It’s known as “Light Fidelity”, a new form of wireless data transmission that does away with radio signals in favor of optics. And much like the concept of an optic computer – which uses photons to transfer and store information rather than electrons – it’s long been considered as the next possible leap in internet technology. Hence why it was being demonstrated at this year’s Mobile World Congress – the world’s largest exhibition for members of the mobile phone, internet and IT industry.
Despite its monumental growth in the last decade, Wi-Fi remains somewhat hindered by the fact that it relies on microwaves in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, a radio spectrum which is limited. LiFi, however, relies on the transmission of light and could be deployed in everyday LED bulbs, covering the entire interior of a home or office. These LED bulbs would send information out in what appears to be a constant stream of light, but which is actually made up of millions of micropulses a second.
A system based on this would be capable of transferring far larger bundles of data than one based on microwaves. The system that was on display at MWC this year ran at 150 Mbps. But with a more powerful LED light, it could conceivably reach a rate of transfer equal to 3.5 gigabytes per second. That’s 210 gigabytes a minute, and 12.6 terabytes (that 12 and a half trillion bytes, people!) every hour, far in advance of what current WiFi offers (which maxes out at 450 mbps).
To put that in perspective, as of March 2014, the US Library of Congress estimated that their web had cataloged 525 terabytes of web archive data, with an addition 5 terabytes added every month. This means that a LiFi connection running at full capacity transfers in one hour what the Library of Congress processes in over two months! In short, the widespread use of LiFi would mean an explosion in information the likes of which has not been seen since the internet first went online.
Granted, there are still some limitations, like how any computer running off of LiFi needs a special adapted, and interrupting the light source will cause information transfers to cease. And I can’t help but wonder what micropulsing lights will do for people with epilepsy, not to mention the rest of us. However, such concerns are likely to be addressed long before LiFi sees any adoption on a grand scale, which is likely still a decade away at this point.
This year, the MWC conference took place in Barcelona, a place committed to the concept of the Internet of Everything (IoE) and the building of the world’s first truly “smart city”. In the coming months and years, I anticipate that this Spanish haven for technological innovation and integration will feature plenty of LiFi. So if you’re traveling there, you might want to look into getting an adapter for your laptop.
And in the meantime, enjoy this video – courtest of CNET First Look – that takes a look at this year’s LiFi demonstration at MWC 2014:
Today, I got an all=important notification from WordPress.com. It tells me that today is the third anniversary of this here blog, also known as storiesbywilliams.com. Yes, it was on this day, three years ago to the day, that I started this little enterprise in order to publicize my work, share what inspires me, and connect with other writers and bloggers out there.
And as with all anniversaries on this site, I’d like to commemorate this by sharing a few facts and figures, just to put it all in context context. Three years on this site has resulted in the following numbers:
3 years
1095 days
8760 hours
1576800 minutes
Or, to put it in terms of what I’ve actually done with that time, which seems much more relevant:
410,057 views
6,417 comments
2,039 followers
1,541 posts
And as usual, I would like to thank all those who helped make this possible. Since starting this blog, I’ve managed to publish all my works from 2004 onward. These include Source, the Legacies: Preludes collection, Data Miners, Whiskey Delta, and most recently, Papa Zulu. And in the coming months, I plan to release Flash Forward, and finish work on the long-awaited Yuva Anthology.
And, just as importantly, I feel I’ve learned a great deal, thanks to the personal and professional connections I’ve made. And wherever possible, I’ve tried to pass that experience and knowledge onward; and shall continue to do so whenever possible. This site is, was, and always will be about inspiration, and that belongs to no one and everyone.
So expect to hear plenty more from me, and be sure to make yourself heard as well – as often and as much as possible. Here’s to three years more, and to forever looking onward!
As documents that illustrate the NSA’s clandestine behavior continue to be leaked, the extents to which the agency has been going to gain supremacy over cyberspace are becoming ever more clear. Thanks to a new series of documents released by Snowden, it now seems that these efforts included two programs who’s purpose was to create a ““useful quantum computer” that would be capable of breaking all known forms of classical encryption.
According to the documents, which were published by The Washington Post earlier this month, there are at least two programs that deal with quantum computers and their use in breaking classical encryption — “Penetrating Hard Targets” and “Owning the Net.” The first program is funded to the tune of $79.7 million and includes efforts to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” that can:
sustain and enhance research operations at NSA/CSS Washington locations, including the Laboratory for Physical Sciences facility in College Park, MD.
The second program, Owning the Net, deals with developing new methods of intercepting communications, including the use of quantum computers to break encryption. Given the fact that quanutm machinery is considered the next great leap in computer science, offering unprecedented speed and the ability to conduct operations at many times the efficiency of normal computers, this should not come as a surprise.
Such a computer would give the NSA unprecedented access to encrypted files and communications, enadling them to break any protective cypher, access anyone’s data with ease, and mount cyber attacks with impunity. But a working model would also vital for defensive purposes. Much in the same way that the Cold War involved ongoing escalation between nuclear armament production, cybersecurity wars are also subject to constant one-upmanship.
In short, if China, Russia, or some other potentially hostile power were to obtain a quantum computer before the US, all of its encrypted information would be laid bare. Under the circumstances, and given their mandate to protect the US’s infrastructure, data and people from harm, the NSA would much rather they come into possesion of one first. Hence why so much attention is dedicated to the issue, since whoever builds the worlds first quantum computer will enjoy full-court dominance for a time.
The mathematical, cryptographical, and quantum mechanical communities have long known that quantum computing should be able to crack classical encryption very easily. To crack RSA, the world’s prevailing cryptosystem, you need to be able to factor prime numbers — a task that is very difficult with a normal, classical-physics CPU, but might be very easy for a quantum computer. But of course, the emphasis is still very much on the word might, as no one has built a fully functioning multi-qubit quantum computer yet.
As for when that might be, no one can say for sure. But the smart money is apparently anticipating one soon, since researchers are getting to the point where coherence on a single qubit-level is becoming feasible, allowing them to move on to the trickier subject of stringing multiple fully-entangled qubits together, as well as the necessary error checking/fault tolerance measures that go along with multi-qubit setups.
But from what it’s published so far, the Laboratory for Physical Sciences – which is carrying out the NSA’s quantum computing work under contract – doesn’t seem to be leading the pack in terms of building a quantum computer. In this respect, it’s IBM with its superconducting waveguide-cavity qubits that appears to be closer to realizing a quantum computer, with other major IT firms and their own supcomputer models not far behind.
Despite what this recent set of leaks demonstrates then, the public should take comfort in knowing that the NSA is not ahead of the rest of the industry. In reality, something like a working quantum computer would be so hugely significant that it would be impossible for the NSA to develop it internally and keep it a secret. And by the time the NSA does have a working quantum computer to intercept all of our encrypted data, they won’t be the only ones, which would ensure they lacked dominance in this field.
So really, thess latest leaks ought to not worry people too much, and instead should put the NSAs ongoing struggle to control cyberspace in perspective. One might go so far as to say that the NSA is trying to remain relevant in an age where they are becoming increasingly outmatched. With billions of terabytes traversing the globe on any given day and trillions of devices and sensors creating a “second skin” of information over the globe, no one organization is capable of controlling or monitoring it all.
So to those in the habit of dredging up 1984 every time they hear about the latest NSA and domestic surveillance scandal, I say: Suck on it, Big Brother!
All of my recent interesting in the concept known as the “internet of things” has been turning up some interesting results. And it’s not hard to see why really, given all the research, innovation and commercial applications dedicated to making it a reality. And yet, a surprising amount of people seem to be in the dark about what this term means.
Again, not surprising, as high-tech trends tend to be somewhat esoteric, understood by only a select few at first and gradually trickling its way into public consciousness. To break it down, the Internet of Things is a concept where the real world will come to resemble the internet, where digital markers and wireless internet will make reality incredibly accessible and connected.
Think of it this way: you wake up in the morning and receive instant updates from all of your household devices. You’re fridge tells you how close your food is to its expiration dates, and your thermostat sets itself based on the weather, season, and your habits. On your way to work, you are able to access emails and memos from your office server, and when you’re driving home, you are able to tell the house to warm up and turn the lights on.
All day long, you are able to monitor all of your gadgets and devices because they are all “tagged”, feeding you information on their locations and anything else you need to know in real-time. If you lose something, it alerts you to this fact and tells you where to find it. And if you’re out and about without your vehicle, you can summon it and get it to find its way to you.
That’s the general idea, creating a “smart world” through the use of networking technology. Now here are some videos too that demonstrate the concept in action. All are from Cisco, the networking IT giant located in San Jose (capitol of Silicon Valley) and are promotional videos, basically showing what the company’s vision is and how they intend to bring it about.
“Circle Story”: This video, perhaps more than anything, demonstrates how the world of the near future will be interconnected. As the name would suggest, it follows a day in the life of regular folks as they start their day, go to their various jobs, do their shopping, and how the entire process is all part of the same dance. And of course, Cisco showcases how its technology is helping to make it happen.
Curiously though, the people do look kind of bored, don’t they? Subtle social commentary, or were they just being realistic? You decide!
Barcelona Embraces IoE to Create a Smart City: In this promotional video, we see how the city of Barcelona, Spain is using the concept of the Internet of Everything (IoE) to address the ongoing challenge of urbanization and growth. By embracing the latest in smart technology, Barcelona is becoming a shining example of what Cisco refers to as a “smart city”, much to the company’s delight!
What this consists of is Barcelona connecting its citizens, remote sensors, and all devices contained within to a city-wide WiFi. This in turn is offering people new services, facilitating energy-efficient reforms, and establishing new economic opportunities for the city’s companies and partners, not playing to the city’s reputation for social interaction and connectivity. Check out this video for the details:
The Road to the Internet of Everything: Last, but not least, is Cisco’s promotional video of what the Internet of Everything is really all about. Intrinsic to the IoE is the fact that by 2020, the physical and digital world will be connected by 50 billion devices and 1 trillion sensors. Meanwhile, billions of electronic embedded devices will transmit terabytes of data, communicating everything from health information to updates at the speed of light.
The result of all this, according to the video, will be an “electronic skin” built on the internet, one which will overlay the world’s existing surface and communicate everything across its vast, virtual space. As we know, this skin is already being laid, but what is still to come is going to be pretty impressive and game-changing. The bottom line being that those that are in the know will be able to reap the benefits more quickly.
You may think these videos are little more than corporate promotion of company services. But if the “internet revolution” has taught us anything, it’s that the current range of technological change is here to stay, and is only going to be getting more pronounced as time goes on. And when it comes to predicting how these things will shape the world of tomorrow, those deeply involved in the development process are certainly worth listening to!
After all, they are helping to build that world, and are doing so because we’re letting them. Best to know what’s coming if you want to know how it’s going to effect you, and if you want to have anything to say about it, right?
This video was passed onto me by my darling wife, who is a whiz at picking out videos and articles that I would find interesting! Entitled “There and Back Again: A Packet’s Tale, this educational video clip was produced by the World Science Festival – a New York City-based non-profit organization committed to scientific education and public awareness. And in it, they explain how this complex organism known as the internet actually works.
Using a single search item as an example, the clip lets the viewer see how a packet of data – one of trillions of internet interactions – goes from one side of the planet to the other and then back again, all in the space of a second. In addition to explaining how such volumes of data are handled, they also draw attention to the fact that the internet depends upon real physical connections.
This second aspect of the video is very important, in that it reminds us that despite what could computing and wireless teach us – that data is free-floating mass moving through the air – that the world-wide web is still grounded in solid objects, such as copper and optic cables, before it gets to your wireless router. And even though it is only three and a half minutes in length, the clip is quite informative. Enjoy!
The Consumer Electronics Show has been in full swing for two days now, and already the top spots for most impressive technology of the year has been selected. Granted, opinion is divided, and there are many top contenders, but between displays, gaming, smartphones, and personal devices, there’s been no shortage of technologies to choose from.
And having sifted through some news stories from the front lines, I have decided to compile a list of what I think the most impressive gadgets, displays and devices of this year’s show were. And as usual, they range from the innovative and creative, to the cool and futuristic, with some quirky and fun things holding up the middle. And here they are, in alphabetical order:
As an astronomy enthusiast, and someone who enjoys hearing about new and innovative technologies, Celestron’s Cosmos 90GT WiFi Telescope was quite the story. Hoping to make astronomy more accessible to the masses, this new telescope is the first that can be controlled by an app over WiFi. Once paired, the system guides stargazers through the cosmos as directions flow from the app to the motorized scope base.
In terms of comuting, Lenovo chose to breathe some new life into the oft-declared dying industry of desktop PCs this year, thanks to the unveiling of their Horizon 2. Its 27-inch touchscreen can go fully horizontal, becoming both a gaming and media table. The large touch display has a novel pairing technique that lets you drop multiple smartphones directly onto the screen, as well as group, share, and edit photos from them.
Next up is the latest set of display glasses to the world by storm, courtesy of the Epson Smart Glass project. Ever since Google Glass was unveiled in 2012, other electronics and IT companies have been racing to produce a similar product, one that can make heads-up display tech, WiFi connectivity, internet browsing, and augmented reality portable and wearable.
Epson was already moving in that direction back in 2011 when they released their BT100 augmented reality glasses. And now, with their Moverio BT200, they’ve clearly stepped up their game. In addition to being 60 percent lighter than the previous generation, the system has two parts – consisting of a pair of glasses and a control unit.
The glasses feature a tiny LCD-based projection lens system and optical light guide which project digital content onto a transparent virtual display (960 x 540 resolution) and has a camera for video and stills capture, or AR marker detection. With the incorporation of third-party software, and taking advantage of the internal gyroscope and compass, a user can even create 360 degree panoramic environments.
At the other end, the handheld controller runs on Android 4.0, has a textured touchpad control surface, built-in Wi-Fi connectivity for video content streaming, and up to six hours of battery life.
The BT-200 smart glasses are currently being demonstrated at Epson’s CES booth, where visitors can experience a table-top virtual fighting game with AR characters, a medical imaging system that allows wearers to see through a person’s skin, and an AR assistance app to help perform unfamiliar tasks .
This year’s CES also featured a ridiculous amount of curved screens. Samsung seemed particularly proud of its garish, curved LCD TV’s, and even booked headliners like Mark Cuban and Michael Bay to promote them. In the latter case, this didn’t go so well. However, one curved screen device actually seemed appropriate – the LG G Flex 6-inch smartphone.
When it comes to massive curved screens, only one person can benefit from the sweet spot of the display – that focal point in the center where they feel enveloped. But in the case of the LG G Flex-6, the subtle bend in the screen allows for less light intrusion from the sides, and it distorts your own reflection just enough to obscure any distracting glare. Granted, its not exactly the flexible tech I was hoping to see, but its something!
In the world of gaming, two contributions made a rather big splash this year. These included the Playstation Now, a game streaming service just unveiled by Sony that lets gamers instantly play their games from a PS3, PS4, or PS Vita without downloading and always in the most updated version. Plus, it gives users the ability to rent titles they’re interested in, rather than buying the full copy.
Then there was the Maingear Spark, a gaming desktop designed to run Valve’s gaming-centric SteamOS (and Windows) that measures just five inches square and weighs less than a pound. This is a big boon for gamers who usually have to deal gaming desktops that are bulky, heavy, and don’t fit well on an entertainment stand next to other gaming devices, an HD box, and anything else you might have there.
Next up, there is a device that helps consumers navigate the complex world of iris identification that is becoming all the rage. It’s known as the Myris Eyelock, a simple, straightforward gadget that takes a quick video of your eyeball, has you log in to your various accounts, and then automatically signs you in, without you ever having to type in your password.
So basically, you can utilize this new biometric ID system by having your retinal scan on your person wherever you go. And then, rather than go through the process of remembering multiple (and no doubt, complicated passwords, as identity theft is becoming increasingly problematic), you can upload a marker that leaves no doubt as to your identity. And at less than $300, it’s an affordable option, too.
And what would an electronics show be without showcasing a little drone technology? And the Parrot MiniDrone was this year’s crowd pleaser: a palm-sized, camera-equipped, remotely-piloted quad-rotor. However, this model has the added feature of two six-inch wheels, which affords it the ability to zip across floors, climb walls, and even move across ceilings! A truly versatile personal drone.
Another very interesting display this year was the Scanadu Scout, the world’s first real-life tricorder. First unveiled back in May of 2013, the Scout represents the culmination of years of work by the NASA Ames Research Center to produce the world’s first, non-invasive medical scanner. And this year, they chose to showcase it at CES and let people test it out on themselves and each other.
All told, the Scanadu Scout can measure a person’s vital signs – including their heart rate, blood pressure, temperature – without ever touching them. All that’s needed is to place the scanner above your skin, wait a moment, and voila! Instant vitals. The sensor will begin a pilot program with 10,000 users this spring, the first key step toward FDA approval.
And of course, no CES would be complete without a toy robot or two. This year, it was the WowWee MiP (Mobile Inverted Pendulum) that put on a big show. Basically, it is an eight-inch bot that balances itself on dual wheels (like a Segway), is controllable by hand gestures, a Bluetooth-conncted phone, or can autonomously roll around.
Its sensitivity to commands and its ability to balance while zooming across the floor are super impressive. While on display, many were shown carrying a tray around (sometimes with another MiP on a tray). And, a real crowd pleaser, the MiP can even dance. Always got to throw in something for the retro 80’s crowd, the people who grew up with the SICO robot, Jinx, and other friendly automatons!
But perhaps most impressive of all, at least in my humble opinion, is the display of the prototype for the iOptik AR Contact Lens. While most of the focus on high-tech eyewear has been focused on wearables like Google Glass of late, other developers have been steadily working towards display devices that are small enough to worse over your pupil.
Developed by the Washington-based company Innovega with support from DARPA, the iOptik is a heads-up display built into a set of contact lenses. And this year, the first fully-functioning prototypes are being showcased at CES. Acting as a micro-display, the glasses project a picture onto the contact lens, which works as a filter to separate the real-world from the digital environment and then interlaces them into the one image.
Embedded in the contact lenses are micro-components that enable the user to focus on near-eye images. Light projected by the display (built into a set of glasses) passes through the center of the pupil and then works with the eye’s regular optics to focus the display on the retina, while light from the real-life environment reaches the retina via an outer filter.
This creates two separate images on the retina which are then superimposed to create one integrated image, or augmented reality. It also offers an alternative solution to traditional near-eye displays which create the illusion of an object in the distance so as not to hinder regular vision. At present, still requires clearance from the FDA before it becomes commercially available, which may come in late 2014 or early 2015.
Well, its certainly been an interesting year, once again, in the world of electronics, robotics, personal devices, and wearable technology. And it manages to capture the pace of change that is increasingly coming to characterize our lives. And according to the tech site Mashable, this year’s show was characterized by televisions with 4K pixel resolution, wearables, biometrics, the internet of personalized and data-driven things, and of course, 3-D printing and imaging.
And as always, there were plenty of videos showcasing tons of interesting concepts and devices that were featured this year. Here are a few that I managed to find and thought were worthy of passing on:
Amongst the sci-fi greats of old, there were few authors, scientists and futurists more influential than Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. And as individuals who constantly had one eye to the world of their day, and one eye to the future, they had plenty to say about what the world would look like by the 21st century. And interestingly enough, 2014 just happens to be the year where much of what they predicted was meant to come true.
For example, 50 years ago, Asimov wrote an article for the New York Times that listed his predictions for what the world would be like in 2014. The article was titled “Visit to the World’s Fair of 2014”, and contained many accurate, and some not-so-accurate, guesses as to how people would be living today and what kinds of technology would be available to us.
Here are some of the accurate predictions:
1. “By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use.” In short, electroluminescent displays are thin, bright panels that are used in retail displays, signs, lighting and flat panel TVs. What’s more, personal devices are incorporating this technology, in the form of OLED and AMOLED displays, which are both paper-thin and flexible, giving rise to handheld devices you can bend and flex without fear of damaging them.
2. “Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs.” Oh yes indeed! In the last thirty years, we’ve seen voicemail replace personal assistants, secretaries and message boards. We’ve seen fax machines replace couriers. We’ve seen personal devices and PDAs that are able to handle more and more in the way of tasks, making it unnecessary for people to consult a written sources of perform their own shorthand calculations. It’s a hallmark of our age that personal technology is doing more and more of the legwork, supposedly freeing us to do more with our time.
3. “Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone.” This was a popular prediction in Asimov’s time, usually taking the form of a videophone or conversations that happened through display panels. And the rise of the social media and telepresence has certainly delivered on that. Services like Skype, Google Hangout, FaceTime and more have made video chatting very common, and a viable alternative to a phone line you need to pay for.
4. “The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books.” Multitasking is one of the hallmarks of modern computers, handheld devices, and tablets, and has been the norm for operating systems for some time. By simply calling up new windows, new tabs, or opening up multiple apps simultaneously and simply switching between them, users are able to start multiple projects, or conduct work and view video, take pictures, play games, and generally behave like a kid with ADHD on crack if they so choose.
5. “Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.” If you define “robot” as a computer that looks and acts like a human, then this guess is definitely true. While we do not have robot servants or robot friends per se, we do have Roomba’s, robots capable of performing menial tasks, and even ones capable of imitating animal and even human movements and participating in hazardous duty exercises (Google the DARPA Robot Challenge to see what I mean).
Alas, he was off on several other fronts. For example, kitchens do not yet prepare “automeals” – meaning they prepare entire meals for us at the click of a button. What’s more, the vast majority of our education systems is not geared towards the creation and maintenance of robotics. All surfaces have not yet been converted into display screens, though we could if we wanted to. And the world population is actually higher than he predicted (6,500,000,000 was his estimate).
As for what he got wrong, well… our appliances are not powered by radioactive isotopes, and thereby able to be entirely wireless (though wireless recharging is becoming a reality). Only a fraction of students are currently proficient in computer language, contrary to his expectation that all would be. And last, society is not a place of “enforced leisure”, where work is considered a privilege and not a burden. Too bad too!
And when it comes to the future, there are few authors whose predictions are more trusted than Arthur C. Clarke. In addition to being a prolific science fiction writer, he wrote nearly three dozen nonfiction books and countless articles about the future of space travel, undersea exploration and daily life in the 21st century.
And in a recently released clip from a 1974 ABC News program filmed in Australia, Clarke is shown talking to a reporter next to a massive bank of computers. With his son in tow, the reporter asks Clarke to talk about what computers will be like when his son is an adult. In response, Clarke offers some eerily prophetic, if not quite spot-on, predictions:
The big difference when he grows up, in fact it won’t even wait until the year 2001, is that he will have, in his own house, not a computer as big as this, but at least a console through which he can talk to his friendly local computer and get all the information he needs for his everyday life, like his bank statements, his theater reservations, all the information you need in the course of living in a complex modern society. This will be in a compact form in his own house.
In short, Clarke predicted not only the rise of the personal computer, but also online banking, shopping and a slew of internet services. Clarke was then asked about the possible danger of becoming a “computer-dependent” society, and while he acknowledged that in the future humanity would rely on computers “in some ways,” computers would also open up the world:
It’ll make it possible for us to live really anywhere we like. Any businessman, any executive, could live almost anywhere on Earth and still do his business through his device like this. And this is a wonderful thing.
Clarke certainly had a point about computers giving us the ability to communicate from almost anywhere on the globe, also known as telecommunication, telecommuting and telepresence. But as to whether or not our dependence on this level of technology is a good or bad thing, the jury is still out on that one. The point is, his predictions proved to be highly accurate, forty years in advance.
Granted, Clarke’s predictions were not summoned out of thin air. Ever since their use in World War II as a means of cracking Germany’s cyphers, miniaturization has been the trend in computing. By the 1970’s, they were still immense and clunky, but punch cards and vacuum tubes had already given way to transistors, ones which were getting smaller all the time.
And in 1969, the first operational packet network to implement a Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was established. Known as a Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (or ARPANET), this U.S. Department of Defense network was set up to connect the DOD’s various research projects at universities and laboratories all across the US, and was the precursor to the modern internet.
In being a man who was so on top of things technologically, Clarke accurately predicted that these two trends would continue into the foreseeable future, giving rise to computers small enough to fit on our desks (rather than taking up an entire room) and networked with other computers all around the world via a TCP/IP network that enabled real-time data sharing and communications.
And in the meantime, be sure to check out the Clarke interview below:
With all of the world’s current problems, poverty, underdevelopment, terrorism, civil war, and environmental degradation, it’s easy to overlook how things are getting better around the world. Not only do we no longer live in a world where superpowers are no longer aiming nuclear missiles at each other and two-thirds of the human race live beneath totalitarian regimes; in terms of health, mortality, and income, life is getting better too.
So, in honor of the New Year and all our hopes for a better world, here’s a gander at how life is improving and is likely to continue…
1. Poverty is decreasing: The population currently whose income or consumption is below the poverty line – subsisting on less than $1.25 a day – is steadily dropping. In fact, the overall economic growth of the past 50 years has been proportionately greater than that experienced in the previous 500. Much of this is due not only to the growth taking place in China and India, but also Brazil, Russia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, while developing nations complain about debt crises and ongoing recession, the world’s poorest areas continue to grow.
2. Health is improving:
The overall caloric consumption of people around the world is increasing, meaning that world hunger is on the wane. Infant mortality, a major issue arising from poverty, and underdevelopment, and closely related to overpopulation, is also dropping. And while rates of cancer continue to rise, the rate of cancer mortality continue to decrease. And perhaps biggest of all, the world will be entering into 2014 with several working vaccines and even cures for HIV (of which I’ve made many posts).
3. Education is on the rise:
More children worldwide (especially girls) have educational opportunities, with enrollment increasing in both primary and secondary schools. Literacy is also on the rise, with the global rate reaching as high as 84% by 2012. At its current rate of growth, global rates of literacy have more than doubled since 1970, and the connections between literacy, economic development, and life expectancy are all well established.
4. The Internet and computing are getting faster:
Ever since the internet revolution began, connection speeds and bandwidth have been increasing significantly year after year. In fact, the global average connection speed for the first quarter of 2012 hit 2.6 Mbps, which is a 25 percent year-over-year gain, and a 14 percent gain over the fourth quarter of 2011. And by the second quarter of 2013, the overall global average peak connection speed reached 18.9 Mbps, which represented a 17 percent gan over 2012.
And while computing appears to be reaching a bottleneck, the overall increase in speed has increased by a factor of 260,000 in the past forty years, and storage capacity by a factor of 10,000 in the last twenty. And in terms of breaking the current limitations imposed by chip size and materials, developments in graphene, carbon nanotubes, and biochips are promising solutions.
5. Unintended pregnancies are down:
While it still remains high in the developing regions of the world, the global rate of unintended pregnancies has fallen dramatically in recent years. In fact, between 1995 and 2008, of 208 billion pregnancies surveyed in a total of 80 nations, 41 percent of the pregnancies were unintended. However, this represents a drop of 29 percent in the developed regions surveyed and a 20 percent drop in developing regions.
The consequences of unintended pregnancies for women and their families is well established, and any drop presents opportunities for greater health, safety, and freedom for women. What’s more, a drop in the rate of unwanted pregnancies is surefire sign of socioeconomic development and increasing opportunities for women and girls worldwide.
6. Population growth is slowing: On this blog of mine, I’m always ranting about how overpopulation is bad and going to get to get worse in the near future. But in truth, that is only part of the story. The upside is while the numbers keep going up, the rate of increase is going down. While global population is expected to rise to 9.3 billion by 2050 and 10.1 billion by 2100, this represents a serious slowing of growth.
If one were to compare these growth projections to what happened in the 20th century, where population rose from 1 billion to just over 6, they would see that the rate of growth has halved. What’s more, rates of population growth are expecting to begin falling in Asia by 2060 (one of the biggest contributors to world population in the 20th century), in Europe by 2055, and the Caribbean by 2065.
In fact, the only region where exponential population growth is expected to happen is Africa, where the population of over 1 billion is expected to reach 4 billion by the end of the 21st century. And given the current rate of economic growth, this could represent a positive development for the continent, which could see itself becoming the next powerhouse economy by the 2050s.
7. Clean energy is getting cheaper:
While the price of fossil fuels are going up around the world, forcing companies to turn to dirty means of oil and natural gas extraction, the price of solar energy has been dropping exponentially. In fact, the per capita cost of this renewable source of energy ($ per watt) has dropped from a high of $80 in 1977 to 0.74 this past year. This represents a 108 fold decrease in the space of 36 years.
And while solar currently comprises only a quarter of a percent of the planet’s electricity supply, its total share grew by 86% last year. In addition, wind farms already provide 2% of the world’s electricity, and their capacity is doubling every three years. At this rate of increase, solar, wind and other renewables are likely to completely offset coal, oil and gas in the near future.
Summary:
In short, things are looking up, even if they do have a long way to go. And a lot of what is expected to make the world a better place is likely to happen this year. Who knows which diseases we will find cures for? Who knows what inspirational leaders will come forward? And who knows what new and exciting inventions will be created, ones which offer creative and innovative solutions to our current problems?
Who knows? All I can say is that I am eager to find out!
The good people over at Envisioning Technology – the independent research organization based on Brazil – have produced yet another intriguing infographic. As some of you may recall, whenever ET has released a new inforgraphic, I’ve been right there to post about it. So far, they have produced graphics addressing the future of Technology, Education, Health, and Finance.
There latest graphic is similarly significant and addresses the future of something that concerns and effects us all: money. Entitled “The Past, Present and Future of Money”, this graph looks at the trends affecting the buying, selling and investment patterns of people over time, contrasting three trends that are interwoven and have moved between centralized, decentralized, and distributed monetary systems.
In this scenario, centralized tendencies refer to networks where the nodes are connected through dense centers (aka. urban environments), which rely on hierarchically structures institutions (i.e. banks) and require legal tender (physical money). This sort of system relies on an ordered distribution of power, one that generally favor the connected few, and which emerged with the advent of modern industrial civilization.
Decentralized tendencies are those which are based on networks where nodes connect in clusters, that have irregular distributions of power, and favor the selected individual. As the graph shows, these types of networks predate centralized networks, taking the form of bartering and commodities in earliest times, but which have emerged yet again in the modern era and are predicted to continue to grow.
Examples of current and future trends here include crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, banking APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), microfinance, and collaborative consumptions – where access is developed so that consumers can lend, swap, barter, share, and gift products. Whereas this model predates centralized tendencies, it is once again emerging with decentralizing potential of digital technology and open-source databases.
In the third and final method, one which is emerging, is the distributed network of money. These are networks where nodes connect independently, where power is distributed horizontally, and which favor the entire network. This trend began as a result of global real-time communications (i.e. the internet, satellite communications, etc.), and which are expected to expand.
Combining the concepts of attention economies, digital currencies, peer-to-peer communications, and digital wallets, the essence of this final stage is a network economy that is controlled by individuals, not financial institutions or corporations. In addition, currencies are based shared belief in their value, transactions occur between individuals, and physical currencies are replaced by digital ones.
Other trends that are incorporated and cross-referenced into this infographic include global population versus the number of people per capita who have online access. As it stands, less than half the world’s 7 billion people currently have access to the internet, and are hence able to take part in the decentralizing and distributed trends affecting money. However, the infographic predicts that by 2063, nearly 90% of the world’s 10 billion people will be online.
Like many predictions that I’ve come to know and respect, this latest infographic from ET gives us a glimpse of a future where a Distributed model of politics, economics and technological development – otherwise known as Democratic Anarchy – will be the norm. It’s an exciting possibility, and places history in a new and interesting light. In short, it makes one reconsider the possibility that true socialism might exist.
While this was crudely predicted by Karl Marx, the basic concept is quite intriguing when considered in the context of current trends. What’s more, subsequent thinkers – Max Weber, Proudhon, Gramsci and George Orwell – refined and expressed the principle more eloquently. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Goldstein Manifesto in 1984, where Orwell addressed how the process of industrial civilization was making class distinction virtually unnecessary.
It’s been quite the year for cybercops, cybercriminals, and all those of us who are caught in between. Between viruses which continue to involve and viruses that target sensitive information in new ways, it seems clear that the information age is fraught with peril. In addition to cyberwars raging between nations, there is also the danger of guerrilla warfare and the digital weapons running amok.
Consider the Stuxnet virus, a piece of programming that made headlines last year by sabotaging the Iranian nuclear enrichment program. At the time, the target – not to mention its source (within the US) – seemed all too convenient to have been unintentional. However, this year, Stuxnet is once again garnering attention thanks to its latest target: the International Space Station.
Apparently, this has been the result of the virus having gone rogue, or at least become too big for its creators to control. In addition to the ISS, the latest reports state that Stuxnet is hitting nuclear plants in countries for which the virus was not originally intended. In one case, the virus even managed to infect an internal network at a Russian power planet that wasn’t even connected to the internet.
According to Eugene Kaspersky, famed head of IT security at Kaspersky Labs, the virus can travel through methods other than internet connectivity, such as via optical media or a USB drive. Kaspersky claims that this is apparently how it made its way aboard the ISS, and that it was brought aboard on more than one occasion through infected USB drives.
For the moment, it is unclear how this virus will be taken care of, or whether or not it will continue to grow beyond any single organization’s ability to control it. All that is clear at this point is that this particular virus has returned to its original handlers. For the time being, various nations and multinational corporations are looking to harden their databases and infrastructure against cyber attack, with Stuxnet in mind.
And they are not the only ones who need to be on their guard about protecting against intrusion. Average consumers are only at risk of having their databases being accessed by an unwanted digital visitor, one that goes by the name of Cryptolocker. Designed with aggressive salesmanship – and blackmail – in mind, this virus is bringing fears about personal information being accessed to new heights.
Basically, the Cryptolocker works by finding people’s most important and sensitive files and selling it back to them. After obtaining the files its needs, it then contacts a remote server to create a 2048-bit key pair to encrypt them so they cannot be recovered, and then contacts the owner with an ultimatum. People are told to pay up, or the virus will begin deleting the info.
When the virus first emerged in October of this year, victims were given three days to cough up roughly $200 via BitCoin or MoneyPak currency transfer. If the virus’ authors did not receive payment within 72 hours, they said, a single line would be deleted from a text file on some hidden foreign server, forever erasing the only string of numbers that could ever bring the affected files back from the dead.
Some users responded by simply setting their system’s internal clock back. A temporary measure, to be sure, but one which worked by tricking the virus into thinking the deadline had not expired. In addition, the three-day deadline worked against the viruses makers, since it’s proven restrictive to the types of people who mostly contract a virus like this – i.e. senior citizens and people working on corporate networks.
Such people are more vulnerable to such scams, but seldom have the computer-savvy skills to to set up BitCoin or other such accounts and transfer the money in time. Meanwhile, infecting a corporate server means that a bloated corporate bureaucracies will be responsible for making the decision of whether or not to pay, not an individual who can decide quickly.
So basically, the designers of Cryptolocker were facing a catch-22. They could not extend the deadline on the virus without diminishing the sense of panic that makes many people pay, but would continue to lose money as long as people couldn’t pay. Their solution: If a victim does not pay up in time, the hackers simply raise the ransom – by a factor of 10!
This allows people more time to mull over the loss of sensitive data and make a decision, but by that time – should they decide to pay up – the price tag has gone up to a bloated $2000. Luckily, this has revealed a crucial bluff in the virus’s workings by showing that all the keys to the encrypted files are in fact not deleted after the three day time limit.
As such, the security industry is encouraging people to hold on to the useless, encrypted files and waiting for the criminal server to be someday seized by the authorities. Since any ransom paid is a de-facto encouragement to hackers to write a similar virus again — or indeed to re-infect the same companies twice – people are currently being told to simply hold out and not pay up.
What’s more, regular backups are the key to protecting your database from viruses like Cryptolocker. Regular backups to off-network machines that do not auto-sync will minimize the virus’ potential for damage. The best defense is even simpler: Cryptolocker infects computers via a bogus email attachment disguised as a PDF file, so simple email safety should keep you immune.
Alas, its a world of digital warfare, and there there are no discernible sides. Just millions of perpetrators, dozens of authorities, and billions of people fearing for the safety and integrity of their data. One can only wonder what an age of quantum computers, graphene and nanotube processors will bring. But more on that later!
It’s known as “Light Fidelity”, a new form of wireless data transmission that does away with radio signals in favor of optics. And much like the concept of an optic computer – which uses photons to transfer and store information rather than electrons – it’s long been considered as the next possible leap in internet technology. Hence why it was being demonstrated at this year’s Mobile World Congress – the world’s largest exhibition for members of the mobile phone, internet and IT industry.
A system based on this would be capable of transferring far larger bundles of data than one based on microwaves. The system that was on display at MWC this year ran at 150 Mbps. But with a more powerful LED light, it could conceivably reach a rate of transfer equal to 3.5 gigabytes per second. That’s 210 gigabytes a minute, and 12.6 terabytes (that 12 and a half trillion bytes, people!) every hour, far in advance of what current WiFi offers (which maxes out at 450 mbps).
Granted, there are still some limitations, like how any computer running off of LiFi needs a special adapted, and interrupting the light source will cause information transfers to cease. And I can’t help but wonder what micropulsing lights will do for people with epilepsy, not to mention the rest of us. However, such concerns are likely to be addressed long before LiFi sees any adoption on a grand scale, which is likely still a decade away at this point.
As documents that illustrate the NSA’s clandestine behavior continue to be leaked, the extents to which the agency has been going to gain supremacy over cyberspace are becoming ever more clear. Thanks to a new series of documents released by Snowden, it now seems that these efforts included two programs who’s purpose was to create a ““useful quantum computer” that would be capable of breaking all known forms of classical encryption.
Stories by Williams 