Electronics

Yeah, ol' Robert would get a chuckle out of this news item:

Robotic suit could usher in super soldier era

Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly, and plays tennis and skis when time allows. But the 5-foot-11, 180-pound software engineer is lucky if he presses 200 pounds — that is, until he steps into an "exoskeleton" of aluminum and electronics that multiplies his strength and endurance as many as 20 times.

* * *

Jameson — who works for robotics firm Sarcos Inc. in Salt Lake City, which is under contract with the U.S. Army — is helping assess the 150-pound suit's viability for the soldiers of tomorrow. The suit works by sensing every movement the wearer makes and almost instantly amplifying it.

The Army believes soldiers may someday wear the suits in combat, but it's focusing for now on applications such as loading cargo or repairing heavy equipment. Sarcos is developing the technology under a two-year contract worth up to $10 million, and the Army plans initial field tests next year.

One of the things that I predict for my novel is that over time we will introduce personal 'experts' - advanced Expert Systems or Artificial Intelligence - which will act as a buffer between the individual and a technological world. We will enter into a trade-off: allow our 'expert' to function as an old-fashioned butler, knowing all of our secrets but guarding them closely, in order to then interact with the rest of the world. So, your expert would know your preferences on entertainment and books, handle your communications and banking, maintain some minimal privacy for you by being a "black box" which negotiates with other people and machines on your behalf.

Why do I think that this will happen? Why will it be necessary?

Because increasingly, in the name of 'convenience', both government and industry are seeking to become more intrusive in our lives, all the way down to the level of what happens inside our homes. People want the convenience, but are starting to become increasingly aware of what the price of the trade-off will be. The latest example:

I think this will be of interest to some of the folks here, though since I wrote it for my own blog and pertaining to my novel, I feel a little awkward about posting it to the front page.

Jim D.

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I've mentioned previously the work of science historian James Burke. This past weekend I finished watching the last couple of episodes of his ground-breaking series Connections. Overall, you would probably enjoy watching the series, and will find a lot of chuckles over what was "high tech" in 1978 versus the reality of what we have today. But the closing bit was just stunning - it was a prediction of the need for and use of the Internet before DARPA had even begun to let the cat out of the bag. Here's the last ten minutes:

"How's it going?"

"I'm almost done," answered my wife, from the step ladder. She had been out on the front porch, hanging the 'icicle' lights she likes around the perimeter of the roof. "But this one section of lights just won't work!"

"Bulb out?" I offered, looking at the dark 18" section.

"Yeah, maybe. I tried fussing with the bulbs to see if one was loose." She got down from the step ladder, looked back at her handywork. "Oh well, too many to try and figure out which one."

"Well, this string is a couple of years old. These things were what, all of $5.19 or some such? Can't expect them to last."

"Yeah, I suppose. We'll get new ones next year. I am not taking these down and putting up a different set just because that one little bit is dark."

"Fine with me. Let's go in - dinner's almost ready."

We folded up the ladder, grabbed the box for the lights and went inside. It was ten days before Christmas. Because of other things going on here, we've been a bit slow with all our holiday decorations and shopping stuff this year.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I'm always surprised when people *don't* know the limitations and liabilities of the technology they take for granted. Take for example this Washington Post story about cellphone tracking:

Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request
Secret Warrants Granted Without Probable Cause

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

Gee, ya think?

If you haven't really been following the latest on the Telecom Immunity/Domestic Spying efforts by the Bush Administration, or even if you just were busy yesterday, you might want to check out what former AT&T technician and wiretapping whistle-blower Mark Klein has had to say on the matter. In particular, Senator Dodd has posted a 2 minute YouTube summary from Klein that'll give some idea of the scope of the surveillance. And in a discussion on NPR's All Things Considered yesterday, Klein goes into some detail about why he claims that AT&T was basically spying on each and every one of us who uses the internet to surf, post, or send email...before 9/11. It was, as he says in the YouTube summation, "Massively Unconstitutional".

Seriously - this is like something out of a comedy sketch:

FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

Here's an even better idea for the FBI/NSA/Omega Sector: just plant RFID tags in the falafel mix. Then they can trace exactly who buys it, follow them around after they've consumed it, and even know what bathroom facilities they like to use. Man, you could set up monitoring equipment to record their bowel movements!

Genius!

Jim Downey

You think you get frustrated when your computer acts up? How do you think the guys who were on the receiving end of 500 rounds of 35mm explosive anti-aircraft fire feel? From Wired's Danger Room blog:

We're not used to thinking of them this way. But many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic -- picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger. Most of the time. Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own. The South African National Defence Force "is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday."

Pretty much everyone has had the experience of having your computer crash and take out data you hadn't backed-up properly. Whether it is some kind of hardware failure, or a virus, or a lighting strike, or even a malicious employee/spouse/whomever, at some point we have all lost stuff on a computer we thought was secure. If you're *really* lucky, you don't lose much, and you learn the painful lesson about keeping important information properly backed-up on recoverable media. If you're not really lucky, you learn the hard way that you can lose years of hard work in just an instant, with no recovery possible.

And that's the basic idea behind building a secure storage facility for the bulk of human knowledge, and perhaps even humanity itself, off-planet. The people behind the newly formed Alliance to Rescue Civilization want to do just that:

'Lunar Ark' Proposed in Case of Deadly Impact on Earth

(*with apologies to Steely Dan)

So, a couple days ago, I was hitting some of my usual haunts, and on MeFi came across a link to something truly amazing: the most advanced personal energy system available today!

Personal energy system? Huh? Some kind of new sports drink? Maybe a reworked diet fad? Or a new way to charge your, uh, personal massagers?

Nope. They're talking Sympathetic Resonance Technology! Wow! Even the name is impressively scientifical! What is Sympathetic Resonance Technology? I'm glad you asked:

The Q-Link’s fundamental technology can be understood by imagining a tuning fork that vibrates at a certain pitch. Similarly, the Q-Link’s Sympathetic Resonant Technology™ (SRT™) is tuned to optimize the human energy system through resonance. As it interacts with your biofield, it leads to a rebalancing and restoration according to your individual needs.

Via BoingBoing comes news that Tim Wu has an excellent piece up about the forthcoming auction of wireless spectrum, and how it presents the opportunity to encourage the kind of innovation necessary for continued development of seamless connectivity of electronic appliances and ubiquitous computing. Wu, a leader in the promotion of net neutrality and broadband tech, understands that establishing common standards and then allowing inventors to attach their gadgets to wireless networks will be the critical infrastructure of the future. An excerpt:

The right to attach is a simple concept, and it has worked powerfully in other markets. For example, in the wired telephone world Carterfone rules are what made it possible to market answering machines, fax machines and the modems that sparked the Internet revolution.

OK, this doesn't involve the police kicking in someone's door. It just involves the fact that the UK has turned into a defacto surveillance society.

In a truly frightening article, the situation around George Orwell's (of 1984 fame) home in London is used as an example of just how prevalent surveillance cameras are in the UK:

According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell's fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.

This is some very exciting news! I've always maintained that even though our brains are fantastically complex, they are basically understandable. It looks as if this research is headed down the path of using computers to figure out exactly how we have been wired by evolution to think, feel, and reason - in effect, a mind-reading computer. It is being developed at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany by Dr John-Dylan Haynes, working with researchers in London and Tokyo.

[link] By studying changes in brain activity, it is now thought possible to identify how a person is going to act before they do so.

The breakthrough could have huge implications for brain-stimulated devices used by people suffering from paralysis.

In the study, volunteers were asked to decide whether to add or subtract two numbers but told not to reveal what they were going to do.

Using complex computer programs and sophisticated imaging of the brain, scientists were able to identify what each person was going to do with 70% accuracy.

There is a novel written by James Halperin called The Truth Machine that posits the invention of a 100% accurate "truth machine" that reads the brains of those who are connected to it and displays whether or not they are telling the truth. This breakthrough acts as a Singularity event on society and changes everything, allowing humanity to finally progress to the point where we conquer physical death through technology and innovative scientific research into genetics and nanotechnology.

It's a fun book to read - a little too utopian for my tastes, but fun.

While I was reading the article above, I was struck by something that one of the scientists involved with this project said:

[link] "In future it will be possible to read even abstract thoughts and intentions out of patients' brains.

"One day even the intentions such as 'open the blue folder' or 'reply to the email' could be picked up by brain scanners and turned into the appropriate action."

Is a "truth machine" in our near future? And what would be the impact of such a device on our society?