Something that I realized this year is that I like pondering the future -- looking way out and imagining how the world will be different, what things people will be doing, etc. This probably stems from my interest in technology.
Tech WishlistJanuary 21, 2011
Some ramblings on a day in the future from the perspective of my tech wishlist.
I wake up to a gentle, peaceful sound and an initially gentle light coming from my smartphone, which is sitting in a dock on my bedside table. The sound gets a bit louder as I continue to ignore it. After a few seconds, my bedside light starts to turn on gently, and I turn over and touch the screen of my smartphone. When I do, the smartphone starts to talk. The voice is indistinguishable from that of a professional voice actor. It says "Good morning", but the exact wording varies a bit from day to day. I'm reminded of the date, any appointments I have today, both personal and professional. I'm also reminded of any family birthdays, or anything I've asked to be reminded about today, such as the distance I've decided I want to run today to train for the marathon I want to run.
The hall light outside of our bedroom has turned on, as have the lights in the kitchen downstairs. I get out of bed and put on my running pants and shirt, and head downstairs. When I get there, the kitchen computer in the corner of the room is displaying what I'll eat for breakfast, knowing that I'm planning to head out on a 2 hour run. It is a breakfast that has been chosen for me based on what I'm trying to optimize in my meals: Taste, nutrition, ease of preparation, cost, etc. The breakfast consists of things we have in the kitchen, and what we have in the kitchen was pre-planned by the system. In fact, the last time we got groceries, the system was what came up with our grocery list. When we gave it the "ok", it went ahead and ordered the groceries via grocerygateway.com.
While I'm eating breakfast at the island, the computer sees me there, knows what I'm doing, and so it plays a 120 second snippet from my favorite news provider about what's going on in the world. The HD video has been produced by the company for people just like me who want to watch something brief but informative. There isn't any advertising that I have to sit through because I've setup my account to instead bill me 50 cents. I'm intrigued by the mention of a particular story, so when the clip is done, I ask verbally to hear more about that story, and in a few seconds I'm watching a 60 second clip that goes into more detail about that story. Again, the news provider has created the media in such a way so that people can dig in to stories to see more. It's akin to how Internet news sites work, where people read summaries and decide on which articles they want to dig into, but married with traditional video media.
Ready for my run, I head outside. Everything is being tracked: Where I am, how fast I'm running, my stride length, my heart rate, my breathing rate, the impact force on my shoes, etc, and all of that data is being stored in the cloud for me to analyze later, if I want. And the critical information is visible on my smart watch, at 600 DPI in rich contrast and vibrant color. If I start running abnormally slow or quick based on my intended workout, the watch indicates that via a chirp, and I can use the watch to find out more if I want, or to shut up if I don't care. My route is available via the watch if I need to check. I'm listening to my favorite tunes, which are beamed to my wireless ear buds, and whenever I need to make a turn, that's spoken into my ears as well.
Meredith needs to check with me on something, so she phones me and because I'm just running with my ear buds in, the connection is made automatically and I hear her voice. All I have to do is talk back, and microphones inside of the ear buds pick up my voice and relay that back to her with crystal clear audio.
During the run, it is detected that my heart is working abnormally hard given the physical effort I'm exerting. But I didn't sleep that well last night, and the system knows this because I wear a device that monitors my brain waves and knows when I'm sleeping, how deeply, and for how long. It mentions this to me, but also warns that the elevated heart rate could be due to something else and that it would be prudent to cut the workout short incase I'm coming down with something, etc. I agree, and so the closest route home is used.
Once home and showered, my watch chirps. I read a message indicating that now my temperature indicates that I am running a very slight fever. I am directed to take a throat swab and place the swab in diagnostic device which will analyze it for bacteria and viruses. In 15 minutes, my watch chirps again. Looking down, the results of the throat swab are in: I am coming down with a flu virus. I am directed to take a cocktail of supplements and antiviral medications that should eradicate the flu virus within 6 hours. But because of the virus, it is common practice to stay home for the day to prevent the spread of the virus to coworkers or others in the community. Meredith and the kids are directed to also take a cocktail of supplements and antiviral medications incase they come in contact with the virus, and they each take throat swabs to see if there are any sights they too are coming down with it.
The next day, I'm feeling back to normal and resume my marathon training. I leave for work at 7:30 AM in my electric vehicle, but I'm not driving. The vehicle knows where I'm going and expertly drives me along, reducing my risk of serious accident by 90% while increasing driving speeds by 40% and reducing wait times at intersections by 70%. Once at the nearest short runway, 4 km from our house, the vehicle comes to a stop behind the next car in the collector lane. Over the course of 2 minutes, the vehicle slowly moves forward as vehicles ahead of me circle on to the runway and take off. Before long, I'm airborne. All this while, I've been getting ready for my day reading work email and reviewing projects that I'm working on. The 20 minute flight gets me to downtown Toronto, where the vehicle lands on its own and drives 3 km through town to the parking garage. The whole trip has taken me 35 minutes, just enough time to get caught up on email and get ready for the day. Best of all, I can bill for those 35 minutes.
I always enjoy the high speed elevator ride up to the 20th floor. It accelerates at 0.5 Gs, and takes under 7 seconds if there aren't any other stops on the way. The view from the 20th floor is spectacular: The exterior of the building is curved glass with little obstruction from the support structure of the building, looking out onto Lake Ontario and the 300 metres of beach and park that borders the lake.
My computer runs at 300 GHz, with 1024 cores, 100 TB of RAM and 2 PB of storage. The monitor packs 600 DPI of detail and is 3 feet wide. Everything is synchronized seamlessly whether I'm working from home, viewing data on my ride to work, or anywhere else for that matter. Data is transferred at 10 Gbps along fiber optic cables, or at 2 Gbps over the air.
I spend the day working on software that will be used by the United States' next major spacecraft, which is destined for Mars. Key aspects of the software have been outsourced to the Canadian company I work for, and working on the project has been a thrill. I'm fine tuning aspects of the natural language interface to the system's computer.
On the weekend, we're finally taking the kids on a brief trip to the new space hotel opened up last year. The trip will be pricey, but it isn't more than a two week trip to Europe, and hey, it's space! We'll be in orbit for two days and I'm looking forward to playing a couple of the sports that are all the rage in zero G.
In January, we're taking a trip to Australia with the kids, and it will be my first time riding one of the new suborbital fights that can do the trip in 70 minutes.
This Mars project I'm working on will be the second manned trip to the planet, this time with the intention of establishing a permanent presence on the ground. The crew will be going for a 4 year mission and then will be replaced by a new incoming crew. The first of 4 unmanned trips to Mars landed last month. These unmanned mission are delivering the equipment and living quarters. It has been fun watching video of the just-delivered digging machines going to work. Their job primarily is to dig down to allow the settlement to rest mostly underground when it arrives, which should provide some safety from the high winds on Mars. In 6 months, more critical equipment will arrive that will ultimately scrub oxygen from the atmosphere. So far things have been progressing as planned, but there are many things that could go wrong, making the whole project very complex.
At home we just had a new solar array installed on the roof which collects enough electricity in the winter to run our home and keep it heated. It stores excess energy by converting water to hydrogen and then uses that hydrogen over night to keep the house warm and to generate electricity via fuel cells. It has been fun to go "off grid" in a sense, although we are still technically connected to the grid if there's ever a time when we need additional power. We share a cottage with a couple of other families in remote northern Ontario and this summer we're planning on installing a similar setup there since it's not connected to the grid at all. It takes three hours to fly there, but it's a neat feeling to be so far from civilization, and we're on a beautiful lake.
I've been having fun with this new sport involving human-powered aircraft. There are all sorts of fun aspects to it: You can try getting as much altitude as possible (I've gotten to 4,000 feet), or speed at level, or doing acrobatics. It's a tough sport though, because you have to be able to produce about 200 watts of power with your legs to make a go it, and people who are really good at it are usually around 350 watts. Incredibly one guy in Waterloo has made it to 12,000 feet, but at that altitude, the air gets too thin to go any further realistically, although some people acclimatize to 20,000 feet and then go down to sea level to set records... the world record is 15,000 feet I think, and the guy furthered the stunt by skydiving out of his aircraft, letting autopilot land the craft.
Google released a major update to Street View this year which is pretty amazing. There have been many improvements over the years, but this one is notable. The detail of the geometry is high enough now to make touring new cities pretty fun. Some people are getting these spherical screens in their homes which you have to duck to crawl into. You sit on a little chair and an image is projected onto the sphere, giving you a very full field of view, and you can control where you are with an analog control pad. Paired with Street View, it's very immersive, allowing you to walk down streets, peer in shop windows, etc. It's also cool to be able to go airborne to checkout monuments up close or see something from a vantage point that you never see in real life. People are starting to build games on top of Street View such as hide and go seek, capture the flag, etc., and some buildings have published their internal layout as well allowing you to tour buildings. For example, many art galleries can be entered virtually.
Tech Wishlist: Data BackupsJanuary 21, 2011
I wish there was an elegant solution to data backup built into operating systems. I create data, store it in various places on the hard disk, backup some of it occasionally, and then when I get a new computer I burn a bunch of DVDs and try to backup everything. Once my new computer is setup, I don't usually bother to restore everything because I don't want to clutter my new system with things I probably won't need. There are a couple problems with this:
1. | Because I don't backup frequently, and because my coverage is spotty, there's significant risk of losing data. |
| 2. | Because I don't restore everything, and because the organization of my backups is mediocre, even if I wanted to find some old data, it might be extremely time consuming. |
It's not really clear to me how to solve this problem, but to summarize my wish, I want a system for storing that that:
| 1. | Makes backing up automatic so that there is very little risk of losing data and doesn't require remembering to run the backup or the time involved in setting up / performing backups. |
| 2. | Readily searchable so that years in the future, finding an old document is relatively painless. |
| 3. | Doesn't run the risk of "expiring" the way physical media can do. ie. DVDs only last so long, etc. |
| 4. | Is off-site so that a fire (etc) doesn't result in losing everything. |
| 5. | Makes setting up a new computer "painless" with respect to "restoring" data. |
It's pretty clear that the cloud is an important piece of this puzzle, so perhaps that's why this either doesn't exist or isn't in common use. That, and lots of bandwidth. Perhaps the biggest challenge here is the organizational aspect. ie. It's nice when you get a new computer not to have the clutter of the old one, but if your data repository lives forever in an integrated fashion, then you don't get that nice clean start. So the question is, how can the OS / data repository encourage really good organization of information and purging information that is no longer pertinent, etc? That sounds like a pretty challenging problem to solve.
Things of RecentJanuary 19, 2011
IBM JeopardyFloored. That's what I am. Floored that IBM seems to have succeeded in its quest to program a computer to win at Jeopardy. Part of me thinks that they're cheating some how -- well, not really -- but I don't understand how they've pulled this off and so by process of elimination... but seriously, a big congratulations to the team at IBM that has worked on this project. I look forward to watching the game in February!
Google's Self-Driving CarsI was very surprised to learn that Google has picked up where the DARPA Grand Challenge left off... and that they have many thousands of miles under their belt. But if there's any company that is up to the challenge, it's Google. I'm so curious how this will unfold. Where will we be by 2020? I would certainly be surprised to see self-driving cars by then... my guess is still mid-to-late 2020s, say around 2028, but you never know. Anyway, companies are clearly working hard on this, and it's only a matter of time. Fun stuff.
Chevy VoltAfter first hearing about this car a few years ago, it is finally out in the world. Very cool, wish I could own one some day.
NetflixFinally, Netflix in Canada... I find it incredible that you can get so much value for $8/month. For a guy that canceled his cable a few years ago, it's great to see legitimate Internet media blossoming. Also, I've been impressed by the Netflix recommendation engine. I have yet to be disappointed.
BlackBerry PlaybookNow and again, a device catches my eye, and this fall I've enjoyed following the development of the Playbook. I wrote an app to help new parents choose a name for their baby which hopefully qualifies me for their free Playbook offer. I hope the Playbook is a success for RIM.
Retina DisplayMarketing speak aside, I was astounded by Apple's retina display this year. If they had increased the number of pixels in the display by 50%, I would have been impressed. But 400%? Incredible. I have to wonder what led to such a dramatic increase all of a sudden.
AvatarI was very impressed with Avatar last January -- and while I'm skeptical (like many people) about the 3D craze, Avatar was the real deal, a novel experience that raised the bar.
SpaceX2010 was a big year for commercial space with a couple impressive launches by SpaceX. It's great to see Elon Musk getting some bang for his buck and finding success in these endeavors, and I look forward to the next few years.
Virgin GalacticI continue to be very impressed with Burt Rutan and his composite spacecraft. I was in Greece in 2004 when I saw a newspaper reporting that he had succeeded at capturing the XPrize, and now 6 years later his partnership with Virgin appears to be going very well. Exciting stuff, and it will be interesting to see how the cost of a trip to space falls over the coming years. Reducing it from tens of millions to 200K is a great start. Random prediction: 30K by 2030.
ThoughtsI have to say, we live in an exciting time, and I think that the last couple of years have been flush with interesting developments in the technology world. Already we seem to be off to a good start this decade...
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