Category Archives: Technology

The right to be forgotten and the crumbling protection of free speech around the world

August 8, 2015 7:14 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Just when you think the crazy train ran out of tracks they go and build an extension out to the crazytown suburbs…

I mean it would have been ludicrous back in the 80s to think let alone propose that blatant censorship and the alteration of databases would be something that we would want to do for good reasons, right?  There’s no such thing as a memory hole after all.

The “right to be forgotten”.  Back in the early part of the century some plaintiffs in Europe found to their dismay that their criminal and otherwise infamous past continued to live on digitally in the form of news stories and articles preserved on the internet and that search engines could magically whisk users off to find these less than savory tidbits just by typing a few keywords.

So a few European plaintiffs banded together and sued Google, the biggest search engine in the planet, and won a case against them and forced them to take down the links to the pages where the plaintiffs misdeeds continued to live on.  The suit of course only worked for search engine results in Europe.  In any other part of the planet you could still find this information.

Not satisfied with this a french government agency called the CNIL has now asked Google to make the results disappear globally.  Google of course gave the CNIL the finger and said no, so the whole thing is going back into court.

This of course is only part of the worldwide epidemic of censorship that seems to be in vogue lately.  Try typing in certain key phrases in a certain country about a certain recent historical event and watch nothing appear.

China, Tiananmen square, 1989.

Happy?  I just lost 1.7 billion potential readers.

Think we’re immune in America?  Look up CISA or SOPA or PIPA or COICA.  All laws supposedly intended to protect one thing or another and all of them curtailing freedom of speech in some form.

The internet, what was once the digital equivalent of the open range and the last wild frontier, is rapidly becoming as closely regulated and monitored as any piece of government-owned property.

All the mad and ridiculous musings of the George Orwells of yesteryear are coming to pass.  They’re not coming in openly harsh and repressive packaging but in soft are ill-defined laws meant as “protection” or “privacy” laws.  No matter what you decide to call them however they are coming.

Posted in: censorship, internet, privacy, technology, thought

What it all means

July 19, 2015 6:40 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The big science news of the week was the probe New Horizons passing by the dwarf planet Pluto.  About the most controversial aspect of this mission was whether Pluto should qualify as a planet or needs to be in another category.

Despite all the cheer-leading by NASA and the news media the mission itself doesn’t exactly capture the public imagination.  The probe flew by the Pluto.  It didn’t orbit it even once.  It certainly won’t land on the planet and scoop up Plutonian dirt.  Pluto itself hasn’t proven to be a big surprise either.  It’s still a giant rock covered by snow and ice in the middle of a dark nowhere. The pictures were nice but again nothing unexpected.

So how is this supposed to affect the average human back here on Earth and what if anything can we hope to gain out of it all?

Well, if you said not a hell of a lot then you’re right.  This mission won’t make the price of bread go down or solve the middle east crisis or even get your laundry cleaner.

But what it does do is close the book on the first part of our exploration of this solar system.  We have now done the preliminary exploration on all 8 (or 9) planets that we have.  A task that has taken nearly 60 years to accomplish has been done.  This voyage by itself took nearly a decade and depended largely on precise physics and navigational calculations.  We have now proven conclusively that those can work even in deep space and even by a robot working alone.

The mission itself was done on a shoestring budget.  I think I saw someone mention that a Hollywood blockbuster had a bigger budget than this mission.  The control personnel for the mission came from a University so the experience and know how to do this sort of research is diffusing outside the big government agencies.

No, this was not a big epic mission.  Nothing earth-shaking came out of it.  But it is a crucial step on a road that will one day make this a space faring species and lead us to the next great moment in human history.

Little tiny victories like this is what leads to great accomplishments down the road.

Posted in: life in general, science, technology

The perils of technology

May 28, 2015 6:48 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was at a convention recently and the organizers had come out with a downloadable application (app) for people to use in lieu of paper programs.  For the most part the app was a huge success.  The organizers were able to update the information as events required and people got to where they wanted to be.

One slight hitch was that a couple of panels at the convention kept getting switched from room to room or were postponed.  So people had to keep an eye on those panels and some people wound up going to the wrong rooms at the wrong time either cause their app had not updated or they were relying on old information.

A fairly benign glitch to be sure but then again some technological glitches can be more serious.  In other news a car, supposed to be able to avoid collisions, hit several reporters that were there to witness the unveiling.  The car maker claimed that the car was not fitted with pedestrian detection capabilities.  Even though a human was at the wheel he did not brake for the pedestrians because the car did not detect them.

Something fundamentally disturbing about that.  A human operator relying more on the car sensors than his own eyes and not braking.  But I think this is indicative of a trend that I see more and more around me.  People seem to have this innate trust in technology.

We tend to see something new and assume that it is intrinsically good or perfect.  Technology is neither good nor bad, it just is.  What we do with it once it is in our hands gives it context.  Maybe it’s just middle-aged me talking and maybe my parents felt the same way about “new” technologies when I was young.  Maybe it’s been the same story since the beginning of time but I don’t think so.

I think the trend has accelerated in the last ten years.  People, particularly younger people, tend to rely more and more on their technology and less and less on their own judgment and wits.  Hopefully the trend is an aberration and can be reversed.

I would hate to see the day come when we believe more in machines than we do in mankind.

Posted in: activities, computers, future, internet, technology

Living within our means

April 30, 2015 7:04 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been doing a lot with my personal finances in the last few months.  Included in this was the purchase of a new car.  Something that I undeniably need living in Houston but yet some would argue I could have gotten something more pedestrian, less flashy, and more modest.  Some have asked if it is something that I can afford.

To which the answer is yes.  This was something that I’ve been thinking about for over a year and the numbers do make sense.  Now, I could have gotten something more modest, true but the cost difference really wasn’t going to be that great and I do feel that I got quite a bit for my money.  So I still feel that this was a good bargain for me.

Nevertheless these are valid concerns.  In my lifetime I’ve seen how quickly people can get in trouble with easy credit and overspending.  When I was in school the message boards were crammed with credit card applications for students to fill out and even though most students either didn’t work or worked part-time jobs they got ridiculously high credit lines.  Of course within a month or two these kids got into some real financial problems that took years to clear up.

But that’s just symptomatic of our culture or even our civilization as a whole.  We like to push the limits to the extreme and even break the limits till we get into trouble with not just money but resources, living space, and population size.

Take California for example.  The golden state with promises of endless farmlands carved out of the desert, green suburbs without end, and abundant, cheap water hauled from hundreds of miles away. What happens when the waters fail to come year after year?  The answer is the tragedy that’s slowly unfolding right now and affects not just millions of Californians but millions of people across the country and the world that depend on the produce grown there.

What will happen to that population?  They won’t just dry up and blow away.  We’ll soon see them in our neighborhoods looking for work and sharing our resources.  Problems that might have been sidestepped if we had not insisted on trying to squeeze every last resource out of a desert that wasn’t ready to take so many people in the first place.

California will heal but it will take a long time.  My question is when it heals and the rain cycle is restored will we go back and make the same mistakes again or will we learn and not try to live past the capacity of the land?

Posted in: consumerism, current events, economy, energy, environment, future, life in general, technology, thought, weather

Brand loyalty wars

March 5, 2015 6:20 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Every couple of years planned obsolescence catches up with me.  No matter how good that laptop or cell phone or even car was when you bought it eventually you have to replace it.

In some cases it really seems to be planned.  My smartphone contract is 2 years long and in about 2 years my smartphone pretty much becomes obsolete so time to get a new one.

Then of course comes the competing advertising and opinions and advice from partisans from all sides advocating their own point of view. I wrote something about this partisanship a couple of years ago.  Some people will swear by their technology choices and will not yield an inch on anything.

Even though I try to keep clear of biases I suppose I do have some of my own.

My mobile provider for example.  Widely regarded as one of the worst providers for a long time it had the one benefit that my contract had an unlimited data package.  It in fact was the only unlimited data package for a long time before competitors began offering that as well.  In the meantime my providers signal strength and coverage has grown substantially so I could have hopped from provider to provider looking for the best deal but in the end sitting still and letting things develop proved to be the best strategy.  Sometimes doing nothing at all is the best strategy.  Shrug.

But other times, no matter how much you hate to do it, you have to admit that you have to change.

In a related vein I have looked at the specs of the updated version of my smartphone and have determined that it’s not going to meet my needs so off I go looking at other brands.  I have about 6 months to decide but already I’m looking over different models and brands for any marked advantage.

In this case my brand loyalty is absolutely nil.  The maker simply dropped the ball on the new design and I have to look for something that will meet my needs.  I did the same with my last car.  I used to drive an SUV and the maker stopped producing it so I changed not just brands but car types and got a sedan instead.  When it comes to practical items that I use every day I find that I am that way.  If something doesn’t meet my needs then I will stop using it.  When it comes to something less tangible like say fashion choices I may have more brand loyalty.

I think that’s something for makers of practical goods to consider more than say how stylish their product looks or what celebrity endorsements they can get.

If you meet your customers needs, and satiate their desires for a good quality product then the market will come to you.  You will not have to go to them by altering your product and possibly making it worse.  Remember where the core of your clientele is and go out and meet them.

Posted in: business, consumerism, shopping, technology

Running past the app

December 25, 2014 7:07 AM , Leave a Comment ,

When I began trying to get fit I knew that I would need something to gauge my level of health.  This was around 4 years ago and the last time I had been in a gym or run a lap was over a decade earlier.  So I was starting from scratch and hadn’t a clue about anything, not even about how unhealthy I was.

After reading some books and websites, and then consulting a trainer I decided that walking and running would be where I would start my fitness crusade.  The general consensus was that in order to start getting healthy that I would need to walk at least 10,000 steps per day.  So I would need a pedometer, a little device to count my steps.

Most pedometers I’d seen were in the 40 to 100 dollar range.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make that much of an investment in something I might drop a week later.  Remember, this is at the beginning of the process and I was not all that sure of things at the time.

I was in a dollar store picking up some cheap batteries and next to the batteries was a pedometer.  A little cheap plastic device with a digital counter and a start and stop button and nothing else.  This was the most primitive type of pedometer, a pendulum pedometer.  Basically anytime you shake it back and forth you cause it to tick off one more step.  You could vigorously shake it in your hand for a minute and tick off a couple hundred “steps”.  The price was right and for my purpose it was perfect.

The next day I clipped it on and went through my normal day and lo and behold I barely took a thousand steps in a day. Depressing but eye-opening.  I took the pedometer for a few test walks and found what it took to get to 10,000 steps and did it.  After that I got a better sense of things and stopped using it.

A year or so later I stepped up the game and bought a pedometer watch.  It was much more accurate than the previous pedometer and could calculate distances and give me miles per hour for when I did run.  But I never really took to it.  After a couple of months I stopped using it.

My next couple of years were about building up my fitness habits.  I wasn’t really looking into better performance but just building up the  routine to make it habitual within myself.

But in 2013 I got a new smartphone that had a built-in fitness app.  This app used the phone’s built-in GPS application to plot my running routes and give me the amount of time I spent running and the distance covered.  This was quite handy as I could strap it onto my arm and not even have to set it up.  Just go and run and let the app do its thing.

I used it for over a year and watched my daily distance run over time grow and grow.  If I missed a day the app would show that on a bar graph and tell me how my average compared to previous months.  A handy motivational tool.

Then one day someone at the developer decided to update the app and erased all my records for the last 15 months.  In the blink of an eye all that hard work was gone.

Stunned doesn’t cover it.  Angry?  yes, a bit.  The new app works but I now have to log in before each exercise.  Not as automatic as I’d been used to before.  On top of this I now have to store my results on a cloud based app where it’s vulnerable to hacking.  I know, not a huge deal but still, why couldn’t it be stored on my phone.  Not the same easy experience that I was used to.

Along with this development I had been in a bit of a funk about my running lately.  I’d been missing days and doing less and this whole app mess didn’t help things.

I went on vacation and realized how much more I needed to do.  The vacation allowed me to set my goals for the coming year and one thing I realized is that the fitness doesn’t depend on the technology to work.  All the apps, and the watches, and the fitness bands are great but at the end of the day they don’t do the work for you, you do.

So the day after I came back I went out and just ran my regular route without the phone.  I’ve been running every day since that without needing to be prodded.  My fitness goals have been set and I’ve already contacted my new trainer to begin working out in the new year.

The technology was a good way to get back to where I needed to be in my life but it’s not the most crucial aspect of my fitness.  The point of it all is to feel better and to become the person that I want to be and no device will do that for me.

Posted in: activities, exercise, goals, health, running, technology

the convergent world

October 22, 2014 6:25 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I wrote earlier in the year about the reasons why I wasn’t going forward with Google Glass.  Most of those reasons still apply but this week we took a major step forward.  The next level in mobile connectivity speed has been reached.  Trials for a 5G network.  This may one day remove one of the major stumbling blocks to ubiquitous mobile communication.

Devices will be created to take advantage of this and to keep up, most carriers will have to have higher data transmission rates.

Yet even with this major milestone I am still hesitant about devices such as Google Glass.  Privacy issues aside, and believe me that’s not a small thing, I still see Google Glass as a somewhat clunky and perhaps even a dead-end technology.

I believe that ultimately the technology will reach the point of not projecting something over a small screen but directly manipulating a user’s brain waves to augment reality.  Nanotechnology would be introduced into the body and would manipulate the signals from the optic nerve to the brain to introduce “artifacts” into the field of vision.  Basically you would gain the benefits of something like Google Glass but it would exist only in your imagination.

Besides the nanotechnology that would be injected into you or perhaps swallowed in a pill you would have some sort of transmitter/receiver implanted under the skin to handle all the internet traffic.  Such devices do already exist and some have had the operation to have similar devices implanted already.

The nanotechnology could even go further and introduce sensors all around the body to monitor vital functions like heart beat, muscle tone, digestion, even blood chemistry.

Some of the first results in memory manipulation and memory decoding are being done at this moment and it may be possible to manipulate, record, or erase memories like a hard drive.

Now, is this a positive or a negative development?  Like anything made or dreamed up by a human it has potential for both.  We already bristle at the abuse of our privacy online.  Inviting the technology inside of us may lead to even greater abuses.  People releasing our medical records, our location, our thoughts is a seriously scary thing.

Once again the technology is outpacing the ethics.  Really the only one that has even obliquely tackled this idea is William Gibson.  We have some ideas but we don’t have much time.  Technology keeps moving forward.  Should we?

Posted in: future, speculation, technology

tablet and education update

July 18, 2014 7:08 AM , Leave a Comment ,

A little over a year ago I posted some thoughts on using tablets in education.

Since that time technology and online applications have moved forward and some school districts are moving along some of the lines I suggested back then.  I thought it might be nice to delve a little deeper into some of the aspects of technology’s role in public education.

One of the more exciting aspects would be the ability to specialize the curriculum to meet the requirements of not just the state but of the actual school district and even the school.  Before the school year begins the departmental staff could gather together and discuss the successes and failures of the last year and decide what needs more focus in the coming year and select from online publisher catalogs as to what should be in their textbooks.

In Texas we have what are called “Magnet schools”,  schools that put special emphasis on certain curricula.  These schools may focus on the arts, on law, on trades, or the sciences. Having texts that are specially keyed in on these fields would help students not only focus on their chosen fields but also allow them to engage with other courses that aren’t in their chosen fields like maths and sciences for art students, or literature and writing for technical students.

We have such a wealth of communications means these days compared to even when I was a student in high school.  In my time most communications to parents came through the student themselves having to ferry notes and grades from the school to the parent.  In rare cases a teacher might mail or call the parent but that was the exception.

Even with the common communications means like texting, Skype, social media, and email there can be robust communications with parents on the progress of a student.  Communications with teachers but with other parents is possible.  Classes can become secondary communities where topics like drugs, alcohol, gangs, or bullying can be addressed by parents.  I think marrying up technology will make it more attractive for parents to become involved in this and help them take preventative measures to help their children avoid these problems.

The last aspect I would address is the fact that computers and internet access do open up so many new opportunities and aspects of life.  We have so much information readily available to us online that we can become inundated with data but yet at the same time if it is managed properly then we can look at this as resource.  Online schools exist that help adults with remedial courses, governments from federal to local now post information and forms online, besides that you have all the data that commercial companies post.

I don’t deny that there are costs involved in all of this or that there are pitfalls to these schemes but on the whole I think this is the direction that schools will have to go to keep pace with the rest of the world.  The tried and true model from the last century of paper textbooks and school binders and backpacks is sadly out of date and needs to be replaced as soon as possible.

 

Posted in: education, technology

unplugging

June 18, 2014 6:29 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been noticing something lately.

The other day I was at my favorite writing cafe.  It was a nice Saturday afternoon and conditions seemed perfect for writing.  Yet the writing didn’t come.  This happens to every writer every once in a while.  It’s part of the territory and it’s nothing to stress over.  You just have to roll with it and use the time for some other purpose.

So I decided to spend the time thinking.  Yes, I know.  Thrilling.  But it’s necessary.  I have several plans and issues on my plate at the moment and some free time to contemplate all of these subjects is a real gift.

But just as I was about to get started…. beep.  A Facebook update, or a blue light on my phone indicating a tweet response, or a whistle indicating a text message or the ring of an email coming in.  Little things but they can wreck a thought process or stop it from ever starting.

So instead of thinking about all those other issues I started thinking about these distractions.  When was the last time I had truly been alone with my thoughts for a good long time without any of this coming in and butting in?

Oddly enough it was back in my bar hopping days.  Weird I know but way back when I used to go to clubs and bars I would go to some really loud place where I couldn’t hear my phone and just sit back in some shady corner booth and nurse a drink or two for a couple of hours.  It was like some sort of white noise that separated me from the world at large and really let me think.

Nowadays?  Running gives me a bit of a respite from the world but it’s maybe an hour?  hour and a half and half that time I’m keeping my eyes open trying not to trip up or get hit by a car.  Bedtime?  As soon as I crawl into bed I want to sleep so try as I might I can’t get a thought process going.

So why not just turn off the damn phone or tablet or whatever?  There’s always the fear that the second that you do you’ll miss a phone call or tweet or whatever that you need to answer right away.  Never works out that way…cept when it does.  The minute you turn it off, you know someone will be trying to get a hold of you.

That’s the curse of the instant communications era.  You know that you need to keep awake and aware and that fear robs you of that precious time that you need to think.

And I’m not the only one that this is happening to.  I’ve noticed other people complain about the exact same thing.  These little conveniences are robbing us of the time and opportunity to think.  We desperately need to get away from these things.  They seem to be so innocuous but they’re a real danger to a thinking person.

Posted in: activities, life in general, technology, thought

interesting times

June 16, 2014 6:34 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Last year I was interviewed over the phone for a piece in The Atlantic magazine.  The topic of this unexpected interview was a new company called Skybox.  They had a plan to place into orbit a string of low-cost observation satellites all around the world and to provide almost continuous image coverage over all the major cities of the world.

I should probably first explain that I have been in the remote sensing industry for the past 20 years.  I have been around since the time that 9-track tapes were state of the art and from the time that satellite images were being delivered as film negatives.  My career has taken place as the industry as a whole has seen ups and downs and has been rocked by takeovers and acquisitions.  One company that I have worked with has been taken over and renamed 4 times during my career.  So I’m not exactly  newcomer to this field.

People in business and government as well as private individuals have dreamed of or dreaded the idea of having a satellite overhead watching your every move for decades.  However it has been a fantasy for most of this time.  The technical hurdles were and to some degree still are quite daunting.  Satellites have to be in low orbit to get the level of detail you want but that means that they don’t stay overhead all the time.  This means that they can’t be watching your every move all the time.  You would need several satellite working together to do something like that.

But what really trips up this concept is the lack of ready capital.  Satellites have been the cutting edge of technical innovation for decades.  Components were custom-made for just one satellite and made to fine tolerances.  Entire new disciplines and programming languages had to be developed to make satellites work.  This of course required extremely well-educated and capable engineers and scientists to work with expensive production processes and as a consequence trying to put up a satellite usually depended on having a major corporation or often a large government to foot the bills.

Just the act up putting a satellite, really putting anything into orbit, was and still is extremely high.  On average it is about $10,000 per pound.  Normal observation satellites weigh tons.  Rockets can and do blow up, a tiny circuit can fail and render your satellite useless, a bit of space junk can crash into it.  The task of getting permission to launch something into orbit from a government is difficult in and of itself.  Overall it’s no easy or cheap task.

Skybox did a couple of clever things.  Borrowing from the NASA FBC (faster, better, cheaper) concept of the early 1990s, they created systems that were cheaper than the norm.  By using off the shelf technology and cutting down on many components that would be normally found on satellites they have designed a satellite that is around 100 kilograms and is the size of a small refrigerator.  A normal satellite would weigh tons and be the size of a car.

Still, the costs of launching just this small satellite were a stumbling block.  The second thing that Skybox did that was clever was that rather than trying to go for launching the entire system at one time they decided to do a proof of concept model.

Last year Skybox managed to raise some capital and launch one satellite into orbit (SkySat-1).  The satellite successfully deployed and relayed back images.  Not the best of images from a satellite but images nonetheless.  This proof of concept launch was enough to encourage Google to acquire the company for $500 million.

The acquisition is a perfect fit for Google’s mapping applications.  If implemented correctly it would mean that they can update any outdated map information pretty much on demand.  Road construction closures, new subdivisions, large outdoor gatherings could all be updated when and if the Google programmers wanted them to be.  This along with the aerial drones that Google intends to deploy gives them a potentially crushing edge over Apple in the mapping arena.

In addition to their own mapping revenue there will be the private and government markets that for a long time were ruled by aircraft companies and a small number of satellite companies that mainly did government contract work.

Now mind you this is all still a fairly long way off.  The whole scheme rests on the ability of Skybox to put into orbit entire squadrons of these tiny satellites and have them working in concert to provide coverage all around the globe.  Even Google will be hard pressed to provide the capital to do this but if anyone has the money to pull this off it’s them.  Of course after that they will have to maintain the chain of satellites, replace them as needed, and of course to manage the unimaginable amount of data streaming down from the satellites.  All huge technical challenges but with rich rewards.

This will also potentially bring about changes in my life.  With a centralized source of image data flowing out to clients from a ubiquitous single source this could mean the end or at the very least a radical change in my job.  I have worked in a fairly specialized and obscure field for the last 20 years and suddenly it looks like it may become fairly accessible and commonplace.

Interesting times indeed.

Posted in: business, career, technology , Tagged: , , ,