6:18:00 PM
Unknown
The electric light was a failure.Invented by the British chemist Humphry Davy in the early 1800s, it spent nearly 80 years being passed from one initially hopeful researcher to another, like some not-quite-housebroken puppy. In 1879, Thomas Edison finally figured out how to make an incandescent light bulb that people would buy. But that didn’t mean the technology immediately became successful. It took another 40 years, into the 1920s, for...
electric utilities to become stable, profitable businesses. And even then, success happened only because the utilities created other reasons to consume electricity. They invented the electric toaster and the electric curling iron and found lots of uses for electric motors. They built Coney Island. They installed electric streetcar lines in any place large enough to call itself a town. All of this, these frivolous gadgets and pleasurable diversions, gave us the light bulb.
We tend to rewrite the histories of technological innovation, making
myths about a guy who had a great idea that changed the world. In
reality, though, innovation isn’t the goal; it’s everything that gets
you there. It’s bad financial decisions and blueprints for machines that
weren’t built until decades later. It’s the important leaps forward
that synthesize lots of ideas, and it’s the belly-up failures that teach
us what not to do.
When we ignore how innovation actually works, we make it hard to see what’s happening right in front of us today. If you don’t know that the incandescent light was a failure before it was a success, it’s easy to write off some modern energy innovations — like solar panels — because they haven’t hit the big time fast enough.
Worse, the fairy-tale view of history implies that innovation has an end. It doesn’t. What we want and what we need keeps changing. The incandescent light was a 19th-century failure and a 20th- century success. Now it’s a failure again, edged out by new technologies, like LEDs, that were, themselves, failures for many years.
That’s what this issue is about: all the little failures, trivialities and not-quite-solved mysteries that make the successes possible. This is what innovation looks like. It’s messy, and it’s awesome.
When we ignore how innovation actually works, we make it hard to see what’s happening right in front of us today. If you don’t know that the incandescent light was a failure before it was a success, it’s easy to write off some modern energy innovations — like solar panels — because they haven’t hit the big time fast enough.
Worse, the fairy-tale view of history implies that innovation has an end. It doesn’t. What we want and what we need keeps changing. The incandescent light was a 19th-century failure and a 20th- century success. Now it’s a failure again, edged out by new technologies, like LEDs, that were, themselves, failures for many years.
That’s what this issue is about: all the little failures, trivialities and not-quite-solved mysteries that make the successes possible. This is what innovation looks like. It’s messy, and it’s awesome.
Physicists
at Wake Forest University have developed a fabric that doubles as a
spare outlet. When used to line your shirt — or even your pillowcase or
office chair — it converts subtle differences in temperature across the
span of the clothing (say, from your cuff to your armpit) into
electricity. And because the different parts of your shirt can vary by
about 10 degrees, you could power up your MP3 player just by sitting
still. According to the fabric’s creator, David Carroll, a cellphone
case lined with the material could boost the phone’s battery charge by
10 to 15 percent over eight hours, using the heat absorbed from your
pants pocket.
Chris Nosenzo
Soon,
coffee isn’t going to taste like coffee — at least not the dark, ashy
roasts we drink today. Big producers want uniform taste, and a dark
roast makes that easy: it evens out flavors and masks flaws. But now the
best beans are increasingly being set aside and shipped in
vacuum-sealed packs (instead of burlap bags). Improvements like these
have allowed roasters to make coffee that tastes like Seville oranges or
toasted almonds or berries, and that sense of experimentation is
trickling down to the mass market; Starbucks, for instance, now has a
Blonde Roast. As quality continues to improve, coffee will lighten, and
dark roasts may just become a relic of the past.
Your
spandex can now subtly nag you to work out. A Finnish company, Myontec,
recently began marketing underwear embedded with electromyographic
sensors that tell you how hard you’re working your quadriceps, hamstring
and gluteus muscles. It then sends that data to a computer for
analysis. Although the skintight shorts are being marketed to athletes
and coaches, they could be useful for the deskbound. The hope, according
to Arto Pesola, who is working on an advanced version of the sensors,
is that when you see data telling you just how inert you really are,
you’ll be inspired to lead a less sedentary life.
The
problem with laptops and tablets, says Mark Rolston of the design firm
Frog, is that they’re confined by a screen. He wants to turn the entire
room into a monitor, where you can have the news on your kitchen table
while you place a video call on your fridge. And when you’re done, you
can swipe everything away, like Tony Stark in “Iron Man.”
This
15-minute shampoo treatment begins when you lean your head back into a
machine that looks like a sink at the salon. First it maps your scalp,
then it shoots streams of warm water and foam shampoo from its 28
nozzles before 24 silicone “fingers” work up a lather. One conditioning
mist, scalp massage and light blow-dry later, you’re done.
Q&A
What are your two best million-dollar ideas?
The first is permanent sunblock. No one likes putting the stuff on, so there should be a one-time treatment that embeds the skin with a permanent level of S.P.F. 30, akin to having Lasik eye surgery once and then forgetting about it. Sunburn vanquished like smallpox. The other is the “brain map” — a technology that maps out every neural connection in your mind and then, effectively, stores your brain on your hard drive. That information — more than your DNA even — is you.
Traffic
jams can form out of the simplest things. One driver gets too close to
another and has to brake, as does the driver behind, as does the driver
behind him — pretty soon, the first driver has sent a stop-and-go shock
wave down the highway. One driving-simulator study found that nearly
half the time one vehicle passed another, the lead vehicle had a faster
average speed. All this leads to highway turbulence, which is why many
traffic modelers see adaptive cruise control (A.C.C.) — which
automatically maintains a set distance behind a car and the vehicle in
front of it — as the key to congestion relief. Simulations have found
that if some 20 percent of vehicles on a highway were equipped with
advanced A.C.C., certain jams could be avoided simply through
harmonizing speeds and smoothing driver reactions. One study shows that
even a highway that is running at peak capacity has only 4.5 percent of
its surface area occupied. More sophisticated adaptive cruse control
systems could presumably fit more cars on the road.
- When a quarter of the vehicles on a simulated highway had A.C.C., cumulative travel time dropped by 37.5 percent.
- In another simulation, giving at least a quarter of the cars A.C.C. cut traffic delays by up to 20 percent.
- By 2017, an estimated 6.9 million cars each year will come with A.C.C.
Chris Nosenzo
Anti-theft handlebars
Here’s an old idea whose time has come again. The bearing system that allows the bike to turn can be locked so that a thief can’t steer his stolen bike. The lock is internal, meaning that he’d have to destroy the bike to ride it away.No more greasy chains
An updated shaft drive — which replaces the chain with a rod and internal gear system — would be perfect for urban riders. They’re popular in China right now, but new versions will be lighter and have more sophisticated gearing.One-piece plastic and carbon-fiber frames
Plastic frames were tried back in the ’90s, but they were too heavy. The materials and technology have improved. Thermoplastics are cheap and practically impervious to the elements.
Chris Nosenzo
Your
car is already able to call for help when an accident occurs, but
within a few years, it’ll tip paramedics off to probable injuries too.
E.M.T.’s would know the likelihood of internal bleeding or traumatic
head injury, for example, before arriving on the scene, which would help
them decide whether to move you to a Level 1 trauma center or a
standard emergency room. Researchers at the University of Michigan
International Center for Automotive Medicine have created the predictive
models by cross-referencing the crash data provided by sensors on cars,
like speed and location of impact, with 3-D scans of accident victims.
Chris Nosenzo
Attitude Adjustments
The new planes maintain a more comfortable cabin pressure, which feels more like the altitude of Denver than that of the Andes.
The
industrial designer Jiang Qian has conceived of a subway strap that’s
also a video game. It has a button on each side that you push with your
thumb as you hang on; instead of a joystick, you control movement by
twisting the handle from side to side. Jiang imagines that new types of
games could be created, where keeping your balance while the train is
motion is part of the challenge. And unlike Angry Birds on your phone,
Strap Game (that’s the official name) will alert you when your stop is
approaching.
Q&A
What technology that you wanted to put into a film were you not able to because it seemed too far-fetched?
In “Minority Report,” Tom Cruise gets into a car that drives itself. We considered giving him neural control of that car, but we deliberately held back on how far biology could go. It would have overwhelmed the story. And here we are today with real neurological control of machines. It’s transformative technology. In 50 years, you’ll be able to drive cars with your mind.
If
you slump down when you’re typing on an ErgoSensor monitor by Philips,
it’ll suggest that you sit up straighter. To help office workers avoid
achy backs and tired eyes, the device’s built-in camera follows the
position of your pupils to determine how you are sitting. Are you too
close? Is your neck tilted too much? Algorithms crunch the raw data from
the sensor and tell you how to adjust your body to achieve ergonomic
correctness. The monitor can also inform you that it’s time to stand up
and take a break, and it will automatically power down when it senses
that you’ve left.
When
you aim the SpeechJammer at someone, it records that person’s voice and
plays it back to him with a delay of a few hundred milliseconds. This
seems to gum up the brain’s cognitive processes — a phenomenon known as
delayed auditory feedback — and can painlessly render the person unable
to speak. Kazutaka Kurihara, one of the SpeechJammer’s creators, sees it
as a tool to prevent loudmouths from overtaking meetings and public
forums, and he’d like to miniaturize his invention so that it can be
built into cellphones. “It’s different from conventional weapons such as
samurai swords,” Kurihara says. “We hope it will build a more peaceful
world.”
Chris Nosenzo
Researchers
at Wharton, Yale and Harvard have figured out how to make employees
feel less pressed for time: force them to help others. According to a
recent study, giving workers menial tasks or, surprisingly, longer
breaks actually leads them to believe that they have less time, while
having them write to a sick child, for instance, makes them feel more in
control and “willing to commit to future engagements despite their busy
schedules.” The idea is that completing an altruistic task increases
your sense of productivity, which in turn boosts your confidence about
finishing everything else you need to do.
A
team of Dutch and Italian researchers has found that the way you move
your phone to your ear while answering a call is as distinct as a
fingerprint. You take it up at a speed and angle that’s almost
impossible for others to replicate. Which makes it a more reliable
password than anything you’d come up with yourself. (The most common
iPhone password is “1234.”) Down the line, simple movements, like the
way you shift in your chair, might also replace passwords on your
computer. It could also be the master key to the seven million passwords
you set up all over the Internet but keep forgetting.
Q&A
What innovation scares you the most these days?
The Internet is not merely connecting computers together for the benefit of humans; it’s connecting humans together to reinvent labor. This opens terrific opportunities along with real worries. Soon we’ll have to question whether an earnest-looking group of protesters with hand-lettered signs is genuine or simply rapidly convened as a paid flash mob: a crowdsourced crowd. We’ll be able to one-click shop for cheering throngs or protests at a particular location on a moment’s notice, indistinguishable from genuine collective sentiment. A house can be surveilled and a spouse tailed because an online bounty has been put out for anyone nearby to take a photo of the building at a particular address, or to “follow that car.”
Two
Norwegian psychologists think that modern playgrounds are for wimps.
Instead of short climbing walls, there should be towering monkey bars.
Instead of plastic crawl tubes, there should be tall, steep slides. And
balance beams. And rope swings. The rationale is that the more we shield
children from potential scrapes and sprained ankles, the more
unprepared they’ll be for real risk as adults, and the less aware
they’ll be of their surroundings. Leif Kennair and Ellen Sandseter’s
ideas have won the support of playground experts on both sides of the
Atlantic; one company, Landscape Structures, offers a 10-foot-high
climbing wall that twists like a Möbius strip.
Chris Nosenzo
What’s
the new psychological trick for improving performance? Strategic lying.
When amateur golfers were told, falsely, that a club belonged to the
professional golfer Ben Curtis, they putted better than other golfers
using the same club. For a study published in March, human cyclists were
pitted against a computer-generated opponent moving at, supposedly, the
exact speed the cyclist had achieved in an earlier time trial. In fact,
the avatars were moving 2 percent faster, and the human cyclists
matched them, reaching new levels of speed. Lying is obviously not a
long-term strategy — once you realize what’s going on, the effects may
evaporate. It works as long as your trainer can keep the secret.
On
traditional roller coasters, your weight is centered over the wheels,
but two new coasters — the X Flight at Six Flags Great America and
Dollywood’s Wild Eagle — have you hanging off the side of the track,
dangling in midair. It’s kind of like you’re sitting on the wings of a
plane. The Swiss company Bolliger & Mabillard had to completely
reimagine the seat design to handle the stress caused by the differently
distributed weight.
Researchers
at Imperial College London are closing in on a formula for a new kind
of booze — synthetic alcohol, it’s called — that would forever eliminate
the next morning’s headache (not to mention other problems associated
with drinking). The team, led by David Nutt, a psychiatrist and former
British drug czar, has identified six compounds similar to
benzodiazepines — a broad class of psychoactive drugs — that won’t get
you rip-roaring drunk but will definitely provide a buzz. According to
Nutt, the alcohol substitute would be a flavorless additive that you
could put in a nonalcoholic drink. And when you want to sober up, all
you’d have to do is pop a pill.
Chris NosenzoQ&A
What tech problem needs to be addressed most urgently?
That we’re heading for a bandwidth crunch. We’re saddling the Internet with amazing new features — movies on demand, streaming TV, Siri voice recognition, whole-house backup — but they’re starting to overwhelm the existing Internet’s capacity, especially on cellular networks. The Internet and phone companies respond by imposing monthly limits, and the F.C.C. is trying to make more wireless frequencies available. But unless something gives, “high-speed Internet” will soon become an oxymoron. You’ll just have to get used to pauses in your streaming video.
In
February, Chaotic Moon Labs began testing a robotic shopping cart that
acts a bit like a mind-reading butler. To start it up, you can text
message the cart’s built-in tablet computer. Now it knows who you are
and what you need for dinner. The cart uses Microsoft’s Kinect
motion-sensor technology to track and follow you through the store,
pointing you — in a synthy voice reminiscent of a G.P.S. navigator —
toward products on your list. The system will also warn you if you’ve
added something that violates your dietary restrictions. Still only a
prototype, the cart isn’t nearly as nimble as its human-powered cousin,
but it does have one main advantage. Items you add to the cart can be
automatically scanned, and you can finalize your purchase from the
device, skipping the checkout line entirely.
Chris Nosenzo
A
movie projector flashes 24 images across the screen each second to
create the illusion of motion — kind of like a flipbook. The directors
James Cameron and Peter Jackson propose kicking that number to 48 or
even 60 frames per second. It’ll change the way we experience movies:
colors will appear brighter, images sharper, motion smoother. Steven
Poster, president of the International Cinematographers Guild, says the
effect can be “almost holographic in quality.” Proponents say it’s what
3-D was supposed to feel like — a kind of immersive reality. Still, the
image quality takes some getting used to. At an industry conference
where Jackson previewed scenes featuring higher-frame-rate hobbits,
critics complained that the hyperclarity made the scenes look like live
television rather than cinema. It will doubtless take some getting used
to. “When sound came out, a lot of people said this will last about
three years,” says cinema-studies professor Tom Gunning of the
University of Chicago. “Instead it became totally dominant and wiped
silent film off the map.”
A Short History of Frame Rates
Scientists
at Princeton and Tufts are working on a superthin tooth sensor (a kind
of temporary tattoo) that sends an alert when it detects bacteria
associated with plaque buildup, cavities or infection. It could also
notify your dentist, adding an extra layer of social pressure to make an
appointment. The sensor may have wide-ranging use: the researchers have
already used it to identify bacteria in saliva associated with stomach
ulcers and cancers. While the sensor won’t last long on the surface of a
well-brushed and flossed tooth, Michael McAlpine, the project’s leader,
says that the sensors will be inexpensive enough that you can replace
them daily.
Chris Nosenzo
Wearing
a small sensor on your head, at home, while you sleep, could be the key
to diagnosing diseases early and assessing overall health. “This tech,”
says Dr. Philip Low, the founder of a medical technology firm called
NeuroVigil, “enables us to look for faint signals of, say,
schizophrenia, Parkinson’s, depression or Alzheimer’s in the brain, even
though there may be no obvious symptoms.” Thus far, Low’s device has
found a number of applications: evaluating children with autism,
studying the efficacy of trial-phase drugs and assessing traumatic brain
injury in soldiers. Currently, Low is working on a newer version of the
device, which will be the size of a quarter and will transmit brain
scans directly to smartphones and tablet computers. “We’re using sleep,”
Low says, “as the gateway to the brain.”
Q&A
What innovation are you clamoring for?
What I’d really love to see is full genomic sequencing at moderate costs that individuals can do at home. When taking a given drug or even deciding what to eat or how much to exercise, wouldn’t it be good to know what you really need to be concerned about and what you don’t? If you had high cholesterol, you could know if you should really be taking a statin, which, based on your particular genomics, could have limited benefit and some associated risk.
Researchers
at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
are working on a technology that would make household cleaning supplies
much smarter — almost like a sprayable forensics team. When the spray
hits a surface where there are pathogens present, like your bathroom
sink, it would bind to the bad stuff and turn a color — orange, say, for
E. coli. Then you could knock it out with a stronger disinfectant.
Chris Nosenzo
Frozen
food may soon be on par with anything you can get at a three-star
restaurant. Sous vide — a process in which food is heated over a very
long period in a low-temperature water bath — has been used in high-end
restaurants for more than a decade. (Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud
were early proponents.) But the once-rarefied technique is becoming mass
market. Cuisine Solutions, the company that pioneered sous vide (Keller
hired it to train his chefs), now supplies food to grocery stores and
the U.S. military. Your local Costco or Wegmans may sell perfectly
cooked sous vide lamb shanks, osso buco or turkey roulade. Unlike most
meals in the freezer aisle, sous vide food can be reheated in a pot of
boiling water and still taste as if it were just prepared. And because
sous vide makes it almost impossible to overcook food, it’s perfect for
the home cook. Fortunately, sous vide machines are becoming more
affordable. “It’s like the microwave was 30 years ago,” Keller says.
Chris Nosenzo
Petting
a living animal has long been known to lower blood pressure and release
a flood of mood-lifting endorphins. But for various reasons — you’re at
work, or you’re in a hospital, or your spouse is allergic to dogs — you
can’t always have a pet around to improve your mental health. So
researchers at the University of British Columbia have created something
called “smart fur.” It’s weird-looking (essentially just a few inches
of faux fur) but its sensors allow it to mimic the reaction of a live
animal whether you give it a nervous scratch or a slow, calm rub.
Creepy? Yes. But effective.
Chris Nosenzo
Researchers
at Merck have created a pill called suvorexant that essentially makes
you a narcoleptic for a night. It turns out that might be the best cure
for insomnia. Unlike existing sleep aids, the drug (which will likely be
reviewed by the F.D.A. later this year) works by turning off
wakefulness rather than by inducing sleep. “There’s good reason to
believe this pill brings on more R.E.M. sleep and better rest,” says Dr.
Emmanuel Mignot of Stanford University. “It’ll be less of a hammer on
the brain.”
Q&A
Is there any invention you find particulary sinister?
A smaller, even stealthier drone — something called the Cyberbug Drone, currently under development. In this model, a microsystem is embedded in an insect larva, and when the adult emerges — whether bee, butterfly or ant — a “bug” really will be a bug, and the proverbial fly on the wall will be actual. Tiny winged avengers can hunt down invasive beetles, cabbage whites can snoop on destructive raccoons and six-legged nanospies can insert themselves into the air-conditioning systems of even the most impenetrable buildings. As for bedbugs, they’ll wedge themselves under mattresses to snoop on errant spouses. The hive mind really will be the hive mind! Coming soon to a crevice near you.
Source: nytimes.com
0 σχόλια:
Post a Comment