Technology – Page 23 – artdiamondblog.com

“Pretty Cool” Cochlear Implant: “It Helps Me Hear”

“The cochlear implant.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ commentary quoted and cited below.

(p. A15) . . . , three pioneering researchers– Graeme Clark, Ingeborg Hochmair and Blake Wilson –shared the prestigious Lasker-DeBakey Award for Clinical Medical Research for their work in developing the [cochlear] implant. . . . The award citation says the devices have “for the first time, substantially restored a human sense with medical intervention” and directly transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands.
I’ve seen this up close. My 10-year-old son, Alex, is one of the 320,000 people with a cochlear implant.
, , ,
“What’s that thing on your head?” I heard a new friend ask Alex recently.
“It helps me hear,” he replied, then added: “I think it’s pretty cool.”
“If you took it off, would you hear me?” she asked.
“Nope,” he said. “I’m deaf.”
“Cool,” she agreed. Then they talked about something else.
Moments like that make me deeply grateful for the technology that allows Alex to have such a conversation, but also for the hard-won aplomb that lets him do it so matter-of-factly.

For the full commentary, see:
Denworth, Lydia. “OPINION; What Cochlear Implants Did for My Son; Researchers who were just awarded the ‘American Nobel’ have opened up the world of sound to the deaf.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Sept. 20, 2013): A15.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed word, added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Sept. 19, 2013.)

“Carnegie Watched, Listened, Learned” from Scott’s Process Innovations

(p. 65) Later in life, Scott would be better known for his political skills, but he was, like his mentor Thomson, a master of cost accounting. Together, the two men steadily cut unit costs and increased revenues by investing in capital improvements–new and larger locomotives, better braking systems, improved tracks, new bridges. Instead of running several smaller trains along the same route, they ran fewer but longer trains with larger locomotives and freight cars. To minimize delays–a major factor in escalating costs–they erected their own telegraph lines, built a second track and extended sidings alongside the first one, and kept roadways, tunnels, bridges, and crossings in good repair.
Carnegie watched, listened, learned. Nothing was lost on the young man. With an exceptional memory and a head for figures, he made the most of his apprenticeship and within a brief time was acting more as Scott’s deputy than his assistant. Tom Scott had proven to be so good at his job that when Pennsylvania Railroad vice president William Foster died unexpectedly of an infected carbuncle, Scott was named his successor.

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

“Western Union Bullied the Makers of Public Policy into Serving Private Capital”

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Until now there has been no full-scale, modern company history. Joshua D. Wolff’s “Western Union and the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845-1893” ably fills the bill, offering an exhaustive and yet fascinating account.
. . .
If people today remember anything about Western Union, it is that its coast-to-coast line put the Pony Express out of business and that its leaders didn’t see the telephone coming. Mr. Wolff tells us that neither claim is exactly true. It was Hiram Sibley, Western Union’s first president, who went out on his own, when his board balked, to form a separate company and build the transcontinental telegraph in 1861; he made his fortune by eventually selling it to Western Union. And the company was very aware of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention, patented in 1876, but history had supposedly shown that it wasn’t necessary to control a patent to win the technology war. The company’s third president, William Orton, was sure that Bell and his “toy” would not get the better of Western Union: “We would come along and take it away from him.” They didn’t.
. . .
Mr. Wolff contends that the company’s practices set the template for today’s “corporate triumphalism,” not least in the way Western Union bullied the makers of public policy into serving private capital. Perhaps, but telecom competition today is so ferocious and differently arranged from that of the late 19th century that a “triumphant” company today may be toast tomorrow–think of BlackBerry–and can’t purchase help with anything like Western’s Union’s brazenness and scope. Western Union had friends in Congress, the regulatory bureaucracy and the press. Members of the company’s board of directors chaired both the 1872 Republican and Democratic national conventions. It seemed that, whatever the battles in business, politics, technology or the courts, the company’s shareholders won.

For the full review, see:
STUART FERGUSON. “Bookshelf; The Octopus of the Wires.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Dec. 23, 2013): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 22, 2013, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Western Union and the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845-1893,’ by Joshua D. Wolff.”)

Book under review:
Wolff, Joshua D. Western Union and the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845-1893. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Innovators Agree: Whiteboard Is Fast, Easy to Use and Big

(p. B1) . . . Evernote, like pretty much every tech company I’ve ever visited, is in thrall to the whiteboard. Indeed, as technologically backward as they may seem, whiteboards are to Silicon Valley what legal pads are to lawyers, what Excel is to accountants, or what long sleeves are to magicians.
They’re an all-purpose tool of innovation, often the first place a product or company’s vision is dreamed up and designed, and a constant huddling point for future refinement. And though many digital technologies have attempted to unseat the whiteboard, the humble pre-electronic surface can’t be beat.
The whiteboard has three chief virtues: It’s fast. It’s easy to use. And it’s big. “We’re often doing something I call ‘designing in the hallway,’ ” said Jamie Hull, the product manager for Evernote’s iOS apps. “When a new problem or request comes up, the fastest thing you can do is pull two or three people aside, go to the nearest wall, and figure it out.”
Unlike a computer or phone, the whiteboard is always on, always fully charged, and it doesn’t require that people download, install, and launch software to begin using it.

For the full commentary, see:
FARHAD MANJOO. “HIGH DEFINITION; High Tech’s Secret Weapon: The Whiteboard.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Oct. 31, 2013): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Oct. 30, 2013. The online version combined paragraphs 1 and 2 above and 3 and 4 above. I have returned them to the form they had in the print version.)

Politically Correct Artisanal Locally Sourced Combat Video Game

“Call of Duty: Ghosts Female avatars have been added, and so has an “extinction” mode involving fighting aliens, in this game for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U and PC.” Source of caption and image: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited below.

From a review of the video game “Call of Duty: Ghosts”:

(p. C5) “. . . the South Americans torture a character using artisanal, locally sourced interrogation techniques supposedly (and naturally) used by Amazonian tribes.”

For the full review, see:
CHRIS SUELLENTROP. “VIDEO GAME REVIEW; A Fantastical Shootout, Moving Across Space and Time.” The New York Times (Weds., November 6, 2013): C5.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in caption in original of both print and online versions.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 5, 2013.)

Over-Regulated Tech Entrepreneurs Seek Their Own Country

The embed above is provided by YouTube where the video clip is posted under the title “Balaji Srinivasan at Startup School 2013.”

(p. B4) At a startup conference in the San Francisco Bay area last month, a brash and brilliant young entrepreneur named Balaji Srinivasan took the stage to lay out a case for Silicon Valley’s independence.

According to Mr. Srinivasan, who co-founded a successful genetics startup and is now a popular lecturer at Stanford University, the tech industry is under siege from Wall Street, Washington and Hollywood, which he says he believes are harboring resentment toward Silicon Valley’s efforts to usurp their cultural and economic power.
On its surface, Mr. Srinivasan’s talk,called “Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit,”sounded like a battle cry of the libertarian, anti-regulatory sensibility long espoused by some of the tech industry’s leading thinkers. After arguing that the rest of the country wants to put a stop to the Valley’s rise, Mr. Srinivasan floated a plan for techies to build an “opt-in society, outside the U.S., run by technology.”
His idea seemed a more expansive version of Google Chief Executive Larry Page’s call for setting aside “a piece of the world” to try out controversial new technologies, and investor Peter Thiel’s “Seastead” movement, which aims to launch tech-utopian island nations.

For the full commentary, see:
FARHAD MANJOO. “HIGH DEFINITION; The Valley’s Ugly Complex.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Nov. 4, 2013): B4.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Nov. 3, 2013, and has the title “HIGH DEFINITION; Silicon Valley Has an Arrogance Problem.”)

Use of Floppy Disks Shows Slowness of Government

(p. A14) WASHINGTON — The technology troubles that plagued the HealthCare.gov website rollout may not have come as a shock to people who work for certain agencies of the government — especially those who still use floppy disks, the cutting-edge technology of the 1980s.
Every day, The Federal Register, the daily journal of the United States government, publishes on its website and in a thick booklet around 100 executive orders, proclamations, proposed rule changes and other government notices that federal agencies are mandated to submit for public inspection.
So far, so good.
It turns out, however, that the Federal Register employees who take in the information for publication from across the government still receive some of it on the 3.5-inch plastic storage squares that have become all but obsolete in the United States.
. . .
“You’ve got this antiquated system that still works but is not nearly as efficient as it could be,” said Stan Soloway, chief executive of the Professional Services Council, which represents more than 370 government contractors. “Companies that work with the government, whether longstanding or newcomers, are all hamstrung by the same limitations.”
The use of floppy disks peaked in American homes and offices in the mid-1990s, and modern computers do not even accommodate them anymore. But The Federal Register continues to accept them, in part because legal and security requirements have yet to be updated, but mostly because the wheels of government grind ever slowly.
. . .
. . . , experts say that an administration that prided itself on its technological savvy has a long way to go in updating the computer technology of the federal government. HealthCare.gov and the floppy disks of The Federal Register, they say, are but two recent examples of a government years behind the private sector in digital innovation.

For the full story, see:
JADA F. SMITH. “Slowly They Modernize: A Federal Agency That Still Uses Floppy Disks.” The New York Times (Sat., December 7, 2013): A14.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date December 6, 2013.)

Kits Let Model T Owners Transform Them into Tractors, Snowmobiles, Roadsters and Trucks

“OFF ROAD; Kits to take the Model T places Henry Ford never intended included tractor conversions, . . . ” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 1) WHEN Henry Ford started to manufacture his groundbreaking Model T on Sept. 27, 1908, he probably never imagined that the spindly little car would remain in production for 19 years. Nor could Ford have foreseen that his company would eventually build more than 15 million Tin Lizzies, making him a billionaire while putting the world on wheels.

But nearly as significant as the Model T’s ubiquity was its knack for performing tasks far beyond basic transportation. As quickly as customers left the dealers’ lot, they began transforming their Ts to suit their specialized needs, assisted by scores of new companies that sprang up to cater exclusively to the world’s most popular car.
Following the Model T’s skyrocketing success came mail-order catalogs and magazine advertisements filled with parts and kits to turn the humble Fords into farm tractors, mobile sawmills, snowmobiles, racy roadsters and even semi-trucks. Indeed, historians credit the Model T — which Ford first advertised as The Universal Car — with launching today’s multibillion-dollar automotive aftermarket industry.

For the full story, see:
LINDSAY BROOKE. “Mr. Ford’s T: Mobility With Versatility.” The New York Times, Automobiles Section (Sun., July 20, 2008): 1 & 14.
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Mr. Ford’s T: Versatile Mobility.”)

Kerosene Creatively Destroyed Whale Oil

“The whale-oil lamps at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum are obsolete, though at one time, whale oil lighted much of the Western world.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 20) Like oil, particularly in its early days, whaling spawned dazzling fortunes, depending on the brute labor of tens of thousands of men doing dirty, sweaty, dangerous work. Like oil, it began with the prizes closest to home and then found itself exploring every corner of the globe. And like oil, whaling at its peak seemed impregnable, its product so far superior to its trifling rivals, like smelly lard oil or volatile camphene, that whaling interests mocked their competitors.

“Great noise is made by many of the newspapers and thousands of the traders in the country about lard oil, chemical oil, camphene oil, and a half-dozen other luminous humbugs,” The Nantucket Inquirer snorted derisively in 1843. It went on: “But let not our envious and — in view of the lard oil mania — we had well nigh said, hog-gish opponents, indulge themselves in any such dreams.”
But, in fact, whaling was already just about done, said Eric Jay Dolin, who . . . is the author of “Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America.” Whales near North America were becoming scarce, and the birth of the American petroleum industry in 1859 in Titusville, Pa., allowed kerosene to supplant whale oil before the electric light replaced both of them and oil found other uses.
. . .
Mr. Dolin said the message for today was that one era’s irreplaceable energy source could be the next one’s relic. Like whaling, he said, big oil is ripe to be replaced by something newer, cleaner, more appropriate for its moment.

For the full story, see:
PETER APPLEBOME. “OUR TOWNS; Once They Thought Whale Oil Was Indispensable, Too.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., August 3, 2008): 20.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title, “OUR TOWNS; They Used to Say Whale Oil Was Indispensable, Too.”)

Dolin’s book is:
Dolin, Eric Jay. Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.

Not All Environmentalists Reject the Refrigerator

(p. D4) MANY environmentalists — even many who think nothing of using recycled toilet paper or cut the thermostat to near-arctic levels — see fridge-free living as an extreme choice or an impractical and excessive goal.
“The refrigerator was a smart advance for society,” said Gretchen Willis, 37, an environmentally conscious mother of four in Arlington, Tex., who recently read about the practice on a popular eco-themed blog, thecrunchychicken.com, and was astounded.
“I never would have thought of it,” Ms. Willis said, explaining that although she’s committed to recycling and using fluorescent bulbs, she draws the line at any environmental practice that will result in great expense or inconvenience. Living without a refrigerator, she said, qualifies on both counts: she would have to buy more food in smaller quantities because of spoilage, prepare exact amounts because she couldn’t refrigerate leftovers, and make daily trips to the grocery store.
“It’s silly not to have one,” she said, “considering what the alternative is: drinking up a gallon of milk in one day so it doesn’t spoil.”
Deanna Duke, who lives in Seattle and runs the site Ms. Willis visited, said that taking a stand for or against unplugging has become “a badge of honor” for those on either side. “It’s either ‘look how far I’m willing to go,’ or ‘look how far I’m not willing to go,’ ” she said. For her part, Ms. Duke may refrain from watering her lawn in an effort at conservation, but she’s firmly in the pro-refrigerator camp. “I can’t think of any circumstances, other than an involuntary extreme situation, that would make me unplug my fridge,” she said. “The convenience factor is too high.”
. . .
Marty O’Gorman, the vice president of Frigidaire, said an 18-cubic-foot Energy Star-rated Frigidaire refrigerator uses about 380 kilowatt-hours a year — less than a standard clothes dryer — and costs a homeowner $40, or about 11 cents a day.
. . .
. . . , Mr. O’Gorman said downsizing from a standard model to Frigidaire’s smallest minifridge would result in only about $6 in energy savings over a year.
It’s this sort of practical calculus that has led many who advocate sustainable living to view unplugging the fridge as a dubious practice. They point out that it is likely to result in more trips to the store (which burns more gas, for those who drive) and the purchase of food in smaller portions (thus more packaging).
“It’s easy to look at your bill and say, ‘I’m saving energy,’ ” Ms. Duke said. “But you need to look at the whole supply chain.”

For the full story, see:
STEVEN KURUTZ. “Trashing the Fridge.” The New York Times (Thurs., February 5, 2009): D1 & D4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 4, 2009.)

Better Batteries Would Be a General Purpose Technology (GPT)

Economists of technology have been thinking about General Purpose Technologies (GPT) for the last 10 years or so. As the name implies, a GPT is one where there are broad applications, and new applications are invented as the price of the GPT declines. My plausible guess is that a breakthrough in battery technology would be a very important GPT. The progress sketched below is probably not a breakthrough, but progress is good.

(p. C4) People take batteries for granted, but they shouldn’t. All kinds of technological advances hinge on developing smaller and more powerful mobile energy sources.
Researchers at Harvard University and the University of Illinois are reporting just such a creation, one that happens to be no bigger than a grain of sand. These tiny but powerful lithium-ion batteries raise the prospect of a new generation of medical and other devices that can go where traditional hulking batteries can’t.
. . .
Jennifer Lewis, a materials scientist at Harvard, says these batteries can store more energy because 3-D printing enables the stacking of electrodes in greater volume than the thin-film methods now used to make microbatteries.

For the full story, see:
DANIEL AKST. “R AND D: Batteries on the Head of a Pin.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., June 22, 2013): C4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date June 21, 2013.)