OK, admittedly, so-called "smart" electricity meters may not have the cool factor of say, smart refrigerators. But Britain is banking on them to help citizens save money, and help the country meet its European Union obligations to reduce energy consumption and cut carbon emissions. If all goes according to the British government's plan, the next decade will usher in a huge roll-out of smart meters in the UK. So, my Wide Angle assignment was simple: find someone in the smart meter industry who could tell me how smart meters work, and what kind of energy savings one might be able to expect. I found Mark England, Managing Director of a company called Sentec, which is based in beautiful Cambridge, England. England in England...I like that. Anyway, Mark told me that Sentec's been around for 12 years or so, and has been working on smart meters, and in particular the sensor technologies embedded in smart meters, for the past five years. I start the podcast with a very simple question: just what is a smart meter, and how does it work?
These glasses have been, of course, standard issue for any theater-goer wanting the full stereoscopic visual experience. In many ways, they're iconic, especially the cheap cardboard frame versions. But that's the beauty of the 3D cinema experience! Everyone's wearing silly-looking glasses, so you don't feel like a complete tool.
The question we're out to ask in this podcast, though, is this: can the 3D experience work on a mobile device?
OK, so MIT's Pranav Mistry doesn't exactly inspire the same kind of fear that Arnie's Terminator (or, for that matter, actor Christian Bale on the set of the new Terminator movie) does. Then again, Mistry's not trying to. Mistry works in something called the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab. The group as a whole is working on a set of amazing projects that are trying to bridge the current gaps that they feel exist between the real and virtual worlds. Now, if you're one of those people who has watched one too many Terminator films and doesn't want to see the real and virtual worlds melded any further, then by all means do not go the Fluid Interfaces Group website. If, however, you like the idea of a wearable interface system that allows you to check your email against an airport wall, then Pranav and crew have just the thing. It's called SixthSense, an "always-on" wearable interface that is designed to determine who and what you're interacting with, and then proactively go out, scour the web, and find relevant information for you.
OK, so it's true that mobile telecom giant Vodafone knows a thing or two about making money. The company currently operates in more than 25 countries, and has more than 250 million customers. Many of these millions are in developing countries, where things like infectious diseases and sudden natural disasters take heavy tolls. Well, the Vodafone Americas Foundation, a non-profit arm of the company, is looking for ways to help. It just ran what it calls the Wireless Innovation Project. One hundred applicants submitted ideas that harnessed new and existing wireless technologies in pursuit of social good. The idea was to show not only great use of technology, but also a clear sense of how these products could, and would, make it to market. The three winners were recently announced at the Global Philanthropy Forum in Washington, DC.
As Europe's population ages, more and more research, and money, is going toward finding ways to help the elderly feel better, and take care of themselves, for longer. It turns out that light and lighting can play a huge role in the health of older people. It can affect sleep quality, changes of mood and cognitive performance. And so the European Union has given more than two and half million dollars to a project called Ambient Lighting Assistance for an Ageing Population, also known as ALADIN. A group of research universities and companies across Europe are trying to find ways to help older folks' circadian rhythms stay intact. And it revolves around the bio-sensor glove you see here. For this Wide Angle podcast, I speak with Walter Ritter, a research assistant at the University of Applied Sciences Vorarlberg in Austria. He began by explaining how and why light is so important to our health:
It might also help to see a graphic representation of how it works, so here it is.
(Photo courtesy of Edith Maier. Graphic from ALADIN website)
You may remember the horrific collapse of I-35 Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis on August 1, 2007. The catastrophic failure of the steel truss arch bridge during rush hour left 13 people dead and more than 140 injured. The collapse led to questions about the safety of other bridges critical to the country's infrastructure. It also caused many to rethink the way bridges are monitored and inspected. Now, a group of transportation specialists and civil engineers at the University of Michigan has begun a feasibility study for self-monitoring bridges. The program, which was launched in conjunction with Michigan's Department of Transportation and which will use federal money, plans to use of a whole range of new sensor and wireless technologies. Imagine it: cars being able to send data to bridges, which in turn can send that data to a collection point. The idea is that a bridge could be monitored not only from a distance via the Internet, but also continuously, to evaluate the stresses and strains it may be under.
In this Wide Angle podcast, I speak with Tim Gordon, who heads the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute. I started by asking Tim to remind us how bridge inspection is currently done:
The blog post title, if you didn't guess, was a not-so-veiled reference to a line from Keanu Reeves' character Neo in The Matrix. Remember -- when they plug the giant computer directly into the back of his head, and the trusty "kung-fu" program is automatically downloaded into his cortex. Or something.
Anyway -- Rear Admiral Chris Parry, the man who now heads Britain's Independent Schools Council (think private schools) recently predicted, in the esteemed Times Educational Supplement, that children will learn (absorb? process? digest?) information in this way not so long from now.
Parry told the TES: "Within 30 years, sitting down and learning something will be a thing of the past. I think people will be able to access, Matrix-style, all the vocabulary you need for a foreign language, leaving you to just clean up the grammar."
Cool, but I've studied Hungarian. Good luck "just cleaning up the grammar." (I describe my fluency level in the language as "belligerent.")
Just how would this information makes its way directly into all those kiddie brains? Well, details are sketchy, but it seems to involve some kind of organo/chemico-bluetoothy-wimax kind of thing. Parry said: "It's a very short route from wireless technology to actually getting
the electrical connections in your brain to absorb that knowledge."
Needless to say, there's been some great blog reaction to these statements. My favorite comes comes from this blog, Neuroanthropology.
Uhhh, Admiral Parry, do I have to have one of those big plugs in the
back of my neck or live in a tank of fluid while the robots steal my
body heat after we suffer enormous losses in the big robot-human war?
And can I learn super-ninja-no-gravity-martial arts along with my
foreign language programming? And if I do have to live in the tank, can
I at least choose which virtual reality I get to live in because I
don’t really want to move back to Chicago…
The author continues:
I suppose people like Admiral Parry assume that we’re going to have
memory ‘chips’ installed in our brains at some point. That’s entirely
possible, I suppose, although I think there’s likely to be some serious
issues involved, including not just ethical ones but also practical,
neurological, and economic problems. Is he aware that the biggest
challenges in schools are not the absence of technology or wireless
connections to students’ brains, but lack of resources, social problems
from outside the classroom affecting teaching, lackluster teaching,
behavioural issues among students, and basic disagreements about what
education is even supposed to accomplish (witness the problem with
standardized testing)? And that’s not even touching on the fact that in
the developing world, where most children are being educated, these
problems are even more acute.
As a father, let me just throw my requisite line in here at the end: "Dadgumit, if I had to learn the multiplication tables back in my day (oh yes, had to be said), then my kid sure as heck has to as well."
Two recent reports -- one by the Organization for Economic Co-operation (OECD) and one by web giant Akamai -- really stick it to the United States when it comes to access to broadband. America barely makes the top ten globally when it comes to broadband subscriptions in the OECD report; Akamai gives the U.S. a slightly better rating, 7th.
To its credit, the US government is looking for ways to improve internet access. The FCC has been trying, for example, to auction off unused parts of the wireless spectrum to anyone who wants to help build out networks. The latest idea is to auction off some of the 25MHz spectrum. There are a couple of catches. The bidder has to be willing to provide free broadband internet access on that spectrum. The bidder also has to remove any "obscene content."
No further details on what constitutes "obscene."
The winning bidder would also have to build out a network that could service 50 percent of the US population in four years, and, within 10 years, a whopping 95% of the population.
And after that's done, the bidder can have what's left over for commercial purposes.
"We're hoping there will be increased interest in the
proposal; and because this will provide wireless broadband
services to more Americans, it is certainly something we want
to see," said FCC spokesman Rob Kenny.
Trouble is, the 25MHz hasn't been all that sought-after in the past. One company, M2Z Networks, did approach the FCC with a plan to build out a free network on that chunk of spectrum, and then would have tried to make money off of advertising. The FCC didn't go for it.
The FCC is planning to discuss the plan further in mid-June. In the meantime, before you start thinking all that juicy broadband will make us (U.S.) more productive, take a read of this Economist article.
Enough said.
I'm off now to use my own high-speed internet connection for this special something...both productive and participatory!
Come June 12, it looks like you can kiss goodbye your dream (c'mon, you know you've had this one) of sitting in LOVE Park in Center City in Philly, chomping a cheesesteak -- laptop in, well, lap -- using the city's Wi-Fi network to surf on over and check out the latest fauna-based hilarity at icanhascheezburger.
EarthLink -- which invested millions in setting up the wireless network -- has announced it's pulling the plug. How serious is EarthLink about the shutdown? Serious enough to sue the city in court to remove the Wi-Fi equipment (housed in the streelights) and cap the company's liability at a cool $1 million. EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff told AP: "It was a great idea a few years ago,...but it's an idea that simply didn't make it."
The city sure did think it was a great idea four years ago, when it announced the creation of the wireless network with much fanfare. The idea was to make high-speed Internet access the norm across all parts of Philly, especially poorer neighborhoods. EarthLink agreed to pay the full cost of building out the network, and even agreed to pay Philly rent for the use of the light posts. The company was charging about $22 bucks a month for the service. Low-income households could get service at half that price.
The uptake wasn't good. The company said it needed to get 100,000 people on-board to make it commercially viable, but only has about 6,000 subscribers right now. EarthLink says its tried to get other companies to take over the network, but there's no interest. Philly officials say it would cost too much to taxpayers for the city to take it on.
And so, Philly's Wi-Fi experiment looks like it's going to be shuttered. Earthlink is also shutting down a similar network in New Orleans. The company's off-loading other Wi-Fi set-ups -- in Corpus Christi, TX and Milpitas, CA -- both of which have agreed to take municipal control.
But the bigger question is for me is this: what does this mean more broadly for municipal Wi-Fi? Well, take a gander at this Wikipedia page that lists various Muni Wi-Fi networks, both here and overseas. What's instructive is that most of the US-based networks are paid, while most of the overseas networks are free, or at least at a reduced cost. Take it one step further -- Macedonia and Estonia, both in different ways -- have largely succeeded in establishing nationwide wireless networks. OK, they're not big countries, but still. In both cases, a decision has been made that internet access for the bulk of the population is valuable, socially and economically.
Is Wi-Fi a public good? Should taxpayers pay for it?
Or is strictly a commercial venture, to be paid for by only by those who want, or need, to use it?
Well, here's a suggestion.
First, go to Helsinki, and hop on one of the trams they have kitted out, on a trial basis, with free Wi-Fi. A buddy of mine who just got back tested it out, and told me it was working well.
Then, you can head over to Brussels and hop on Thalys, the high-speed railway network. Thalys just announced its starting Wi-Fi service, via satellite, on some of its trains. Second class passengers will pay about $10/hour for the service, or $20 for the whole trip. Service is free for first class passengers.
Let me know how you decide, but don't send me your expense reports...
UPDATE 6/17/2008: News just came through that all is not lost for Philly's Wi-Fi network. It seems a couple of local businessmen are going to take over the abandoned Earthlink network, and build out a wired network to help compliment it. They say it will be free for individuals, but businesses will be charged for access. The city says it won't cost taxpayers a dime.
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