Technology – Page 33 – artdiamondblog.com

Benefits of Driverless Cars Justify Changing Liability Laws

“The car is driven by a computer that steers, starts and stops itself. A 360 degrees laser scanner on top of the car, a GPS system and other sensors monitor the surrounding traffic.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p A13) Expect innovations that change the nature of driving more than anything since the end of the hand-crank engine–so long as the legal and regulatory systems don’t strangle new digital technologies before they can roll off the assembly line.
. . .
Mr. Ford outlined a future of what the auto industry calls “semiautonomous driving technology,” meaning increasingly self-driving cars. Over the next few years, cars will automatically be able to maintain safe distances, using networks of sensors, V-to-V (vehicle-to-vehicle) communications and real-time tracking of driving conditions fed into each car’s navigation system.
This will limit the human error that accounts for 90% of accidents. Radar-based cruise control will stop cars from hitting each other, with cars by 2025 driving themselves in tight formations Mr. Ford describes as “platoons,” cutting congestion as the space between cars is reduced safely.
. . .
Over the next decade, cars could finally become true automobiles. Our laws will have to be updated for a new relationship between people and cars, but the benefits will be significant: fewer traffic accidents and fewer gridlocked roads–and, perhaps best of all, young people will be in self-driving cars, not teenager-driven cars.

For the full commentary, see:
L. GORDON CROVITZ. “INFORMATION AGE; The Car of the Future Will Drive You; A truly auto-mobile is coming if liability laws don’t stop it.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., March 5, 2012): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Quantum Computers May Revolutionize Nanotechnology and Drug Design

“Scott Aaronson.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT commentary quoted and cited below.

(p. D5) When people hear that I work on quantum computing — one of the most radical proposals for the future of computation — their first question is usually, “So when can I expect a working quantum computer on my desk?” Often they bring up breathless news reports about commercial quantum computers right around the corner. After I explain the strained relationship between those reports and reality, they ask: “Then when? In 10 years? Twenty?”

Unfortunately, this is sort of like asking Charles Babbage, who drew up the first blueprints for a general-purpose computer in the 1830s, whether his contraption would be hitting store shelves by the 1840s or the 1850s. Could Babbage have foreseen the specific technologies — the vacuum tube and transistor — that would make his vision a reality more than a century later? Today’s quantum computing researchers are in a similar bind. They have a compelling blueprint for a new type of computer, one that could, in seconds, solve certain problems that would probably take eons for today’s fastest supercomputers. But some of the required construction materials don’t yet exist.
. . .
While code-breaking understandably grabs the headlines, it’s the more humdrum application of quantum computers — simulating quantum physics and chemistry — that has the potential to revolutionize fields from nanotechnology to drug design.
. . .
Like fusion power, practical quantum computers are a tantalizing possibility that the 21st century may or may not bring — depending on the jagged course not only of science and technology, but of politics and economics.

For the full commentary, see:
SCOTT AARONSON. “ESSAY; Quantum Computing Promises New Insights, Not Just Supermachines.” The New York Times (Tues., December 6, 2011): D5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary is dated December 5, 2011.)

The Intensity of Entrepreneur Jobs

(p. 114) As Jobs was criticizing the Pixar managers for failing to hit a delivery date on a project, Smith interrupted and said, “Steve, but you haven’t delivered your board on time”–meaning, a board for the NeXT computer.
It was the sort of remark Jobs normally might have put up with, but it seemed Smith had crossed a line by joking about Jobs’s [sic] computer. “He went completely nonlinear,” Smith recalled. “He went crazy on me and started insulting my accent.”
Jobs had homed in on a sensitive spot. Smith’s native southwestern accent, which he had mostly suppressed since his days as an academic in New York City, sometimes reemerged in moments of stress. Jobs mocked it.
“So I went nonlinear, too, which I had never done before or since,” Smith remembered. “We’re screaming at each other, and our faces are about three inches apart.”
There was an unspoken understanding around Jobs that the whiteboard in his office was part of his personal space–no one else was to write on it. As the confrontation went on, Smith defiantly marched past him and started writing on the whiteboard. “You can’t do that,” Jobs interjected. When Smith continued writing, Jobs stormed out of the room.
To outward appearances, the conflict blew over, but the men’s relationship would never be the same.

Source:
Price, David A. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
(Note: italics in original.)
(Note: my strong impression is that the pagination is the same for the 2008 hardback and the 2009 paperback editions, except for part of the epilogue, which is revised and expanded in the paperback. I believe the passage above has the same page number in both editions.)

Tool Makers Cannot Predict Creative Ways Tools Will Be Used

(p. 89) Jobs had no use for small-minded naysayers. His experience had taught him that if you offered a better computer, well priced and accessible, there was no limit to what human ingenuity could achieve with it. No one, after all, had thought of electronic spread-sheets when he and Wozniak rolled out the Apple II, in 1977, but within two years, a spreadsheet program called VisiCalc–created in an attic by a first-year Harvard MBA student and a programmer friend–was one of the strongest drivers of Apple Il sales. The PIC was not a consumer product like the Apple II, but the principle was the same. “People are inherently creative,” Jobs remarked to an interviewer a few years later. “They will use tools in ways the tool makers never thought possible.”

Source:
Price, David A. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
(Note: my strong impression is that the pagination is the same for the 2008 hardback and the 2009 paperback editions, except for part of the epilogue, which is revised and expanded in the paperback. I believe the passage above has the same page number in both editions.)

Internet Companies Respect the Value of Your Time

“Arvind Jain, a Google engineer, pointed out the loading speed of individual elements of a website on a test application used to check efficiency, at Google offices in Mountain View, Calif.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Wait a second.

No, that’s too long.
Remember when you were willing to wait a few seconds for a computer to respond to a click on a Web site or a tap on a keyboard? These days, even 400 milliseconds — literally the blink of an eye — is too long, as Google engineers have discovered. That barely perceptible delay causes people to search less.
“Subconsciously, you don’t like to wait,” said Arvind Jain, a Google engineer who is the company’s resident speed maestro. “Every millisecond matters.”
Google and other tech companies are on a new quest for speed, challenging the likes of Mr. Jain to make fast go faster. The reason is that data-hungry smartphones and tablets are creating frustrating digital traffic jams, as people download maps, video clips of sports highlights, news updates or recommendations for nearby restaurants. The competition to be the quickest is fierce.
People will visit a Web site less often if it is slower than a close competitor by more than 250 milliseconds (a millisecond is a thousandth of a second).
“Two hundred fifty milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the Web,” said Harry Shum, a computer scientist and speed specialist at Microsoft.
. . .
(p. A3) The need for speed itself seems to be accelerating. In the early 1960s, the two professors at Dartmouth College who invented the BASIC programming language, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, set up a network in which many students could tap into a single, large computer from keyboard terminals.
“We found,” they observed, “that any response time that averages more than 10 seconds destroys the illusion of having one’s own computer.”
In 2009, a study by Forrester Research found that online shoppers expected pages to load in two seconds or fewer — and at three seconds, a large share abandon the site. Only three years earlier a similar Forrester study found the average expectations for page load times were four seconds or fewer.
The two-second rule is still often cited as a standard for Web commerce sites. Yet experts in human-computer interaction say that rule is outdated. “The old two-second guideline has long been surpassed on the racetrack of Web expectations,” said Eric Horvitz, a scientist at Microsoft’s research labs.

For the full story, see:
STEVE LOHR. “For Impatient Web Users, an Eye Blink Is Just Too Long to Wait.” The New York Times (Thurs., March 1, 2012): A1 & A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated February 29, 2012.)

Source of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Web Sites Expose Petty Corruption

“Swati Ramanathan, a founder of the site I Paid a Bribe, in India.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) The cost of claiming a legitimate income tax refund in Hyderabad, India? 10,000 rupees.

The going rate to get a child who has already passed the entrance requirements into high school in Nairobi, Kenya? 20,000 shillings.
The expense of obtaining a driver’s license after having passed the test in Karachi, Pakistan? 3,000 rupees.
Such is the price of what Swati Ramanathan calls “retail corruption,” the sort of nickel-and-dime bribery, as opposed to large-scale graft, that infects everyday life in so many parts of the world.
Ms. Ramanathan and her husband, Ramesh, along with Sridar Iyengar, set out to change all that in August 2010 when they started ipaidabribe.com, a site that collects anonymous reports of bribes paid, bribes requested but not paid and requests that were expected but not forthcoming.
About 80 percent of the more than 400,000 reports to the site tell stories like the ones above of officials and bureaucrats seeking illicit payments to provide routine services or process paperwork and forms.
“I was asked to pay a bribe to get a birth certificate for my daughter,” someone in Bangalore, India, wrote in to the Web site on Feb. 29, recording payment of a 120-rupee bribe in Bangalore. “The guy in charge called it ‘fees’ ” — except there are no fees charged for birth certificates, Ms. Ramanathan said.
Now, similar sites are spreading like kudzu around the globe, vexing petty bureaucrats the world over. Ms. Ramanathan said nongovernmental organizations and government agencies from at least 17 countries had contacted Janaagraha, the nonprofit organization in Bangalore that operates I Paid a Bribe, to ask about obtaining the source code and setting up a site of their own.

For the full story, see:
STEPHANIE STROM. “Web Sites Shine Light on Petty Bribery Worldwide.” The New York Times (Weds., March 7, 2012): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date March 6, 2012.)

“Antony Ragui started an I Paid a Bribe site in Kenya.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Storytelling Trumps Technology in Making Good Movies

(p. 28) The calamity of Tubby the Tuba forced them to confront an unpleasant fact–namely, that they were in the wrong place for making good movies. Money was nor enough, they could now see. Technical genius was not enough (though Tubby had grave technical problems, too). Splendid equipment would not be enough. For them to make worthwhile films someday–not just the R&D exercises (p. 29) they showed at SIGGRAPH meetings–there also had to be people on board who understood film storytelling. Schure, although blessed with great foresight, could not be their Walt Disney.

Paul Allen Uses Microsoft Profits for Bold Private Space Project

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen indicated he is prepared to commit $200 million or more of his wealth to build the world’s largest airplane as a mobile platform for launching satellites at low cost, which he believes could transform the space industry.

Announced Tuesday, the novel, high-risk project conceived by renowned aerospace designer Burt Rutan seeks to combine engines, landing gears and other parts removed from old Boeing 747 jets with a newly created composite craft from Mr. Rutan and a powerful rocket to be built by a company run by Internet billionaire and commercial-space pioneer Elon Musk.
Dubbed Stratolaunch and funded by one of Mr. Allen’s closely held entities, the venture seeks to meld decades-old airplane technology with cutting-edge booster-rocket designs in an unprecedented way to assemble a hybrid that would offer the first totally privately funded space transportation system.

For the full story, see:
ANDY PASZTOR And DIONNE SEARCEY. “Paul Allen, Supersizing Space Flight; Billionaire’s Novel Vision Has Wingspan Wider Than a Football Field, Weighs 1.2 Million Pounds.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., December 5, 2011): B1 & B5.

“What Success Had Brought Him, . . . , Was Freedom”

(p. 5) The success of Pixar’s films had brought him something exceedingly rare in Hollywood: not the house with the obligatory pool in the backyard and the Oscar statuettes on the fireplace mantel, or the country estate, or the vintage Jaguar roadster–although he had all of those things, too. It wasn’t that he could afford to indulge his affinity for model railroads by acquiring a full-size 1901 steam locomotive, with plans to run it on the future site of his twenty-thousand-square-foot mansion in Sonoma Valley wine country. (Even Walt Dìsney’s backyard train had been a mere one-eighth-scale replica.)
None of these was the truly important fruit of Lasseter’s achievements. What success had brought him, most meaningfully, was freedom. Having created a new genre of film with his colleagues at Pixar, he had been able to make the films he wanted to make, and he was coming back to Disney on his own terms.

Source:
Price, David A. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
(Note: ellipsis in title was added.)
(Note: my strong impression is that the pagination is the same for the 2008 hardback and the 2009 paperback editions, except for part of the epilogue, which is revised and expanded in the paperback. I believe the passage above has the same page number in both editions.)

Pixar as a Case Study on Innovative Entrepreneurship

Source of book image: http://murraylibrary.org/2011/09/the-pixar-touch-the-making-of-a-company/

Toy Story and Finding Nemo are among my all-time-favorite animated movies. How Pixar developed the technology and the story-telling sense, to make these movies is an enjoyable and edifying read.
Along the way, I learned something about entrepreneurship, creative destruction, and the economics of technology. In the next couple of months I occasionally will quote passages that are memorable examples of broader points or that raise thought-provoking questions about how innovation happens.

Book discussed:
Price, David A. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

The Tasmanian Technological Regress: “Slow Strangulation of the Mind”

(p. 78) The most striking case of technological regress is Tasmania. Isolated on an island at the end of the world, a population of less than 5,000 hunter-gatherers divided into nine tribes did not just stagnate, or fail to progress. They fell steadily and gradually back into a simpler toolkit and lifestyle, purely because they lacked the numbers to sustain their existing technology. Human beings reached Tasmania at least 35,000 years ago while it was still connected to Australia. It remained connected – on and off – until about 10,000 years ago, when the rising seas filled the Bass Strait. Thereafter the Tasmanians were isolated. By the time Europeans first encountered Tasmanian natives, they found them not only to lack many of the skills and tools of their mainland cousins, but to lack many technologies that their own ancestors had once possessed. They had no bone tools of any kind, such as needles and awls, no cold-weather clothing, no fish hooks, no hafted tools, no barbed spears, no fish traps, no spear throwers, no boomerangs. A few of these had been invented on the mainland after the Tasmanians had been isolated from it – the boomerang, for instance – but most had been made and used by the very first Tasmanians. Steadily and inexorably, so the archaeological history tells, these tools and tricks were abandoned. Bone tools, for example, grew simpler and simpler until they were dropped altogether about 3,800 years ago. Without bone tools it became impossible to sew skins into clothes, so even in the bitter winter, the Tasmanians went nearly naked but for seal-fat grease smeared on their skin and wallaby pelts over their shoulders. The first Tasmanians caught and ate plenty of fish, but by the time of Western contact they not only ate no fish (p. 79) and had eaten none for 3,000 years, but they were disgusted to be offered it (though they happily ate shellfish).
The story is not quite that simple, because the Tasmanians did invent a few new things during their isolation. Around 4,000 years ago they came up with a horribly unreliable form of canoe-raft, made of bundles of rushes and either paddled by men or pushed by swimming women (!), which enabled them to reach offshore islets to harvest birds and seals. The raft would become waterlogged and disintegrate or sink after a few hours, so it was no good for re-establishing contact with the mainland. As far as innovation goes, it was so unsatisfactory that it almost counts as an exception to prove the rule. The women also learnt to dive up to twelve feet below the water to prise clams off the rocks with wooden wedges and to grab lobsters. This was dangerous and exhausting work, which they were very skilled at: the men did not take part. So it was not that there was no innovation; it was that regress overwhelmed progress.
The archaeologist who first described the Tasmanian regress, Rhys Jones, called it a case of the ‘slow strangulation of the mind’, which perhaps understandably enraged some of his academic colleagues. There was nothing wrong with individual Tasmanian brains; there was something wrong with their collective brains. Isolation – self-sufficiency – caused the shrivelling of their technology. Earlier I wrote that division of labour was made possible by technology. But it is more interesting than that. Technology was made possible by division of labour: market exchange calls forth innovation.

Source:
Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. New York: Harper, 2010.