrong argument. It also highlights the differences between privacy in the physical world and in the digital world. It's really easy to understand how to increase your privacy at home build a fence, better curtains better locks, bars on your windows etc.. Fixing privacy on your computer is much more difficult. Security experts have tried to make things as simple as possible by using names like Virus scanner, Firewall etc. Most people don't really know how to use these properly.
Adding a Firewall to your computer can make using it difficult and clunky. Services that you use frequently suddenly stop working correctly and it's not always obvious why at first. There needs to be a movement within security companies to make everything as simple as possible for the broader population. There should be advanced settings for the people who really want to control their data. Basically we need the firewall to turn into a fence for most people but with settings to turn it into the Berlin Wall if an advanced user wants it.
All users need to understand the risks, just like they need to understand risks of burglary, they shouldn't need to be a security expert though.
Other potential resources (I have no idea if they are any good, I just searched for privacy resources)
http://www.privacyresources.org/
http://epic.org/privacy/privacy_resources_faq.html
https://www.privacyinternational.org/article/ephr-privacy-resources
If I did disagree with something written in the privacy policy, I've already agreed to accept their terms and if they said "we're going to steal all your cookies and sell them for profit" and I object to that it's too late. They already did it.
This puts us users in a bind. We enjoy the benefits of cookies. We don't have to always remember our passwords, we automatically get logged into our favorite websites. Personal settings pop up as soon as we log in. There are plenty of benefits from using cookies. We lose all of these as soon as we use services like Incognito from Google Chrome. Some of my readers have commented that they have switched to using an Incognito window, but it's much more of a pain to log into Facebook and they have actually started using the service less. In terms of Facebook to compensate I use TweetDeck which pulls my news feed from both twitter and Facebook. However, it doesn't get everything including messages from friends, which is annoying, but not the end of the world.
To deal with these privacy issues, the EU is proposing a pan-European standard for privacy policies that a website has to get approved. Companies like Facebook are actively fighting against this rule. I think that this is a great step. I know a lot of people don't like new government regulations. However, in this case the public is woefully uninformed and find getting informed on these topics cumbersome. A lot of money is being made off of people's ignorance. Now, many people would say that's their fault for not properly investigating this topic.
There are a few resources out there to help with getting a better understanding of how to protect yourself. The EFF has an entire section of their website devoted to privacy issues. The ACLU has a Technology and Liberty section which includes topics like privacy.
So why should we care about this? If you aren't doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about. I'm sorry, but this is a really naive way of looking at privacy issues. Some of you readers out there have fences in your back yard. Many of them are called privacy fences, if you aren't doing anything wrong why do you have a fence? Others will have a safe to store valuables and important documents, why do you need a safe, if you aren't doing anything wrong you shouldn't need a safe.
Putting this into a physical context highlights the absurdity of the not doing anything wrong argument. It also highlights the differences between privacy in the physical world and in the digital world. It's really easy to understand how to increase your privacy at home build a fence, better curtains better locks, bars on your windows etc.. Fixing privacy on your computer is much more difficult. Security experts have tried to make things as simple as possible by using names like Virus scanner, Firewall etc. Most people don't really know how to use these properly.
Adding a Firewall to your computer can make using it difficult and clunky. Services that you use frequently suddenly stop working correctly and it's not always obvious why at first. There needs to be a movement within security companies to make everything as simple as possible for the broader population. There should be advanced settings for the people who really want to control their data. Basically we need the firewall to turn into a fence for most people but with settings to turn it into the Berlin Wall if an advanced user wants it.
All users need to understand the risks, just like they need to understand risks of burglary, they shouldn't need to be a security expert though.
Other potential resources (I have no idea if they are any good, I just searched for privacy resources)
http://www.privacyresources.org/
http://epic.org/privacy/privacy_resources_faq.html
https://www.privacyinternational.org/article/ephr-privacy-resources
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