QR Codes and the Afterlife

They're everywhere -- those little squares with the squiggles inside called QR ("Quick Response") codes.  The Covid pandemic of the last couple of years has accelerated their spread (pun intended)

Links to a relevant article

mainly as a touchless way to obtain information.  For example, in many restaurants the menu can now be accessed by scanning a QR code with your cell phone which opens a web page displaying the items.  No contact with a potentially germy paper menu is required. During the height of the pandemic access by QR code was almost a necessity -- printed menus were provided only by pleading with the wait staff.  For restaurants, the QR-accessed menu has the added benefit of allowing the offerings and prices to be changed quickly, easily, and inexpensively.  Efficient and germ-free, though not particularly elegant, I suspect even after the pandemic many low to moderate-end restaurants will opt to keep the QR menu.

The QR code was invented in 1994 in Japan (see Stazzone, 2021) for industrial inventory and tracking purposes. Unlike the older bar code that we see on products in retail stores, a QR code can be read both horizontally and vertically, allowing it to encode much more information. Confusingly, QR codes are often referred to as 2d "Bar Codes," though they contain no bars.  The name "QR" is actually a trademarked name of a specific form of matrix code.  There are other types of matrix codes, but the QR version has become so common that the name has taken on the status of "Bandaid" to refer to all adhesive bandages, or "Kleenex" to refer to all facial tissues (Stazzone, 2021).

There are a number of advantages to QR codes over standard 1d codes.  The pattern of squiggles allows for increased error correction so that up to 30% of the code can be damaged and still allow accurate scanning. Also, they can store much more information within the code itself rather than having to consult an external data base.  In a retail application this might include colors available, warranty length, or component details. Another advantage is that QR codes can contain a wider variety of information, such as email addresses, geolocation data, names, website urls.

As with all new technology, there are also some potential downsides and misuses of QR codes. Morey Haber of Forbes Magazine has detailed a number of these (Haber, 2020).  Most stem from the fact that  it isn't obvious from the appearance of the code itself what will happen when you scan it.  It could, for instance automatically direct your phone to a website that installs tracking software or even malware, dials a sales-pitch phone number, or sends an email to request more information while also recording and selling your email address.  Ne'er-do-wells may also substitute their own QR code for the original, as happened recently in Australia.  An anti-vaxer pasted his own code over official ones located at the entrances to retail establishments.  The official codes registered shoppers to allow contact tracing if they came into contact with someone with Covid, whereas the substitute code presented misinformation concerning vaccine safety and efficacy.  The best approach to avoiding these problems is to limit our scans to codes offered only by reputable organizations, businesses, and individuals for purposes that are clearly stated, and to be wary of any codes that appear to have been altered or substituted.

The amount and type of information that can be contained in QR codes has led to a wide range of both commercial and personal applications.  For example, my wife and I recently stayed in a hotel where scanning a QR code displayed in the room automatically logged us into the hotel's wifi network. It's even possible to create a code for your own home network for guests to use -- my Android phone has this feature built into the latest operating system, and there are online code-generation services available (for example, see Code Generator or Scanova).  Advertisements for products and services often contain a QR code that will lead to additional information about the product, even to online sales portals.  Some electronic products I've recently purchased have codes that link to the owner's manual. In museums the display tags for items often contain QR codes that play audio explanations.  At the gym where my wife and I exercise, each machine has a QR code that links to a short video demonstrating the proper use of the equipment. Finally, many uses of QR codes occur when the code is stored on your phone and then scanned by others -- airline boarding passes, entertainment tickets, organizational membership information, even vaccination and testing status codes.

Some of these applications are very creative -- even if a bit odd.  My favorite example of this is

From Rome Monuments Co.

something I came across recently that resonated with my somewhat questionable appreciation for graveyards (see My Favorite Cemeteries).  There are now a number of companies that will place QR codes on...wait for it... tombstones (Bhatia, 2020).  Visitors paying their respects, or just curious weirdos like myself, can scan the tombstone code and have access to the deceased's life history, eulogies, photos, or even as one academic has done, a complete list of his publications and citation metrics (Matyszczk, 2020). It can get even more "interesting" if you imagine that the QR code might trigger a video message from the deceased themselves -- parting words of wisdom or a last harangue, perhaps.

The ultimate, though, would be if tombstone QR codes were linked to the latest AI technology that allows conversations with deceased people (Bantham, 2019).  James Vlahos was the first to use AI (but not QR codes) in this way to keep the memory of his father alive.  Before illness overcame his dad, Vlahos interviewed him about his life experiences, attitudes, and philosophy, and had him relate anecdotes and stories about his life. This content was then fed to an AI Chat Bot program that can respond to questions in a naturalistic way,  almost like having a conversation. Vlahos has since founded the company HereAfter, which offers the same service to others for a fee, and has continued to refine the technology.  Other companies have also picked up the idea and there are now a number of platforms which allow interaction with the avatars of people no longer with us.  An informative review of some of these efforts is available in an article by Russ Bantham in "Transformative Technologies."

It seems to my warped mind that it might be easy to connect a tombstone QR code to the deceased's HereAfter avatar. Scan the code with your phone and have a chat with the dead person! Neat, huh? A phone call to the afterlife! And why not go all in by incorporating VR or AR so that the person's image is right there with you! I have little doubt some enterprising coder is working on this right now, and it is simply a matter of time before tombstone QR codes to interact with the dead are available.

One group of people who might not find this idea very appealing are psychics, who make a living contacting the deceased. Another group are those with different sensibilities regarding death. As Bantham notes: "Not everyone will be delighted at the prospect of conversing with the ghostly vestiges of late friends and family members, perceiving it distasteful and maybe a bit creepy."  Of course internet technology, especially social media, is notoriously indifferent to matters of good taste and sensitivity, so I doubt these people will have much effect.

There is an issue here that should at least be mentioned.  Is having AI-mediated conversations with a loved one the healthiest way to grieve or to honor their memory?  The urge to keep the embodied memory of the departed alive is understandable.  But honoring their non-embodied influence on our current everyday lives and the quality of our current experiences is important, also.  This is a matter of living more fully in the present and being mindful of the many ways they affect us in our attitudes, values, and outlooks, rather than being focused on the past.

We live in an age when developments in technology, like AI and QR codes, are increasingly infiltrating what used to be non-technical aspects of our lives -- our beliefs regarding the afterlife, memories of loved ones, and what it means to be "real,"  "true,"  or even "human." Whether the outcome will be positive or negative for society and for individuals is yet to be determined, of course.  But the challenge of figuring this out may be the most important project humans have ever faced.

Is Your Phone Smarter Than You Are?

Mine is, but it didn't used to be. I think there are two reasons for this change.

First, Geezerhood has progressively robbed me of more and more brain cells so that relative to my phone I've become dumber. And although I still have a few cells left but they don't seem to want to work together as well as they used to.

But there is a second far more interesting reason. Up until a few years ago I had a cell phone that looked like a Star Trek communicator. Although I tried hard, I could never get Scotty to beam me up, nor would the phone do any of those other nifty things the communicators did.  I traded that old "flip" phone for a newer sleeker model, but still it was only a phone, dumb as a post.  Then I finally succumbed to the techno-bug and bought a "smart" phone that has been getting disquietlingly more and more capable of what seems like intelligent behavior.  In other words, it may be getting smarter and I'm...well, let's just say "not."

In my attempts to keep my remaining neurons firing I like to keep up on current developments in information technology and the internet.  This was a topic I used to teach about and I am still interested in it, especially as it impacts our daily lives and also our society. One of the hot topics lately is artificial intelligence, or AI. There have been some significant recent advances in this area that support my suspicions about my phone and all other interfaces to the internet -- they are getting smarter.

The notion that computer systems could become truly intelligent has been around a long time, and the idea has gone through several cycles of optimistic over-hype and pessimistic disparagement. AI was legitimized as a serious field of research in the 50's, led by an impressive array of mathematicians and computer programmers who made striking progress initially but then stalled when certain problems became intractable, either because of the limits of theoretical approaches available at the time or because existing computer power and storage were insufficient. However, today you have more computing power in your cell phone than existed in a room-sized computer in the early days of AI, and recent breakthroughs in how we think of what constitutes machine intelligence have led to real-world applications of AI that are all around us and growing rapidly in number and scope.

Wikipedia attributes the recent surge in AI successes to three factors:  Advanced statistical techniques (loosely known as deep learning), access to large amounts of data, and faster computers.

"[These have]...enabled advances in machine learning and perception. By the mid 2010s, machine learning applications were used throughout the world. In a Jeopardy! quiz show exhibition match, IBM's question answering system, Watson, defeated the two greatest Jeopardy champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, by a significant margin. The Kinect, which provides a 3D body–motion interface for the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One use algorithms that emerged from lengthy AI research as do intelligent personal assistants in smartphones"  [emphasis added]. (Wikipedia, "Artificial Intelligence")

One particularly instructive illustration of the power of current AI occurred in March of this year, when Google's AlphaGo program won 4 out of 5 games against champion GO player Lee Sedol. Computers have previously beaten humans at board games like checkers and chess, but they did so by brute force calculation of the potential outcome of each move. The complexity of GO, however, makes this nearly impossible, even with very fast computers -- it is said there are more possible positions in Go than there are atoms in the universe. Expert players have to rely more on an intuitive feel for the game at a higher intellectual level. As Demis Hassabis, one of AlphaGo's creators describes it, "Good positions look good. It seems to follow some kind of aesthetic. That’s why it has been such a fascinating game for thousands of years” (Wired, 5/16).  And it is also why designing an AI system that could play Go well has been such a challenge -- it would have to incorporate human intellectual qualities that go beyond mere calculation.

So one very important aspect of AlphaGo's success is that it functions more like human intelligence than previous attempts at AI.  A second is that AlphaGo doesn't just apply rules or logic, it "learns" by being exposed to massive amounts of data from which it "distills" knowledge. According to Cade Metz of Wired magazine, AlphaGo's development team:

"...fed 30 million human Go moves into a deep neural network, a network of hardware and software that loosely mimics the web of neurons in the human brain. Neural networks are actually pretty common; Facebook uses them to tag faces in photos. Google uses them to identify commands spoken into Android smartphones. If you feed a neural net enough photos of your mom, it can learn to recognize her. Feed it enough speech, it can learn to recognize what you say. Feed it 30 million Go moves, it can learn to play Go" (Metz, 5/16).

One particular move in the AlphaGo/Sedol match, #37 in game two, was particularly meaningful because it wasn't one of the moves AlphaGo had seen before and because the move was considered by many expert Go players to show an extraordinary level of "artificial insight" and mastery of the game.

"Move 37 wasn’t in that set of 30 million. So how did AlphaGo learn to play it? AlphaGo was making decisions based not on a set of rules its creators had encoded but on algorithms it had taught itself.AlphaGo knew—to the extent that it could “know” anything—that the move was a long shot. 'It knew that this was a move that professionals would not choose, and yet, as it started to search deeper and deeper, it was able to override that initial guide,' [developer] Silver says. AlphaGo had, in a sense, started to think on its own. It was making decisions based not on a set of rules its creators had encoded in its digital DNA but on algorithms it had taught itself. 'It really discovered this for itself, through its own process of introspection and analysis.' " (Metz, 5/16, my emphasis added.)

This ability to go beyond a rote set of programmed instructions is one of the most important and significant qualities of the recent advances in AI -- with both positive and negative potential implications. On the positive side, it greatly enhances the power of AI systems to do all kinds of complex tasks for us. The neural net/machine learning approach that was used to develop AlphaGo is being applied to many other areas as well, including search engines, facial recognition, biometric scanning, robotics, speech recognition, robotic navigation and manipulation, data mining, control systems for self-driving cars, managing complex scheduling operations, etc.

But there also may be a dark side, because this type of AI ceases to be understandable and predictable by its creators. As Jason Tanz of Wired puts it, "...With machine learning, the engineer never knows precisely how the computer accomplishes its tasks. The neural network’s operations are largely opaque and inscrutable...When engineers do peer into a deep neural network, what they see is an ocean of math: a massive, multilayer set of calculus problems that—by constantly deriving the relationship between billions of data points—generate guesses about the world." (Tanz, 2016).

This loss of control has led to some serious warnings about the potential for dire negative future outcomes.  For example, the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking cautions "One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand...Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all."  Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and many others share similar reservations, leading to a recent Open Letter in which they and over 100 other experts have drawn attention to this issue and have called for efforts to lessen the probability that the technology will go awry. "We recommend expanded research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable AI systems are robust and beneficial: our AI systems must do what we want them to do" (my emphasis).

Hmmm.  Sounds good.  But I'm not sure my phone is doing what I want it do even NOW......

__________________________
Sources and Resources:

Artificial Intelligence, Wikipedia. 

AlphaGo, Deepmind

"What the AI behind AlphaGo can teach us about being human."  Cade Metz, Wired, May 2016.

"Soon we won't program computers. We'll train them like dogs." Jason Tanz, Wired, May 2016.

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates Warn About Artificial Intelligence, The Observer, 2015

Open Letter: Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence, Future of Life Institute

My New Chip & Pin Card Works! (Well, Sort Of...)

I've blogged previously about the difficulty my wife and I had last year while traveling in Europe with our "Swipe & Sign" credit card (see American Travelers Abroad: The Chips Are Down). Briefly, the problem is that U.S. credit card technology is way behind most of the rest of the world, where the standard is the much more secure "Chip & PIN."  Transaction information is encrypted via the chip embedded in the card, and then rather than a signature that anyone can fake, a personal PIN number is required to complete the transaction.  An American traveling abroad can still charge things because most card readers there do have a swipe slot and will generate a paper slip to be signed.  However, this assumes the transaction involves face-to-face interaction.  Many point-of-sale transactions in Europe are at unattended machines that (a) only accept chip cards and (b) require a PIN. These include toll booths, gas stations, parking garages, and ticket machines for public transportation --- in other words, many of the venues tourists are likely to encounter.

After our difficult experiences last year my wife and I decided to see if we could get a chip and pin card for future travel.  I quickly found that several companies offered Chip cards, but they were not true Chip & PIN cards because they still required a signature.  Indeed, the first type is what American credit card companies are now distributing in the wake of several high profile data hacks, such as the Home Depot and Target debacles.  These cards, if used with a chip reader, are definitely more secure than the swipe cards they replace because they are harder to counterfeit and the transaction is more securely encrypted.  However, they may do you no good at all in the unattended purchase situations you are likely to encounter while traveling abroad.  Here is the description included with my new Chase chip card that I recently received:

You may be asked for a PIN, rather than a signature, when using chip card readers abroad.  If this happens, you may be able to cancel the PIN prompt and complete the transaction.  Just in case, it's always a good idea to carry local currency for payments at unattended kiosks that may require a PIN.

News Flash, Chase:  Many of those unattended kiosks won't allow payment with cash!

The card my wife and I settled on was the Barclay Arrival + which was touted as having true PIN capabilities and no foreign transaction fees. We received the card and set up a PIN, but of course we had no opportunity to test it here in the U.S.  Our first complete test abroad came a short while ago on a trip to Scandinavia, the Baltic States, and Saint Petersburg, Russia.  Here's my report.

When the chip was inserted into card readers it worked flawlessly everywhere.  Not once did a merchant have to swipe the card.  So far so good.  However, I was disappointed to find that in all face-to-face transactions I was required to sign the charge slip, rather than enter my PIN.

The real test came when we encountered unattended machines.  This occurred  when we landed in Stockholm and needed to buy tickets for the transfer bus from the airport to the downtown area.  In the arrivals area we found a collection of unattended machines selling train and bus tickets.  We stuck in our Barclay card and it asked for our PIN. I entered the number and .... voila! IT WORKED! Wow, we Americans had finally entered the 21st century in terms of banking technology!

Later we needed to buy metro tickets, which in Stockholm are available for sale in certain stores and from unattended machines located near the metro turnstiles.  I held my breath the first time we stuck in the card.  Bingo! -- it asked for our PIN and accepted it!  This happened several more times during the course of our stay.  In short, every time we encountered an unattended machine on this trip the PIN functioned perfectly.  What would have happened if we tried to use a Swipe & Sign or a Chip & Sign card?  Don't know, don't care.  I do know that last year in Europe we were unable to complete these transactions with our old credit card and it was a major pain in the butt.

Apparently the Barclay card's default is to require a signature, but if a PIN is absolutely required it will accept it.  This isn't as good as I had hoped, but it is certainly an improvement and probably the best we can do at the moment.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no true Chip&Pin card where the default is PIN available to Americans at this time (see Note 1 below).  If you know of one, please forward the information to me.

In preparing this blog I did some research on chip cards and immediately found that there is still a lot of confusion about them, especially the difference between Chip&Sign cards and Chip&PIN (with signature also, like my Barclay card).  I even found one forum in which a person with a Barclay Arrival + card claimed the PIN wasn't accepted abroad -- clearly false given my experience of a few weeks ago, as well as reports of other travelers.  At any rate, here is the best and latest assessment of true Chip&PIN cards available to Americans I could find, dated August 1, 2015:  MileCards.Com, "11 Chip & PIN credit cards with no foreign fees."

Happy travels!!
_______________________________
Related Blogs & Notes
American Travelers Abroad: The Chips Are Down
One Way That Chip Credit Cards Aren't More Secure
Note 1 -- I've come across a few unofficial reports of Chip & PIN cards from some credit unions that will ask for a PIN when read by the new readers now being distributed in the U.S.
Note 2 -- I've also come across an unofficial report that foreign chip readers are being modified to accept Chip & Sign cards from the U.S.  This seems doubtful to me -- or a least a bad idea if true -- because it lowers the security of unattended transactions.

How Breathing Fresh Air Can Be Electrifying

Sometimes very simple inventions can have life-changing positive impacts.  I've written about one of these before as part of my "Ray of Sunshine" series:  Using old plastic containers to illuminate the homes of the estimated 1.3 billion people in the world who cannot afford electric lights (Some Christmas Cheer: Liters of Light).  Despite the difficulty in finding other Rays of Sunshine amidst the 99.99% negative news these days, I recently came across one that is noteworthy because it is an example of the convergence of simple technology with a business model whose mission is to be financially successful while simultaneously improving the lives of millions of poor people around the world.

The next time you choose to fire up your barbecue to cook those juicy steaks, consider that the World Health Organization estimates that around 3 billion people worldwide are forced by poverty to cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves burning wood, animal dung, crop waste and coal. Besides the environmental degradation that results from this, the health consequences are staggering:

• Over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels.
• More than 50% of premature deaths among children under 5 are due to pneumonia caused by particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution.
• 3.8 million premature deaths annually from noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer are attributed to exposure to household air pollution.  (WHO Factsheet)

Entrepreneurs Alec Drummond and Jonathan Cedar didn't start out to tackle this health problem. They were simply avid hikers who didn't want to carry fuel with them for their campstove and wound up inventing something called the Biolite Campstove.  This little beauty is a techie's dream and just the thing for those who like to hike and camp but don't want to give up all the comforts of home. Ignite some twigs, pine cones, or small branches in the stove's fire chamber and the heat activates a thermoelectric generator that powers a small interior fan, making the fuel burn more cleanly and efficiently than a traditional open stove.  As a result, the Biolite stove produces 90 percent less carbon monoxide and 94 percent less smoke than an open fire, and uses less fuel to produce the same amount of heat.

Biolite Campstove

But that's not all. The excess electricity produced by the thermoelectric generator is sent to a USB charging port that can recharge cellphones, cameras, LED lights, or any other device that has USB recharging capabilities.  In other words, you can cook, stay warm, light your campsite, and charge your cellphone all at the same time with a just few twigs of firewood.  The appeal of being environmentally green and also comfy has turned out to be very strong. When Drummond and Cedar first began marketing their stove in 2012 it was an immediate success with the recreational camping market in the U.S.  It retails for about $130 and the rechargeable lights the company offers are about $100 more, well within reason given the cost of other camping gear and the willingness of Americans to spend big bucks on this kind of equipment (a total of $1.5 billion per year, according to Statista.Com).

Early in the development of their product, Drummond and Cedar became aware of the world-wide health problem posed by open-fires in developing countries and saw the potential of their stove for helping solve it.  And they also saw that bringing free electricity to those who need it most could potentially improve the quality of people's lives beyond the health benefits. The problem, of course is that $250 is far beyond the reach of the people who could benefit the most from Biolite's stove and light system -- if they had that kind of money to spare they wouldn't be cooking over open fires in the dark. It also is beyond the financial ability of most charities to distribute large numbers of units that cost that much.

The solution that Drummond and Cedar came up with was to design a simpler and sturdier version and to

Biolite Homestove

finance its distribution in rural developing countries like India, Ghana, and Uganda by lowering the cost in a unique way:

"They quickly dismissed relying on a charity, because there was not one large enough to fund stoves for 3 billion people. Instead, Cedar and Drummond decided to pair the two markets they were interested in: the recreational market in the developed world and the rural, third-world market.

The camping products subsidize the cost of operation––and lower prices in the developing world. BioLite's stove for campers retails for $130 in the United States. A sturdier, more durable and larger version for cooking daily sells for the equivalent of $50 in India and Africa. Cedar calls the business model "parallel innovation."

Most of their revenue comes from selling the camp stoves and other products for recreational use in the U.S. and other Western countries. A smaller share of revenues is from selling camp stoves in the developing world; an even smaller slice of the company's revenue pie comes from charitable grants." (8/26/15, Naveena Sadasivam, insideclimatenews.org )

Although $50 may still seem like a lot for many people in developing countries, the cost can be spread out through charitable loan programs and lowered through reductions in duty and other taxes on imports of clean energy products. Other creative approaches are being championed by organizations such as the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.

It is still too early to document the large-scale health impacts of the Biolite but studies are in fact being conducted.  In the meantime there is inspiring anecdotal evidence of what the HomeStove has meant to the financial status and self-development opportunities of individual people. One example is the case of Erinah, an enterprising woman living in a small town in Africa. Erinah makes her living by working at the local hospital and in her spare time running a small canteen in her village. Through a microloan program she was able to buy four HomeStoves -- one for her business, one for her mother, one for her aunt, and one for her grandfather. Because the HomeStoves use less fuel than open fires she was able to save money that she would have otherwise spent on charcoal or firewood and she paid the loans back in a year.  Her business is more prosperous and the lives of her relatives are easier and healthier (without relying on charity) thanks to an innovative, simple product.

Make no mistake:  Drummond and Cedar are no doubt enjoying the financial rewards of their invention and their marketing strategy, and they are working to make their business even more profitable.  But this is not a case of profiting by exploiting others. The Campstove makes a healthy recreational activity more enjoyable and more environmentally friendly, and the HomeStove greatly improves the healthfulness of people's home environments, reduces environmental degradation, and provides people greater financial security and opportunities for self-development in some of the poorest regions of the world.  It seems to me this is a case of entrepreneurism quite worthy of being a "Ray of Sunshine."

_________________
Sources and Resources:
World Health Organization FAQ on Household Air Pollution
Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
Biolite Campstove and Biolite Homestove Descriptions
Biolite Mission Statement
Brooklyn Startup Tackles Global Health with a Cleaner Stove | InsideClimate News
How Electricity-Generating Cook Stoves Increase Profit and Decrease Suffering | | Observer.Com
How BioLite Is Making The World A Better Place With Thermoelectricity - Earth911.Com 

Some Christmas Cheer: Liters of Light

Finally, another in my "Ray of Sunshine" series!  Suitable topics have been very hard to come by recently, buried deep in all the bad news about wars, political meltdowns, scandals, natural and unnatural disasters, etc., etc.  But here's something to fit the spirit of the season and counter some of that negativity.  It is about efforts to provide disadvantaged people around the world with a low-cost, environmentally friendly, and ecologically sustainable source of  interior lighting for their homes, schools, and businesses.  The impact on their lives is heart-warming -- and literally a "ray of sunshine."

BBC News Photo

"Liter of Light" refers to the main material used to create the lights -- discarded plastic liter bottles.  The bottles are filled with water plus a little chlorine to prevent algae growth, and then sealed into a hole cut in the roof with the majority of the bottle protruding below into the building.  Sunlight hitting the bottle is refracted into the space at about the same brightness as a 50-watt light bulb. The inventor of this device is Brazilian Alfredo Moser, who came up with the idea in 2002.  Although the original version works only during the day, a simple solar storage system has been developed that provides light at night as well, using a small photovoltaic panel and a battery attached to the plastic bottle.

Light is one of those things that we who are fortunate enough to live in countries with highly developed infrastructures take for granted, along with other niceties like clean running water, roads with only a few potholes, and centralized sewage treatment systems.  But the fact is that much of the world lives in conditions where none of these are the norm, including reliable lighting. Not having adequate interior light is perhaps hard for us to imagine, but it poses great difficulties for many people around the world for whom it is a fact of everyday life.

BBC News Photo

In Bangladesh, for example, daytime power outages are common in poor areas like Dhaka, leaving schools, homes, and small businesses in the dark.  As one student described the conditions before the bottle lights were installed in his school, "During power outages, our classrooms became so dark that our teachers often had to take us out into the corridor where we read under a bit of sunlight that managed to creep in."  The school could not afford a costly back-up generator, and kerosene lamps and candles were expensive, ineffective, and unsafe.  After a local organization called CHANGE installed Moser's low-cost bottle lights in the school the situation improved dramatically.  According to the same student, "We can now read and write under the solar-powered lights during the day, despite power outages or bad weather."  Other lights have enabled small business owners to be more productive during outages.  "It's helped hundreds of people - including sari makers and rickshaw repairers - whose livelihoods depend on having sufficient light" (BBC News).  A simple device made from trash, affordable by even the poorest, can make a huge difference in the quality of people's lives.

Even in situations where electricity is reliable, the savings in energy costs to people with meager incomes can provide much needed extra money.  Moser recounts "There was one man who installed the lights and within a month he had saved enough to pay for the essential things for his child, who was about to be born. Can you imagine?" (BBC News)  And there is a savings in terms of the carbon footprint of the bottle of light versus incandescent bulbs.  Being made from discarded material, the bottle lights require no significant energy to create and no CO2 is associated with their operation. In contrast, the carbon footprint of the manufacture of one incandescent bulb is 0.45kg CO2, and a 50-watt light bulb running for 14 hours a day for a year has a carbon footprint of nearly 200kg CO2 (BBC News).

Alfredo Moser

The impact of such a simple idea on the environment and on improving people's lives around the world is remarkable. Moser's invention has been adopted by organizations in at least 15 countries other than Brazil, from India and Bangladesh to Tanzania, Argentina and Fiji, and bottle lights have now been installed in hundreds of thousands of homes.  As Illac Angelo Diaz, executive director of the MyShelter Foundation in the Philippines put it, "Alfredo Moser has changed the lives of a tremendous number of people, I think forever." (BBC News) Thanks for the ray of sunshine, Alfredo......

_________________________________________
For More Information:
A Liter of Light Organization Website
Alfredo Moser: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor.  BBC World Service, Uberaba, Brazil
Liter of Light Wikipedia Entry 
Bottle Lights Brighten Lives in Bangladesh.  Aljazeera News

An Ode To Cosmos, Comets, and Rosetta Spacecraft

Let's face it.  These days it is rather easy to be pessimistic about the human race and so-called "advanced" societies.  The news is full of reports of wars, terrorism, genocide, religious extremism and sectarian violence, willful ignorance (aka pseudoscience and anti-science), cruelty, environmental degradation, political paralysis, ideological stalemates, economic meltdowns, social incivility, the failure of institutions to provide for the common good, the exploitation and subjugation of women and minorities, etc., etc., etc.  The message is clear:  "Humans are no damn good. Film at 11."

Then, every once in a while something comes along that suggests there may be a glimmer of hope after all.  For me these rare moments are usually associated with (a) acts of extreme unselfishness and compassion that dramatically alleviate suffering or improve life opportunities for people who are desperately disadvantaged, (b) manifestations of artistic or literary talent that produce astonishingly powerful emotional experiences or intellectual insights, and (c) technical or scientific accomplishments that involve supremely focused applications of accumulated human knowledge and logic driven by the irrepressible spirit to know more simply for the sake of knowing.  The last category is the subject of this blog.

The event that has suggested a glimmer of hope to me is the recent success of the European Space Agency's mission to rendezvous with a comet, land a small craft on its surface, and accompany the comet as it approaches the sun. This of course isn't as news-worthy as any of the negative things listed above, but if you examine what it implies about human nature it offers a refreshing and inspiring glimpse of a more positive side of our human potential.

After a journey of 10 years and almost 4 billion miles, on August 6th the spacecraft Rosetta arrived at

Rosetta Probe

its target, a comet named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (the name is reason enough not to make it big in the media news).  Although previous spacecraft have flown by comets and have even deliberately crashed into one, this is the first to achieve an orbit around around a comet, the first to study it as it approaches the sun and, if all goes well, the first to soft-land a smaller craft on the comet's surface.  And it's off to a great start, judging by the stunning postcard it sent back to show us it had arrived at the comet.

This is a remarkable accomplishment.  It also adds to a growing list of achievements using unmanned space probes, including the Mars landers, Voyagers 1 and 2,  the Pioneer series, and one of my favorites, Galileo (see my blog, Confessions of a Selective Technophile for more on Galileo).

The Comet 67P/C-G

To put the Rosetta mission in perspective, try to imagine a tiny speck of dust and ice 250 million miles from earth.  From there the sun is a tiny dot, and the light level from the sun is only about 4% what is on earth. The earth looks like most of the rest of the stars, maybe a little brighter. The target speck is only a couple of miles in diameter and traveling at 34,000 miles per hour.  Now imagine trying to send a spacecraft no bigger than a large refrigerator to that icy speck. How would you do it?  How would you find and rendezvous with the speck, given that it is moving 20 times faster than a bullet?  How would you accelerate a spacecraft to 34,000 miles per hour without expending an impractically huge amount of fuel?  How would you communicate with the craft and control it when it is so far away -- so far that radio signals take up to 50 minutes to travel the distance?

The answers to these questions illustrate the extraordinary power of the human intellect  -- they entail a difficult and complex integration of cutting-edge mechanical and electrical engineering, materials science, computer science, applied and theoretical mathematics, astrophysics, astronomy, geology, and many other fields.  Oh, and a huge dose of insatiable curiosity and a relentless drive to explore questions of cosmic significance like "what is the origin of life?"  Humans may not be totally bad...more on this improbable story at 11!

I'll leave a lot of the details to the science reporters (see my embedded links or some of the links below if you want to know more).  I've read a number of them and have marveled at the level of scientific achievement some of my fellow human beings have displayed in this project.  For example, the acceleration problem was solved by looping the Rosetta several times around the earth, using the earth's gravity as a sling-shot to gather speed each time, a technique that took no fuel but added billions of miles and many years to the journey. This acceleration trick has been used previously with other space probes, but never with this much precision.  In this case it was necessary to calculate the exact positions of the spacecraft and the comet as they would be in 10 years, as well as their relative speeds, in order to determine precisely when to fire rockets to slow the Rosetta to match the comet's speed.  Being a bit math-challenged, to me this is a jaw-droppingly awesome feat.

I was a huge fan of the t.v. series Cosmos hosted by the late astronomer Carl Sagan over 30 years ago, in 1980.  Sagan would have loved witnessing the accomplishment of orbiting a space craft around a comet, and would no doubt be making eloquent commentary on the mission. He was not only an accomplished scientist, he was one of the first champions of making science accessible to the general public in an entertaining yet educational way.  The Cosmos series was the first of its kind and highly critically acclaimed -- and it reinforced my lifelong fascination with astronomy and cosmology.  A recent updated version hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is a fittingly high-quality successor.  It has the same up-beat, inspiring and humbling effectiveness as the original.

Look very closely.

Sagan wrote a number of popular books on space and astronomy, one of which was titled The Pale Blue Dot, a reference to the earth as it appeared in a photograph taken by the spacecraft Voyager 1 in 1990 as it left our solar system.  Voyager 1 was about 6 billion miles from earth at the time, and the photo is a sobering "selfie" that clearly depicts the smallness of our place in the universe. One often quoted passage in the book is particularly moving to me because it puts our species -- both the positive features and the flaws -- in a very insightful context, and Sage does it in his usual Cosmic style:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. [My emphasis]
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

 Right on, Carl. And I hereby dedicate the Rosetta Mission to your vision.

_____________________________________
Some Relevant Reference Sources About Rosetta:

Cometary science: Rosetta's stone | The Economist economist.com

Europe’s Rosetta becomes the first spacecraft to orbit a real, live comet (updated) | ExtremeTech extremetech.com

Europe's Rosetta Spacecraft Makes Historic Arrival at Comet space.com

DLR Portal - Mission - Rosetta at a glance - technical data and timeline archive.org

Long-distance communication / Rosetta / Space Science / Our Activities / ESA esa.int

First Comet Close-Ups from Rosetta Spacecraft Reveal a 'Scientific Disneyland' (Photos) space.com

Overview | Rosetta nasa.gov

Technical Specifications | Rosetta nasa.gov

A Pale Blue Dot | The Planetary Society planetary.org

An Early Draft of Carl Sagan's Famous 'Pale Blue Dot' Quote - The Atlantic theatlantic.com

Watching The World From Cyberspace

Movietone News. Remember?  This was how many people got a chance to see images of current events before the days of T.V. news, YouTube, webcams, and smartphone video transmissions.  I remember as a kid going to a movie theater and before the feature film began watching a cartoon and then an episode of Movietone News.  I was fascinated by the filmed depictions of  people, places, and events that I had previously read or heard about.  The lag on these films was at least a couple of weeks, but it really didn't seem to matter -- things moved more slowly back in those days.

Fast forward to the last few weeks.  It would be hard to imagine a clearer illustration of how internet technology has changed the way we acquire knowledge of the world and the way we relate to people, places, and events than the role of technology in covering (a) the popular uprisings in the Middle East,  (b) the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and (c) closer to home, the sudden change in the ongoing eruption of Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii.

Unlike the days of Movietone News,  from anywhere in the world you could watch the demonstrations and confrontations in Egypt live , as they were happening, thanks to webcams streaming video images to internet sites.   Or you could access YouTube clips uploaded minutes after events happened.  Interpreting the meaning of what you were seeing was perhaps problematic,  but there was nevertheless a feeling of immediacy that was unmistakeable, and a feeling of being connected  to the people in this far away place.  For those providing the images there was no doubt a feeling of connection as well, and also a feeling of empowerment and influence.

The video coming from Japan has been a stunning, near real-time display of the destructive power of nature and the fragility of human existence.  I've seen movies and still photos of tsunamis before, but the current depictions have had an effect on me at much higher level of magnitude.  I think this is due to the range of video sources, the immediacy of the images, and to their internet accessibility.  As with the popular uprisings in the Middle East,  my empathy seems stronger because the images are depicting the events right now, not as they were sometime in the past.

My third example is the role of internet technology in covering the recent change in the eruption of Kilauea Volcano, about 90 miles from where I live here on the island of Hawai'i.   The current eruption has been going on for over 20 years, but it has changed in character several times during that period.  For the past couple of years the main activity has been from a side vent of Kilauea, which feeds lava to a system of tubes that carry it several miles to the ocean.  Although the side vent is in a remote part of Volcanoes National Park and volcanic gases make hiking to it very dangerous, real time images of it have been available from a webcam placed on the rim of the vent.  A webcam is also positioned over the summit caldera in a spot accessible only to geologists, and until just recently the summit camera showed fascinating images of a lava lake just below the rim. 

These live views of an erupting volcano, available to anyone in the world with access to the internet, illustrate my point very nicely.  But even clearer is the role of internet technology in providing an immediate experience of the change in the eruption which happened a couple of weeks ago.  Suddenly all activity at the summit and the side vent ceased,  and lava began fountaining from a crack near the vent.  Within hours the geologists had placed additional cameras near the crack to provide spectacular views of the event.  In this case technology allowed a real-time experience of something happening that would be too dangerous and too difficult to observe in any other way.  Like the tsunami, witnessing this event via the internet deepened my appreciation of the power and unpredictability of nature in a way a Movietone News clip could never have done.

It is certainly debatable whether constant connectivity with events around  the world is a good thing in all cases.  But there is little doubt that this technology has irreversibly altered our relationship to each other and to the world around us.

Confessions of a Selective Technophile

I was twelve years old when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik I satellite.  The date was October 4, 1957.  The news shook the world, which was in the grips of the Cold War, and set off the space race.  For me it was mesmerizing and enthralling.  I remember lying in bed unable to sleep, listening to the signals from Sputnik being broadcast over the radio as the satellite passed over the U.S.  It was incredibly exciting to think that there was an object made by human beings circling the earth miles above my head.

By today's standards Sputnik I was a puny payload -- about the size of a beach ball and weighing 189 pounds.  But in those days that was huge, and suggested that the Soviets had powerful rockets that could also launch intercontinental ballistic missiles.  Then they upped the anti by launching a second satellite just a month later which was not only heavier by far, it also carried a live passenger -- a dog named Laika.  The U.S. had been working on a satellite, but had to rush to get it into orbit.  The first attempt in December ended after two seconds with an embarrassing explosion, or as the spin doctors described it, "rapid burning."  Success came on January 31, 1958 with the launch of the 31-pound Explorer I.

Fast forward fifty+ years.  The U.S. eventually won the Space Race and the Cold War, with some stunning technological achievements along the way, including landing a human on the moon.  We all can appreciate the moon landing and other manned missions because of the demonstrable element of danger and our personal identification with the astronauts.  But for me some of the unmanned missions illustrate the greatest technological achievements precisely because they were accomplished without humans on board.  There are many examples, such as the Mariner 2 probe to Venus,  the Lunar Surveyors,  the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Rovers, and the remarkable Voyagers I and II, which have been operating for over 33 years and are still communicating from 14 and 17 billion kilometers away.

But the one that still leaves me awestruck is the Galileo mission to Jupiter, mainly because of the difficulties that were overcome during the mission and because the probe was so resilient -- an interplanetary Energizer Bunny that kept going and going no matter what.  The Galileo probe was launched in 1989, and took 6 years to arrive at its destination.  Several technical problems developed on the way, but engineers managed to overcome them.  Once at Jupiter Galileo fulfilled its intended two-year mission, then continued to operate for another six years,  far surpassing its design parameters and surviving some of the harshest conditions imaginable from radiation around Jupiter's moons  It was intentionally crashed into the planet in 2003,  providing valuable scientific data right up to the end.

Galileo Photo of Ice Flows on Europa

 The scientific achievements of Galileo were very impressive.  On the way to Jupiter it flew close to two asteroids, Gaspra and Ida, the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid.  Galileo discovered that tiny Ida had an even tinier moon.  As it neared its destination, Galileo was able to observe and photograph in great detail the collisions of fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy with Jupiter.  During its six years in the Jovian system Galileo discovered strong evidence that Jupiter's moon Europa has a melted saltwater ocean under an ice layer on its surface, and found indications that two other moons, Ganymede and Callisto, have layers of liquid saltwater as well. Other major science results were observations of varied and extensive volcanic processes on the moon Io, measurements of conditions within Jupiter's atmosphere, and discovery of a magnetic field generated by Ganymede.

Galileo Photos of an Active Volcano on Io

The problems Galileo faced began early on, when its high-gain antenna failed to open fully.  This forced mission engineers to use the low-gain backup antenna, which reduced the data transmission rate to only 8-16 bits per second (sloooowwww),  later increased by various work-arounds to a still-glacial 160 bits per second, about 1/1000 of the high-gain speed.  This limitation made the data that was returned, especially the approximately 14,000 photos that were sent back, even more impressive.  And the signal was transmitted with only 20 watts of power!  Another problem that occurred before Galileo reached Jupiter was with the onboard tape recorder (parents, explain to your children that back in the olden days we actually recorded data on long strips of tape....)  that stored data for later transmission back to earth.  The recorder became stuck in rewind mode and damaged a section of tape near the end.  Engineers overcame the rewind problem and instructed the recorder not to use the damaged section of tape.  The recorder was also damaged late in the mission by high radiation near the moon Almathea, but this, too was overcome.

Other difficulties from radiation exposure were encountered, but none of them stopped the Bunny:

The uniquely harsh radiation environment at Jupiter caused over 20 anomalies in addition to the incidents expanded upon above. Despite exceeding its radiation design limit by at least a factor of three, the spacecraft survived all the anomalies. Several of the science instruments suffered increased noise while within about 700,000 km of Jupiter. The quartz crystal used as the frequency reference for the radio suffered permanent frequency shifts with each Jupiter approach. A spin detector failed and the spacecraft gyro output was biased by the radiation environment. The SSI camera began producing totally white images when the spacecraft was hit by the exceptional 'Bastille Day' coronal mass ejection in 2000 and subsequently on close approaches to Jupiter. The most severe effect was a reset of the computers (a CDS despun bus reset) that occurred when the spacecraft was either close to Jupiter or in the region of space magnetically downstream of the Earth. Work-arounds were found for all of these problems. (Wikipedia article on Galileo)

Ok, you get the idea.  To me, the Galileo mission  represents an awe-inspiring combination of technological know-how, applied science, ad-hoc problem-solving, and creative ingenuity which provided a close up view of strange new worlds and greatly increased our knowledge of the universe.  In this age of news filled with stories of greed, incompetence, political and social strife, environmental degradation, and economic collapse, it is tempting to become misanthropic and conclude that humans are just no damned good.  But then we do something like this and through such a wondrous technological expression of the human spirit, raise the possibility that maybe there is a glimmer of  hope after all.

Two Things That Will Change the World

**Warning:  The following blog contains prognostication that exceeds the credentialed informational acumen possessed by the author (i.e., he's blowin' smoke)**

In my last blog we looked at simple inventions with large impacts.  This blog will get more complex and more serious.  Get a cup of coffee, you may need it.

One of the phenomena I investigated during my working days as a social psychologist was how the internet and the World Wide Web are changing society.  I still follow this topic -- old social psychologists never die, they just  stop going to departmental meetings -- and it has been fascinating to watch  as this technology has become more and more central to our lives and altered our interactions.  One of the developments that I correctly predicted ten years ago was the move toward wireless connectivity.  I also correctly noted at that time that the cell phone, though not discussed nearly as much as the internet, was also changing society in dramatic ways.  What I missed, though, was that the two would be merged to have an even greater impact, a development we are seeing very clearly today.

Unquestionably the internet/cell phone combination has rapidly altered society in fundamental ways and stimulated a lot of debate about whether the changes are good or bad.  I predict, though, that there are two scientific fields that will change the world at least as much, and perhaps pose even greater challenges and dilemmas to society over the next 15-20 years:  Nanotechnology and Genetic Engineering.

I assume that nearly everyone has heard of these fields from depictions in current entertainment media and in recent splashy news accounts.  For example, male Star Trek fans will recall the rather visually intriguing connection of nanotechnology to the character Seven-of-Nine.  Michael Crichton readers will recall Prey, which combined nanotechnology with emergent artificial intelligence, and of course Jurassic Park, which explored the deathly downside of genetic engineering.  Readers of Neil Stephenson (who wrote Snow Crash, from which I took the title of this blog)  will remember his dystopian extrapolation of nanotechnology in Diamond Age.  Genetic engineering has been in the news frequently, mainly related to controversies surrounding genetically modified food, stem-cell research,  cloning, and the development of "synthetic life."

Nanotechnology involves the creation of very, very small devices, such as carbon tubes 1000 times smaller than a red blood cell.   Nano-structures can have some very interesting properties that scientists are only beginning to explore.  For instance, carbon nanotubes assembled together into large structures are hundreds of times stronger yet six times lighter than steel.  Other nano applications have the capacity to do physical "work," as illustrated by a range of devices called nanopumps, which can pass specific liquids back and forth through a membrane .  Coatings composed of certain nanoparticles can alter the characteristics of objects, for example by keeping them cooler or by making them scratch resistant, self-cleaning,  or sun resistant.  Nanotubes implanted in human tissue can act as energy producing transistors, fueled by the body's biochemistry and thus providing power for nano devices, such as tiny computers, that might be implanted under the skin.


Genetic Engineering refers to the direct manipulation of an organism's characteristics by altering its genetic structure.  This also takes place at a very, very small scale and like nanotechnology the consequences are enormous.  The key word here is "direct" -- humans have been altering organisms indirectly through intentional selection processes throughout our history.  In GE the alteration is carried out at the molecular level and the effects can be quite specific and unlikely to occur naturally.  Recent applications include modifying organisms to produce insulin, changing certain food crops to be disease resistant, and altering viruses so that they deliver chemotherapy drugs to cancer cells.  Gene therapy, in which genetic abnormalities are corrected by repairing, replacing, or turning off defective genes, is a major development in medical treatment of a number of diseases.  


There is also the very real possibility that nanotechnology and genetic engineering may be combined in certain ways.  For example,  UK researchers have conducted gene therapy in which genes were inserted into cancer cells that caused them to self-destruct.  The insertion was carried out by nano particles:  The genes were wrapped up in microscopic nano-particles which were taken up by cancer cells, but not their healthy neighbours. Once inside, the genes stimulated production of a protein which destroyed the cancer.

There are both utopian and dystopian views of  genetic engineering and nanotechnology, just as there are of  the internet.  On the utopian side are suggestions that these fields will solve the energy crisis, clean the planet, reverse global warming, solve world hunger, and eliminate disease.  On the dystopian side are arguments that we might unknowingly unleash dangerous substances into the environment,  poison our food supply, and create a race of genetically vulnerable humans.  Judging from history, predictions based on these extremes are unlikely to be correct  -- there are always unforeseen consequences of any technology, both positive and negative.  But it is clear that the potential applications of these two technologies are so varied and so far-reaching in their possible impacts that they will  indeed change the world.  Regardless of the specifics, our understanding of what a machine is, what the properties of familiar things are, what it means to be human, and what "life" is and how much it can be and should be controlled and by whom -- these and other fundamental views are about to change profoundly.

Duct Tape, Velcro and Cable Ties

I was at a party recently that included really good finger food and some interesting conversation.  This was a get-together where people knew each other at a casual level, so the discussions tended to be light and far ranging.  It was also a party where the couples were (a) "mature" and (b) had been married a long time, so that after a few minutes the discussion groups tended to be separated by gender.

At one point the group of men I was talking with drifted onto the topic of the wonders of  duct tape (now marketed as Duck Tape). We all readily agreed on its usefulness, and several of the men related stories of how they had used it creatively to solve problems.  It was pointed out that duct Tape was an example of an invention that was simple yet could be adapted to many uses beyond its original intent (in the case of duct tape, this was to seal ammunition boxes in WWII).  Now, of course,  its uses range from fashion to car repairs .

The conversation then turned to other inventions that  had similar properties, though weren't quite as legendary as duct tape.  One was the cable tie, those strips of plastic that have little teeth on one side and a buckle at one end.  Pulling the tie through to buckle in a loop locks the strip in place because the buckle has a wedge that engages with the teeth and prevents the strip from moving backward.  The simplicity of the design makes these little suckers incredibly cheap and easy to produce. As the name suggests, one of the most popular uses of these is to bundle wires or cables together and/or to secure them to something else.  However, just like duct tape, the cable tie has been adapted for many, many other uses, from handcuffing criminals to closing someone's chest after heart surgery.

So here's the challenge:  What do you think should be added to a list of the most useful inventions of the last couple of hundred years?  I'll start off with Velcro, which -- like duct tape -- has only been around since the '40's.  Preference will be given to simple items like these.  Maybe in a later blog we can take on nominations for inventions that have most changed society, like the microwave oven.  (Also, in my next blog I'll discuss a couple of things that will change everything.....)

Here's the list so far.  To make an addition submit a comment (anonymously if you prefer) and I'll add it to the list:

1. duct tape
2. cable ties
3. velcro

Added:

     4.  springs
     5.  rubber bands
     6.  tooth picks
     7.  paint
     8.  paper clips

I Got My New GPS!

In an earlier post I wrote about why I needed a new GPS. Well, Santa dug into his toy bag and brought me a new one for Christmas. Oh, yessssss! This baby will do practically everything except maybe tie your hiking boots. Speaking of hiking boots, maybe I should get a new pair to go with the upgraded GPS?..... Anyway, my hiking buddy from Oregon and I gave the new toy...er, TOOL, a good test last week, and I'm happy to report it passed with flying colors.

My friend and I are both the same age, which is the time of life when men still have the drive to do stupid risky things but have bodies that can no longer get them out of trouble when they do. For the past couple of years we have been exploring old lava flows here in Hawai'i. This is tough hiking, because lava cools to become razor sharp rock which will shred skin at a touch, particularly skin that now seems to bruise or bleed in a strong breeze. It is also often loose, jumbly, and uneven -- a particular challenge for those with a less than perfect sense of balance.

However, it also cools in some of the most fascinating patterns you can imagine. Like stone browny batter, with drips and drops, tangles and splatters. The patterns are endless, and each flow seems to have different characteristics that make them always fascinating to explore.

One of the features of lava flows here on the island of Hawai'i is that they often form tubes -- channels of lava that are completely enclosed and can be miles long. In fact, this is how lava can travel so far from the source -- the walls of the tubes insulate the molten magma so that it stays fluid. As an eruption dies down, these tubes empty out and leave tunnels that can be a real thrill to poke around in. Of course, it is also a teensy bit dangerous, which can make it all the more attractive!

Now, back to my GPS. When I got my new model I noticed one of its features is called "geocaching." I then learned that geocaching has been around for about 10 years, and according to Wikipedia, it is "...an outdoor activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook. Larger containers can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is most often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek", sharing many aspects with orienteering, treasure-hunting, and waymarking .... Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.^[1] As of February 8, 2010, there are over 984,900 active geocaches over the world.^[2]"

It turns out that somebody hid a geocache near an unmapped lava tub about 30 miles from where I live and published the coordinates on Geocache.Com, I downloaded the position into my new GPS and my friend and I set out to find it. Yup, the new toy guided us right to the spot, requiring a hike across open lava, of course, and in an area that we would never have thought to look for a tube. When I say it guided us to the spot, I actually mean to the coordinates. As anyone who has had a senior (or junior) moment can attest, just because you're within 15-20 feet of something doesn't mean you can see it. I must admit there was a tad bit of luck in finding the actual box containing the cache -- if we had approached from a different angle we might have stood right over it and not seen it.

We then proceeded to hike through the tube, which required flashlights (next time we have to take extra batteries!) and a smidge of stupidity. Oh yes, and just a little bit of blood.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out

Many adults have a rather negative view of the younger generation's involvement with technology. We puzzle over groups of teenagers in malls walking and talking as much to their cell phones as to each other. They twitter, text, and surf the net constantly, to the point where we fear they spend as much time online as in "real" interactions. We regard most of this activity as wasted time devoid of any positive value. We blame the dependence of youth on technology for their lack of social skills, their resentment of authoritative structure, and their difficulty staying with just one task.

For adults with this dim view of youth's reliance on technology a recent British study seems to support the adults' conviction: A survey of 16 to 24 year olds found that 75% of them feel they "couldn't live" without the internet. The author of the study, Professor Michael Hulme of Lancaster University, concluded that "For young people the internet is part of the fabric of their world and does not exist in isolation from the physical world." A good part of negative adult thinking may stem from not really appreciating this integration of online and offline worlds -- to many of us they are separate, distinct, and unequal in legitimacy.

Over the past ten years or so considerable research has investigated the impact of new technology on young people's development. Most of it doesn't support the strong negative view outlined above. Some of the earliest findings were those of Don Tapscott, which he presented in a book titled Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. About ten years ago some of my students carefully evaluated Tapscott's data and created a Web tutorial (still available online) to present their findings. My students' conclusion, which I agreed with, was that although Tapscott was perhaps overly optimistic in his interpretations, there were indeed both positive and negative aspects of the net's influence.

More recent research has tended to confirm this balanced assessment. An important example of this is a 2008 study funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of a large scale Digital Youth Project, which attempts to determine "... how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life." The report's lead author, Mizuko Ito at University of California, Irvine, summarized the findings by saying, “It might surprise parents to learn that it is not a waste of time for their teens to hang out online ... we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age.”

The research revealed that today's youth uses the new technology to enhance and maintain social networks of friends and acquaintances, and also to gain knowledge and skills in self-directed learning activities. "Hanging out" with friends, for example, is an activity that all generations have participated in, but young people have simultaneously incorporated face to face interaction with various forms of electronic interaction. As the researchers noted, there are additional implications to hanging out for the younger generation because of the merging of online and offline social worlds: "Through participation in social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo (among others) as well as instant and text messaging, young people are constructing new social norms and forms of media literacy in networked public culture that reflect the enhanced role of media in their lives. The networked and public nature of these practices makes the “lessons” about social life (both the failures and successes) more consequential and persistent."

Another type of activity identified in the study is "messing around" with new technology. "When messing around, young people begin to take an interest in and focus on the workings and content of the technology and media themselves, tinkering, exploring, and extending their understanding. Some activities that we identify as messing around include looking around, searching for information online, and experimentation and play with gaming and digital media production."

Although adults often see this as haphazard and lacking in commitment, there are important positive outcomes identified by the study. "Whether it is creating a MySpace profile, a blog, or an online avatar, messing around involves tinkering with and exploration of new spaces of possibilities. Most of these activities are abandoned or only occasionally revisited in a lightweight way. Although some view these activities as dead-ends or a waste of time, we see them as a necessary part of self-directed exploration in order to experiment with something that might eventually become a longer-term, abiding interest in creative production. One side effect of this exploration is that youth also learn computer skills they might not have developed otherwise."

For some youth, a third activity can be extremely important because it is often ostracized by peer groups in face-to-face worlds. "Geeking out" is "...an intense commitment to or engagement with media or technology, often one particular media property, genre, or type of technology. Geeking out involves learning to navigate esoteric domains of knowledge and practice and participating in communities that traffic in these forms of expertise." It is important to note that although this activity often involves social interaction in online communities, the peer groups are often different from those in more friendship-oriented situations, and this can allow a young person to develop knowledge and skills that might not be highly valued by face-to-face peer groups.

There are other differences that are also important for understanding how some young people view traditional institutionalized learning. "Interest-based communities that support geeking out have important learning properties that are grounded in peer-based sharing and feedback. The mechanisms for getting input on one’s work and performance can vary from ongoing exchange on online chat and forums to more formal forms of rankings, critiques, and competition. Unlike what young people experience in school, where they are graded by a teacher in a position of authority, feedback in interest-driven groups is from peers and audiences who have a personal interest in their work and opinions. Among fellow creators and community members, the context is one of peer-based reciprocity, where participants can gain status and reputation but do not hold evaluative authority over one another."

There is much more to the findings of the MacArthur study, and I urge you to read the report. For example, I haven't dealt with the study's analysis of the negatives that face today's young people as they confront their technology-loaded lives. I'll just say that they may not be the negatives that many adults think .