Kyle Brady: Blog » Future

“The SciFi Future of Corporate Supremacy” [Self]

Kyle Brady — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:09:13 +0000

New column at Technotainment Revelations on True/Slant:

In a world of corporate supremacy, where governments are controlled by corporations, life will be very different from the future many of us imagine. Thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows organizations to have direct influence on politics, at least in America, our bright future will no longer be so bright, and it will not be full of the technological wonders that science fiction and our imaginations have taught us to expect.

Go check it out.

The F-22: A Bureaucratic Failure to Understand War [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:05:52 +0000

War is unpredictable and largely unforeseeable – most especially in the manner in which it will be fought.

Why, then, does the United States continue to insist that the “future of war” for America will be mostly in the guerrilla style seen with terrorist organizations? Has both the Pentagon and Congress forgotten the lessons of military history? In preparing a country for future self-defense, or aggressive actions, focusing on the struggles of the present inevitably fails to meet the needs of the future, producing technology and methodologies that is hopelessly unsuited to the now-present theatre of war.

The street-by-street method of war currently being used by American military in counter-terrorism efforts is relatively new, and all branches of the military were largely unprepared for it – in terms of both training and equipment. However, modern troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Middle Eastern locales are almost exactly opposite their peers of a decade ago: their training, equipment, and weaponry is designed and tested heavily to cater to their needs in the closed-in, chaotic environments. The retooling of the military, with a heavy focus on the Army, for urban battlefields has taken many years, but resulted in better personnel gear, the reliance on (and improvement of) unmanned drones, and a rethinking of certain military strategies.

However, the Middle East, and other counter-terrorist or black ops conflicts, are not the only battlefields. True, America is currently embroiled in physical conflicts that classify as counter-terrorism, but other threats from various sources could easily erupt into more violent interactions that would be more akin to “classical warfare” – such as North Korea, China, and Russia. These potential conflicts, or even wars, would be much different from the United States’ current military interests.

In terms of sheer manpower, all three of these potential enemies outnumber the American military by significant ratios – fighting such countries in “hand-to-hand” combat would be both pointless and devastating. These conflicts would be fought, and won, in a more traditional manner resembling more the World Wars than Afghanistan: via air and sea power. Despite this simple, and obvious, fact, funding has been continuously cut to “next generation weapons” over the last decade to focus on the lowly footsoldier, rather than devastating and effective weapons that could start, fight, and finish wars without the death or injury of any American military, and the F-22 Raptor is merely the latest and most public example.

Congress, along with President Obama, has stopped the financing of additional F-22 Raptor fighter jets, claiming that the current 187 Raptor jets in the fleet is enough to serve the country. To put that in perspective, that equates to slightly more than three jets per state if they were to be distributed evenly and domestically, or barely enough to canvas each coast with overlapping defensive areas. Basic analysis shows that 187 stealth, nextgen fighters is not as large a force as one might assume, especially given that modern aircraft carriers hold an average of 48 fighter jets, not to mention that most of the airfleet, such as F-16’s, are the aging products of decades past.

This is not to say, however, that air and sea power is being ignored, because they are, most definitively, not. Certain aspects of what could be classified as “future classical warfare” are being heavily invested in, such as space-based laser weaponry, country-wide protection defense systems, and highly efficient/intelligent drone vehicles. But it is the progress of the recent years that presents a worrying trend, not the lack of modern programs: the tendency to eschew advanced weaponry, gear, or otherwise technology for more immediately applicable technology to the current battlefields. Time and time again, empires and countries alike focused on handling their immediate military needs over innovation and the advancement of their future forces, and ultimately met their own demise as a result – Imperialist England and Cold War Russia are simple proof.

Congress, and the rest of American Bureaucracy, are in a unique position to effect the military investments without having the knowledge, foresight, and impartial judgment necessary to make appropriate decisions – similar problems can be found in Congressional oversight of agencies such as the CIA, who are tasked for intelligence appropriation, but are criticized in a public forum for acting, or planning to act, in accordance with their mandate: protecting the United States via operations on foreign soil. The simple ignorance of many Congressmen is astounding, and is only magnified by giving the same individuals the capacity to approve military budgets when they have, on the whole, little to no knowledge of the needs of the military, let alone any knowledge of details outside basic costs.

Admittedly, the combined budget of the United States Air Force, Army, and Navy is quite an astounding figure, rounding out at an estimated $367 billion per year - not including general "Defense Wide" expenditures. This could likely be cut in any number of ways, such as addressing overspending on certain contracts where bidding is inflated on the principle that "the government can afford it". But the place to do so is absolutely not cutting investments in the future, new technology, or any other advancements that could save American lives while retaining, or increasing, the country’s military dominance – the F-22 is just the tip of the government-funded iceberg.

The Failure of American Colleges [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:05:28 +0000

In the midst of a national crisis, equally financial and moral in nature, why has little thought been given to the educational system? True, there are more college graduates than ever before and enrollment is skyrocketing, but is this truly an appropriate marker of success when these are students coming from school systems with abysmal competency rates in reading/writing, math, and science? Simply put, no.

American elementary, middle, and highschools typically cater to the lowest common denominator, wanting the slowest of the class to understand material rather than challenging, or even educating, the others. They do this for funding purposes, and teach for standardized tests instead of endowing these children and teenagers with knowledge both required and useful for their futures. Private schools are different than the public system, and usually have higher numbers in all the metrics, while also producing graduates that are at least partially intelligent and knowledgeable. However, the sad truth is that private schools are often expensive, and a majority of the country is educated in the failing public school system.

One day, these public school experiment participants graduate from high school, and a portion go off to college – inflated GPAs, SAT preparation, and the mass-application process ensures that those who wish to attend college will. Some of these teenagers are intelligent and educated, more likely because of natural inclinations than the school system producing a diamond in the rough, and they do well in college, going on to even higher education, research institutions, or a key position within an influential company. But it’s not the fact that they graduated that matters – what matters is their intelligence and thirst for knowledge.

Modern colleges are largely degree factories, providing a laundry list of requirements for the students to complete – many of which are not only not a part of their field of choice, but irrelevant in the overall knowledge perspective. These requirements are filled in a mostly linear fashion, with teachers, tutors, other students, study guides, and “open note” tests there to help ease the way, producing graduates that have, on the whole, learned nothing except how to regurgitate information and manipulate those in control of your future (Professors), managing to coast through four years of higher education without an original thought or problem analysis. This goes for both private and state universities.

There are exceptions, as always: accredited engineering programs are necessarily rigorous, many scientific disciplines of study are inherently complex, and higher math is difficult to even comprehend. But these programs are not the issue; the business, communications, journalism, liberal studies, economics majors et. al are the culprits of degree devaluation. These same foci of study happen to be the most popular – coincidence? Unlikely.

When a Bachelor’s degree can be attained by drinking yourself into a stupor four or more nights a week, writing the occasional paper, and taking multiple choice exams, the credibility and value of such a so-called education becomes questionable. Computer Engineers and Biochemists like to party as much as the rest of them, but more often than not they can be found doing homework, studying, or participating in extracurricular learning activities along with the rest of their academic peers.

It is by this very process that America has reached its current position where a college degree is preferred, if not required, for even the most uncomplicated and simple jobs. “College is the new high school” is a phrase oft spoken without the realization that this is not a compliment, and is instead a criticism of both the job market and the entire education process. Regardless of the level of personal experience, actual knowledge, or demonstrable intelligence, many organizations are simply not interested in hiring candidates without degrees, as a matter of principle. Except, of course, for those that buck the broken system and found their own companies, only to be praised years later for not receiving a college degree – an odd compliment considering they were ignored and looked down on until reaching a stratospheric level of success. These are the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world.

Many majors themselves are a joke, where the only real skills to be learned are slick talking and a few core life truths, in addition to some controversial and wholly fabricated rulesets – the graduates of business and economics schools caused the collapse of the entire financial system because of faux knowledge, inflated self-value, and a lack of basic intelligence. The universities, however, continue to pump out such gems of genius without much change to the programs, or even a recognition of their complicity in the issue, which is, in itself, an indictment of the very system.

The American education system is a disaster just short of an entire failure, and the universities which undereducated high school students graduate to are largely just as short-sighted and worthless as their lower education counterparts. Consistently providing easy ways to acquire supposed verification of intellectual and overall individual value is of no benefit to anyone, let alone the graduates themselves. True reform starts at the education level, which can’t be accomplished with budget cuts, lowered expectations, and ignoring the problem.

This situation needs to be addressed before it drives the country, and the world, further into the arms of coddled and misled overgrown children.

“The Cloud vs. The Desktop: An Irrelevant Argument” [Self]

Kyle Brady — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:30:27 +0000

New guest post over at the Inquisitr:

These days, tech pundits and futurists can’t go a week without pontificating on the future of computing, wondering (and arguing) whether the computer will be merely a tool to access “the cloud” or as an application set. Even the most inconsequential software release (or failure) sparks this argument - the most recent example is the release of the Opera browser’s repackaging of a personal webserver.

Go take a look!

The Decimation of a Generation’s Future [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:00:12 +0000

My generation, which I think of as children of the 80's and early 90's, is supposed to be the future. We're supposed to be the generation that guides computing and technology to the edge of physics; the generation that is widely thought to be the first to see civilian space travel and the beginning of the colonization of space; the generation that many are depending on to solve the many global problems like hunger, poverty, and inhuman regimes. Not to mention being heralded as the future conquerors of sickness and disease, along with a host of other issues we're told will be eradicated in our lifetimes.

But there's a problem: if current trends continue, all of this will be impossible. The even scarier fact is that we may be the first generation in decades (centuries?) to see a reversal of intellectual progress.

Take a look at the state of the Western world. Over the last two decades, at least, wheels have been set in motion that are all but impossible to stop, and the situation is only worsening. For the sake of familiarity and semi-simplicity, I'm going to focus on America - but the following applies just as easily to the state of the Western world as a whole.

Politics

One of the central, and continuing, problems is politics. Not the idea of politics, nor the institution, but the people that have come to infest the system over the long arms of Time: rich, old, white men are elected to Congress and abuse their powers; lobbyists for shady corporate interests largely control the discussions and decisions of said Congressionals; the only issues discussed or addressed properly, at every level of government, are those that will win a re-election or bring in campaign financing... the list goes on, and it's not news to those who pay attention. For the last twenty years, this has worked for most issues simply because there were no major crises or crucial decision points - besides the "war on terrorism", the country has only had to address trivial issues.

Within the last year we've seen crisis after crisis, a systemic failure of Old World industries and ideas that have caused cascading problems. But when the time comes for Congress to help the American people they claim to represent, they banter over party politics, point fingers, and go crusading over the most useless of points - every time. Even appointing a rather uninteresting and uncontroversial individual for a Supreme Court position takes months, thanks to the arbitrary opposition and accusation.

Furthermore, these same politicians spend government money on pet projects for their financial backers, the largest and most pervasive of which are so-called energy ("oil") companies, the healthcare industry, Big Tobacco, and copyright terrorists like the RIAA or MPAA. But the real issues get pushed around (as seen by the bailout process), or ignored completely. Education funding continues to be cut while salaries and benefits for many government employees rise, and specific educational programs are discontinued to make room for activities like hunting down marijuana growers or prosecuting 10 yr. old children for allegedly downloading a song or two off the internet.

Those that are elected to represent us do not resemble, at all, the demographics of our country or interests. In fact, they are more akin to the million-dollar executives of corporations than they are the average citizen, and their actions show this. Issue after issue proves to be another failure for the interests of the people, for which the only option seems to be waiting for the current set of politicians to be eventually replaced by the next generation - gay marriage is a perfect example of this. My generation is largely indifferent, at worst, about the issue, but it has yet to be legalized: the older generation, and a religious fanatic subset (more on them later) are preventing this.

But politics are just the beginning.

Intelligence

There was a time when it may not have been "cool" to be a nerd (unlike today), but intelligence as a whole was valued. Parents watched over their children to make sure homework was completed, school teachers pushed their students (instead of catering to the lowest common denominator), and graduating from college was actually an achievement (aka "difficult"). Books were read, theatre was intelligent, and issues were discussed among ordinary people.

No longer is this true.

The public school system caters to the dumbest of the class, aiming only to get more funding than the year previous - essentially teaching for the tests. A common topic of discussion among ordinary people is the previous night's episode of a reality TV show or brain-numbing "drama", rather than world news or even politics. Entertainment itself has degraded, with the majority of TV showcasing idiots and their adventures, and plays are no longer witty satire, instead choosing to produce stage versions of movies or books.

Even more frightening is that books are not considered a valid form of entertainment any longer - which shouldn't be a surprise, given the average reading level of today's people. Instead of reading news from the source via the Internet, newspapers, or slightly-biased publications like TIME or Newsweek, people choose to watch CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC, where the goal is not to inform you, but to make advertising money.

Semi-legitimate outlets like CNN or MSNBC focus largely on American politics, with a sidedish of celebrity news and the occasional sensationalized humanity piece - not exactly the real issues of our society. Considerably worse is the insult on intelligence known as Fox News, parading crazy and irrational opinion pieces as news and fact - with many people not able to differentiate. The BBC does a better job than American news outlets by an order of magnitude, but the real gem is NPR, where they provide both views/sides to a story and feature issues the American public typically don't even know exist.

Perhaps worse is the perception of intelligence - nerds may have been finally accepted by the general population, but any show of intelligence outside of a mob-ruled norm is seen as elitism. We don't need to crucify the intelligent members of our society, let alone force them to make excuses for their knowledge and insight. But this social perception has trickled-down for long enough that high school children no longer are interested in math and science (a problem seen during the beginning of the Cold War and the Apollo-era), and are instead interested in banking, business, lawyers, and sports. Need proof? Just look at college graduates - there has been a recent rise in sciences and engineering, but the net result is still negative. The majority of graduates from universities and four-year colleges are focused in areas of business, finance/economics, or pre-law. Not engineering, pre-med, or the sciences.

President Obama would like to fix this, and has made a few small babysteps towards funding such an educational retooling, but government spending is just the beginning. As Intel has so appropriately stated in their recent commercials, "rockstars" of the programming/engineering world are not like John Mayer or Axl Rose, but they're nonetheless important... something our society needs to quickly relearn. Instead of idolizing a mediocrely-talented female popstar that gained success via a series of TV-based exploitation, we should be idolizing, or at least recognizing the brilliance of, our scientists and engineers that continue to push us into the technological future.

But just being interested in science or engineering isn't enough... our economy needs to be organized to once again support such endeavours.

Economy

Countless American business icons have created small business ownership as part of the American Dream for many modern citizens, including the part where "small business" becomes "large conglomerate". This is not a bad thing, especially given that America is essentially a long string of innovators, inventors, and entrepreneurs over our short history. Where it takes a turn, however, is the recent focus on banking, retail, and food services as the industries of interest.

Most of our modern society is based on complex electronics, and yet many people seem to disregard this fact. Why should we care about being able to implement, maintain, and innovate the very basis of our lives? I hope you caught the sarcasm.

Silicon Valley used to be a bastion of computer and electronics excellence, as little as ten years ago. Nowadays, it's a mess of imported immigrants, manufacturing/production outsourcing, and short-sighted idealism, where profits, IPOs, and trendy acronyms are more important than true innovation. And it's not alone.

Billions of dollars have been spent in "saving" industries, only to have them fail at a slower pace - this is investing in the past, not the future. The stock market only facilitates the problem, punishing companies that dare to take risks and don't manage to post continual profit gains.

And, as companies continue to fall like dominoes, no-one thinks to question the system itself.

Capitalism

Capitalism is a brilliant idea in theory, but true laissez-faire capitalism is likely to never work - this is something we're discovering only now, after a century of work and a decade of deregulation. It is a mix of appropriate government regulation and capitalism that would be most likely to work (look to the era of FDR for a precedent), but the country is loathe to move in this direction.

Deregulation of industries has resulted in unadulterated chaos: telcos have free reign to largely operate as they wish; broadband providers of all types filter traffic, while claiming they don't, and operate de facto local monopolies; a privatized for-profit health care system refuses to provide the most basic of services to those that pay for them; a banking system built on trust and basic intelligence has collapsed on itself thanks to greed and tunnel-vision.

These are facts, and no-one will dispute that they have occurred. However, in all the discussion of our current state, people are reluctant to discuss the regulation of industries. President Obama has mentioned it in terms of healthcare, and the FCC has expressed interest in regulating broadband+telcos, but the conservatives are immediately lashing against it on principle - despite that it is an attempt to reverse our recent declines.

Regulation across all industries is neither appropriate nor feasible - our current stance on the precipice is a combination of deregulation and corporate greed, but uneven regulation is just as much to blame. The heavy regulation of certain industries, and the complete disregard of others by the federal government, causes a dangerous climate of government (non)intervention.

As an example, heavier regulation of manufacturing could bring untold jobs back to the United States in countless industries, where they currently reside in China, Japan, India, and South Korea. This would, almost overnight, solve the production outsourcing problem.

But the debt being accrued at an alarming rate to "fix" what is solidly broken is going to prevent this.

Debt

Count up the money spent within the last 10 years, look at the income of the country as a whole, and then take a look at American debt - both federal and personal. How are we supposed to repay this?

Personal debt is usually assumed to be paid off sometime before the debtor's death, despite the credit revolution being relatively new and having no precedent. But the reality is that children (my generation) are going to likely be stuck with their parents debt after they die, adding to our own personal debt accrued by going to school, living out of our means, or any number of other sources.

The federal debt isn't that different - it's not going to be paid back quickly, and it's going to require taxes staying as-is, if not increasing (rather than being cut) for a number of years. The money is being dispensed like candy to small children, and it's being done so by a group that may not even be alive 15 years from now - let alone be concerned about dealing with the debt.

By being in such massive debt, there are going to be consequences. We've already seen the beginnings of this at the state-level, as California goes broke and will not be able to operate independently for much longer. What happens when the federal government, the glue that holds the states together, falls into a faulty relationship and has to question its very existence?

Programs are going to be cut, funding to states lessened, and our dreams shattered, since all of history shows us the lawmakers will protect themselves and their interests first, and be concerned about the general welfare of the population at a later point. NASA, the ultimate embodiment of American frontierism, is already on the chopping block, with massive budget cuts and restrictions likely coming down the pipe - despite being a crucial part of our future, both in terms of space exploration and technological innovation.

And it will likely be a vicious cycle. Funding cuts results in less interest and progress, creating less gains in a given area, which, in turn, will result in more funding cuts.

However, money and intellectualism are not the only worries.

Religion

Religion is not an inherently bad concept, since it helps group people together (an evolutionary survival tactic) and gives hope/relief in some situations. But it can be a devastating force, as the Dark Ages have shown us.

For a time, it appeared that religion had peaked and was on the way out - as the previous century progressed, people became more concerned with themselves, rationality, and society than with the metaphysical. TIME Magazine even ran a feature on "the death of religion". Sadly, that period has passed, giving way to a recent resurgence in religion.

Christian, Muslim, Hindu... the classification and specifics are irrelevant, the important point is that religion can get in the way of intellectual pursuits, and, when encouraged, can eclipse it. As the need for political correctness grew through the last few decades, religious tolerance took on an extreme definition, where the mere criticism of religion was not allowed - even when the religious were allowed to criticize non-believers or those of competing faiths.

This has led us to our current situation where whole states, not just individuals, are attempting to pass off their beliefs as science, contradicting fact and solid theory with creation stories and a "we have a right to believe what we want" mentality. We've seen where this road leads before, and it needs to be stopped.

The Dark Ages was a period of extreme Christianity, and it discounted all but the most basic of scientific tenets. Islam has gone through such a period a few times in their own history, and has resulted in such extremes in portions of the modern Middle East - one needs only to examine the ideals of any Muslim-oriented extremist organization to discover this.

Islam and Christianity both laud values of selflessness and a number of other likable human qualities, but can quickly eschew their own value sets for extremist actions. Religion has a place, and that place is outside of politics, outside of science, and outside of a learning environment - especially for highly impressionable children.

Unless something changes, the Evangelical Christians, and other such high intensity believers, will win their war thanks to political correctness and an aversion to criticize another's beliefs. Their winning this war is not going to result in a good situation for any other than the ignorant, as science will quickly become pseudo-science where the "theory" ("we made it up") of Creationism sits alongside the theory ("we just don't want to call it fact yet") of Evolution. It will eventually bleed into politics and government, turning our mostly-agnostic government into a full blown theocracy.

Does this sound beneficial to our future? A future that is going to be science dependent? No. And any concessions to the hardcore religious, of any type, in a scientific, political, or government arena will ultimately be just one more step towards our imminent doom.

Division

The final major issue contributing to the decimation of our future is the gross divisions appearing in our country on a geographical basis. The reasons behind the divisions run the gamut from politics to religion to race, but the results are clear.

America has long had internal strife and division visible in specific locations, and as one crisis follows another, they are quickly reappearing. Even though the Civil War ended, much of the South has harbored feelings otherwise, and the concerns, interests, and divisions are strikingly similar to the ones Abraham Lincoln had to address.

We have successfully elected America's first black President, Barack Obama, much to the horror of the Southern states. The predominant Republican stronghold exists in the South, which was stringently anti-Obama... and has refused to let it go, continuing to attack with nonsense items, and encourage extremist behaviors, even violence.

And yet other portions of the country, like the West and the Northeast, are strongly Democrat and polar opposite to the Republicans on most issues. Only the Midwest isn't strongly in favor of one side or another, and merely from political party associations, lines can be drawn to divide the country into four distinct sections.

Now consider where the majority of the vocal Christians reside, along with the battle against Creationism, and a host of other issues. A unified country after 9/11 has quickly become an association of entities that are strikingly different, only a few years later, where many residents of one location do not like those from another, let alone want to exchange and discuss ideas in a civil and rational manner.

America is supposed to be a country grounded in freedoms and intelligence, but these divisions are working against us. Just as important as the other major issues, America needs to stay unified in order to not devolve into lesser, poorer states ... the former U.S.S.R. was an abject lesson in deunification.

Conclusion

The conclusion is this: America is facing a host of crushing issues, all of which have to be navigated carefully, appropriately, and properly in order for us to not only continue to exist as a free-thinking, independent, and powerful society, but to have a future at all for the younger generations that is not bleak and depressing.

President Obama, I believe, is intelligent enough to recognize this, and has already mentioned a few of these issues in terms of our future. But it will take more than the polices and appointments of our current President to do what needs to be done: corporations need to act appropriately; government needs to work for and with the people, instead of for the highest bidder; science needs to be once again emphasized and encouraged as the predominant, rational method of thinking.

I've made my case, America. Now step up.

A Paperless Society: An Easy Place to Start [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:56:32 +0000

Everyone in the tech world dreams of a day when we're a truly "paperless society" - archives are purely digital, there are no warehouses of file boxes, and memos are never printed. Obviously, we haven't reached this (and may never), but PDFs, email, and assorted other digital tools have helped us come a long way: consider the effect email has had on regular mail (aka "post"), and without much afterthought by those using it.

But to reach such a paperless society, do we really need to develop more tools? The answer is obviously yes, but what if a few tweaks to already-existing technology allowed us a step closer?

The best place to start are credit/debit card receipts.

After you get your daily (or not-so-daily) latte from Starbucks, or coffee from Dunkin Donuts, do you keep the receipt? Be honest - most of the time they'll ask if you want a copy, and click an option to not print one for you. Now consider all the other trivial expenses of life... most purchases don't require you to keep the receipt for warranty purposes. Stamps, a tank of gas, movie tickets, etc. are perfect examples.

Additionally, receipts aren't required for tracking purposes, because of the pervasiveness of online banking. I'm assuming that most people use online banking, at least to some degree, which isn't a bad assumption - if you didn't have the option a year ago, your bank probably got bought by someone that provides it.

If your bank is anything greater than a one-off podunk local bank, they have alot of information on you - email is just one of many personal data items. Online banking takes this one step further, and may have information like a cell phone number... Bank of America has mine as a security confirmation tool via a text-message confirmation code system.

Using an online system, a user could specify a set of rules (or use a default set) that defines when they want receipts: price floors, individual retailers, purchase location, etc. Then, at the time of transaction, the bank associated with the card receives the request, and returns data to the retailer about receipt printing, most likely saying "no receipt". An email could be sent to the user with the purchase data (specified beforehand), or kept in a receipt archive downloadable from the bank.

This is merely inserting a small bit of functionality into technology that already exists and is relatively mature - a set of online options, an added return value to the retailer, and maybe an email sent. I'm not suggesting a tech revolution here.

It could be the beginning of a truly paperless society. I don't have exact numbers, but I would imagine not printing 75% of the modern world's receipts would be a huge paper savings - and alot of trees.

Who knows what would follow? Once the public warms to the idea of not worrying about receipts, perhaps paper currency itself can be phased out (saving not only many trees, but billions of dollars a year). Or maybe train/metro/bus/lightrail/subway tickets via cellphones.

I'm all for this, whatever follows.

“Gas Stations” of the Future [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:22:15 +0000

I recently found a NewScientist piece on "robotic battery swappers" for electric vehicles, and was highly impressed. The concept is relatively simple: pull into a computerized facility, remove the easy-access battery pack from beneath the car, replace it with an identical fully-charged pack, and let the car move on its way. This whole operation takes less than the average trip to the modern gas station for a fill-up, without all the worry of dangerous explosions.

Don't believe me? There's a video of a demo facility:

The discovery/release of this concept coincides with the passage of federal standards for higher gas mileage, because producing hydrogen-based vehicles is apparently too dangerous and full electric vehicles neither have a market nor can be cheaply produced... at least according to the oil-fed industries of the moment.

Of course, I don't buy it, because I'm too smart to be fed the company line, and the obvious next step is to question both the movement towards the future and the industry itself.

Future Gas Station

One of the many reactions to fully electric cars is "I have to ... plug it in?", which the auto industry obviously loves to hear - no matter how many miles you get per night of charging, the idea of running out of power mid-trip, without a quick recharge, is fearsome to many.

The result is the hybrid cars now on the roads, a combo electric-fuel engine, that uses the electric engine in manners ranging from under a certain velocity to all the time (using the fuel engine as a recharging system, as necessary). Imagine that these cars become immensely popular in the future... great, but we're still dependent on oil, and, by association, the Middle East and its lovely little cartel.

Having a "gas station" that will quickly swap out your entire battery assemblage provides the end-user with the immediacy of a modern tank fillup, without the need to have fuel involved whatsoever.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen should be a viable "alternative fuel" source for vehicles, since it produces no pollution as a byproduct of use, but the oil industry has successfully prevented its rise (so far). Hydrogen vehicles would require fillup stations much like the gasoline ones of today, but since hydrogen is more than abundant, the distributor would likely see very little profit... not to mention it's a naturally volatile gas.

If the past is any indication of the future, we should be expecting significant push-back from the oil industry for these "battery swap" stations, since they pose as much of a threat to their profits as hydrogen: anything that makes an alternative fuel attractive and easy to use is worrisome.

Federal Control

We have a hope, however. As anyone who paid attention to the media in the last few months knows, the Federal Government now has large stakes in the American "Big Three" auto makers, and has been exerting considerable influence. Within weeks of achieving this, higher standards for gas mileage were passed - who's to say the influence can't extend to "suggesting" a standard battery assembly on the undercarriage of the cars, and "suggesting" higher volumes of production, with more model options?

Combine these "suggestions" with some sort of incentive to companies and entrepreneurs to build these battery-swap stations, and there could be an all-electric revolution within a few short years. The technology exists for both the vehicles and the stations... they merely need to be joined together.

I would hope that the interests of the old world companies can be pushed aside (oil companies, fuel resellers, etc.) for the benefit of our future and continued innovation towards a "cleaner, better tomorrow".

ArsTechnica Misses the Point (on Holographic Data Storage) [Expose]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:40:48 +0000

ArsTechnica did a writeup of a new optical disc technology from GE that can produce 500GB storage on each disc... and they were sneering at it. I'm here to clear the air.

Essentially the discs use a holographic imaging technology to accomplish multi-layer storage on a special material that I'm assuming is a variant of plastic. You can read the tech specs on it if you want. But here's a quote from the Ars piece:

If anyone can make the case for a 500GB optical disc in 2011, I'd love to hear it.

Excuse me? I think that's a little overly critical. Maybe there's not a market for ginormous data storage for the average person... or maybe there is?

Consider that the average music collection today is in the Gigabyte range, and can easily reach double-digits. Personally, I'm sitting on about 65GB of music. Not all of that fits on my iPod, and it sure isn't very portable to other devices since the iPod doesn't facilitate easy data transfers.

Ever tried burning some music for a friend on CDs these days? I've resorted to using DVDs because of the larger storage capacity. Who's to say that a 500GB disc wouldn't be useful? You could burn your entire music collection to disc while you're sleeping, pop it in the car on the drive to work, listen from your work computer, etc. All from one disc.

But this is just the immediate and most obvious use. Imagine the implications.

CD technology paved the way of using a combination of lasers and plastic for data storage, quickly followed by DVDs and now Blu-Ray DVDs, each successor having larger storage and a greater feature set. But non-portable storage hasn't changed that drastically in almost two decades... excluding a small minority of solid-state drives (in things like new iPods, netbooks, etc.), we're still using magnetized plates read by a mini robotic arm.

Solid-state drives have their own glories and limitations, which I won't get into. But GE has made a successful application of holographic technology for data storage. Isn't this important? Yes! Once the method is shown to be successful, others are going to look at how to apply the same ideas to their hardware projects, and experiment with improving it.

We're not going to reach ubiquitous and unobtrusive data storage via solid-state drives, unless something drastically changes - the memristor has potential. But it's definitely not happening with standard hard-disk technology.

Holographic pattern storage is likely the future of large-scale data permanence, or something derived from it. And yet Ars Technica missed this crucial point.

“The Rise of Skynet” [Self]

Kyle Brady — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:56:27 +0000

This is my first guest post on a "real" blog... "The Rise of Skynet" on The Inquisitr.

Excerpt:

The reality is that Skynet is quickly becoming a reality, whether we like it or not. And since I haven’t heard of Sarah Connor blowing up buildings, killing people, or traveling through time to avoid robots… I’m not sure there’s anything we can do about it.

Go check it out.

The Kindle, Not All Bad [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:08:58 +0000

If you're reading this, then chances are you know about Amazon.com's Kindle, an e-book reader... kind of like an iPod for books. And you also probably know that it's getting major criticism for everything from it's battery life to it's product design to if it's even useful.

But one major market is being overlooked here, without anyone thinking about the potential effect it may have: students.

Textbooks are super expensive, and it gets even worse when you go to college. $350 for a textbook? And it's not made of silver? The biggest excuse for the price of textbooks (even if you buy them used online, they're still very expensive) is the printing. Hardback + many many pages + color + nice and glossy pages = high printing cost.

I guess that makes sense. So why don't you not print at such a high standard, and lower the prices a little bit, eh? BECAUSE YOU WANT MY MONEY!

Most high schoolers (at least the ones that actually want to go to college) carry a backpack full of textbooks to and from school everyday. Not one of those laptop backpacks, but a super-size LL Bean backpack that is made of that funny material that'll stretch, but not easily rip.

Doctors and parents complain this is ruining their children's backs. College kids refuse to bring books to class because it's so difficult to make that 30min walk across campus with 15 books in their bag, totaling the entire weight of a large hobbit.

Why don't we use less textbooks then? Oh, maybe because there's usually 2 books required, if not more, for the average college class, and rumor has it those "Barnes and Noble Campus Bookstore" places highly encourage the use of multiple books, especially when they're new...

Remember when laptops were going to revolutionize the learning process, about 10 years ago? How parents were fighting for their kids to be able to use laptops in the high school classroom? And colleges were promising to make the texts available via computer?

What happened to that? I know I haven't ever used a digital textbook in college, and I don't know of anyone else that does either. But the ones I do hear about are usually clunky: you have to install special software, only install once... sounds like something Microsoft would create, right?

So here's my solution. Since publishers are apparently incapable of publishing full-color textbooks in PDF format, and selling them iTunes-style (not through iTunes, but the same idea of online distribution)... which would considerably cut costs, since not only is the book not physically printed, but it's not shipped anywhere either... why don't we take advantage of the "I want to be popular" technology of the moment?

E-book readers like the Kindle (there are others, but this is the one to get the most coverage so far) could be the easy solution. Try this out on college campuses, where the kids have money to spend, and actually might want to learn:

Include as part of tuition a one-time fee for an e-book reader. Deliver this at orientation Freshman year.

All classes have the option to buy a printed version of a book, but are suggested to use the digital version, available for download at the appropriate location.

See how happy it makes everyone.

Continue this program every year.

Eventually stop even printing these college textbooks.

"Oh but what if it breaks?!?!?!" Easy answer. I'm pretty sure that if you have to pay anywhere between $100-300 every now and then, even if it's every year, to get your textbooks for a fraction of the cost ($30 Physics books anyone?), no-one is going to complain. So don't give me that IT crap as an excuse.

Maybe e-readers are not going to be very popular in general population for another decade or two. I mean, seriously, a digital library of books isn't going to impress anyone... no-one's iPod or iTunes library is of any interest either, right?

But at least target the market that would benefit the most: poor college students who hate paying for textbooks every semester. College textbooks have been a problem since probably the dawn of time, and now here's a way to alleviate the pain.