Dream Gadgets

Have you ever really sat down and thought about what your dream gadget would be?  What functions would you truly want and use?  How would it change your life?

 

Think deeply about it.  What can technology do that would radically change your life for the better?  You personally, not the world in general.  Now think how it could be done.

I’ve thought about it, and here’s what I’ve come up with.  I’ve kept this fairly realistic — all of this is either possible now or should be in the next 5 years.  In most cases it’s simply a matter of putting pieces that already exist together.

Hardware:

Hand-held or wearable unit
Built in Camera
Low-resolution, short-range projector
Bluetooth foldable keyboard (optional accessory)
Bluetooth eyeglasses display (later, contact lenses)
Bluetooth earpiece/microphone
5gig processor
5TB SSD

Software:

Expert social system
Personal wiki
Augmented Reality
Personal Information Manager system
Health / Psychological monitoring
Phone / GPS / QR Code reader
Browser / E-mail
Voice recognition

Most of this you will no doubt find familiar, with the exception of the “expert social system”.  This is something I’ve been coming up with in my head lately.  Here’s how it works.

I’ve become fascinated by the possibilities of tags and tag clouds.  What if everything — not just articles on Wikipedia or books on Amazon, but everything – had tags associated with it?  Events, objects, people, places, e-mail, photos, literally everything.  Even you yourself.  Your unit acts as a life manager, a constant log-file of everything you do, everywhere you go, all your interests, the work you do, the calls you make, the people you associate with.  All of this is stored in your personal wiki, searchable by date or tag or association.  Objects and places in the real world would have something similar to QR Codes that would be readable by the camera on your unit, and show up on your Augmented Reality view if they have a web presence or info available.  People who have their units set to transmit would also show up on the Augmented Reality and their associated info and tags — according to whatever level they feel comfortable making public.  You’d see all this via the eyeglasses display, or later via contact lens displays.  The glasses or contacts could also track eye movements and that could become your cursor — you focus on something and click a button on the unit or (later) activate a subcutaneous pressure switch to activate whatever you have chosen.

So where does the “social” part come in?  Your unit would have an expert system that would build up an increasingly detailed virtual model of you.  It would gather tags from everything you do, everywhere you go, the people you associate with, the subjects and context of your e-mails and interests.  All of these tags become your personal tag cloud.  The frequency of use of each tag raises it higher in the tag cloud rankings.  From this, the expert system weights each object and then constantly searches out similar tags and associations, which it would then suggest to you.  Let’s say my tag cloud’s highest ranking subjects are anthropology, Jungian psychology, science-fiction, computers, popular science videos, writing and books.  My unit would search out events, people, places, and things that have the highest correlation to these tags and any strongly associated tags and then suggest them.  Let’s say the unit finds a new public lecture series on Jungian psychology and mythology being offered by a local college.  It would suggest it to me and ask if I’d like to schedule it.  If I say yes, it automatically schedules the times into my calendar and will remind me of it at appropriate intervals.  It will also note the tags associated with the event and add in any new tags to my collection or add points to tags I already have, thus increasing their relevance scores in my tag cloud.  It would do the same with people, making me aware of people around me who have similar interests.  It would be a way to meet people with whom I would already have a lot in common, and most likely in a context where we’d have something to talk about.  That kind of thing would be a godsend for people like me who are not the most social of folk, who have trouble finding anything to talk about to strangers.

The unit could do the same with regards to work and education.  Let’s say I get laid off from my job.  The unit would be able to search for possible new jobs that have my top tags associated with them, factoring in commute distance, education and experience, and even Myers-Briggs type.  If I need help with career counseling, I have the unit search for a career counselor in my area and contact them.  The unit could automatically generate a resume with my education and experience and my top tags.  The counselor would have all the info needed to begin working with me immediately, and could advise me on any education or preparation I’d need to help my future prospects.  The unit could also suggest relevant college courses or resources for strongly associated tags on a continuing basis, to help keep my knowledge of my field current and expand my knowledge of related fields.

The unit would also be capable of a certain level of health and psychological monitoring.  It could be programmed to record everything I eat and call up all relevant nutritional data.  It could advise me on calorie intake and help keep me on my diet.  It could also deduce when I may be withdrawing from people and the world by my level of activity and social contacts, or if I’m under too much stress or doing too much.  In the future it will also be possible that the unit would be able to gather more direct info from implanted sensors to keep a check on vital signs and biochemical levels within the body, and to automatically call for help if something went wrong.

The unit would not be artificially intelligent per se — but it would increasingly seem so the user.  As time goes on the unit would have an ever more complex model of the user, and thus its suggestions would be increasingly more relevant.  It would not preclude learning new things or acquiring new interests, it could easily be programmed to suggest things associated with lower ranked tags or associations to provide a wider variety of experiences.  It could act as a social intermediary, providing a means of introduction to people who have common interests.  And of course it could provide directions, book hotels and flights, send e-mails, schedule appointments, provide information, make phone calls, and all the other mundane things we ask our phones and computers to do for us.

The longer I think of this dream gadget the more I realize how deeply it would impact my life.  The personal wiki would save everything I come across, from articles I read on the ‘Net to books I want to buy.  The unit could retrieve info I need from the ‘Net and store it all for me for later reading or watching, like news and blog articles and YouTube vids.  With the tags associated with each thing it could suggest increasingly relevant information and ideas.  If units like this came into popular use it could lead to a total rethink as to what constitutes education and knowledge — sitting at desk in a college classroom would be only one way of a myriad to acquire an education, and the old academic categories would blur even more than they are today.  Groups of people could find each other more frequently on the grounds of common interests and temperament, not simply by random chance.

That’s my dream gadget.  What’s yours?

Pepper, the Eye of the Beholder, and the Moon

Xyl’s best friend and mentor, Sgt. Damien Pepper, is a history buff.  He loves what he knows as “Pre-Millenial” history — the 1960’s through the turn of the Millenium.

In this scene from Aquaria, Pepper reveals a discovery he’s made out in the Wastelands.  He and his gang are scavengers and he’s found an old telescope and some science books.  When I was writing this scene, I imagined the Eye of the Beholder to be a 12 or 14 inch Meade LX-200, a fairly advanced consumer model with an electronic targeting and tracking system.

“So I’m fartin’ around with this thing, gee whiz, lookee that, there’s Jupiter and all the moons going around it, there’s Saturn.  Then I read something in one of the books that threw me for a loop.  It said that in 1969 people had landed on the Moon.  That over the next three years, up until 1972, there were six missions that landed a total of twelve men on the Moon.  Now if any of you clowns remember your history — the which I doubt, since kids forget stuff almost before it makes it between one ear and the other — the human species has never gone beyond Earth orbit.  Anyone who bothers to look up that time in history knows the history of the old Pre-Millenial space programs:  that there was a President back then who upped the ante on the Russians and committed his government to landing a man on the Moon in only eight years.  And that’s all on the strength of one fifteen minute suborbital jump and a hell of a lot of failures when their rockets blew up on the launch pad.  Sounds to me like a couple of kids daring each other to do something stupid, but it was a big thing back then.  So they had two successful projects, Mercury and Gemini, and the big deal was going to be the Apollo program.  That’s the ones who were going to the Moon.  But our history textfiles now say that the first Apollo spacecraft, Apollo 1, blew up on the launch pad during a test.  Killed three men, Grissom, White and Chaffee.  Our history says that after that the country lost heart, and there was a war going on, and Apollo was scrapped for being too dangerous and too expensive and technically impossible.  Our history says that after that we started only concentrating on near-Earth orbit work, space stations, commercial and industrial stuff.  Our history says that no one’s ever been to the Moon.  But here’s this book from 1983 that says a dozen men had landed on the Moon.  And they left laser reflectors and a lot of stuff behind.  So I figured, well, maybe I can see it with this telescope.  Moon’s only a quarter million miles away, shouldn’t be a problem.  Then I got this bright idea that if I could find where this Apollo 11 had landed, I could use a target scope from a rifle and see if it bounced back from the laser reflectors.  That would be the proof, wouldn’t it?  So that’s what I did.  And it worked.”

 

Pepper stopped and turned to look at Xyl.  “C’mere, kid.  You gotta see this.  All of you, anyone that wants to see it, stick your eye here at the eyepiece just like you’re looking through a rifle scope.  You ain’t gonna believe your eyes.”

“Pepper, you’ve been claiming that Geneva’s one big conspiracy theory ever since I’ve known you,” Xyl said, not moving from her place leaning against the bot-car’s door.

“Yeah, well now I’ve got solid proof.  C’mere and look at this, willya?”

Xyl sighed, pushed herself up and went to him.

Gray filled the field of view, a variagated gray pocked with several perfectly round craters cut out as if by a cookie cutter, some worn away until they made only shallow depressions.

“Okay, now hold onto your hat, I’m gonna up the magnification,” Pepper said beside her.

The field blurred and resolved again, and something square that glinted with gold leaped into resolution.  Four spindly legs radiated from the corners, ending in the circles of landing pads.  Smaller shadows of other items that she couldn’t quite make out, and the dust around and between appeared lumpy and uneven.

“Okay, here we go again.  Now watch that bright square, I’m gonna hit the targeter,” Pepper said at her side.

Again the blurring, and suddenly she saw unmistakable human bootprints.  And beside them a bright rectangle blazing white with the reflected light of the sun.  And a moment later a tiny red dot blinked in the center of the reflectors.

She pulled away from the eyepiece and looked up at Pepper’s somber expression.

“Y’see,” he said quietly.  “I was right this time.  There’s an old Pre-Millenial United States flag up there too.  People went to the Moon.  But all our history says we didn’t.  And you gotta wonder why, ’cause if we did then everything changes.”

“What do you mean?” Kham asked as Jodo bent to look through the eyepiece.  “What’s it change?”

“Think about it, kid.  If we could make it to the Moon in 1969 — two hundred and sixty-one years ago — why haven’t we been doing it all this time since?  Why haven’t we gone to Mars, to the moons of Jupiter?  Why are there twelve billion people stuck on this planet when there’s all that real estate out there?  I’m betting that by the turn of the Millenium we had the tech to set up colonies on the Moon and Mars at the very least — we’ve got the tech now.  We’ve recycled everything from plastic to metal to silicon to water for decades because we’ve already used up everything we could reach here on Earth.  Who makes a profit out of twelve billion people stuck on this dirtball?  You find that, you’ll find out who’s holding us back.”

And now, the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter has given us exactly what Pepper saw through the Eye of the Beholder.  Scroll down to the detailed view of Apollo 14’s landing sight.

The chapter of Aquaria when this scene takes place was the turning point of the story, the point at which Xyl realizes that even the government wasn’t what it seemed.  The global government in her day is far less of an influence on the world than the corporations, and exists merely as a form of administration for the monetary and healthcare systems and the global Security forces.  The global government headquarters are in Geneva, but the real power in the world resides in the upper echelons of Microlera and Intelligon and others like them.  Except, of course, they have the power to change history.  When all information is digital and that information is at the mercy of an Artificial Intelligence, all you know as fact can be changed in the blink of an eye.  What you know as certainties can vanish when it’s only an arrangement of electrons in a datastream.

–Scene excerpted from Aquaria by Carol E. Meacham, used here by permission of the author.

“But What Do You Use It For?”

“But what do you use it for?  What do you do with it?”

These questions came from my mother during a recent conversation.  She was asking me about my computers and my electronic-infested life, and could not understand why I am so attached to my computers and gadgets.  My step-father had asked me not long before “what do you do with your computers?” and as I listed off all the things I do on the computer even I was struck by the sheer length of the list.  When my mother asked the same question I simply said, “Everything.  I do everything on the computer.”

The questions brought into sharp focus the chasm of the electronic generation gap.  Remember when our parents just didn’t understand our music?

It pointed out to me especially how far apart we are in the fundamental mind-set.  A question like “what do you do with it?” with regards to computers and the Internet seems ludicrous to anyone under the age of about 45.  Computers are so integral to our lives that we never think about it.  Computers are extensions of our brains, our memories, our voices.  Computers are our tools, our communications, our toys.  They facilitate every aspect of our lives.  They are part of us.  They amplify us.  We are becoming cyborgs, integrating these machines into our thoughts and lives so much that we feel as if a vital body part had been amputated when we’re away from them.

But our parents aren’t like that. The digital divide isn’t between the people who have computers and those who don’t.  That is a problem of economics and can be solved by a variety of means.  What cannot be solved is the fundamental mind-set that cannot live in a symbiotic relationship with the machine.  Our thinking has diverged from that of our parents in a way that signals a bedrock disconnect in the culture.  When I was in that conversation with my mother I had the most profound feeling that I was of some strange new species speaking to one of the species from which I evolved — there was that uncrossable gulf between us.  My species had just begun its journey into the future.  That of my mother would stay where it was.  That variant of homo sapiens had come to the end of its journey at the shore of an endless ocean of data and signal.  My kind had evolved flippers and were playing in the waves just off the shore.

I like to think it would have been different if my father was still alive.  My father built his own radios and stereo equipment, and he’d wanted to be a pilot.  The first electronic thing I can remember was one of the first Texas Instruments scientific calculators that my father had acquired.  I remember sitting and staring at the album cover for my Dad’s copy of the soundtrack of 2001, with its paintings of a moon colony.  I think my father might have made the jump to this new way of life.  He would have learned to build his own computers, and would have spent endless hours tweaking them.  He would have bought the $300 control yoke and spent his Saturdays flying simulated fighter planes in all the simulated air battles of World War II.  My dad could have made himself at home on the computer.

He would have been 68 years old today.

And oddly, I think I have an answer for my mother now.  I wouldn’t have sent an e-mail to my father today.  I’d be home with him, helping him tweak his computer or install the software for that new control yoke and headset.  I’d be helping him fix the digital camera he’d installed in his remote-controlled airplane for do-it-yourself aerial photography.  We’d be in Best Buy together, picking out a new video camera or TV.  There are some things you can’t do on the computer.  But we can still share the things we love to do with the people who love us.  The computer merely enables us to do so in a more efficient fashion.  It doesn’t fundamentally change the fact that we love each other.

To my father, Edwin Elvis Meacham, Jr.  Happy birthday, Dad.  I miss you.

Ancestor of Distributed Computing of 2230?

From the history of 2230 (see the second post of this blog for full text):

The technique of distributed computation — using thousands, even millions, of computers to process massive amounts of data during unused processor cycles — enabled researchers to do in days what would have taken decades of tedious work. Such rapid numbercrunching accelerated developments in dozens of areas. Designs evolved, radio signals analyzed for extraterrestrial intelligence, computer-generated life evolved and survived in virtual environments, and hundreds of potential cures assessed for effectiveness against known disease characteristics.

And now, from Singularity Hub:

Create an AI on Your Computer

This article outlines just the sort of thing that really set the world of 2230 in motion — distributed computing to use hundreds of thousands or even millions of computers to tackle huge projects in small timeframes.

When I was writing that part of Aquaria I also had in mind an article I’d read in Scientific American about a computer program that literally evolved electronic circuits.(Scientific American, February 2003.  See the teaser for the article here.)  The idea that a distributed computing program could be used for evolving electronic circuits seemed to me to be just the thing for an innovation explosion.  The thing would spit out so many circuit designs that millions of electronics engineering grad students would spend their entire careers just figuring out what they all did and what they were good for.  Sure, it would spit out a lot of useless stuff — but when it’s coming up with a billions designs a year, “one in a thousand” becomes commonplace.  And for the one in a million that really hits the jackpot — well.  That’s what science-fiction is made of, isn’t it?

Ancestor of WorkMates / LifeMates of 2230?

From the Mercury News (www.mercurynews.com)

Siri Lifts Veil on Intelligent Assistant

You’ll note it’s an app for the iPhone, which would put it at the proper size for a WorkMate and LifeMate from my stories (I actually imagined Wally’s unit to be a PalmPilot type device).  It responds to natural language, which all WorkMates and LifeMates do.  This app is actually closer to the LifeMate version, but I suspect expert systems and technical database plug-ins won’t be long in coming.

Transhumanism Isn’t What We’ll Gain, But What We’ll Give Up

by Carol E. Meacham

(auntyproton@gmail.com)

Project 2230

In the course of reading up for the topic of transhumanism for Project 2230, I came across a few opinions from what’s called the “bio-luddite” camp.  One of the questions they ask that has stuck in my mind is this (in paraphrase) :  “Why would anybody want to replace their body, in whole or in part, with mechanical parts?  Why in the world would anybody want to upload their mind into a machine?  What can a mechanical body do that a human body can’t?”

My friends in the Singularity and transhumanist communities have many answers to these questions, most of which I’m sure you’ve all heard if you are at all interested in these subjects.  I have another view, one that may or may not be welcome in the argument.

It is not so much what mechanical bodies and mind uploading will give us as what it will take away.  Or rather, what the transhumanist movement believes it will take away.  The hoopla has been over the assumed capabilities that mechanical parts and bodies will give to an individual, the assumed aspects of immortality, the efficiency, the ability to live and work in environments for which human anatomy is unsuited.  But I think that this idea of a mechanical body appeals because along with all these capabilities the mechanical body will somehow take away the perceived “bad” aspects of being human.  In this case, “bad” equals all those things which are most difficult to live and deal with — emotions,the very things that make us human.

In the popular view, machines are often called “soulless” and often portrayed as emotionless.  They are believed to have no conscience, no moral sense, and no mercy in dealing with humans.  In human terms, this makes them “evil”.  I think, however, that deep under the moralizing and condemning of the “evil machine” is an element of envy.  Machines are freed of all the messy human stuff that we have to put up with every moment of our lives.  They have no emotions — they don’t have to put up with embarrassment, shame, guilt, jealousy, grief, sadness,infatuation, frustration, fear.  Machines do not have these emotions and so are not hindered by them.  They aren’t encumbered by an inescapable human morass and can act uninfluenced by anything save precise logic.  This is a state of being that I think many people would choose for themselves, if such were available.  These emotions are often overwhelming even to a relatively well-adjusted person.  Why not choose to live without them?  Why not choose to eliminate something that consumes vast amounts of time, energy, and thought often to no good end?  Emotionality leads to trouble.  Machines, in existing without such, are able to operate without the interpersonal friction that can doom any endeavor — politics, status-seeking, envy, sexuality.

Humans are confronted not only with their own emotions but inundated by the emotions of others on a daily basis.  And not only in face-to-face interactions but now available 24/7 on the news and the Internet.  War, conflict, politics, the general inhumanity that people can inflict upon each other comes crashing in on us from all sides.  Machines, on the other hand, don’t do that.  Machines are not plagued by millions of years of evolution trying to ensure that the best and strongest of the human herd breed and produce lots of offspring.  In this day and age, politics, wealth and power have replaced success at the hunt.  Machines don’t fight over such things because there’s no emotion there.  Survival for a machine is predicated on far different factors than it is for a human.  Machines work best and most efficiently when they cooperate.  Machines get things done.  I think humanity underneath it all is envious of that.

As for the idea of “soulless” machines — yes, they are soulless.  But no one has been able to conclusively prove via scientific methods that humans have a “soul” either.  Definitions for “soul” vary widely and are usually vague and made of inherently unprovable factors.  No one has ever found a region of the brain wherein the “soul” resides, nor what it’s function is.  I have always wondered what one does with a “soul” anyway.  From what I have seen of the standard dogmas, a “soul” seems to be something akin to a subway token that you have to have to get into an equally vaguely defined “afterlife”, the qualities of which are determined by how clean you have kept said token.  This aspect of the argument simply does not apply to machines.  They are not afraid of death.  They are not afraid of loss of consciousness.  They are not afraid of losing a “self”.  They will not be afraid of anything.  Fear is an emotion, and they are free of that.  Machines, by their nature, are mass-producible and can be made identical.  When one fails, another will take up the task.  It is not the individual that is important, it is the goal the machine or collective of machines are engaged in.  Survival is preferable with regards to conservation of resources and energy, but it is not the primary function of a machine.  So in that respect I think humans envy machines and secretly want to be machines — so that we no longer have to fear death and loss of the individual consciousness.

Ultimately, yes, transhumanism is about transcending the limitations of the human physiology.  Yes, it will enable us to leave Earth, colonize Mars, colonize the moons of Jupiter, and travel to other stars.  Yes, it will enable us to make the most of our lives, to enhance our lives by giving us new senses and new capabilities.  There is noDRM on the human genetic code.  We are open source.  There is no agency that will slap us with a lawsuit for remixing our genetics, or adding in mechanical parts.  The highest goals of humanity — ending war, disease, poverty, prejudice — would be admirably served by wise use of the technologies we will see in the coming decades.  But I can’t help wondering if maybe it’s in part to escape the painful parts of human existence, a sort of cowardly ducking out.  One might see it as a sort of cheating, of trying to cross the river without paying the ferryman his due.  We are still human now.  If we really want to transcend what it is to be human, we have to deal with all of it.  If we don’t, we won’t have transcended anything at all.

Contact me at auntyproton@gmail.com

Universal Internet / Universal Wifi

Universal Internet / Wifi

Probably the “oldest” of the technologies of 2230 is what we here in 2009 would call “Universal Internet” or “Universal Wifi”.  To the world of 2230, those two terms — or their 2230 equivalents — are synonymous.  In 2230 it’s considered to be something on a par with the air — it’s everywhere, it’s free, and you have to work really hard to get away from it.  Over 90% of the population — in 2230, well over 12 Billion people — have at least basic nanobot Netspace interfaces.  Nearly the entire population of the Earth is constantly connected, and when I say “constantly” I mean it.  Similar to SETI@Home and other distributed computing projects, a person in 2230 can contribute their nanobots’ unused processing cycles to massive collaborative computing projects so that even when a person is asleep their brain is connected wirelessly to NetSpace.  In 2230, a standard nanobot Netspace interface can give you:

• Chat (real-time voice/video between Netspace Personas)
• NetMail (voice/video/text e-mail type asynchronous messages)
• VoiceComm (real-time, Real Life voice “cellphone” type communications, with means to send/receive data files)
• Mid-Mode NetSpace (limited viewing and interaction with NetSpace without full immersion, similar to the Augmented Reality of today)
• NetSpace (full-immersion virtual reality, Audio / Visual / Tactile sensory input, full interaction with NetSpace)

These functions are transmitted wirelessly to and from the optic and auditory nerves and the tactile sensory processing center of a user’s brain via the nanobot Netspace interface.  The signals are transmitted to and from the nanobot interface and NetSpace via small devices called “comm boosters”.  These are relatively short-range transmitters that connect to each other in what we now would call a “mesh network”.  While there are ways to encrypt and protect signals to and from users, comm boosters themselves are rarely encrypted or restricted.  In 2230, universal constant connection to the global NetSpace is as much a neccessity and an assumption as sewer systems and the electrical grid are to us here in the Western world of 2009.

So how close are we to it now in 2009?

First some facts from the Broadband Fact Book, courtesy of the Internet Innovation Alliance.

• According to FCC Estimates, 82 percent of American households now have access to DSL service and 96 percent have access to cable modem service.
• From 2002 to 2007, the number of Kenyans using cell phones grew almost tenfold to reach about a third of the population, many of whom did not have land lines, according to the International Telecommunication Union.
• Satellite connections are faster and more stable, which is why they are attracting interest from the likes of Google, as a way to provide Internet connections to the estimated 95 percent of Africans who have no access.
• About 60 percent of British households currently have broadband.
• OECD countries with the highest rate of broadband penetration in 2007 were South Korea, Iceland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland. In each of these countries, more than two-thirds of households subscribe to broadband.
• When measured on a household basis instead of a per capita basis, U.S. ranking in the OECD measure of broadband penetration improves to 12th.
• In absolute numbers, the U.S. does well, with 79.07 million [broadband] subscribers, making it second only to China’s 83.37 million, but China’s subscriber base is growing faster.

There are several things which need to be in place for universal Internet in our world of 2009, and many of them seem to be happening or have happened in the last year.  (I’ll get to universal wifi in a moment)  With regards to the United States, broadband Internet (cable modem or DSL) is by no means available everywhere in the country.  We have a patchwork of providers using many means of delivery — cable for cable modems, phone land lines for DSL, and a variety of wifi or wireless options from celltowers.  There has even been a plan called “broadband over power lines” where broadband access would be piped through the electrical grid.  You may think this variety of Internet connections would cover everybody who might want it in the United States.  This is not the case.  Those in remote and rural areas often do not have any means of Internet access because the cable companies and the phone companies have not extended their networks out to their locations, and in many of these areas cell reception may be impossible due to mountainous terrain or distance.

These are just the technical reasons.  There are other reasons such as poverty that hinder universal access, and that can be a factor even in the heart of the most connected cities in the country.  If you can’t afford a computer, you can’t get on the Internet.  No amount of free wifi or subsidized access is going to alleviate that.

But there are now several developments that suggest universal Internet access may happen sooner than we could otherwise expect, and in fact right with the timeline of the world of 2230.

First, in November of 2008, the FCC put out a press release regarding unauthorized usage of TV spectrum “white space” — if you’re old enough to remember a time when TVs used antennae, these were the channels between your local channels that showed nothing but static.  These channels ~ specific frequencies on the broadcast spectrum ~ were empty of any signal in the specific local area.  Since the “digital conversion” (still ongoing as of this writing), the FCC has found itself with a lot of empty spectrum.  Some of this spectrum was auctioned off recently with some flurry as Google was making a bid for it, but after the furor died down the FCC quietly released this statement:

In its continuing efforts to promote efficient use of spectrum and to extend the benefits of such use to the public, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today adopted a Second Report and Order (Second R&O) that establishes rules to allow new, sophisticated wireless devices to operate in broadcast television spectrum on a secondary basis at locations where that spectrum is open.

This opens up a lot of spectrum for use by “wireless devices” — and that means everything from laptops and netbooks to smartphones and anything else anybody can come up with. (Subject of course to some device restrictions regarding signal interference, such as for emergency responder use.)

The second development came about due to two factors:  the nosediving economy and the election of President Barack Obama.

Washington, D.C. – The Federal Communications Commission today begins the process of developing a national broadband plan that will seek to ensure that every American has access to broadband capability.
In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – known as the stimulus package – Congress charged the Commission with creating a naional broadband plan. In a Notice of Inquiry adopted today, the Commission begins a proceeding to create that national broadband plan, seeking input from all stakeholders: consumers, industry, large and small businesses, non-profits, the disabilities community, governments at the federal, state, local and tribal levels, and all other interested parties.

President Obama’s progressive outlook — I call him our first Geek President — has put issues like universal Internet, science and renewable/sustainable energy at the forefront of American politics.  Putting this issue center stage brings attention to it not just in the United States but across the world, and shows that the US is serious about catching up to the rest of the world with regards to the Internet.  We are currently 16th in the world in broadband Internet penetration — which is kind of humiliating considering the silly thing was invented here.  This plan could ensure universal access within the United States.

As for those folks who cannot afford computers, there’s a few answers for that too .

Universal Wifi

But what about the actual hardware, the “comm boosters” of 2230?  They’re everywhere in 2230.  Usually there’s one in every room, and ruggedized versions built into the outside walls of buildings every ten meters.  I didn’t hear the term “mesh network ” until years after I’d written Machina Obscura and Aquaria, but I knew the idea long before.

Mesh networks can be created now, with access nodes you can buy and hook up to any router or modem.  I have one of these myself, built by Meraki .  In fact I acquired one of their original indoor models when it first came out, because I could see the potential in it even then.  It’s worked admirably for me ever since, delivering several years of trouble free open home wifi.  If my neighbor had a Meraki on the wall of his house, the two units could mesh and provide a large wifi area.  With each Meraki added on, the area covered gets bigger.  One can even set it up so that users accessing it have to pay for the privelege — or, as I have, leave it completely open.  (I’m not quite that pollyannaish — if you use my wifi, you’ve got to put up with the splash screens!)

In such a way with comparatively little outlay of capital, a large area could be given wireless access.  Connection speeds would be dependant on the bandwidth of the original ‘Net connection(s), but the signal itself could be shared by any number of people.

A similar strategy is used by the Spanish company FON, with their Fonera network.

Both Meraki and FON have maps online to show where their respective wifi units are located.  These units are often built for outdoor use, and Meraki even has a unit with a solar panel for power.  If connected to the Internet via satellite, these units could be deployed in rural and remote areas and with mobile satellite units mounted in vehicles could be quickly deployed in disaster zones for the use of emergency responders and relief workers.  With several units meshed together, entire villages and towns could be given Internet access for education, communication, political involvement and economic opportunity.

There are also municipal wifi projects that crop up from time to time, and many that are currently ongoing.  These projects, unfortunately, seem much slower to get off the ground, and much harder to keep going.  Large cities such as Chicago, San Fransisco, and Sydney Australia have canceled such projects, while projects in smaller cities like Kennesaw and Peachtree City, Georgia continue.  Google WiFi is one ongoing project to give free wifi access to the entire town of Mountain View, CA.  Google intends to keep the access free of charge until 2010.

Not Just a Cellphone Anymore

Here in the United States we’ve got a real thing for the full computer experience.  What we don’t really get (unless one goes overseas) is that for a great portion of the world the Internet is something that happens over the phone.  And lately it hasn’t just been any old cellphone but a class of device known as the “smartphone”.  The iPhone is perhaps the most well known, followed closely by the BlackBerry , the Palm Centro and Treo , and many others.

According to World Internet Usage Statistics, Asia and Europe together account for 65% of Internet usage in the world, and in both regions that Internet usage is primarily through handheld devices (smartphones, mobile Internet devices, or personal digital assistants).

Here in the United States, one might be wondering why anybody would rely on a cellphone as their primary Internet device.  iPhones are great, you can do an amazing number of things with them very well, but using one as your primary computer all the time?  Most Americans, long accustomed to at least a 15 inch screen, a keyboard, speakers, CD/DVD and broadband just don’t see how anybody could put up with such a small screen and limited capabilities.

What cellphones do have, however, is a cheap price.  Cell tower networks are by far easier to set up in third-world nations than the massive infrastructure project of a landline system, and cellphone providers who see a vast new market.  This leads to poor countries who have never had a national landline grid getting a cell network with little to no capital outlay, and the cellphone providers getting those new lucrative markets.  Microlending operations such as GrameenPhone and Kiva have provided the means for poor people in these markets to afford the phones, and a large percentage of the phones purchased then are used as a sort of pay-phone service.  This provides the phone owner a source of income to pay off the loan.  The people of these poor, remote and rural areas gain a new source of income after paying off the loan, the service providers get a new market, and the improved communications in the area often kickstarts a wide range of new economic activity and political involvement.  Better communications leads to a higher sustainable standard of living, and true progress.

What we here in the West don’t really get is that for most of the world these phones are the Internet.  The Internet in Asia more often than not is via smartphone and PDA interface, not laptops or desktop computers.  This is often due to factors far other than poverty — in Japan it might be lack of space for a full computer in one’s dwelling.  It might be due to prohibitively expensive Internet service provider prices.  It might be due to simply wanting to be as mobile as possible and a wish not to be burdened with lugging a laptop or tied to a desk.  This is the constantly connected life of today for the majority of the world.  And now, with the advent of the netbook, it seems the laptop and the smartphone may be involved in some convergent evolution.  The question now becomes what form will the Internet take for the world of the future — that of the keyboard and screen, or that of the touchscreen and Bluetooth earbud?

How Close Are We?

So how close are we to the universal Internet, and perhaps more importantly how close are we to universal access to that Internet?

In 2230, while a person can operate perfectly well with just the processing power of the nanobot interface, a device called a WorkMate or LifeMate is a common and valuable peripheral to a person’s cybernetic life.  Think of a LifeMate as a personal digital assistant with a personality, a little semi-autonomous avatar who keeps track of your life for you, learns your preferences and habits, deals with your finances, and can even search for and set up contract work, travel, education, and social contacts for you.  A WorkMate is basically the same machine, but with expert task-related systems for any occupation you can think of.  The prime example of this is one of the major characters in 2230, Xyl’s WorkMate Wally.

Eight hours later Xyl woke to find the room dark with night. She triggered the chrono display and the green pyramid morphed into green alphanumerics. It was the middle of the night, three hours til dawn. She yawned and opened the battered cover of her WorkMate, folding it up and sliding it into the recessed slot on the back of the device. She put her thumb to the biometric scanner sensor beside the directional buttons below the screen and the tiny green pyramid in the lower left corner of her vision automatically zipped to the middle of her visual field and expanded into the virtual representation of the WorkMate’s bot personality. A comical green, furry, two-legged 3-dimensional cartoon character with a short green elephant’s trunk and big googly eyes, spindly arms ending in white mitten-like hands. It jumped and flipped in a somersault, then rolled up into a menacing martial arts defensive posture.

“Xyl! Where have you been?” it asked after a moment when the auto-test sequence was done.

“In storage, just like you,” Xyl answered the WorkMate’s bot construct. “Pepper gave you to Azim for safekeeping while I was in prison.”

“Prison? What happened?”

“That’s a very long story,” Xyl said, not really wanting to go over it. “And anyway, it’s over with now and we’ve got a job.”

“Gotcha. You want a rundown of what I’ve got on tap?”

“Yeah, chapter and verse. I might need you to run out on the Net while I’m asleep and get whatever we don’t have. You can never have too many Nulls or too much Shielding.”

“Copy that. You want the list by alphabetical order or use category?”

Xyl stopped to yawn again and closed her eyes, pulling the pillow over her head again. Wally still floated in her visual field, bobbing slightly with nervous energy and flexing his fingers. “Use category, subsort alphabetical.”

“Gotcha.”

Wally is not just a handheld device with an extensive database of illegal hacking techniques.  He is a form of Artificial Intelligence that can act independently when Xyl gives him orders, carry out dozens of tasks, learn from watching how Xyl works, and adapt his own behavior to novel situations in order to carry out his assigned work.  WorkMates of Wally’s caliber are designed from the beginning to be full partners to their Users.  They are designed to assist their Users get the fullest possible use out of NetSpace for the performance of the User’s job, whatever it may be.  They are meant to be another set of hands, another set of eyes, another brain to help process and winnow out the diamonds from the dross.  This is what I envisioned the perfect Internet to be when I wrote Machina Obscura back in the summer of 2001 — an uncharted bottomless ocean of data, forever unseen in its true form but only through the mediation of a friendly little AI who could understand everything asked of it and offer up properly filtered subsets of the most useful information before skipping off to do with that information whatever its task required.  It was a happy little cybernetic ghost who could keep track of all the fiddly details while enabling its User to concentrate on the work at hand, archive anything important and retrieve it again whenever needed.

NetSpace in 2230 is as common and abundant as the air people breathe — maybe more so, given how polluted the air is in Xyl’s Atlantica.  It is in effect far too much of a good thing.  All the information in the world is useless if you cannot understand it.  Already here in our own real world of 2009 we are faced with so much Internet that we have to have sites like Digg , Google, StumbledUpon, and others to help us find what’s worth looking at.  RSS feeds, niche blogs, news alerts, are all means to apply a lens to the vast flood of information we live in on the ‘Net.  Here and now in 2009, the concept of the Intelligent Agent is known, and like all technology it is evolving.  These programs and programs like them will act as filters for the human intellect to translate the overwhelming presence of the Internet into something comprehensible and useful.  In the future humans will simply be unable to process all the information the Internet will provide.  We will have no choice but to adopt a friendly machine — or several — to mediate for us the digital world.  A “universal Internet” is simply too big a place already for human minds to comprehend.

One way or another, we will have a universal Internet.  Whether by conscious design as with President Obama’s broadband initiative or simply by an aggregation of a myriad of sources and providers, a universal global Internet is on its way.  More than likely it will still take decades for standards of signal and means to be hammered out worldwide, and will happen by a process of “survival of the fittest” — whatever is most efficient and delivers the most gigabits will win.  Most likely it will be some form of universal wifi, but whether WiMax, broadband over power lines, wireless cable modem, DSL or some other standard remains to be seen.  Indications at present tell me that it is likely to happen as a grassroots movement rather than as a state-funded municipal infrastructure project.  This means it will happen initially as a result of action by concerned citizens who do not want to be left behind or overwhelmed by the ever-increasing pace of the technological world.  The United States simply cannot afford to be left behind in this way, not if we are to retain any standing as a world power.  In ten years — twenty at the outside — universal Internet will no longer be a luxury but a necessity.  Later, it may well be considered a human right.

So in numbers:

Optimistically — 15 years to Universal Internet access

Realistically — 20 years to Universal Internet access

Pessimistically — 50 years to Universal Internet access, if circumstances, natural disaster or politics intervene

Coincidence with timeline of 2230 — Roughly equal, and on schedule.

Sources used for this post:

Excerpts from Aquaria and Machina Obscura by Carol E. Meacham, used here by intention of the author.

Blorge  ~  November 4, 2008

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2008/11/04/universal-internet-access-is-upon-us-fcc-opened-white-spaces/

“FCC Adopts Rules for Unlicensed Use of Television White Spaces” ~  press release from the FCC, dated November 4, 2008

www.speedmatters.org ~ Promotoing universal high-speed Internet access for America.

The Internet Innovation Alliance ~ www.internetinnovation.org

Citizens Online ~ http://www.citizensonline.org.uk/conline  (for the United Kingdom)

Twice.com ~ CES Daily 2009  http://www.twice.com/ces2009/article/CA6628288.html  (Universal access over cellphones)

Free Geek  ~  www.freegeek.org

Meraki ~ www.meraki.com

Fon ~ www.fon.com

Wikipedia:  Google WiFi, Municipal Wireless Network, Mesh Network, Universal Internet,

World Internet Usage Statistics ~ http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

GrameenPhone ~ www.grameenphone.com

Kiva ~ www.kiva.org

Ray Kurzweil’s site — www.kurzweilai.net

WiMax — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMax

A Brief History of the World of 2230

A Brief History of the World of 2230

~an excerpt from Aquaria by Carol E. Meacham~

The return to a nomadic life began with the first tendrils of NetSpace, that first explosive chaos of the archaic InterNet, with the ability to communicate and share data from anywhere on the planet. The InterNet began with the need for the old American military to communicate between installations should a nuclear strike disrupt normal means of communication. Transmitted in those days over the clumsy medium of physical wiring, transmission speeds and bandwidth reached their effective limits within a few decades. Integrated solid-state circuitry reached its highest possible potential within a hundred years of its invention. But as with all technologies where one avenue of development reached a plateau another would blossom into new innovation. Wireless technology flourished when integrated circuitry stalled in the early 21st century, and robotics, nanotech, biotech, and artificial intelligence research absorbed the brain power that up to that time focussed on hardware.

Nanotechnology and robotics proved the most intensive areas of research and development in the 21st century. The technique of distributed computation — using thousands, even millions, of computers to process massive amounts of data during unused processor cycles — enabled researchers to do in days what would have taken decades of tedious work. Such rapid numbercrunching accelerated developments in dozens of areas. Designs evolved, radio signals analyzed for extraterrestrial intelligence, computer-generated life evolved and survived in virtual environments, and hundreds of potential cures assessed for effectiveness against known disease characteristics. By the end of the 21st century medical nanobots could repair vital organs from within the body, provided insulin for diabetics, and destroyed cancers without recourse to chemotherapy or radiation. By the year 2115, nanobots could identify and eliminate specific viruses and bacteria — and freed humankind forever from the last few deadly diseases that until that time eluded eradication. The last few AIDS victims were cured in 2118 and each went on to live for over a century, a phenomenon that had long since become commonplace by the year 2100.

Effective immortality loomed as the human genome unravelled and revealed its secrets, but shortsighted governments failed to curb the birthrate to compensate. Technology eliminated the gap between the old third world and the more prosperous states, but despite the institution of a global government multiculturalism moved slower to bridge that gap. The monotheistic religious faiths breathed their last, defiant to the end even in the face of overwhelming evidence that their centuries-old policies perpetuated a cycle of poverty and misery. No one could be kept away from knowledge anymore. The contradiction of a compassionate God who demanded his devotees deny themselves the means to improve their lives and those of their children would no longer hold. Humankind no longer believed in something they couldn’t prove.

Nanotech, meanwhile, began to evolve in other areas. The first uses of nanobots to stimulate nerves were clumsy, crude, and painful. As the technology improved and nanos got smaller and more sophisticated, actual repairs of severed nerve fibers became possible. At first nanobots were a minor experimental treatment, to cure the paralysis of facial nerves for victims of stroke. Within ten years damaged spinal nerves could be repaired in a matter of weeks. At the same time, researchers used much the same techniques on the auditory nerves, and soon afterward repairs to the optic nerves became possible. During the course of these studies the first volunteer patients for optic nerve regeneration found that while the nanobots repaired the nerves they perceived patterns of colors and light even before the repairs were completed. Similar reports of spinal injury patients feeling phantom touches on hands and toes, and then reports of the auditory nerve injury patients hearing odd humming static, brought the phenomenon to the immediate attention of the researchers. They found that during the repairs the nanobots actually attached themselves to the nerves, and the infinitesimally tiny bursts of electricity they used to help repair the nerves provided more stimulation than they anticipated. The reawakened nerves sent the sensations back to the brain as if they came from the actual sensory organs themselves. NetSpace was a flat, crude thing in those days, accessed by lightweight virtual reality glasses and gloves connected to the Net by wireless transmission. With nanobots able to directly stimulate the sensory nerves the dream of direct mental connection to the Net became suddenly and earth-shatteringly real.

At first the government tried to suppress the knowledge, immediately confiscated the research and data and sequestered the medtechs and researchers. But too many people had read the paper detailing the data and phenomena, and researchers all over the planet conducted similar experiments. Within two years nanobots could transmit readable text from computers to the optic nerves, though not without discomfort. Five years later, the concept of wireless transmission directly to the nanobots within the body became possible. Personal Data Assistants — until then indispensible but ubiquitous adjuncts of modern life, storing everything from passports to diaries to correspondence to random doodles — finally came into their fullest capacities as true handheld computers, connecting their users to NetSpace, storing software and data.

Another fifty years passed before nanotechnology enabled NetSpace users to store and run warez from the unused portions of their own brains. But even then the freedom of having one’s primary personal computer in a handheld device changed the social fabric of the planet. One no longer needed to settle in one place. All forms of media already came in electronic form so storage space for bulky hardcopy media became a thing of the past. With banking and credit transactions taking place on the Net via debit or credit accounts one no longer needed a specific local institution. Corporations became truly multinational, and with global wireless communications anywhere you could have the peace and comfort to concentrate could become a workplace. The anchored feeling of coming home to the same place to sleep every night still had its appeal for most, and even with this new possibility of nomadic life roughly two-thirds of the planet’s population chose to settle down. But for the remaining third it became possible to live without a permanent physical residence. Entire families wandered together in RVs, or in caravans of smaller vehicles powered by fuel cells and hydrogen. But for the single people who travelled alone and didn’t choose the expense of owning a vehicle, the market quickly filled the need for secure, basic, cheap accommodations with waystations and sleeptubes.

Originally meant for professionals spending only a few days in any one location, both the communal waystations and the hivelike sleeptubes quickly attracted minimalist nano-gypsies of all stripes. Cheap, basic, relatively secure, both provided spaces to sleep, work, and wash for prices that threatened to put the more luxurious hotels out of business. Corporations maintained their own waystations and sleeptube racks for the free use of their employess, or else gladly covered the minor expense if their employees opted for the rootless existence. Gangs took to the idea like ducks to water, quickly establishing their “ownership” of any sleeptube rack in their turf. “Home” became virtual, with globetrotting parents keeping in touch with wandering offspring through NetSpace.

As a consequence, the idea of “family” as the people one dealt with In Real Life on a daily basis became something expressed more through choice than through blood. The species may have lost something when this trend began — psychology and sociology had yet to fully determine what vital social elements would vanish in the nomadic portions of the population, nor the eventual long-term consequences. But just as certainly some new aspect of human psychology would arise from this new way of living, and as yet no one could guess in what direction it would lead human society. Perhaps in another few generations the nomadic, communal way of life would become the norm, a society that placed more emphasis on peer-to-peer, non-familial, polyamorous bonds rather than the familial, parental, monogamous structures of previous times. Or perhaps the ancient ingrained hierarchy of the nuclear and extended family would win out in the end as the species craved more and more the comfort of blood relations in a world made increasingly inhuman by the pervasiveness of technology. As of yet, no one could tell for certain which way humankind would go.

(Note:  This excerpt is part of a copyrighted work, Aquaria by Carol E. Meacham.  Its use here is by the author.  Please notify the author and provide a link to your work at auntyproton@gmail.com if you wish to use it in its entirety elsewhere.  Thanks!)

Project 2230

This project is about gaps.

In May 2001, I had a simple thought that over the next 3 years turned into nearly 300,000 words of science-fiction:  What do we really know about the person on the other side of that e-mail or that chat room name?  It was a question about the gap between the person the world sees and the person that lives inside, and about the gap between that outer mask and how we perceive ourselves.

Machina Obscura was a simple adventure story that held a deep but quiet meaning.  The world they lived in was a world of two layers, Real Life and NetSpace.  In Real Life, Xyl and Gracie were vastly different people than the NetSpace Personas they inhabited in the other layer of their world.  Yet they met in NetSpace and interacted only in NetSpace, and so only knew each other by the Personas they chose to portray.  These Personas were who they each chose to be, the image of who they were on the inside.  They grew to respect each other, to be annoyed with each other, to argue with each other, to fight and ultimately die together in NetSpace, all before they met in Real Life.  Once they met face to face, something may have died between them.  They were not who they had thought each other to be.  Because of that gap in perception, something between them fell apart and was never the same again.

In the Autumn of 2003 I began writing the sequel to Machina Obscura, Aquaria.  With this new and much longer work I was able to fully explore the world I had begun to create in Machina Obscura.  Yet in and around all the gee-whiz technology, strange and intriguing characters and detailed settings there also seemed to be once again that idea of gaps.  This time it was gaps in the history of the world, gaps in lives where brothers and sisters should have been, gaps in continents where farmlands and cities once stood, gaps in the march of human progress.  There seemed to be a fundamental disconnect in the world of the year 2230, masked by the dazzle of NetSpace and all the technological wonder of a world of utopian miracle.  They could do so much — direct wireless mental connection to NetSpace, full immersion virtual reality interface, the vast computer-generated world of NetSpace itself, nanotech medicine that could repair even severed spinal cords and rebuild shattered bodies — all this, yet they were trapped inside low orbit by apathy and a history that told them a single disaster had forbidden forever any further steps away from the comforting confines of Earth.  This was a world where the strongest human relationships were mediated not by blood but by friendship, genetics and nanobot firmware.  Yet it was also a world where passionate, long-standing love affairs began with gunshots and a fall out of a 237 story window, and an old alcoholic Marine with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome could somehow end up with a “daughter” in all ways save blood.  Nothing in 2230 was as it seemed.  Yet somehow, it all fit together.  It all worked.

All in all, it’s much like the real world of today — disconnects, absurdities, and equations that just don’t add up.

Project 2230 is about bridging what may be the biggest gap of all.  How close are we here in the real world of May 2009 to the world of 2230 as written in Machina Obscura and Aquaria?  How close are we in the real world of today to the technologies, to the culture, to the psychology of my imaginary 2230?    How close, ultimately, is reality to science-fiction?

With this project I intend to explore these questions.  I hereby invite everyone who reads this along for the ride.