The Red Pill

Robot Actor debuts in Japan

2010-11-11T11:29:00.001-08:00

Driverless tech – the wide reaching effects

2010-10-18T14:16:00.000-07:00

Google last week announced it has been test driving a group of 6 driverless cars in California, clocking up a whopping 140,000 miles in specially adapted vehicles with trained drivers and engineers monitoring to ensure no nasty accidents. The specially adapted vehicles of course made use of Google's mountain of data of the terrain, which has been captured and utilised in Google Earth and Google Maps.

It's an exciting development and something I've been watching for some time. The idea first came to my attention when BT published it's Futurology survey in 2005, predicting the use of such vehicles by the armed forces in 2015, with domestic use to follow 10-15 years later.

Turns out, though, that the idea of driverless cars are nothing new. Japanese automotive testers were working on such a vehicle as far back as 1977, and in 1995, a driverless car got up 110mph on a German autobahn. In addition, there have been the DARPA challenges to develop driverless tech, with a prize sponsored by the US government. Meanwhile, in England, London's Heathrow airport has seen the introduction of driverless "pods" already, this year. (check out the video)

Such predictions do appear to be on course, and the prospect of reducing the 1 million worldwide car deaths each year but a half is positive development.

Anyway, after giving the matter no considerable thought, I realised there would be several effects of this new tech when it does appear, so here is what I came up with....

1. It will mean more leisure / work time for average person. Being able to drink your tea, eat breakfast, or read the paper on way to work, or actually answer emails and begin working.

2. The car will be able to make journeys for family members and friends without you present. E.g. after you have been dropped off at work, the car could go home and collect your kids, and drop them off at school.

3.This will change the face of shopping. E.g. your car could go to Tescos and pick up your groceries, and take them home.

4. There will be much less need for car parking spaces - your car can just go home and wait.

5. There will be much less need for several cars per household. Many will only need one car per household in many cases.

6. The ability to have a driverless car will be invaluable, providing a new lease of life to the elderly & disabled who are unable to drive, and the young, who have difficulty getting insurance, or are just too young to get a licence.

7. There will be no more need for late night hours long queue for taxis.

8. Indeed, there may no more taxi services – or at least ones with drivers. Alternatively, taxis may become more prevalent, or carsharing, as the need to own a car, as opposed to sharing, becomes more popular.

9. There will be no more drivers jobs – van drivers, taxi, coach, lorry, bus etc. This will impact upon tens if not hundreds of thousands of jobs.

10. The number of accidents will drop dramatically, as will road deaths, something predicted by Google in their blog post upon the new tech. The most difficult aspect to crack will not be the danger of your car hitting other vehicles, but pedestrians, particularly children, etc., as they are less predictable.

11. For a member of the public, driving your car will become illegal on the open road eventually – too dangerous, insurance issues, etc.

12. Cars will beoperable via smartphone facility, for example, you can “call” car to fetch. Apps for controlling your car (e.g. Volvo app?)

13. Cars themselves will change. They are currently focussed on driving as an activity. They will be a place for relaxing, and entertainment. More like a room. With TV, internet, and the emphasis on eating and drinking, and sleeping.

14. The change will cause a Huge cut in traffic, esp. With the introduction of “convoys” of cars travelling in unison to streamline roads.

15. There will be a massive loss of business for personal injury / motor insurance firms, leading to a huge loss to the economy and employment in that sector as firms go out of business.

16. There will be an end to car culture – driving will no longer be a mass activity, but a niche interest, so less magazines, less TV shows like top gear, less enthusiasts.

17. There will be a massive change for garages – services cars will become even more technical, IT rich, expertise, etc. Reliability will become a key issue like never before. MOTs will have to reach a much higher standard. Cars will have to be able to self-diagnose.

18. Cars will contain black box technology & ability to notify emergency services in case of accidents. There will be a massive drop insurance fraud, and premiums will go down, as cars become safer.

Wireless Charging for Mobile Phones to hit market in 2012

2010-09-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

As a journalist who is willing to bore anyone willing to listen to me with my future technology obsession, I talking about this particular innovation, which was rumour a few years back. Well, it looks like it's now nearly here. Fujitsu have revealed a mechanism for wireless electricity charging at a technology conference in Osaka Prefecture University.

Working at a distance of several metres, it's effectively like wifi hotspot, but for recharging your phone, laptop, or other electrical devices without the use of messy plugs and wires. The innovation could also be implemented in the race to popularise electric cars, by charging them while parked. Fujitsu suggested products using the new technology could be on the market as early as 2012, but did not clarify how much they might cost.

The Waterless Washing Machine

2010-03-09T09:10:00.000-08:00

So, I saw this and got me all excited. You've no doubt noticed the increasing number of waterless urinals in restaurants, bars and workplaces across the land if you're a bloke. Well, here is the "Waterless" Washing Machine, courtesy of a company from Leeds. British innovation leading the way! It uses 90% less water than a normal washing machine, using "beads" to get into all the nooks and crannies of your washing. The machine causes a 30% cost saving for the user (a lot of the energy usually used in a washing machine is for heating the water) and once the beads are done, they can be used to make other plastic stuff like dashboards.

Sounds perfect. Now we just need people to get their heads round the idea.....

Google At War With Apple with New Tablet?

2010-02-02T10:07:00.000-08:00

While Apple caused a huge stir in the world of tech and gadgets last week with the announcement of its' forthcoming ipad, major players google may have leaked details of their own multitouch tablet machine.

The picture opposite, which appeared on their Chrominum site, reveal how their Chrome OS would function on a touchscreen machine, and as you can see, a QWERTY keyboard can appear on screen, there are resizeable windows and zooming functionality.

If such rumours suggest no love lost between Apple and Google, they will be further fuelled by reports that at a meeting between Apple CEO / cult leader Steve Jobs and his employees, he said of Google that "they want to kill the iphone" (with their release of Nexus One), and even more controversially, of their "Don't Be Evil" mantra, "It's bullshit".

As they say in the playground, "fight fight fight fight!" Watch this space for developments.....

The All-New Apple Ipad : Emperor's New Clothes, Or The Re-Invention of Portable Computing?

2010-01-27T14:36:00.000-08:00

Wow. So after much consternation, prediction and hype, the Apple Ipad has Finally landed.

The Specs were widely predicted, but in the end, rumours of an OLED display were incorrect, while it comes in 16G, 32G, and 64G capacities, with support for 720 telly, but sadly NO flash. It's been described as essentially an oversized iphone, and so anyone familiar with the existing apple smartphone offering should find its' 9.7 inch touchscreen interface pretty familiar, and far more expansive, while the 160,000 apps available for the iphone will no doubt be adapted and added to for this gizmo.

Probably equally important, if not more so, was the announcement by Steve Jobs of an Apple ibooks store, which is envisioned to revolutionise the print publishing industry in the same way iTunes changed music consumption. The new tablet and store will utilise an "epub" form - a free and open e-book standard. While it the latter comes as a welcome relief for writers hoping for a future for the industry, personally, I'm doubtful whether this latest must-have accessory is going to be the "kindle-killer" that it clearly hopes to be. Since it doesn't use the "e-paper" technology of other e-readers, using it will become heavy on the eyes after several hours of reading.

Meanwhile, it's clearly also aimed at the Netbook market, as a cross between a lightweight laptop and smartphone. However, the rather difficulty of tapping away on-screen means that a keyboard doc has been produced for those who wish to type extensively, pictured thus:

The keyboard itself is similar to that of the sleek-looking kind already offered with full-sized Macs, but the problem for me is that A) It looks delicate, and ready to be snapped or damaged, as does the large touch-screen which cannot be protected from scratches by folding the gizmo shut, and B) It takes away the all-in-one nature of this object which purports to be the gadget to end all gadgets.

On the plus side, I can see the ipad being a great outlet for games developers, who are already thriving on the Iphone Apps store, thus putting it alongside PSPs and Nintendo DSs.

It's clearly also intended to be a portable TV / video as well, far better for watching than the tiny screens offered by the nano, classic, and even the Iphone, which isn't quite big enough.

What the ipad is for me, created out of an intention to revolutionise an area somewhere between the smartphone, e-reader portable media player, and laptop, but it remains to be seen whether it will manage it. It could applications that are revolutionary, particularly in education, which I think could be key, but it remains to be seen whether or not it will manage to do this - it's all about adoption of the technology, but given apples' track record on revolutionising useage (particularly re-inventing the smartphone with the advent of the iphone, and the many apps that have mushroomed in both creation and widespread adoption), I wouldn't put it past them to manage it.

Manchester Blog Awards

2009-11-05T06:25:00.000-08:00

Belated it may be, but here it is. A couple of weeks back, Manchester had its' fourth annual Blog Awards, which were started by Kate Feld of The Manchizzle. As a resident of this fine city, which is ahead of the curve when it comes to all things creative and internety, I think it's only fair that I give you a roundup of the winners.

Best City and Neighbourhood Blog
Lost In Manchester of which a judge on the panel said, "Sometimes it’s easy to forget to look at what’s right under your nose. I love its unashamed raw passion for Manchester". The Manchester Zedders also got a special mention from the jury.

Best Personal Blog

My Shitty Twenties (pictured) Of the single-mother from Salford, judges said her blog was, "Moving, thoughtful, funny and wise. Sometimes heartbreaking, always uplifting." Runner up was Cynical Ben., which certainly put a smile on my face....

Best New Blog
Word And Fixtures, the work of Claire Conlon, Mancunian media type who has previously worked for Elle, Nova and Wallpaper. "“It was the only blog out of the twenty-four shortlisted that made me laugh out loud.” Second place went to achingly cool music blog Songs From Under The Floorboards.

Best Writing On A Blog
My Shitty Twenties. "It's almost impossible not to get drawn into the story that this blog tells." Others shortlisted were I Thought I Told You To Wait In The Car, and Dave Hartley's Weblog.

Best Arts And Culture Blog
Run Paint Run Run. "Opinionated, heartfelt and pleasantly rough-around-the-edges, a blog with an infectious enthusiasm for art." Runner up was The Manchester Hermit by artist Ansuman Biswas, who has written, rather curiously about living in the Gothic Tower in Manchester Museum.

Blog Of The Year

Lost In Manchester. with it's curiosity for the little details that put the "Greater" before Manchester (see for example, the picture opposite). Judges said "Quirky, original and focussed, with an eye for detail. Putting the extra into extraordinary.”

In other MBA news, Jenn Ashworth, who won the awards two years ago, with Every Day I Lie A Little, was shortlisted for the Guardian-run Not The Booker prize for her book A Kind Of Intimacy. coming as a runner up to Rana Dasgupta.

The Future Of Civilisation

2009-11-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

Hi Chaps and chappesses,

Back again. Been off doing my music, movies, and TV journalism blogs elsewhere.

Surfing Youtube for my regular dose of futurism, I found this awesome exposition by reknowned thinker Michio Kaku of the civilisations that scientists are searching for across the universe. There's a typology, with Types 1 to 3. At the moment, earth doesn't even figure, it's a 'Type 0' civilisation, because we're so primative at harnessing the earth's resources! Rest at peace, though, he explains how we're in transition to be able to truly harness the earth's resources, before we can reach Star Trek, and Star Wars levels of advancement (yes, really!).

News Roundup

2009-10-25T06:37:00.000-07:00

So, it's Sunday, oh what a fun day. Not. Currently hunting around various news sites for stories worthy of the mighty Red Pill, I found several, so here are a selection...

Firstly, in some rather unsurprising science news, apparently modern man had sex with neanderthals, across the species barrier, according to the research of Professor Svaante Paabo. The two species lived alongside another 30,000 years ago, for around 10-12,000 years. Further research on the neanderthal genome sequence will reveal if this had a permanent effect or not. The whole thing sounds what usually I usually observe when I go out for a night in Manchester, if you ask me.

The much anticipated release of Windows 7 last Thursday has made the news everywhere, as the successor to the much-maligned Vista broke all sales records for Microsoft, giving a lot of IT companies a huge boost in the process, particularly PC manfacturers threatened by the rising sales of Apple Mac computers that has taken place this year, which has partly been attributed to the weaknesses of the old Microsoft platform. The new operating system has multi-touch screen functionality, is great for easy home networking, is apparently a lot less annoying than Vista. Happy days.

And in good news in the world of medicine and biology, a gel has been developed that can stop the spread of HIV/Aids as well as a condom. Researchers at the University of Utah have developed the gel, which would be ideal for use in countries where family planning is not openly discussed. I'm personally all for any measures that can be taken to stop this easily preventable disease in its' tracks, so that sounds great to me.

The first 1000 year old human has already been born

2009-10-08T03:48:00.000-07:00

As openers go, that's got to be a pretty controversial statement, but there it is. I sat agast last night as I watched a BBC 4 programme It's Only A Theory , a bearded and erudite Cambridge don, Dr Aubrey De Grey expounded the above theory.

He explained that at the beginning of the twentieth century, life expectancy for someone in the UK was around mid-40s, and with medical advances, by the end of the century, a person could expect to live to their mid 70s. Now, hold onto your chair. Dr De Grey then explained how, given the exponentially increasing pace of development in technology, we could to expect to see a similar gain, in a shorter amount of time, he guessed around 30 years. The clever bit here was that he believed this ongoing process of technological discovery would mean that those being born, and upto around 30 today would ride the wave of innovation, so by the time they reached the maximum life expectancy for their age, advances would have pushed back their terminal age even further, virtually into perpetuity - he called this "longevity escape velocity".

He also said there would be a shift in the way we increase the maximum age of your average human. The gains made in the past century were the result of resolving issues that were killing the very young, infant mortality, and childbirth mortality. This time however, the gains will be made by actual, bone-fide rejuvenation, restoring the ageing human body at the cellular level, as far back as young adulthood (around 20, he suggested). All of a sudden, the prospect of living over 100 seems far more attractive.....

The panel on the TV show obviously toyed with his idea, before rejecting it as a possibility. I for one however, agreed, on the basis of the evidence he put forward - after all, he was only suggesting one such person might exist, not millions.

Of course, even if he's only a fraction right, which as a professor who studies ageing, he must be, a hugely ageing does raise a great number of moral, philosopical and practical questions. This is the fun bit for me, the bit where I can geek out, and extrapolate the various ramifications of the red pill on offer. Let us make some predictions:

The pension age will one day probably be 75 0r 80 for those, like myself, currently in their 30s, let alone the UK government's tentative plans to raise it to 66.
Society will become more risk-averse. With human beings living for extraordinary amounts of time, death will become more and more unusual, and unexpected, something to be avoided at all costs. So there'll be less nutters base jumping and climbing buildings.
Birth rates will drop massively. It's people in their teens and twenties that tend to have risky, unprotected sex leading to pregnancy, whereas older people tend to plan.
The doctor on the show also said it would be possible to conceive at much older ages, so children would grow up with parents that are more socially conservative, responsible, experienced etc., as older people tend to be. This might in turn lead to a drop in crime rates and other social problems related to inexperienced parenting.
Lots of people would go on Saga holidays, and Carol Vorderman would carry on being in Channel 5 adverts for stairlifts and life insurance in perpetuity.
The definition of youth and youth culture will continue to shift as it has done in the post war years, with people deferring responsibility and family into their 40s and 50s in the coming decades.
Those who can afford anti-ageing technologies and scientifically advanced medical care will be tend to be wealthy, many of the older people in society will be the rich, whereas poorer people will tend to die at a much younger age, progressing and pronouncing the current age/wealth gap to a much greater level.

Anyway, if you have any suggestions, feel free to add them. Enjoy......

Think About the Future...

2009-10-08T03:37:00.001-07:00

Hello, people. My welcome first of all to my brand new blog, all about futureology, gadgets, and technnology. As a big, hairy man in my thirties, I've had a passion for science and technological innovation for as far back as I can remember - it started in the 80s, watching the classic technology magazine show 'Tomorrow's World' on BBC, and playing about on my ZX Spectrum 128k (the black one with the heat sink!), seeing Marty McFly time travel in his Delorean, and Han Solo traverse the stars in his Millennium Falcon.

Technology and the gap between what is possible and what will be possible is something that has always been a fascination for me. Indeed, I have been known to bore and bemuse my friends by talking about driverless cars, seamless virtual reality and domesticated robots which I swear blind will be wildely used in the next decade or two. It sounds bonkers sometimes. It probably is, but I love it.

So this blog is to be a celebration, of the best of today's technology, and hopefully a place for daydreaming about what tomorrow will bring. Enjoy, and please share your opinions! If you think it's barking mad, or genius, let me know!