China’s ambitious Secrets of the A messsage from eco-city project digital detectives Mr BlackBerry TechnologyQuarterly September 23rd 2006 Q: How long does it take to change a light bulb?

A: 131 years

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Contents

On the cover Light bulbs, which have been around in their current form since 1879, both illuminate the world and symbolise the moment when inspiration strikes. But light-emitting diodes, which are more versatile and ecient, could be an even brighter idea, and are now starting to push light bulbs aside: pages 24-27 Splitting the digital dierence Monitor 1 Crossing PCs with phones, a high-tech bus, bringing back the airship, better speech synthesis, growing articial meat, internet access on trains, hyperlinking video, turning waste into fuel, and the many uses of digital grati Computing: A variety of novel approaches aim to bridge the gap between mobile phones and PCs in the developing world Rational consumer 9 Gaming’s next episode? HAT is the best way to make the units apiece to the governments of Argen- The rise of episodic games Wbenets of technology more widely tina, Brazil, Nigeria and Thailand. But available to people in poor countries? across the Atlantic in Cambridge, Eng- Environmental technology Mobile phones are spreading fast even in land, another band of brainy types has 10 China’s vision of ecopolis the poorest parts of the world, thanks to cooked up a dierent approach. They Can an eco-city really be green? the combination of microcredit loans and have devised a device that allows one PC pre-paid billing plans, but they cannot do to be used by many people at once. Computing everything that PCs can. For their part, The organisation is called Ndiyo (the 13 Software that reads your mind PCs are far more powerful than phones, Swahili word for yes), and was Towards augmented cognition but they are also much more expensive founded by Quentin Staord-Fraser, a and complicated. If only there was a way former researcher at AT&T. We don’t Case history to split the dierence between the two: a want to have cut-down computers for 15 An even brighter idea device as capable as a PC, but as aord- poor people, he says. We want them to Why light-emitting diodes could able and accessible as a mobile phone. have what we haveso we need to nd a pull the plug on light bulbs Several initiatives to bridge this gap are better way to do it. The system exploits a under way. The hope is that the right little-used feature in operating systems Materials combination of technologies and busi- that permits multiple simultaneous us- 18 Concrete possibilities ness models could dramatically broaden ers. Ndiyo’s small, cheap interface boxes New forms of an ancient material access to computers and the internet. allow multiple screens, keyboards and Perhaps the best-known project is the mice to be linked to a single PC cheaply Computing one dreamt up by a bunch of academics via standard network cables. 20 Secrets of the digital detectives at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- This allows a standard PC running Li- Inside fraud-detection software ogy, in Cambridge. The scheme, called nux, the open-source operating system, One Laptop Per Child, aims to use a va- to be shared by between ve and ten peo- Brain scan riety of novel technologies to reduce the ple. Computers today are many times 22 A message from Mr BlackBerry cost of a laptop to $100 and to distribute more powerful than those of just a few A prole of Mike Lazaridis, the millions of the machines to children in years ago, but are idle much of the time. inventor of the ubiquitous and poor countries, paid for by governments. Ndiyo is returning computing to its roots, iconic e-mail device Nicholas Negroponte, the project’s co- to a time when they were shared devices founder, says he is in talks to deliver 1m rather than personal ones. We can make 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006

2 computing more aordable by sharing ing system that is meant to overcome this it, says Dr Staord-Fraser, as he hunches problem. His Shuttleworth Foundation over a ganglion of wires sprouting from has also created something called the machines in Ndiyo’s oce. In much of Freedom Toaster, a kiosk that distrib- Behold, the bus the world, he says, a PC costs more than a utes open-source software by letting peo- house. Internet cafés based on Ndiyo’s ple pick programs and burn them on to of the future technology have already been set up in free CDs. So far around 30 kiosks have Bangladesh and South Africa. Mobile been set up in South Africa, but the idea is phones are used to link the shared PCs to also generating interest elsewhere as a Transport: Maglev trains are the internet. novel way to spread software in places expensive; buses are cheap. The Another approach is being taken by that lack fast internet links. Superbus, a high-tech road vehicle, Microsoft. The software giant has devised And even when the hardware and is a compromise between the two a plan to provide PCs to the poor using a software are available, there is the ques- business model borrowed from pre-paid tion of technical skills. To help train fu- T LOOKS rather like a futuristic stretch mobile phones. Called FlexGo, the ture techies, Cisco, the leading maker of Ilimousine, but its actual function is scheme is designed to appeal to people network equipment, supports free net- rather more populist: the Superbus is a who cannot aord a PC because it is too working academies run by local techni- novel public-transport system being de- expensive to pay for one all at once, or be- cal experts in 63 developing countries. veloped in the Netherlands by the Delft cause their income is irregular or cyclical One instructor, Mohammad Tariq Mee- University of Technology. It is an electric (as with farmers). ran of Kabul University in Afghanistan, bus designed to be able to switch seam- FlexGo is a rent-to-buy arrangement explains that there are not enough PCs lessly between ordinary roads and dedi- in which the customer determines the for each student in his computer-science cated supertracks, on which it can reach frequency of payments. People pay department, so they must take turns in speeds of 250kph (155mph). It could thus around half the price of the computer class. A system like Ndiyo’s would be a present an alternative to much more ex- and software at the start and then pay to boon by allowing one computer to be pensive magnetic-levitation trains. The use it by buying scratch cards. Once their used by many students, he said in an in- Superbus would be driven in the usual credit is depleted, the machine goes dark, terview on his mobile phoneAfghani- way on roads and an autopilot would be just as a mobile phone does. But after stan lacks reliable xed lines. engaged when it reached a supertrack. about two years of use, Microsoft esti- Will any of this work? In the past, ef- Though it is as wide and long as a mates, the full price of the PC and the forts to bring computers to the poor often standard city bus, the Superbus is only 1.7 software has been paid, and the owner failed because they were based on West- metres high, or roughly the same height then has unlimited use of it. Craig Fiebig ern ideas of how technologies ought to as a sports-utility vehicle. Joris Melkert, of Microsoft says this approach can open be used or paid for. Governments and the project’s manager, explains that the up an untapped market. In a trial in Brazil foundations doled out money, only to designers managed to keep the Superbus 30% of participants said that they could see it poorly spent or pocketed by middle- this small by doing away with the central not otherwise have aorded to buy a PC. men. And when market-oriented ap- aisle usually found in today’s buses, a Mr Fiebig suggests that the scheme proaches were tried, they often presumed vestigial design feature that allows pas- could even provide a chance for entrepre- that PCs were things individuals owned sengers to stand upright, but also gives neurs to resell computer time, just as peo- and paid for upfront. By borrowing ideas conventional buses the aerodynamic ple in poor countries (such as the from mobile phones and taking greater prole of a brick. telephone ladies of Bangladesh) make account of local conditions, these The low-riding Superbus, in contrast, a business of charging others to use their schemes have a better chance of making has a separate door for each of its 30-odd mobile phones. Microsoft is also working computing accessible. We need to nd a seats. The low ceiling and the use of light- on another way to strike a compromise solution, says Dr Staord-Fraser. This is weight materials make for a far more between PC and handset. In June it un- not necessarily the best solutionbut it streamlined vehicle, which in turn re- veiled a prototype system that allows does work now. 7 quires only a modest electric motor: 1 people to plug a keyboard and an ordin- ary television into a mobile phone, thus enabling it to function like a simple PC. Hardware is only part of the story of course; how can software be made cheaper, too? Microsoft has developed a scaled-down version of its Windows op- erating system for developing nations, called XP Starter Edition. By removing features and dropping the price, it hopes to reduce software piracy. It could also make Windows more competitive with free, open-source software, which is pop- ular in Brazil, China and other parts of the developing world. Although such soft- ware is free, it can be harder for novices to use. Mark Shuttleworth, a South African software entre- preneur best known for having paid $20m in 2002 to blast into space aboard a Russian rocket, is developing Ubuntu, an easy-to-use open-source desktop operat- The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Monitor 3

2 though engineers have not yet decided whether the Superbus will be powered by fuel cells or batteries, they estimate that it will be able to accelerate from rest to 100kph in a leisurely 36 seconds. The individual doors also allow for rapid loading and unloading of passen- gers, which will need to be fast if the Su- perbus is to live up to its promised door-to-door mission: instead of making predetermined stops, the vehicle will pick up and drop o passengers based on their text-messaged requests. This kind of exibility is a central tenet of the project; the estimated three-year lifespan of a Su- perbus (as opposed to thirteen years for a standard European bus) will also allow the latest technologies to be phased in quickly as they become available. To start with, that might include satel- lite-based tracking to keep the Superbus Pipe in the sky? on course, sensors to scan the road for ob- stacles up to 300 metres ahead and a smart suspension system that remem- bers the rough spots in the road. The spe- cial supertracks, too, will form a Transport: The latest attempt to revive the fortunes of airships involves using technological testing ground, storing so- them to construct oil and gas pipelines lar energy in the summer and using it in XTRACTING oil and gas from remote chequered history. Who can forget the the winter to heat up the lanes and pre- Eand landlocked places can carry a re that dramatically destroyed the Hin- vent them from freezing and cracking. heavy price tag. Over the next decade $50 denburg in 1937, killing 36 people? More Conveniently enough, much of the billion is expected to be spent building recently but less perilously, CargoLifter, a technology comes from Delft University new pipelines over land, according to German rm that planned to develop a itself, which houses one of the world’s one estimate. In an attempt to reduce dedicated heavy-lifting airship, went largest aerospace-engineering depart- these costs, the oil and gas industry is bust in 2002 with only a huge empty han- ments. (The headquarters of the Euro- considering a new approach: airships. gar and a few blueprints to show for it. pean Space Agency are located in nearby These would be used not as giant air- Eorts by America’s top military bof- Noordwijk.) The university’s industrial- borne tankers for carrying oil or gas from ns to develop heavy-lifting airships design department has cooked up the wells, but as delivery trucks, carrying ma- have faltered, too. In August 2005 the Batmobile-like blueprint for the proto- terials, equipment and supplies to re- Defence Advanced Research Projects type; the project’s chief designer, Antonia mote places for laying pipelines. Agency (DARPA), an American military Terzi, previously worked on Formula 1 At the moment, logistics accounts for a research outt, launched a $6.3m re- cars for Ferrari and Williams-BMW. quarter of the cost of building a pipeline, search project, called Walrus, to develop Some detractors have suggested that says Luc Henriod, executive secretary of airships capable of carrying 500 tonnes a making so many stops would erode the the International Pipeline and Oshore distance of 12,000 nautical miles Superbus’s speed advantage, and others Contractors Association (IPLOCA), based (22,200km) in less than a week. The aim question whether a new cog in the Neth- in Geneva in Switzerland. In Kazakhstan was to nd a way to deploy support infra- erlands’ already-intricate transport infra- laying one pipeline required 800km (500 structure for troops quickly: unlike structure is even needed. Furthermore, miles) of new roads to be built and a fur- planes, airships require no runways, and the Superbus does not yet exist, whereas ther 800km to be repaired so that supply unlike ships, they can reach landlocked maglev trains are already operating suc- trucks could reach the pipeline. By de- countries, says Mr Hochstetler. DARPA cessfully in Shanghai. livering materials and equipment di- said it wanted evidence that earlier air- The future of the project is uncertain. rectly to the site, airships could, in theory, ship-era limitations will be overcome. Its intended route, a new transport link dramatically reduce costs and speed up Then, earlier this year, it suddenly and connecting Amsterdam with the north- construction. As a bonus, the pipeline mysteriously cancelled the project. ern city of Groningen, was recently would also have much less eect on the Studies commissioned by IPLOCA scrapped by the Dutch government (al- environment, notes Ron Hochstetler, of and BP, a British oil company, suggest though the Superbus was deemed the Science Applications International Cor- that the Walrus project may have been most feasible of all the options consid- poration, an engineering rm based in too ambitious. The IPLOCA/BP studies ered, which also included a maglev train). San Diego, California, who has carried concluded that the more modest ability In spite of the setback, the project has out feasibility research for IPLOCA on the to carry 75 tonnes travelling up to 800km since received an extra 7m ($9m) in gov- use of airships in laying pipelines. was more feasibleand still very useful ernment funding, plus 1m from Con- In theory, airships are well suited to says Philippe Lopez, one of the engineers nexxion, a local bus company. The heavy lifting, since they benet from a who carried out the research at BMT Syn- Superbus team’s latest plan is to unveil a law of increasing returns: doubling the tek, a rm based in Arlington, Virginia. fully functional prototype at the Beijing length of an airship increases the surface Mr Lopez estimates that airships of this Olympics in 2008. With its combination area (and hence the weight) by a factor of kind produced in reasonable numbers of low emissions, high speed and snazzy four, while the volume (and hence the would cost around $50m each. But there design, this might prove to be a bus that is lifting capacity) goes up by a factor of is a catch: so far, nobody has ever built an worth waiting for. 7 eight. In practice, however, they have a airship so large. It is not just a question of 1 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006

2 building a bigger version of previous de- gether groups of two or three phonemes, signs, since scaling can be a problem with known as diphones and triphones. But airships, says Mr Hochstetler. Before Dr van Santen’s approach is to model the building the Hindenburg, which was 245 way the pronunciation changes and to metres long, the Luftschibau Zeppelin transform the phonemes accordingly. Ul- company rst built more than 120 timately, he hopes that a few dozen sen- smaller airships, each slightly bigger than tences will suce to capture all the the last. information needed to build a model that One diculty, for example, is that if can then be used to mimic a real speaker. the bow is raised too high above the stern A more minimalist approach is called during a climb, the airship can tip into a voice transformation. Rather than piec- vertical position. Those things are so big ing together recorded snippets of speech that they have their own climate, says from a large database, this involves over- Mr Lopez. Then there is the problem of laying the snippets on to an existing but parking. A heavy-lifting airship must be similar synthetic-voice model, just as a easy to tie down, even in cross winds. costume might be draped over a generic And when it delivers its payload, it needs mannequin. The advantage of this ap- to be weighted down with ballast to stop proach is that it is much easier to build a it shooting up into the air. transformation model than to build a The solution to these problems may synthesised voice from scratch. In one ex- lie in hybrid airships that are aerodynam- periment, Jane Philbrick, an American ically shaped to generate part of their lift artist, used Dr van Santen’s software to as a conventional wing does. Stationary, get a virtual version of Jesse Helms, a re- such airships would be heavier than air tired American senator, to read a poem and so easier to park. Although this idea by Gertrude Stein. is several decades old, Lockheed Martin Dr van Santen has more serious uses ew the rst large-scale hybrid prototype nology promise to expand the way syn- in mind. His team is working on proto- only this year. The Walrus project also thetic voices are used. They could help type systems for medical applications took this approach. people who have lost their voices speak that could be commercially available in Before his death in 1917, Count von again, captivate gamers in virtual worlds, the next three to four years, including a Zeppelin, inventor of the airship, was direct lost drivers and enable dead celeb- portable device for use by people suer- hailed as the greatest German of the 20th rities to speak from beyond the grave. ing from slurred speech caused by Parkin- century. That turned out to be somewhat Mr Baker spent 11 days in a recording son’s disease. The technology could also premature. But perhaps, with the help of studio, reading nearly 12,000 sentences, be used by people suering from motor- high oil prices and some new technol- to generate all the sounds needed to en- neurone disease, or even from locked-in ogies, the invention he pioneered will do able his voice to render any message. The syndrome, in which a catastrophic brain better in the 21st. 7 approach now used for car navigation injury means that patients can communi- similarly relies on pre-recording large cate only by moving their eyes. In each chunks of sound, from single words to case the idea is to use old recordings of entire sentences. The larger the chunks, people’s voices to enable them to regain the more natural it sounds when several the power of real-time speech. In the beginning are joined together. Using smaller More realistic synthesised voices, chunksright down to individual pho- without the need for large databases of netic units, or phonemes, such as ar or recordings, would have many other uses. was the word ehrequires less storage space. But Smartphones could read out text mes- when the phonemes are strung together, sages, navigation systems could pro- the result sounds robotic. nounce place names more accurately, Computing: New systems that turn SVOX, a Swiss company, is trying to and speech-based interfaces might be- text into realistic speech could help get around this by developing new algo- come widespread. Sam Ruby, a re- the ill, direct lost drivers and make rithms to control the accentuation, phras- searcher at IBM, speculates that the video games more absorbing ing, pitch and rhythm of synthesised internet in ve years’ time might resem- speech. By analysing the context and ble MapQuest or Google in your ear. OW would you like to make a celeb- meaning of the words being spoken it is Game developers are also interested Hrity say whatever you want? Earlier possible subtly to control these param- in better speech synthesis, which would this year, customers of BT, Britain’s in- eters to produce a more natural result. allow characters in games to speak in cumbent telecoms operator, could do just This approach will also be much cheaper more responsive and lifelike ways, rather that, and send the results to a friend. Tom than the $100,000 it now costs to create a than relying on pre-cooked responses. Baker, a veteran British actor, did not realistic synthesised voice, says Volker Pe- That would make the virtual world more have the slightest idea what he was say- ter Jantzen, SVOX’s boss. convincing and exciting, suggests Jon inghis voice was generated by a com- Jan van Santen, a researcher at the Payne, the head of development for 2K puter, which spliced sounds together to Oregon Health & Science University in Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interac- enable him to read out text messages Portland, Oregon, is trying to solve the tive. His programmers are already using keyed into mobile phones. This system same problem in a dierent way. The rea- facial sensors when they record actors for and a similar one launched by Telstra, son that phoneme-based speech synthe- new games, to improve the lip-syncing. Australia’s telecoms incumbent, provide sisers sound robotic, he says, is that they Yet the technology still relies on hours of a glimpse of the next generation of text- fail to take into account the way in which recordings and looks clumsy. But soon, to-speech synthesis, the oft-neglected sib- the pronunciation of each phoneme de- Mr Payne believes, players will be able to ling of speech recognition. pends on its neighbours. Some systems customise the voices of their in-game Improvements in text-to-speech tech- try to get around this by stringing to- alter egos. Now you’re talking. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Monitor 5

ing living tissue from sh, and then scores of lines and several hundred trains growing it in culture. This approach has are due to oer the service. the advantage that the tissue has a func- Driving the market is a combination A meaty question tioning system of blood vessels to deliver of passenger demand, the rail operators’ nutrients, so it should be possible to grow own needs and improved technologies tissue cultures more than a millimetre that make access on board feasible and thickthe current limit. cost-eective. Rail companies and access Henk Haagsman, a meat scientist at providers cite studies showing that 80% the University of Utrecht in the Nether- to 95% of their business passengers want Biotechnology: Meat grown in vats, lands, is trying to make minced pork from internet service in transit; providing it rather than in the form of animals, cultured stem cells with the backing of gives the railways an edge over com- could soon be on the menu. It might Stegeman, a sausage company. It could muter ights (since in-ight internet ac- even be healthier and better for you be used in sausages, burgers and sauces. cess has been slow to get o the ground). But why would anyone want to eat It also helps the rail companies’ own op- F YOU have ever longed for a meat sub- cultured meat, rather than something erations, by enabling such things as real- Istitute that smelt and tasted like the real freshly slaughtered and just o the bone? time video monitoring of passengers and thing, but did not involve killing an ani- One answer, to mix metaphors, is that it voice services for sta. mal, then your order could be ready would allow vegetarians to have their But making the technology work is soon. Researchers believe it will soon be meatloaf and eat it too. But the sausage- not easy. Trains race between dense cities possible to grow cultured meat in quanti- meat project suggests another reason: hy- and remote regions at high speeds, often ties large enough to oer the meat indus- giene. As Ingrid Newkirk of PETA, an ani- ducking under tunnels along the way. It try an alternative source of supply. mal-rights group, puts it, no one who is hard to maintain a seamless service for Growing muscle cells (the main com- considers what’s in a meat hot dog could users. As a result, today’s services typi- ponent of meat) in a nutrient broth is genuinely express any revulsion at eating cally combine at least two technologies, easy. The diculty is persuading those a clean cloned meat product. most often third-generation (3G) mobile- cells to form something that resembles Cultured meat could be grown in ster- phone networks and satellite links. But real meat. Paul Kosnik, the head of engi- ile conditions, avoiding Salmonella, E. some lines have chosen to go entirely neering at a rm called Tissue Genesis, is coli, Campylobacter and other nasties. It with WiMax, a wireless technology that hoping to do it by stretching the cells with could also be made healthier by adjust- is still in its infancy. mechanical anchors. This encourages ing its compositionintroducing heart- In Britain, for instance, trains managed them to form small bundles surrounded friendly omega-3 fatty acids, for example. by GNER use 3G for upstream access at by connective tissue, an arrangement You could even take a cell from an endan- relatively slow rates, and satellite on the similar to real muscle. gered animal and, without threatening its downstream at two megabits per second Robert Dennis, a biomedical engineer extinction, make meat from it. Giant- (Mbps). On Southern Rail’s Brighton-to- at the University of North Carolina, be- panda steak, anyone? 7 London route Nomad Digital, the service lieves the secret of growing healthy mus- provider, teamed up with T-Mobile, a cle tissue in a laboratory is to understand mobile operator, to use a WiMax system how it interacts with its surroundings. In capable of 6Mbps in each direction, at nature, tissues exist as elements in a least in ideal circumstances. larger system and they depend on other Getting the A big trial being carried out in Califor- tissues for their survival. Without appro- nia involving four companies is being priate stimuli from their neighbours they internet on track closely watched by rail operators around degenerate. Dr Dennis and his team have the world, since it will provide a wealth been working on these neighbourly inter- of information about the eectiveness of actions for the past three years and report Communications: Internet access on dierent technologies. The Capitol Corri- some success in engineering two of the aircraft has been slow to take o, but dor line spans 170 miles (275km) from most importantthose between muscles it could be coming soon to a railway Sacramento, the state capitol, to San Jose, and tendons, and muscles and nerves. on the edge of Silicon Valley. The rail au- At the Touro College School of Health carriage near you thority required the rms to provide at Sciences in New York, Morris Benjamin- OUR hours on a train between least 2.25Mbps downstream and son and his team are working on remov- FToronto and Ottawa was not going to 1.75Mbps upstreamwhich precludes to- stop Stuart MacDonald from watching a day’s 3G systems and most proposed World Cup football match in June. Barrel- ones, spelling bad news for traditional ling across the Canadian countryside, he wireless operators. Moreover, a separate was able to catch the action over a wire- part of the bandwidth must be dedicated less-internet connection supplied by VIA for the rail authority’s own use. Rail, the train operator. I did a blog post The test network is being designed by while I was in the middle of it, boasts Mr a consortium led by ATC International McDonald, a professed early adopter of (ATCI), which will use two-way satellite; new technologies and the founder of Concourse Communications, an airport Expedia.ca, a travel website. Wi-Fi and cellular service provider, He is not alone in getting online while which will test Wi-Fi, WiMax, and other riding the rails. Across North America technologies; EarthLink, which is also de- and Europe train operators are testing ploying municipal Wi-Fi networks in wireless internet access or beginning Philadelphia and San Francisco; and No- large commercial deployment of the ser- mad Digital. The companies will each vice. Today, only around a dozen rail cover short segments of the route, which lines and about 100 trains are equipped passes through urban and rural areas, with broadband, but by the end of 2007 tunnels, cuttings and valleys. As much 1 6 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006

they move around. Viewers can then click on items of interest in a video to watch a related clip; after it has played, the original video resumes where it left o. To inform viewers that a video is hy- perlinked, editors can add highlights to moving images, use beeps as audible cues, or display still images from hyper- linked videos next to the clip that is cur- rently playing. As the amount of video available on- line increases, so do the possibilities for linking clips together. Someone watching a documentary about the 20th century, for example, could click on the face of John F. Kennedy and be directed to news- reel footage of him. Further clicks might 2 as you’re testing speed, you’re testing cost ductors with hand-held, Wi-Fi-enabled lead to the trailer for Thirteen Days, a eectiveness, says Jim Allison, the rail barcode scanners roaming the aisles. The lm about the Cuban missile crisis, to an authority’s principal planner. Altamont Commuter Express in northern interview with protagonist-actor Bruce The easy parts of the network are rel- California, which has provided low- Greenwood, and to a lm promoting tou- atively cheap to do, notes Nigel Wall- speed internet access for three years, is rism in Hollywood. Just as hyperlinking bridge, the chairman of Nomad Digital. testing a scanner that works with pre- disrupts the traditional structures of writ- More than 80% of a typical line is sim- paid accounts. Steve Del Bosco of VIA ten text, the same is true of video. plesuch as long, straight sections of Rail in Canada says the operator is con- But sometimes a hyperlinked struc- trackbut the remaining parts are much sidering providing feedback to its con- ture makes more sense than a linear nar- more cumbersome and costly to connect, ductors on a barcode scanner’s screen to rative. Researchers at the Technical he says. Still, these sorts of diculties are improve customer loyalty. University in Darmstadt, Germany, for normal. Every train line, even in the Regardless of the technology that is example, have developed a system called same country, has a dierent topology, deployed or the uses to which it is put, the ADIVI (a name derived from add digital explains Peter Kingsland, the boss of SCI internet-access providers say that one of information to video). Siemens, an engi- Solutions, which provides wireless ac- the biggest adjustments is to get used to neering rm, plans to use it to enhance cess on railways in Britain. The trains are the idea of the 30-year lifespan of railway online-video technical manuals, so that dierent, the demographics of the pas- carriages. Wireless technologies tend to technicians can click on a particular com- sengers are dierent, the volume of the last for ve, observes Mr Wallbridge. 7 ponent or system to summon up more passengers you’re carrying are dierent. detailed video clips. The researchers call You have to treat every train operator in a this telescoping. In contrast, at view- kind of bespoke way, he says. magazine.tv, a website that is experi- According to a study carried out in menting with hypervideo, the term 2004, Train-Phoenix, a Spanish rail oper- From hypertext drilling is used to describe the ability to ator, was able to receive 4Mbps down- click on a talking head during a sound stream and send over 1Mbps upstream to hypervideo bite to summon an entire interview. Such via satellite at speeds of up to 320kph for disagreements over terminology empha- 75% to 85% of its routes from Madrid to Se- sise just how new the technology is. ville, and Madrid to Barcelona. If it suc- Software: New technology that links Clickable areas in video clips, for exam- ceeded in that dicult terrain, some of together segments of online video ple, are variously called tracked objects, these US trials are a piece of cake by com- delights viewers, vloggers and hotspots, and tagged pixels. parison, says Linda Hennessee of Wi-Fi video-on-demand vendors Another area of uncertainty is the eti- America, part of ATCI’s consortium. quette of linking to other people’s clips. In addition to streaming football HE rise of the web transformed hy- Hypervideo can either redirect viewers matches to passengers, rail operators Tpertextwhich allows readers to click to another site and automatically start a hope that wireless broadband will un- on a word in one document and be trans- clip on that site at a desired scene, or dis- leash all kinds of new services for both ported to anotherfrom an obscure con- play video from elsewhere within their travellers and operators. For instance, in cept in computer science to a familiar, own websites. This practice, known as the wake of terrorist bombings in everyday technology. Might hypervi- hotlinking, is controversial, since the Madrid, London and Mumbai, train com- deowhich lets viewers click on a mov- owner of the clip that is linked to may not panies are considering installing video ing image to call up a related clipbe on be properly credited. So some sites dis- cameras on commuter trains. But e- the verge of a similar transformation? courage hotlinking. But Andrew Michael ciency is also on their minds. Operators This nascent development, also called Baron, the producer of Rocketboom, a today use a combination of low-tech ra- video-hyperlinking, makes it easy to link popular vlog based in New York, encour- dio systems to communicate. A wireless- together segments of online video in ages hotlinking to his content. We’re say- data system would provide internet- novel ways. Andreas Haugstrup Peder- ing, ‘Hey, please do that’, he says. His based calls between sta and electronic sen, a video blogger (or vlogger) based only proviso is that hotlinkers must not ticket-checkingand might enable train in Aalborg, Denmark, who likes to video- use his footage to make money by selling equipment to diagnose and report pro- hyperlink clips on his website, says the advertising alongside it. Ravi Jain, an- blems automatically. technology is a vlogger’s dream. other New York vlogger, jokes that this is Many operators are interested in add- Hyperlinking video involves the use a good time to be a copyright lawyer, ing passenger-printed electronic tickets, of object-tracking software to make since hypervideo is so new that its legal much as airlines do. They imagine con- lmed objects, such as cars, clickable as consequences are still unclear. 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Monitor 7

2 Then there is the matter of hypervi- waste into various grades of fuel, at least deo’s commercial potential. Advertisers in the laboratory. You can gasify rubbish are understandably excited by the idea. by heating it and turning it into synthesis Eline Technologies, based in Vancouver, fuel, which is then fed into a reaction is doing brisk business selling hypervi- called the Fischer-Tropsch process. This deo software called VideoClix to ad- technique for converting carbon monox- vertising agencies and companies ide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocar- including Apple, Disney and Sony. The bons using a catalyst was invented in software makes it possible to create on- Germany in the 1920s and was used by line video clips that link to advertising or the Nazis to convert coal into fuel during e-commerce sites, or provide more in- the second world war. An alternative formation about particular products. The method involves breaking down cellu- result is far more powerful than a tradi- lose using various catalysts to accelerate tional television advert, says Babak the decomposition of organic plant resi- Maghfourian of Eline. dues into ethanol. Microsoft’s adLab research centre in Household rubbish presents special Beijing is working to incorporate hyper- problems, since it is an unpredictable video features into the company’s TV- mishmash of all sorts of stu. Allen over-broadband platform. And Tandberg Hershkowitz, director of the solid-waste Television, a Norwegian rm that sells programme at the Natural Resources De- video-on-demand systems, already sells fence Council (NRDC), says that no tech- a hypervideo system called AdPoint. It nology can take large amounts of mixed enables viewers to click on certain ob- household waste and protably convert jects in television shows to see a promo- it into ethanol or any other kind of fuel. showed o of a technology for convert- tional video and to drill into a He also notes that, although the country’s ing waste to oil. The company says it can commercial to see a longer version. landlls seem to be overowing, Amer- process any waste that is not glass, metal Tandberg is now working on a way to ica in fact produces only about 230m or radioactive and, using a catalyst, con- video-hyperlink lm libraries. Viewers tonnes of municipal solid waste a year, vert it to fuel, with an eciency of 90%. would be able to click on, say, a tank in a compared with more than 2 billion But the rm’s claims were met with scep- movie to call up a menu of lms or mili- tonnes of farm waste. The NRDC reports ticism, partly because of a past convic- tary documentaries. Reggie Bradford of that much of the solid waste in landlls is tion of Michael Spitzauer, its chief Tandberg says the result is compelling. made up of recyclables like plastic, or executive, for fraud in his native Austria. You get the emotional experience of tele- food waste that could be used as com- The one American company that has vision, with the Google experience of the post. Burning such things for fuel may not succeeded in building and running a internet, he says. If all this sounds baf- count as a gain for the environment. commercial plant to convert waste to fuel ing and the terminology, etiquette and By contrast, Startech’s Mr Longo says is Changing World Technologies. Even business models seem unclear, it is worth he can produce fuel with almost no emis- then, the company says that, although it remembering that just a few years ago, sions and using only 10% of the resulting can convert solid waste to fuel, the pro- that was true for hypertext, too. 7 energy to power the process. Mr Longo is cess is not yet economical. People’s primarily a rubbish manStartech was waste material is unpredictable, says formed in the 1990s as a low-emission al- Brian Appel, who heads the company. ternative to landlls and incinerators. His rm’s rst plant processes waste Now he is hoping the ethanol craze will from a turkey slaughterhouse and pig A rubbish convince cities to strike deals with him. fats, using thermal conversionheat Theoretically, a plant using Startech’s and frictionto break down the chemical process to vaporise 25 tonnes of tyres a bonds, followed by heat and water to hy- business model day could create more than 8,500 gallons drolyse the material. This mainly yields of fuel (the number would be less if it liquid and solid fertiliser, but also makes processed other forms of waste). True, gas that is used to power an industrial Energy: The dream of turning America alone consumes more than 20m plant, but could be rened into biodiesel. worthless waste into valuable fuel is gallons of fuel a day, but some lucky cit- One problem is that it costs Changing as potent as ever. But is the whole ies could run their eets of dustcarts from World about $80 a barrel to make the idea too good to be true? such a plant with fuel to spare. However, fuel. Another is that the company has all the 74-year-old Mr Longo has to show had to spend heavily to reduce the smell HERE there is muck, goes the old for his eorts so far is a small demonstra- from the plant, which was briey shut Wsaying, there is brass. Several rms tion plant in Bristol, Connecticut. No down because of it. have taken that idea to heart and are seek- backer has been prepared to provide the With oil prices high, Mr Appel and his ing protable ways to turn rubbish into $6m for a Startech system that could con- fellow entrepreneurs must hope that fuel. Startech Environmental, for in- vert 10 tonnes of waste a day. their timing is good. Nancy Floyd, co- stance, based in Wilton, Connecticut, At least Mr Longo has his demonstra- founder and managing director of Nth uses plasma conversion, superheating tion plant, though. Not so Masada Re- Power, a pioneering energy investor, says rubbish to break down its molecular source Group, which in 2004 signed a that her rm is close to investing in a com- bonds and create a synthesis gas which contract with Middletown, New York, to pany that converts waste to ethanol is then converted into ethanol or biodie- build a $300m plant to convert waste to though she declined to name it. Although sel. We get 3.7 gallons of ethanol per 20lb fuel. Although the scheme promised 90% the industry has a record of failure, she tyre. That’s serious output, says Joseph eciency using a vaguely dened Oxy- says, there is new technology now, and Longo, Startech’s chief executive. Nol process, the rm has yet to lay the we are seeing it applied. So although The idea might sound far-fetched, but plant’s foundations. In July Green Power, prots are hard to come by, optimism is in there are several ways to convert organic a start-up from Issaquah, Washington, plentiful supply. 7 8 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006

on back home, he says. Stephen Randall, going to shut it down, says Mr Notzold. the boss of LocaModa and one of the In fact, they just wanted to know the founders of Symbian, a company that phone number to send messages to. The writing on makes software for smartphones, likens As the photos on his TXTual Healing the result to a location-based blog. He website reveal, most messages (Where’s the wall plans to have sponsored screens captur- my other sock?) lack lyricism. But Mr ing the word on the street in 10,000 Notzold expects gravitas will come with places by 2009. time. The more I can get out there and do Technology and society: Is the mobile Some of the messages sent to the this, the more people are going to text po- phone mightier than the spray can? screens are remarkably banal, but things litically and socially charged material, New digital grati systems are occasionally get spicy. In March one he suggests. His text-message grati sys- being put to a variety of uses woman received a marriage proposal via tem gives people a way to stay engaged, the Witi screen at Toscanini’s café in he believes, instead of just plugging into S IF text messaging were not already Cambridge, Massachusetts. What is games or music on the phone, and dis- Aubiquitousover a billion messages more, she accepted via Witiafter a connecting from society. a day it between the world’s 2 billion mere 29 minutes of contemplation. Al- Digital grati can have commercial as mobile phonesit is now moving from though it might seem to make more sense well as political uses. This summer Brit- the private sphere into the public one. to talk to, rather than text, the person sip- vic, a British soft-drinks company, ran a New technologies allow text messages to ping coee nearby, people are looking Court on Camera promotion at the be displayed on the sides of buildings, on for a way to break the ice, says Tamara Wimbledon tennis tournament. Con- public screens in cafés or on vast digital Mendelsohn of Forrester, a consultancy. sumers who were queuing for tickets displays at sporting events and festivals. Furthermore, systems like Witi are were encouraged to send photos from Such digital grati can be used in va- their phones to a giant screen adorned rious ways: to capture the mood of a gath- with branding for its Robinsons line of ering, boost a brand, or to spark public soft drinks. It became a form of co- dialogue. Mobile devices are in a unique branding, where the consumers stamped position to enable new forms of commu- their identity on the event, says Daniel nication within groups and crowds, since Conti, Britvic’s new-media manager. VIP almost everyone in the developed world tickets to the centre court were awarded now carries one, notes Linda Barrabee, to the senders of the best pictures. an analyst at Yankee Group in Boston. But text-based campaigns are more We are still in an early stage, but there is widespread. Last year Nike, a maker of promise, she says. sports gear, used text messaging to allow The earliest examples of digital grati people to conjure up images of custo- appeared in Europe, where text messag- mised shoes on a giant screen in New ing took o years ago, unlike in America York’s Times Square. Anyone who did so where it has only recently become pop- received a text message in return that con- ular. In 2001, for example, at the tained the address of a website where the Speaker’s Corner building in Hudders- design could be conrmed and the shoes eld, England, a tickertape-like display ordered. And in July this year Procter & showed the results of a text-message po- Gamble invited women to text their se- etry contest. Sponsored by the Arts Coun- crets to Times Square’s giant screens, as cil England, the contest elicited some part of a promotion for its Secret deodor- 2,000 poems, 100 of which were dis- ant. (I cut my sister’s hair when she was played on the constantly scrolling screen. younger and told my parents that she did The latest digital-grati systems are it herself, ran a typical message.) The rather more elaborate, thanks to the ef- TXTual Healing in action messages were also displayed on the se- forts of companies such as LocaModa, a cret.com website. Brand awareness has start-up based in Somerville, Massachu- noncommittalyou’re not going to face increased dramatically, says P&G. setts. It has installed eight Witi rejection, she adds. Similarly, MOVO Mobile, based in screens (a name derived from wireless For others, public texting is a chance to Sarasota, Florida, ran a spring-break pro- gratiit has no relation to Wi-Fi net- cause a stir. Paul Notzold, a designer motion for Gillette, a maker of grooming working) in coee-shops in several Amer- based in Brooklyn, has rigged up a system products, in which college kids could ican cities, sometimes with the support to project blank speech bubbles on to send irty messages to a large screen at a of sponsors. Between double espressos, public walls. He generally sets up after night-club. Sending a message, of course, patrons send text messages to the 50-inch sunset for better visibility and passes out opens the door to follow-up messages screens. What they write is also mirrored leaets explaining how to send text into from the event’s sponsor. on the web, so that visitors to witi.com the speech bubbles. There is an element Digital grati even have their reli- can remotely observe what’s going on at, of empowerment in being able to post a gious uses. Teen Mania Ministries, an say, the Hurricane Café in Seattle, the message, says Mr Notzold, who just n- evangelical Christian group based in Gar- Filter Coee Lounge in Chicago or Half ished a master’s degree in design and den Valley, Texas, sets up huge screens at Fast Subs in Boulder, Colorado. technology at Parsons The New School its Battle Cry events, which are at- When Jason Hetherington, a 26-year- for Design in New York. He has done a tended by tens of thousands of teenagers. old exam instructor, was working in Du- dozen or so projections on to buildings: Those attending can text personal mes- bai for six months, he often visited in Brooklyn, along the canals in Amster- sages to the screens, or use them to ask witi.com to see what was up at Somer- dam, in a public square in Hamburg and the preachers questions. The idea is to ville’s Someday Café in Somerville, even on to the Millennium Museum in train teenagers to use technology for a Massachusetts, his old haunt. It was a Beijing. The police were around, and higher purpose, says Tocquigny, the great way to get a taste of what was going when they came over I thought they were advertising agency involved. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Rational consumer 9

Gaming’s next episode?

Electronic Arts, the world’s biggest games erty, he says. Instead, it is safer to go for a publisher, imagines a distribution model movie tie-in, since the game can then pig- Consumer electronics: The idea that combines disks with downloads. The gyback on the lm’s marketing campaign. of episodic games, which can initial game would be sold on disk for $20 This is a recipe for creative stagnation, or $25, he suggests, and would be shorter he says. But by moving to smaller and be bought and played in small than today’s games. Anyone who n- more regular releases of content, we take chunks, has pros and cons ished it could then download more levels risk out of the size and budget and can put onlinesince the latest games consoles, that risk into other areas of the project. T IS an industry that likes to compare it- like PCs, can connect to the internet. If The same, after all, is true of television: Iself to Hollywood. Video games can in- you want more, you can have as much as unlike in lm, writers can experiment deed be epic, cinematic experiences; and you can eat, using micropayments for the with unusual scenarios within a single they are often based on lms, such as next levels, he says. That way, heavy episode, as in the musical episode of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. But gamers go further and pay more. Buy the Vampire Slayer or the live some in the industry take a dierent view. One company that is doing something episodes of ER. Games, they say, ought to be more like along these lines is Bethesda Softworks, television programmes, not lms: de- the maker of Oblivion, a popular role- Telling a dierent story livered in small, short, regular chunks. playing game on the Xbox 360. Although It sounds almost too good to be true. Epi- This approach, called episodic gaming, the game is a full-price title and provides sodic games, it seems, will be cheaper for could have benets for both players and hundreds of hours of gameplay, Bethesda both games companies and gamers, will developers of games alike, says Gabe has also released several add-ons, which have wider appeal and will be more inno- Newell, the president and co-founder of can be bought and downloaded via Mi- vative. But not everybody agrees. Jason Valve Software. His rm is one of the best- crosoft’s Xbox Live Marketplace. Several Kraft, an analyst at Susquehanna Interna- known proponents of episodic gaming, of these add-ons are new missions that tional Group, is sceptical. The real motive having chosen to release the sequel to take a few hours to complete. They keep behind episodic gaming, he suggests, is to Half-Life 2, a popular action game, in players interested, and it helps to further lock in players and generate new revenue. the form of a trilogy of shorter episodes. extend the life of the game, says Pete Downloadable add-ons for games Smaller chunks of content should Hines of Bethesda. such as Oblivion, notes Mr Kraft, gener- have greater value for consumers, he Episode One was well received, and ate extra revenue at very high margins, says. That is because most gamers have a the next episode is due next year. That since internet distribution costs next to pile of unnished games languishing next highlights a further advantage of episodic nothing. The consumer pays these incre- to their consoles. Modern video games gaming: episodes can be developed and mental fees because they are sucked into take several years and perhaps $10m to released more quickly than full-scale the game, he says. Some Oblivion fans create, and typically provide a storyline games. Half-Life 2, which came out in grumble that to own a complete version that takes an average player around 50 2004, took six years to develop, whereas of the game, it is now necessary to buy all hours to complete. But, Mr Newell points new episodes can be put together in a the add-ons, too. But Mr Hines notes that out, less than 20% of players of Halo 2, a year or so. The traditional rule of thumb the add-ons are not compulsory. popular shoot-’em-up for Microsoft’s is that twice as much content takes four Mr Kraft is also dubious about the idea Xbox console, have nished the game. times as much resources to develop, says that smaller, shorter games can be de- So over 80% of customers are paying Mr Newell. So for maximum productiv- veloped more cheaply. Much of the initial developers to create content they’ll never ity, he says, you want to make your expense of creating a game involves the consume, he says. chunks of development as small as possi- creation of characters and artwork, and That is why Half-Life 2: Episode One, ble. Internally, he says, Valve measures the software engine that brings the which came out in June this year, is both its productivity in terms of man-years game world to life. It is not at all clear that shorter and cheaper than a typical game. per player-minute. So far, he says, de- it costs half as much to create a game of It costs $20, rather than the usual $50-60, veloping episodic games seems to be half the size, since these start-up costs are and provides around ve hours of game- about four times more productive than so signicant. Another criticism of epi- play on average. This changes the gaming developing traditional games. sodic games is that episode could just experience: the episode can be played in a Yet another benet of the episodic ap- prove to be a euphemism for sequel. single stretch. proach is that it could encourage more in- And many people feel that gaming, like Some in the industry believe that epi- novation, says Mr Newell. As the cost of the lm business, is too dependent on se- sodic games could have broader appeal developing games increases, there is a quels already. So it is unclear whether epi- than existing games, which can put o tendency to play it safe. If you have a sodic gaming is a promising new business players who are unwilling to spend $20m budget, you aren’t going to try a model or a fad with only limited appeal. weeks nishing them. Gerhard Florin of new game design or intellectual prop- As they say on television, stay tuned. 7 10 China’s eco-cities The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006

Technology and the environment China has ambitious plans to build a model eco-city near Visions of ecopolis Shanghai. How green will it be?

N AN island at the mouth of China’s tan will rise from the paddy elds, crab OYangzi River, plans are afoot to build ponds and vegetable plots to become the city of the future. The rst residents home to tenseventually hundredsof will move in within ve years. The city thousands of people. will be self-sucient in energy and water Chongming likes to call itself China’s and will generate almost no carbon emis- third-largest island, though many would sions. Petrol and diesel vehicles will be no doubt object to that description in in- banned in favour of solar-powered boats dependent-minded Taiwan (supposedly and fuel-cell-driven buses. The develop- the largest island, with the oshore prov- ers of this eco-city, called Dongtan, ince of Hainan as number two). It is a strip hope that it will come to be seen as a of alluvial silt about 80km (50 miles) long model for the rest of the world: London’s and 17km wide that is home to some mayor, for one, is already inspired by it. 650,000 people. The plan is to turn some Will it work? of this farmland into forest and to make The island, Chongming, is a semi-rural all agriculture organic. Chongming also county on the northern boundary of hopes to attract low-polluting, high-tech Shanghai, China’s most populous and industries. But much of its economy will crowded city, with a population of more be generated by green tourism. than 9.3m in its main urban area. Shang- Chongming’s forestsall planted, be- hai’s rapid economic growth in recent cause there is no natural woodlandwill years has made land in the city extremely provide a holiday refuge for Shanghai’s expensive. Chongming, relatively poor residents, who have few parks or other and undeveloped compared with the open spaces to enjoy. There are also plans decades of lobbying to achieve this. neighbouring city, has long looked ripe for a theme park. Dongtan’s planners say they will not only for development into yet another ex- Then there is the wetland. Chong- preserve the mudats, but also create a panse of factories and commuter towns. ming’s fringe of tidal reed-covered mud- wildlife park some 4km wide as a buer Instead, the city’s plannerswith strong atsespecially close to Dongtanare a along the edge of the wetlanda pla- backing from China’s political leader- haven for birds, including the rare black- centa where life is to be gestated, accord- shiphave decided to turn it into a model faced spoonbill, as they migrate between ing to their brochure. Only one-fth of of what Shanghai is not. Chongming is to Australia and Siberia. Last year the central Dongtan’s 86km2 area is to be urbanised. be an eco-friendly island. At its eastern government put the wetland under state It sounds like just the kind of green- end, on an expanse of reclaimed wetland protection, although Yu Weidong, an or- ness so urgently needed in the rest of that is today home to a scattering of farm- nithologist at Shanghai Normal Univer- China. The country’s cities are choked by ers and shermen, the eco-city of Dong- sity, dryly observes that it took two the exhaust fumes from a burgeoning1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 China’s eco-cities 11

2 number of cars, shrouded with dust from ersin the hope of making their cities powered water taxis that will ply Dong- countless building sites and soaked with look modern. Many of Beijing’s most tan’s canals, and buses powered by rain turned acidic from coal burnt for prestigious new buildings are foreign cre- hydrogen fuel cells, which combine hy- power and heating. It is beguiling to imag- ations. Shanghai’s Pudong district, which drogen with oxygen to generate electric- ine that Chongming might become a until the early 1990s was mostly farmland ity and water, but no harmful emissions. model for city planners elsewhere in and a few factories, now boasts a collec- The city government is expected to pro- China as they struggle with the fastest ur- tion of skyscrapers designed by some of vide the buses as part of a scheme to have ban growth in the country’s history. By the world’s most famous architectsnot 1,000 fuel-cell vehicles in the city by 2010 some estimates, China’s urban areas, al- to mention the world’s rst commercially and 10,000 by 2012. Visitors, says a news ready home to around 560m people, may operating magnetic-levitation train, sup- release, will be encouraged to park their well have to accommodate another 300m plied by Germany. cars outside the city and use public trans- people by 2020. Arup’s contract, signed last August, is port while in Dongtan. No petrol or die- The central government, worried with Shanghai Industrial Investment sel vehicles will be allowed in the city. about the country’s growing reliance on Corporation (SIIC), a property company And the hope is that there will be visitors imported fuel and anxious to dispel its controlled by the Shanghai government aplenty. The eco-city is to be partly a tou- image as a super-polluter in the making, and listed in Hong Kong that was given rist attraction. has begun to talk enthusiastically about the newly reclaimed Dongtan site in 1998. Yet herein lies one potential aw. the need for green GDP growth. There is The deal became a showpiece of environ- Chongming is at present a couple of hardly a local government that does not mental co-operation between Britain and hours’ journey from central Shanghai by talk these days about plans for an eco-vil- China during a visit to London by Hu Jin- taxi and ferry. This, and its lack of ve-star lage, town or even city. But what they tao, China’s president, last November. In amenities, acts today as a deterrent to the mean by this is vague. The central govern- the presence of Mr Hu and Tony Blair, Brit- tourist hordes. But once a new express- ment fears that issuing clearer instruc- ain’s prime minister, the two companies way, a 9km tunnel and several bridges tions could threaten growth and social signed another deal pledging to co-oper- have been built to link downtown Shang- stability. Ocials bicker about how to ate on any similar future projects by SIIC. hai with the province of Jiangsu to the quantify green GDP. Chongming, with lit- There is also talk of building further eco- north, Chongming will no longer be a re- tle manufacturing industry that might re- cities after Dongtan. mote backwater. The plan is to complete sent the cost of going green, is seen as a this new transport artery by 2010, when low-risk place to experiment. Soul of a new metropolis Shanghai will host the World Expoan Ken Livingstone, London’s mayor, is Arup’s plan for Dongtan is for a city made event regarded as the city’s coming-out one Chongming enthusiast. During a trip up of three villages. The rst phase, due partyrather as the 2008 Olympic Games to Shanghai in April, he described the to be completed by 2010, will accommo- will be for Beijing. Hence the timing of Dongtan project as breathtaking in scale date some 25,000 people, the rm says, Dongtan’s rst phase. SIIC wants to have and ambition and a potential beacon to and the total population will increase to something to show o when Shanghai is the world on how to achieve a low-car- half a million by 2040. According to the ooded with tourists, politicians and bon future. Mr Livingstone has plans to company, the city will combine elements businesspeople. Visitors will be encour- build a zero-carbon suburb in London, in of traditional Chinese design with the lat- aged to use Dongtan’s eco-friendly public conjunction with Arup, a British engi- est green technologies. Its energy will transport. But their emissions in getting neering rm that is helping to design come from renewable sources such as there, swollen by the growing numbers as Dongtan. The project, in an old industrial wind turbines and bio-fuels made from travel gets easier and other planned at- area in east London, would be much agricultural waste. Most of the city’s rub- tractions become available, could oset smaller than Dongtan. But Mr Living- bish will be recycled. There will be no the city’s eco-friendly features. stone has said his plan would show that it landll. Human sewage will be processed Then there is the risk that Dongtan will is aordable and achievable to make all and used for irrigation. Food will be pro- become little more than an expensive major new developments low-carbon. duced without using agricultural chemi- idyll where Shanghai’s wealthy can enjoy Arup is excited, too. Rarely does the cals. And green building technologies their weekends, or a dormitory town chance arise to design a city from scratch. will reduce the amount of energy needed from which residents will commute to The rapid growth of Chinese cities in re- to heat and cool buildings by 70%. Shanghai’s city centre, polluting as they cent years has been a bonanza for foreign Unlike the newly developed areas go. After all, cynics might say, SIIC is sit- architects and urban designers. Local gov- around many of China’s fast-expanding ting on a potential goldmine that readily ernments have been lavishing huge sums cities, Dongtan will be compact, making it lends itself to just such a development. of money on overseas expertisemuch to easy to cycle or walk around. Public trans- Since it acquired the land, there has been the annoyance of home-grown design- port, Arup says, will include solar- little that the company could do with it to1 12 China’s eco-cities The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006

2 turn a prot. In the absence of better trans- benets and understands what is re- demand for better roads, resulting in a port linksit is 40 minutes by car to Dong- quired. But one of the main ways to foster frenzy of construction across the country. tan after arriving on Chongming by such an awareness in Western societies, a According to Peter Head of Arup, the boatthe land has been all but worthless. vigorous civil society, is lacking in China. aim at Dongtan is to achieve an ecologi- But with the infrastructure now being The country is only barely tolerant of cal footprint of two or less, meaning that built this will dramatically change. non-governmental organisations, and two hectares of land would on average ac- SIIC insists, however, that Dongtan fears that environmental pressure groups commodate the consumption and waste will grow in accordance with the de- could provide cover for political activism of each person. Measuring ecological mands of its own local economy and will against the Communist Party itself. A wet- footprints is an imprecise and controver- not be a getaway for Shanghai’s rich. Yet land expert in Shanghai asks that critical sial science, but Mr Head says his target initially, at least, the city will depend on remarks about Chongming’s plans not be would bring Dongtan to roughly the level providing leisure activities for visitors attributed to him (he frets that a profusion that would be required globally for man- from the mainland. In other words, it will of wind turbines, and an increase in the kind to sustain itself indenitely. By com- be a theme-park economyhardly one island’s population, could threaten parison, he says, London has a footprint that could serve as model across China. Chongming’s birds.) Even the Beijing of- of 5.8. By Mr Head’s current measure- Later, Dongtan hopes to attract research ce of WWF, an international environ- ments, Dongtan would come out at 2.5 laboratories, technology companies and mental group, declined to discuss and he admits that lowering this to two call-centres, and to develop commercial- Dongtan. The local media say nothing will be hard. The obstacles include the ef- exhibition services. But such activities are that might embarrass the city authorities. fects of construction, as well as residents’ possible to a large extent because Dong- A big part of the environmental pro- expected consumption of meat (which tan is located on the doorstep of Shang- blem arising from China’s urban growth raises the footprint because animals need hai, one of China’s wealthiest cities. So is that local governments and companies grain). There is no way you can expect even if Dongtan becomes a showcase for they associate with have little to restrain Dongtan people not to eat meat, he says. technologies and urban design that help them as they rush to make money. This to protect the environment, it is not clear has encouraged the rapid outward expan- Follow the footprints how aordable or relevant they would be sion of cities, rather than the more e- A pioneer of the ecological footprint, Wil- elsewhere in China. cient use of existing space. In name at liam Rees of the University of British Co- least, rural land is collectively owned by lumbia in Canada, has mixed views of How green is my city? village residents. But since unelected Dongtan. It is, he says, hardly a truly sus- Even Chongming’s own government, party ocials still control most villages, it tainable option given that it is a new city notwithstanding its eco-pretensions, is easy for local governments to seize land occupying what is mostly agricultural does not appear anxious to push the rest and sell it to developers while giving land near a large ecologically signicant of the island to follow the Dongtan peasants little compensation. wetland. He says that it is being designed model. Hu Jun, a deputy county chief, Dongtan, as reclaimed land with no to attract wealthy buyers whose way of says that one solar heating-panel costs the permanent population before SIIC took it life will be characterised by high levels equivalent of a year’s income for a peas- over, is not tainted with such a history. of personal consumption and large per- ant. The cost of electricity from wind tur- And most Chongming islanders, long iso- capita eco-footprints. But it could be bines, he points out, is four times greater lated from Shanghai’s boom, doubtless worse. It is at least less bad, he concedes, than it is from coal-red plants. As a result, welcome the government’s decision to than greeneld cities for the rich based on he says, the low income of Chongming’s make the island’s development a priority. standard urban designs and architecture. residents can’t support this kind of eco- But Shanghai’s growth, and that of many China’s rapid development means it is technology. Nonetheless, Chongming’s other Chinese cities, has happened with most in need of a new approach to eco- plans are ambitious by China’s standards. little reference to public sentiment. Even friendly urban design, yet least able to By 2020, it plans to source 30% of its en- as Shanghai’s government plans a green embrace it. Despite the noble aims of its ergy from renewables, up from less than haven on Chongming, it has been relocat- planners, Dongtan seems more likely to 1% at present (solar-powered street light- ing tens of thousands of people from the promote the development of other eco- ing is ostentatiously installed near the city centre to make way for World Expo cities outside China than within it. But as ferry terminals). The country as a whole is projects. The demand for cars is soaring as mankind becomes an urban species aiming for 15% renewable energy by then, growing numbers are pushed into distant around half of the world’s population is up from 7% now, most of it hydropower. suburbsa widespread phenomenon now city-dwellersthe search for ways to Chongming ocials readily proclaim across China with cities rushing to build reduce the environmental impact of cities that environmentally friendly develop- modern-looking business districts and has to start somewhere. Dongtan is as ment requires a population that sees the erase Maoist-era housing. So, too, is the good a place as any. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Augmented cognition 13

Computers that read your mind

enemy, but also by information, says simulator in which they faced a series of Dylan Schmorrow, previously the foun- threats, including heat-seeking surface-to- Software: Systems that work out der and programme manager of DARPA’s air missiles. Although the sample was too what users are doing, and then AugCog programme. (Dr Schmorrow, small to be statistically signicant, the who now works at the Oce of Naval Re- missions that used the CogPit’s adaptive- respond accordingly, could help search in Arlington, Virginia, will also autopilot feature suered less damage people to work more eectively chair an international conference on aug- than those that did not, says Dr Dickson. mented cognition which takes place next Besides recording EEGs, the DARPA O YOU use the internet while watch- month in San Francisco.) programme has also measured such Ding television, listen to music while Augmented cognition should be able things as heart rate, sweat, pupil dilation working at your computer, or read e-mail to help soldiers and ghter pilots make and even posture. The more involved while talking on the phone? According to sense of high volumes of data and exploit you get into a task, the more you lean into Linda Stone, a former Microsoft and them, rather than being swamped by the desk, says David Kobus of Pacic Sci- Apple executive, this is the era of con- them, says Dr Schmorrow. One idea, ence and Engineering in San Diego, Cali- tinuous partial attention. People it con- dubbed the CogPit, is to work on a smart fornia, who helped to set up DARPA’s stantly between technologies, yet never cockpit for ghter aircraft. The system AugCog programme. Such information devote their undivided attention to any of monitors the pilot’s use of conventional can help reveal the mental state of an air- them, she observes. The e-mails, instant controls but also takes readings from elec- trac controller, for example. messages, text messages, calendar alerts, troencephalogram (EEG) sensors built telephone calls and the occasional, old- into a helmet to measure brain activity. If Body talk fashioned face-to-face conversation are all the pilot is targeting the enemy and the Even at noisy and chaotic times, such as competing for their share of your aware- aircraft detects a threat, such as a surface- during a military exercise, augmented ness. Part of the problem is that today’s to-air missile, the CogPit system senses cognition has worked surprisingly well, technologies lack the intelligence to deter- when to alert and possibly distract him says Dr Schmorrow. In trials where teams mine when to interrupt peopleand, with a verbal or onscreen warning. of four soldiers had to rescue a hostage, more importantly, when to leave them be. From changes in frequency of the pi- head-up displays relayed information vi- Now a new class of technologies is be- lot’s brain waves and contextual informa- sually and vibrotactile vests gave soldiers ing designed to help users to regain their tionsuch as how he is interacting with navigational information about where to focus and enjoy more lucidity and con- the ghter’s controlsthe system can re- go during an ambush. Given how unreli- centration. The new eld is known as cognise when the pilot’s task is too deli- able some sensors can be, particularly augmented cognition, and it employs cate to be interrupted. If necessary, the EEG sensors, the results were encourag- sensors to infer the mental state of some- system can even deploy countermeasures ing, says Dr Schmorrow. And in addition one using a device. Rather than trying to automatically, depending upon how seri- to helping individual soldiers, the system read the user’s mind directlythe ap- ous the threat is, says Blair Dickson of can also benet those in the command proach taken in a dierent eld, known as QinetiQ, Britain’s privatised military-re- centre, by indicating when a particular brain-computer interfaces (BCI)aug- search agency, which has been working unit has its hands full or is too tired to mented cognition has a subtly but cru- on part of the CogPit project. move elsewhere. cially dierent aim. BCI devices are used As well as determining how to treat The armed forces are not alone in to control things in the physical world, new information, the system can also try wanting to get more out of people. Aug- such as a cursor on a screen, a wheelchair to reduce stress on the pilot by ltering out mented cognition could also nd its way or even a prosthetic limb. Augmented cog- non-essential information, says Dr into work, too. Microsoft has been devis- nition, in contrast, focuses on deducing a Schmorrow. If the EEG and pilot’s behav- ing tools to improve productivity by cognitive state with the aim of somehow iour indicate that he is becoming over- working out what people are doing. This enhancing it. whelmed, it can temporarily grey out is just what the company’s infamous pa- So when someone is overwhelmed less vital onscreen information and re- perclip was supposed to do, popping up with information, an augmented cogni- duce incoming radio communications. on the screen and oering advice when- tion system would try to help him cope by This should free the pilot to concentrate ever its Bayesian engine statistically deter- diverting some of it. Naturally enough, on the information that matters most. mined that the user needed assistance. Yet augmented cognition has captured the A lot of people still think it is science the clip soon became an irritation, dis- imagination of the armed forcesthe Pen- ction, says Dr Schmorrow, but there tracting the user and reducing productiv- tagon’s Defence Advanced Research Pro- have been some profound advances in ity. (Part of the problem was that jects Agency (DARPA) is one of its biggest the last six months. In an assessment of Microsoft was so proud of the feature that backers. That is because today’s military the system, six F-16 pilots were recently it made the clip more prominent.) personnel are bombarded not just by the asked to carry out a mission in a CogPit Augmented cognition promises to be a1 14 Augmented cognition The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006

forms the caller that the driver is busy, but may answer soon. If the driver is likely to motor on, the call is diverted to voicemail. The system is surprisingly accurate, says Dr Horvitz. It can predict whether a person will stop for just ve seconds, 35 seconds, or more than a minute, with an accuracy of about 80%. And rather than having to be trained by each user the sys- tem appears to generalise well. Given the amount of information being thrown at motorists, such a system could help take some of the stress out of driving.

Mind games When playing video games, a little stress can be a good thing. There is a lot of inter- est in using augmented cognition in gam- ing, says Dr Schmorrow, because by sensing a gamer’s cognitive state you can make it more fun. In particular, the tech- nique can stop players getting bored or lost, says John Laird, the director of the Ar- ticial Intelligence laboratory at the Uni- versity of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In a haunted-house role-playing game, Dr Laird has used augmented cognition to in- fer mental states and determine whether the player needs help to get back on track 2 dierent story, insists Eric Horvitz, a se- gauges how busy the user is and the ur- and advance the game’s story. nior researcher at Microsoft Research in gency of the new data, whether in the Although Dr Laird is basing this purely Redmond, Washington, and president of form of e-mails, telephone calls or text on the player’s activity and behaviour the American Association for Articial messages. We weigh the cost of interrup- within the game world, others are using Intelligence. The emphasis now is on l- tion against the benets of seeing time- physiological sensors, too. Alan Dix, an tering information before it reaches the critical information, says Dr Horvitz. expert in human and computer interac- user, he says. By controlling the ow of in- During a video-conference call, for ex- tion at Lancaster University in England, formation, it should be possible to in- ample, the system might decide not to predicts that within a few years game con- crease the amount of information people notify you that a piece of spam had ar- soles will come with a range of sensors can absorb without overloading them, rived in your mailbox. Similarly, it should designed to measure a player’s state of says Dr Horvitz. know that you do not want to be dis- alertness. EmSense, a company based in The trick in getting this right lies in the turbed by a message from a friend just be- Monterey, California, is already pursuing ability to recognise cognitive limitations fore the deadline for a reportbut to put this approach. It sells a lightweight head- and biases. And unlike BCI interfaces and through a call from a colleague who is set that monitors a player’s brainwaves, many of the military applications, this working on the same project. heart rate and breathing. It can also tell does not call for brain sensors, he says. Dr Horvitz’s team has also looked at whether the wearer is moving. Plenty of measures can tell you some- how models of interruption, as he calls Working with his colleague Kiel thing about the user’s state of mind: key- them, can lter out information when Gilleade, Dr Dix linked a heart monitor to strokes, how many windows are open people are driving. One program, called a rst-person shootera game in which and their content, whether the user is Short Stop, which runs on a smartphone, the player views the world along the bar- scrolling, the time of day, the contents of a can predict when a driver is likely to stop rel of a gun. The idea was to see if you can desktop calendareven background and how long that stop will last. The change the gameplay to keep people at an noises from a microphone and visual in- model is based on logs of more than optimal level of arousal, says Dr Dix. As formation from a camera. 18,000 miles (29,000km) covered in 2,500 the player’s heart rate drops, the game be- By analysing someone’s behaviour trips made by Microsoft volunteers. comes harder; but if he becomes too ex- during a training period, a program called When a call comes in, the program cited, it will start to ease o. We don’t Busy Body can learn to tell what someone looks at the position, speed, time of day want to kill them, says Dr Dix. The result is doing and whether to interrupt him. and even the weather to calculate the is a more compelling game. On the battle- The system can distinguish between chances that the driver will stop soon. If a eld, in the oce, in the car and even at types of behaviour and incoming in- stop is likely, the call is answered and put home, there are good reasons to teach formation, says Dr Horvitz. In eect, it on hold until the car stops. A message in- computers to read their users’ minds. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Case history 15

luminating areas. Moreover, the ability to mix and match the output of red, green and blue LEDs makes it possible to tune the emitted light to produce any desired colour. Lighting designers are already us- ing LEDs to illuminate monuments, res- taurants and even famous paintings, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Be- cause LEDs emit monochromatic light, any potentially harmful or unwanted ra- diation, such as ultraviolet or infra-red light, can be eliminated.

Back in the dark ages The rst observation of a semiconductor emitting light when zapped with electric- ity dates back to 1907. But because the amount of light produced was tiny, no one pursued the idea in earnest. That changed in the early 1960s, when Nick Holonyak, a researcher at General Elec- An even brighter idea tric, rst learned that semiconductors could generate infra-red light. He then set out to make a new type of semiconductor crystal that would be able to emit visible, red light. He succeeded in 1962, inventing conventional light bulbs. For one thing, the rst practical light-emitting diode. they last much longer: they can endure An LED is based on a combination of Lighting technology: The light up to a decade of non-stop use compared two semiconductor materials, called n- bulb is synonymous with with a few months or less for incandes- type and p-type. The n-type is so called invention. But, as this case cent bulbs. They also take up much less because it contains an excess of nega- space (a typical LED is about the size of tively charged electrons; the p-type con- history explains, it may lose out the rubber on the end of a pencil), are tains an abundance of positively charged to the light-emitting diode, shock resistant and, perhaps most impor- holes that can accept electrons. At the which is better in many ways tant of all, are extremely energy-ecient. junction where the two materials meet, An incandescent bulb, made of a wire electrons pair up with holes to form an OW long does it take to change a light lament encased in glass, emits only 5% area depleted of charge that prevents cur- Hbulb? According to iSuppli, a market- of the energy it consumes as light; the rest rent from owing. But applying a large research company that specialises in is wasted as heat. Fluorescent lights, enough voltage causes electrons and technology trends, the answer is 131 which consist of tubes lled with mer- holes to ow into the junction from op- years. That is the amount of time that will cury vapour, are roughly four times more posite sides. As electrons and holes pair have elapsed between 1879, when ecient. LEDs, however, contain no mer- up, each electron gives up energy, which Thomas Edison rst demonstrated his in- cury and already rival uorescents in e- is emitted in the form of light. By chang- candescent light bulb, and 2010, when ciency. Upfront costs make them too ing the composition of the semiconduc- semiconductor-based light-emitting expensive for most general lighting appli- tor materials, it is possible to determine diodes (LEDs) are expected to have made cations, but experts expect that to change the amount of energy given up by each signicant inroads into general illumina- over the next ve years as prices come electron, and hence the light’s colour. tion, a market worth $15 billion. down and eciencies go up. Even though Dr Holonyak’s original Since LEDs were rst invented over Worldwide about 20% of all electricity red LEDs were dim by today’s standards, four decades ago, they have mostly been generated is used for lighting. Several they were immediately commercialised used in niche applications, rst as simple studies reckon that LEDs could eventually and ended up being in production for de- indicator lights on calculators or watches cut that amount in half. That would not cades. Leaving GE in 1963 for an engineer- and then, as their brightness improved, only save billions of dollars in electricity ing professorship at his alma mater, the in displays, signs and trac signals. More bills, but also signicantly reduce energy University of Illinois, he schooled over recently, some companies have begun to demand, environmental pollution and two dozen PhD students who themselves sell LED xtures for residential use. greenhouse-gas emissions. made major contributions to the eld. We’re on the brink of a new lighting Besides being environmentally Among them is George Craford, who in- revolution, says Jerry Simmons, head of friendly, LEDs allow unprecedented con- vented the rst yellow LED and is now the solid-state lighting programme at trol over lighting. Unlike incandescent or the chief technology ocer at Philips America’s Sandia National Laboratory. uorescent lamps, which spew light in all Lumileds, a leading maker of high-bright- LEDs have become popular because directions, LEDs generate directional ness LEDs based in San Jose, California. they have numerous advantages over light, making them ideal for selectively il- In 1967 Dr Craford began working at 1 16 Case history The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Light bulbs are among the last devices that use vacuum tubes, an old technology that has been replaced in radios and most televisions.

2 Monsanto, then a chemical company, leagues at Nagoya University created the never published a paper, and Nichia was which mass-produced LEDs for the rst rst p-type gallium nitride by incorporat- an unknown company located on the time. LEDs then began to appear as indi- ing tiny amounts of magnesium. But the smallest and least populated of the four cator lights in calculators and watches, in- ease with which holes could travel main Japanese islands. Managers ini- cluding the famous digital Pulsar watch. through it was still too low to be practical. tially provided little support for his re- In 1971 Monsanto published an ad- A few years later Shuji Nakamura, then a search, though Nichia’s president later vertisement in the Wall Street Journal pro- scientist at a small chemical company authorised more funding for the project. claiming that LEDs might eventually be called Nichia, discovered why. He found The payo turned out to be huge. The used in car headlights. That was regarded that producing p-type gallium nitride, availability of the whole spectrum of col- as preposterous at the time, Dr Craford re- which made use of ammonia at high ours opened up new applications, from calls, and a fellow scientist even called temperatures, trapped hydrogen atoms full-colour video screens to display back- the assertion technically irresponsible. inside the crystal. These hydrogen atoms lighting. Between 1995 and 2005 the mar- But Dr Craford expects the prediction to bonded with the magnesium atoms that ket for high-brightness LEDs grew from be fullled within a year or so. were supposed to promote hole mobility, $122m to $3.9 billion, an average of 41% a Since those early days, LEDs have preventing them from doing their jobs year, says Robert Steele of Strategies Un- been rened in many ways. Researchers properly. Heating the crystal in a nitrogen limited, a research rm based in Moun- developed sophisticated methods to atmosphere, Dr Nakamura found, re- tain View, California. Nichia itself made a grow high-quality semiconductor crys- leased the hydrogen atoms and dramati- tidy sum, with sales of about $1.7 billion tals, reducing the likelihood that elec- cally improved the ease with which holes in 2005. Dr Nakamura wrote several in- trons or holes will become trapped by could move around. uential papers and went on to become defects. There has also been progress in In the end it was Dr Nakamura who one of the pre-eminent researchers in the scaling up the size of LEDs, so that they announced the creation of the rst bright eld. But he initially received only a piti- can be driven at higher currents and gen- blue LED in 1993, followed by the rst ful $200 bonus for his inventions. He erate more light. And design tweaks have bright green and bright white LEDs a few made headlines in 1999 when he left improved eciency by ensuring that years later. His success took the world by Nichia, took a position at the University light can escape from LEDs easily. surprise. When he began working on of California Santa Barbara, and in 2001 blue LEDs in 1989, he had no PhD, had sued his former employer in a patent dis- Singing the blues pute that was recently settled for $7m. Since the early 1970s, the eciency of Today there are two basic approaches red, orange and yellow LEDs has in- Source of illumination to generating white light with LEDs. The creased tenfold every ten years. In the- How LEDs work simplest and most common way is to ory, LEDs should eventually be able to coat a blue LED with a yellow phosphor.

p-type n-type electron LED achieve eciencies close to 100%. In the - The blue light from the excites the

- + -

mid-1980s red LEDs overcame a big hur- + phosphor, causing it to emit cool white

+ + -

+ -

dle when they surpassed incandescent + - light. But some energy is lost in the pro- -

+ - - LED red bulbs, which are notoriously inef- + + cess. Combining red, green and blue s cient since the white light they generate hole to produce white light has the potential to is passed through a red lter, which ab- An LED is based on a combination of two be more ecient, and the colour of the semiconductor materials, called n-type and p-type. sorbs 90% of the light. This paved the way The n-type contains an excess of negatively light could be tuned depending on mood for the use of red LEDs in trac signals, charged electrons; the p-type contains an or taste. The drawback of this approach is rear lights on cars, and outdoor signs. abundance of positively charged “holes” that can that it is dicult and expensive to match accept electrons. At the junction where the two LED Although scientists made advances materials meet, electrons pair up with holes to form and maintain the output of multiple s with red LEDs, creating bright blue and an uncharged, insulating layer that prevents over long periods. green LEDs proved much more dicult. current from flowing. To tackle these and other problems, Research on gallium nitride, a material many countries have created multi-mil-

that showed promise for blue LEDs, be- emitted light lion-dollar LED research programmes.

-

+ - -

gan in the late 1960s at the Radio Cor- - America’s government-sponsored Next + -

RCA + + -

poration of America ( ), which + - Generation Lighting Initiative, which has

+ - LED + - LED wanted to use s to create at-panel + funded more than 70 dierent pro- televisions. In the early 1970s RCA did + jects to date, aims to triple the eciency succeed in coaxing some light from gal- of white LEDs by 2025. To some that is a lium nitride-based diodes, but its blue +- conservative benchmark. I think we’ll LEDs were inecient and dim. Discour- But applying a large enough voltage causes be there much sooner, reckons Neal aged, most scientists in the eld gave up electrons and holes to flow into the junction from Hunter, the former chairman of Cree, one opposite sides. As electrons and holes pair up, each LED on the material. Gallium nitride turned electron gives up energy, which is emitted in the of the world’s leading manufactur- out to be dicult to grow without defects, form of light. By changing the properties of the ers. Dr Hunter is now the boss of LED and although n-type gallium nitride semiconductor materials, it is possible to Lighting Fixtures, a rm based in North determine the amount of energy given up by each LED could be made easily, p-type could not. electron, and hence the colour of the light. The Carolina that is working to make s Among the few who did not give up semiconductor materials are housed inside a more suitable for use in general illumina- were two Japanese researchers and even- plastic enclosure with a lens that concentrates the tion. It recently set an eciency record for emitted light in a particular direction. tually their persistence paid o. In the a white-light LED xture. late 1980s Isamu Akasaki and his col- Source: The Economist So far, only a handful of rms are 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Case history 17

2 specialising in this market. To compete with the light output of a single 60-watt incandescent bulb that emits about 800 lumens (a measure of light power as per- Lighting up the world ceived by the human eye), companies such as LED Lighting Fixtures and Perm- light of Southern California are designing lamps based on clusters of white LEDs The greatest impact of LED-based lighting could be in developing that achieve a similar lumen output, but countries, where it can be powered by batteries or solar panels consume a fraction of the power. Initial costs are still higher for such xtures than HILE trekking in Nepal in 1997, for traditional bulbs, but lower electricity WDave Irvine-Halliday was struck bills could make up the dierence within by the plight of rural villagers having a year or two, says Dr Hunter. to rely on smelly, dim and dangerous The size of LEDs allows for far greater kerosene lanterns to light their homes. choice in xture design, though people Hoping to make a dierence, Dr Irvine- disagree on how receptive consumers Halliday, a professor of electrical engi- will be to such possibilities. The shape neering at the University of Calgary in of lamps will change, believes James Canada, founded the Light Up The Brodrick, who manages America’s solid- World Foundation. The non-prot state lighting research programme for the organisation has since helped to distri- Department of Energy. Color Kinetics, a bute low-power, white light-emitting rm based in Boston, already makes LED diodes (LEDs), at low cost or free, to xtures resembling large tiles that can be thousands of people around the globe. mounted on walls to create checker- About 1.6 billion people worldwide board-like eects or morphing colours. are without access to electricity and LEDs made of organic materials, have to rely on fuel-based sources for called OLEDs, promise even more revolu- lighting. But burning fuel is not only tionary design possibilities. Since they extremely expensive$40 billion is were rst commercialised a few years spent on o-the-grid lighting in de- ago, they have mostly appeared in small veloping countries a yearit is also portable devices, such as mobile phones highly inecient and contributes to in- MightyLight shines bright and digital music-players. Based on ultra- door air pollution and the emission of thin, lightweight plastic sheets, OLEDs greenhouse gases. If people switched ble and runs for up to 12 hours. So far, emit a softer, more distributed light than from using fuel-based lamps to solar- Cosmos has sold nearly 5,000 of its conventional LEDs and might eventually powered LEDs, carbon-dioxide emis- $50 lamps to various charities. be turned into softly glowing wallpaper sions could be reduced by up to 190m Another company, Better Energy or curtains. tonnes per year, reckons Evan Mills, a Systems of Berkeley, California, is test- Because OLEDs are not as reliable and sta scientist at America’s Lawrence ing LEDadd-ons that might work well long-lasting as conventional LEDs, some Berkeley National Laboratory. That is with its Solio, a portable solar array scientists have been tempted to belittle equivalent to one-third of Britain’s an- that can also be used to charge mobile their importance, just as LEDs themselves nual carbon-dioxide emissions. phones and other devices. were originally underestimated in their LEDs are an ideal o-the-grid light The International Finance Corpora- early years. That could be a mistake, says source because they need so little tion (IFC), the private-sector invest- Fred Schubert, an engineering professor power. They can be run on AA batter- ment arm of the World Bank, recently at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in ies, or batteries recharged using small secured $5.4m in nancing for Light- Troy, New York, who heads the univer- solar arrays. Compared with kerosene ing the Bottom of the Pyramid, a four- sity’s Future Chips Constellation labora- lanterns, LEDs can deliver up to 100 year initiative that will engage lighting tory. As researchers, he says, we times more useful light to a task, be- manufacturers with pilot projects in always have to be ready for surprises. sides being extremely long-lasting. All Kenya and Ghana. Those in the eld may disagree about this adds up to a life-changing impact One task is to make LEDs aordable, the prospects of OLEDs, but they do seem for the lamps’ owners, ranging from in- says Dr Mills, who is a consultant on to agree on one thing: the days of the in- creased work productivity, more time the IFC project. Households in rural candescent bulb are numbered. Conven- to study at night and reduced health Kenya, for example, spend an average tional light bulbs are among the last problems and re hazards. of $7 a month on kerosene for lighting. devices that use vacuum tubes, an old Several rms are getting ready to tap Although the cost of a solar-powered technology that has long been replaced into this underserved market. Cosmos LED lamp over its lifetime is much less in radios and most televisions, notes Ignite Innovations, a spin-out from than the cumulative cost of fuel, many Sandia’s Dr Simmons. Ultimately, in- Stanford University that is now based people cannot aord the initial $25 to candescent light bulbs will end up in a in New Delhi, India, has developed the $50 outlay for such a lamp. If that hitch museum, just like vacuum tubes did for MightyLight, a solar-powered LED- could be ironed outvia micronance, electronics, he says. 7 based lamp that is waterproof, porta- perhapsthe payo could be bright. 7 18 High-tech concrete The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006

Concrete possibilities

chemicals that encourage the trapping of tiny air Materials: It has been in use for bubbles makes concrete more durable, because centuries. But now, tired of it gives water room to being walked all over, concrete expand into when it is ready for a high-tech upgrade freezes, thereby avoid- ing tiny cracks. In the HE Wizard of Menlo Park had a magic late 1990s researchers Ttouch, but it sometimes failed him. In began to experiment 1906 Thomas Edison declared that he had with another additive hit upon the salvation of the slum small amounts of electri- dwellercheap concrete houses cast cally conductive steel or from single, reusable moulds. Though his carbon bres. Even though Edison Portland Cement Company went the bres make up less than on to supply concrete for New York’s Yan- 1% of the concrete by volume, kee Stadium and the rst concrete high- they have a large eect: the re- way, the great man’s dreams for concrete sulting concrete gains the ability to died amid complex, expensive moulds conduct electricity. and 11 unsold demonstration houses. A century later, materials scientists Electric avenues and their business partners have been Such concrete has a range of interesting picking up where Edison left o. In their properties. If you compress electrically search for more high-tech concrete mix- conductive concrete, the bres get slightly tures, they have found a fast, innovative closer together, increasing the concrete’s way to make cheap, durable housing for electrical conductivity. So if a road is both the developing and the developed made from conductive concrete, it will be world. Other researchers have been ex- able to monitor and weigh passing trac. tending Edison’s asphalt altruism in new That is not all a conductive concrete directions, trying not only to reduce con- road can do. Passing an electrical current crete’s environmental impact but also to through a wire causes it to heat up, just use concrete to clean up the environment. like the lament in a light bulb. An electric The recipe for concrete is simple and current will heat a road, a bridge, or a run- has been around, in one form or another, way made of conductive concrete in just since the days of Ancient Egypt. The bulk the same way. For the past three winters, of the material consists of aggregatene the Roca Spur Bridge outside Lincoln, Ne- particles such as sand and coarse ones braska, has been warming itself using an such as gravel or crushed stone. When electric blanket of conductive concrete. water and a powdered cement are mixed Christopher Tuan of the University of Ne- in, they undergo a chemical reaction that braska-Lincoln and his former student, hardens and binds the aggregates into a Sherif Yehia, have been carefully moni- wires and sensors in traditional concrete. solid mass. To make the cement, materials toring the bridge. Using electrical heating, Conductive concrete could thus be used such as limestone and clay are heated in they can maintain Roca Spur at a toasty on heavily used bridges or airport run- large kilns to over 1,000°C. At such high 10°C above the ambient temperature, ways. Dr Tuan is looking for people to li- temperatures, water and carbon dioxide warm enough to keep it free of snow and cense and commercialise his technology. are driven o and the limestone and clay ice throughout the winter. In theory, conductive concrete could begin to fuse to form new compounds. Although their conductive concrete is also nd uses in buildings. A oor of con- These are then ground into a ne powder roughly four and a half times more ex- ductive concrete could reveal when some- that goes by the name of Portland cement. pensive than ordinary concrete, Dr Tuan one had entered or left a rooma handy In America alone over 100m tonnes of notes that this does not include the costs way to detect intruders or control heating the stu are used each year. of accidents or corrosion due to the salt and lighting. It could be used for under- But like good chefs, materials scientists used to de-ice roads. Furthermore, using oor heating, too. A building with beams have long known that they can tweak the the concrete as a heater does not degrade of conductive concrete could detect basic concrete recipe to create any num- the mechanical properties or the durabil- changing loads and damage during an ber of desired eects. For example, adding ity of the concrete, unlike embedding earthquake. Conductive concrete walls1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 High-tech concrete 19 The kilns that produce Portland cement also produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, accounting for 5-10% of global emissions.

2 can also shield sensitive equipment from rode it, so it is suitable for use in coastal ar- fume (a waste-product of the semi- electronic eavesdroppers. eas and its insulating properties mean conductor industry) have all been tried as Dr Jaycee Chung of Global Contour, an that it can be used both in hot and cold cli- replacement cements. Laila Raiki of the engineering rm based in Rockwall, mates. It should also be strong enough to Canadian IRC thinks that the use of such Texas, cautions that such ideas are far withstand hurricane-force winds. supplementary cements has yet to be from being realised. Although labora- Jim Paul, Grancrete’s chairman, reck- fully exploited. Questions remain over tories have been rening recipes for con- ons that a team of two can build a simple such things as the quality and transport ductive concrete for years, testing in house in two days. All in all, he estimates costs of the waste. But the IRC wants to buildings is only now getting under way. that low-cost housing can be made for $12 use such industrial by-products to make The chief task is to build systems to moni- to $15 per square foot. Grancrete opened practical objects, such as roong tiles. tor the electrical signals coming from con- its rst full-scale production plant this Scientists have also been using con- ductive-concrete structures. Global summer. So far, it has performed proof- crete to get rid of unwanted materialgiv- Contour has been developing special of-concept demonstrations in Venezuela ing waste, as it were, the proverbial wireless sensors to do just that. And Dr and Panama, and is preparing for more in concrete boots. Highly toxic materials Chung has raised half the money needed Mexico, Canada, Argentina and America. such as the ash left over from incinerating for a building in Texas to demonstrate Another new type of concrete is at an municipal solid waste, or material conductive concrete’s gift for self-sensing even earlier stage. Bill Price, an architec- dredged up when maintaining a port, are and electromagnetic shielding. ture professor at the University of Hous- dicult and costly to dispose of. By en- The American army, which has ton, has been making concrete embedded capsulating them in specially treated con- funded part of Global Contour’s research, with glass or plastic mixtures and dier- crete, they can be dumped and serve a is interested in using conductive concrete ent binding agents. The resulting thin con- useful function, too. Christian Meyer, pro- in military facilities and bunkers, as well crete panels are translucent. Dr Price has fessor of civil engineering at Columbia as on roads at border crossings. The Insti- made translucent concrete into bricks and University, has come up with treatments tute for Construction Research (IRC), a di- into pre-cast panels that are suitable for that allow waste glass to be used as an ag- vision of National Research Council non-load-bearing walls. It has been ex- gregate in concrete. Normally, glass reacts Canada and one of the pioneers of re- hibited at the National Building Museum with cement, causing the concrete to search into conductive concrete, is also in in Washington, DC, at the Musée des Arts swell and crack. The specially treated the rst stages of nancing demonstration and Métiers in Paris, France, and in a pa- glass concrete is less water-absorbing, projects. The rst conductive-concrete vilion near Chaumont, also in France, de- more durable, more chemically resistant houses and oces are likely to appear in signed by Dr Price, his colleague Peter and aesthetically pleasing. In addition, it the next few years. Zweig, and their students. So far, how- encourages the recycling of glass. ever, there are no rm plans for commer- Wausau Tile of Wausau, Wisconsin Casa de concrete cialisation. Dr Price’s next step is to has licensed Dr Meyer’s technology to Self-sensing houses may appeal to the ex- include it in new buildings around Hous- make decorative tiles and planters. In travagant few who can aord them, but ton, starting with a 2.5-metre by 5-metre 2005 they used over 270 tonnes of recy- another concrete technology promises to (8ft by 16ft) wall in a residential building. cled coloured glass. Sales of their recy- help those who cannot. Grancrete, a com- Concrete is the second-most widely cled-glass concrete products in 2005 were pany based in Mechanicsville, Virginia, used material on earth after water. Each 45% higher than in the previous two has been working on a new type of ce- year, about one cubic metre of the stu is years; sales so far in 2006 are up another ramic, cement-like material for making produced for every man, woman and 20%, as builders show more interest in quick, durable and cheap spray-on child on the planet. Not surprisingly, an green construction techniques. We’re housing for the billion or so people in the industry of this size has a big eect on the still learning how to use recycling, Dr world who lack it. Grancrete, as its inven- environment. In and of itself, concrete is a Meyer says. As space in landlls grows tion is known, has its origins in a material durable and environmentally friendly short and gravel pits are mined for aggre- invented to encapsulate nuclear waste. Its material. Unfortunately, the kilns that gate, he thinks alternatives like his glass developers soon realised, though, that its produce Portland cement also produce will become more attractive. real potential lay in housing people, large amounts of carbon dioxide So concrete research con- rather than plutonium. roughly one tonne of it for each tinues at a furious A small local team can be trained to tonne of cement. As a result, ce- pace. Thomas Edison mix and to apply the grancrete, which is ment-making is thought to ac- would be proud. 7 made from a mixture of sand and a spe- count for some 5-10% of global cial binding agent. The team uses a hose carbon dioxide emissions. to spray a thin coating onto a simple As concern over greenhouse- frame. Because grancrete binds to many gas emissions has risen, so too has surfaces, the frame can be made from interest in materials that can re- wood, metal, or even polystyrene or place Portland cement. Fly ash woven matting. When it hardens, 20 min- (the residue trapped in the utes later, the grancrete structure is twice chimneys of coal-red as strong as traditional concrete, and it is power plants), blast- durable, re-resistant, waterproof and furnace slag (a by-pro- non-toxicmore than can be said for most duct of steelmaking) of the poor’s housing. Salt does not cor- and condensed silica 20 Digital detectives The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006

Secrets of the digital detectives Computing: How fraud-detection systems combine dozens of clues to spot suspicious patterns in mountains of transactions

HE pleasure of reading a classic detec- a person will drive a cheaper but properly Ttive story comes from the way that the insured car. And so on. sleuth puts together several clues to arrive The staggering number of combina- at a surprising conclusion. What is enjoy- tions, each an indication of fraud or legiti- able is not so much nding out who the macy, underscores the limitations of villain is, but hearing the detectives ex- human analysis. Fraud-detection soft- plain their reasoning. Today, not all detec- ware, however, can evaluate a vast num- tives are human. At insurance companies, ber of permutations and deliver a banks and telecoms rms, fraud-detec- fraud-probability score. And such pro- details of the items being purchased (de- tion software is used to comb through mil- grams are getting better as new claims rived from their bar codes), to evaluate the lions of transactions, looking for patterns provide extra statistics that can help tune likelihood of foul play in the form of a nu- and spotting fraudulent activity far more the computational recipes, or algorithms, merical risk score. Any transactions that quickly and accurately than any human used to detect fraud. score above a certain pre-dened thresh- could. But like human detectives, these German insurers, for example, re- old are then denied or challenged. software sleuths follow logical rules and cently noticed that claimants who call Buying petrol seems innocent enough. combine disparate pieces of dataand back shortly after ling, angrily demand- If no attendant is present, however, the there is something curiously fascinating ing speedy settlement, are disproportion- risk score goes up, because fraudsters about the way they work. ately more likely to be cheaters, says Jörg prefer to avoid face-to-face purchases. Consider car insurance. Every Mon- Schiller, an insurance expert at the Otto Buying a diamond ring soon after buying day morning, telephone operators at in- Beisheim School of Management in petrol results in an even higher risk score: surance rms listen to stories of the Vallendar, Germany. Evidently fraudsters thieves often test a card’s validity with a weekend’s motoring mishaps, typing the consider themselves good actors. But small purchase before buying something answers to several dozen standard ques- when pugnacious policyholders call after much bigger. A $100 purchase at a shop tions into their computers. Once, each the 20th of the month, the probability that sells hard liquor is more likely to be claim form then passed to a loss adjuster that they are acting decreases slightly, fraudulent than a more expensive shop- for approval; now software is increasingly since funds from the previous month’s ping spree at a wine shop, because used instead. The Monday-morning in- paycheque may be dwindling. Mr Schiller whisky is easier to fence. A purchase of surance claims, it turns out, are slightly says most car insurers in rich countries sports shoes is risky because trainers ap- more likely to be fraudulent than Tuesday now use fraud-detection software, and peal to a demographic with less money claims, since weekends make it easier for those in developing countries are adopt- than, say, buyers of golf clubs. Buying two policyholders who stage accidents to as- ing it rapidly. pairs of trainers increases the risk, as this semble friends as false witnesses. A single may indicate plans to resell them. Shoes rule like that is straightforward enough Play your cards right in teenage sizes bump up the score fur- for a human loss adjuster to take into ac- With an estimated $250m in annual sales, ther, since pre-teens are less likely to buy count. But fraud-detection software can and yearly growth topping 25%, the larg- stolen goods. Sales in London, New York consider dozens of other variables, too. est and fastest-growing category of fraud- or Miami, all cities with vibrant black If a claimant was nearly injured (be- detection software is that used to spot markets for shoes, push scores higher, as cause of an impact near the driver’s seat, fraudulent credit-card transactions. Ac- do purchases made during school holi- for example), the accident is less likely to cording to the Association for Payment days. The fraud history of individual have been staged and the claim less likely Clearing Services, based in London, such shops can also be taken into account. to be fraudulent, even if it is being led on software is largely responsible for reduc- Seasoned criminals can, of course, g- a Monday. Drivers of cars with low resale ing losses from credit-card fraud in Britain ure out such rules and change their be- values are proportionately more likely to alone from £505m ($925m) in 2004 to haviour in an attempt to avoid detection. le fraudulent claims. But that factor is £439m ($799m) in 2005. Merchants imple- Some types of purchases are less likely to less important if the claimant also owns a menting anti-fraud software for the rst be fraudulent. A shopping spree in a linen luxury car, which suggests auence. And time commonly see losses from fraud re- shop, however, does not have much ap- if the insurance on the luxury car has ex- duced by half. Such software evaluates peal to most criminals. However, says pired, the likelihood of foul play drops many parameters associated with each Mike Davis, a fraud expert at Butler further, since this increases the likelihood credit-card transaction, including specic Group, a consultancy, the vast majority1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Digital detectives 21

world, where mobile operators now in- vesting in the technology. David Ronen, of ECtel, a rm based in Rosh Ha’ayin, Is- rael, with more than 100 telecoms clients and galloping growth in poor countries, says his rm’s software establishes the normal calling patterns of individuals in 2 of fraudsters are low-level opportunists items, apparently in an eort to deceive order to detect tell-tale weird situations. fairly easily foiled by today’s fraud-detec- anti-fraud systems (since such music is For example, if a mobile account opened tion software. The situation, he says, is generally assumed not to appeal to in Shanghai, and sparingly used for local spectacularly better than it was just a young, tech-savvy criminals). Retail Deci- calls, begins making numerous calls from few years ago. sions’ software, called PRISM, detected Beijing to a few numbers in a distant west- But the technology trips up cleverer the trend. Now, purchases that combine ern province, then it is likely that a phone fraudsters too, using a variety of tricks. classical or opera CDs with expensive thief is calling friends back home. The software can, for example, assign a goods receive a higher score than pur- Fair Isaac, a large fraud-detection rm customised scoring algorithm to each chases of high-cost items alone. based in Minneapolis, operates a system credit card, depending on its normal us- By reading a computer’s internet-pro- so fast that it can block dialled calls before age patterns. That algorithm can then be tocol address, anti-fraud systems can ge- they are even connected. The software, ne-tuned after each transaction. If a card olocate online buyers, and raise or lower called Falcon, is widely used, since laws belonging to a Berliner has never been scores depending on where they are. Most prevent many telecoms rms from termi- used to purchase a plane ticket or buy systems penalise customers in places nating non-prepaid calls once they are goods outside Germany, the system may such as Eastern Europe, China, Thailand connected. Wily criminals are increas- block an attempt to book a Moscow-To- and Vietnam. More dramatically, many ingly operating black-market phoning kyo ight leaving in three hours. An at- merchants block all transactions from cer- businesses based in parks and on street tempt to charge a moped to an elderly tain countries. As this practice becomes corners. You may see 30 people with cell woman’s card may fail. Cards are often more widespread, many countries, phones on one corner and one guy is blocked when the volume of transactions mostly in West Africa, are being com- dialling all the numbers for them, says for which they are used abruptly spikes. pletely shut out of international e-com- Ted Crooks of Fair Isaac. The calls, often to E-businesses using anti-fraud software merce. SN Brussels Airlines, for example, expensive destinations in poor countries, now block about 8% of all transactions. uses software developed by Ogone, a Bel- sometimes last days, Mr Crooks says, be- Some aborted orders, of course, are not gian rm that protects more than 6,400 cause cheats use forwarding systems to fraudulent. Each false positive reduces European merchants, to shut out all com- serve many customers with a single call. prots and angers an honest shopper. To puters in Liberia and Congo. Without it, Technology that can pinpoint handsets’ limit such damage, risk managers (em- says Bruno Brusselmans, director of on- locations, however, allows calls in hot ployed by the software developers or the line sales, I don’t even want to think areas renowned for such illicit operations merchants themselves) study sales data about what would happen. to be blocked. compiled before the anti-fraud software Telecoms rms have always suered It is all a far cry from piecing together was implemented. This analysis helps re- heavily from fraud, which is thought to re- clues in a country house, or the drudgery tailers nd the optimal score threshold to duce industry revenues by around 5%. But of real-life detective work. But the result is determine which orders they accept. new software that identies fraudulent the same. Life gets harder for the bad guys, Online fraudsters have tricks of their callers on mobile networks is helping and the honest citizens, who ultimately own, of course. Carl Clump, the boss of some operators slash their losses. Tele- pick up the bill for fraud, are protected. Retail Decisions, a fraud-detection rm com Italia’s 140 anti-fraud engineers The digital detectives, like those in mys- based near London with clients including trimmed losses this year to less than 1% by tery novels, arrive at their conclusions by Wal-Mart, Sears and Bloomingdale’s, of- freezing about 30,000 phones a month, combining apparently trivial morsels of fers an example. Not long ago, American says anti-fraud director Fabio Scarpelli. information. But as Sherlock Holmes put scammers began buying CDs of classical Such spectacular drops in fraud are it, I am glad of all details, whether they music with their purchases of expensive more commonplace in the developing seem to you to be relevant or not. 7 22 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Mr BlackBerry sends a message Balsillie, a Harvard MBA who joined the company in 1992, handles the nancial Mike Lazaridis, co-founder of side of the business. the rm behind the BlackBerry, Having settled a long-running patent is a passionate advocate of dispute with a $612.5m out-of-court pay- fundamental scientic research ment earlier this year, RIM is on a roll. The millionth BlackBerry subscriber signed up in 2004. In March, barely two years OME pocket-sized electronic gadgets later, the number of subscribers passed S are merely successful, but an exalted 5m. The rm is almost doubling in size few become household names. The each year and Mr Lazaridis confesses that Walkman, Game Boy and iPod are exam- this is one his biggest headaches. We ples from the consumer market; and in have to make sure the new half does not the business world, the BlackBerry has go and make mistakes that have been attained a similar iconic status. During avoided by the other half, he says. Most meetings and in airport lounges, manag- entrepreneurs would love to have such a ers can be seen furtively tapping out mes- problem. No wonder that Mr Lazaridis, sages on this nifty device, which keeps who has won his country’s top innova- them constantly updated with their oce tion award among other accolades, is of- e-mail anywhere they can get a wireless ten called the Bill Gates of Canada. signal. So compulsive is such push e-mail that the term CrackBerry has The cosmic connection been coined to describe the addiction. Such is the iconic status of the BlackBerry Yet just a decade ago, the whole idea that Mr Lazaridis was asked to appear in that adults would happily type e-mails a recent advertisement by American using a keyboard the size of a credit card Express. Mr Lazaridis is shown sketching seemed absurd. It was late one night in a BlackBerry in a room lined with equa- 1997, while sitting in his basement, that tion-laden blackboards. The academic Mike Lazaridis suddenly glimpsed the fu- setting is no exaggeration. Mr Lazaridis is ture. In a paper he drafted on the spur of fascinated by fundamental physics, a pas- the moment, entitled Success Lies in sion in which he invests as a philanthro- Paradox, he asked, When is a tiny key- pist. In 2000 he founded the Perimeter board more ecient than a large one? Institute for Theoretical Physics, just out- The answer to his riddle: when you use side Waterloo University, donating your thumbs. Mr Lazaridis e-mailed his C$100m ($66m) to establish an institute vision of a new device to colleagues at where bons struggle to reconcile the Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian force of gravity with quantum mechan- company based in Waterloo, Ontario, ics, by postulating that the universe has that he had co-founded in 1984 with Dou- hidden dimensions or that space and glas Fregin, a childhood friend. A year time have a granular structure. later the BlackBerry was born. At rst sight, this seems like a highly Fortune favours the well-prepared esoteric form of philanthropy, far re- mind, and for Mr Lazaridis, the prepara- moved from the world-saving urgency of, tion started at school, where he loved to say, the real Bill Gates, who is backing tinker with electronics and ham radios. new drugs to cure diseases such as ma- In a prophetic moment, an electronics laria. But for Mr Lazaridis, this is enlight- workshop teacher told him that the per- ened, if rather long-term, self-interest. He son who combined computers with sees a direct link between basic science wireless would be on to something big. and Canada’s technological future. This Of course, the BlackBerry is not unique in is a cornerstone of a country’s competi- achieving that combination. Rather, it re- tiveness. You can never invest too much lies on a series of innovations, such as the in basic research, he says. keyboard optimised for thumbing, a It is a refreshingly far-sighted view clickable scroll wheel and menus pared from a business leader. Indeed, some down as much as possibleall of which would argue that it is a trie naive. What are designed to please busy executives. dierence does it make whether a coun- We take a very measured, scientic try such as Canada supports basic sci- approach to what we dowe’re not just ence, as long as its industry is ready to chasing what others have, says Mr benet from the technological spin-os Lazaridis. His role at RIM, where he is co- of basic science performed elsewhere? chief executive, is to oversee the com- When asked about this, Mr Lazaridis pany’s technology development; Jim quotes a 1945 report by Vannevar Bush, 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 23rd 2006 Brain scan 23 Mr Lazaridis expects his philanthropy to produce some demonstrable payo for his own rm. In fact, he thinks this is already starting to happen.

2 called Science, the Endless Frontier. behave in unpredictable ways. One neat cess. RIM has licensed its software to Bush was the man who co-ordinated trick is to create qubits, the quantum other rms, including Nokia, so that they American research during the second equivalent of the 0s and 1s on which digi- can incorporate BlackBerry functionality world war, overseeing one of the most tal information is based. Computers that into their devices. The company is also portentous applications of science in the process qubits, which weirdly manage to moving beyond e-mail, by providing the history of mankindthe building of the be both 0 and 1 at the same time, are far tools for mobile devices to gain access to atom bomb. Yet in the report, Bush ar- faster at solving some problemssuch as other software, such as sales- and inven- gued eloquently for the need to fund ba- factoring large numbers into primes, a tory-management systems. sic research that is unfettered by step in code-breaking. But the area where Mr Lazaridis thinks industrial or social demands. Mr Lazaridis explains with evident that RIM has a special edge is data secu- For decades, his inuential views pride that researchers at IQC recently rity. I believe that security is underesti- have helped to promote a linear model of published the rst experimental demon- mated by the industry at present, he innovation where curiosity-driven re- stration of a 12-qubit computer. Although says. Regulatory issues, such as the Sar- search begets technology, which is then that sounds small compared with the banes-Oxley act in America, are aecting transformed by industry into products megabits that ordinary computers rou- how corporate data is maintained and se- that benet society. But in recent years, tinely deal with today, he points out that cured, including on wireless devices. He the model has come under scrutiny. it wouldn’t take many more qubits to get points to customers such as America’s Funding agencies in many industrialised something quite useful. Already, quan- armed forces, the British police force, re- countries are increasingly shifting sup- tum cryptography, a branch of quantum cent validation of RIM’s security model port towards applied science, and are in- computing that uses qubits to ensure the by NATO and a long list of security certi- sisting that even basic research must be secure transmission of information, has cations obtained in various countries, to directly relevant to the taxpayers who spawned start-up companies selling com- illustrate his point. Analysts seem to support it. mercial products. Quantum computing agree: Gartner refers to RIM as the gold Mr Lazaridis is quick to point out that is probably accelerating faster than the standard for wireless security. the linear modela caricature of Bush’s early days of electronic computing, says And it is in just this area that Mr Laza- arguments in his viewis too simplistic. Mr Lazaridis. It’s amazing that we can ridis sees early signs that his commitment You don’t go from the laboratory test- say that quantum cryptography is al- to nurturing basic science is paying o. I tube straight to someone’s garage and ready almost old hat. was quite proud of the fact that last year then on to successthat’s a fable, he Mr Lazaridis’s advocacy of science we hired our rst quantum cryptography says. For him, the correlation between ba- and education has won him acclaim in PhD from IQC, and he went straight into sic science and industrial achievement Canada. He became chancellor of the our cryptography labs, he says. That’s makes sense only if you look over long University of Waterloo in 2003even how seriously we take the whole security time scales. And, he explains, you’ve got though nearly 20 years earlier he had part of the platform. to have all the parts in place, including ef- dropped out of his engineering course at The point is not that BlackBerrys are cient mechanisms to train young people the university to start RIM, much to his about to process qubits anytime soon. who will transfer new scientic knowl- parents’ dismay. But he does expect his But by helping to attract talented scien- edge to industry, as well as companies philanthropy to produce some de- tists to Canada, Mr Lazaridis can furnish that are ready and receptive to employ monstrable payo, including for his own his company, and many others besides, and empower that talent. In other rm. In fact, he thinks this is already start- with the bright young people who will words, basic science is a necessary but ing to happen, as RIM strives to maintain sustain the country’s technology indus- not sucient condition for remaining in- its lead in wireless e-mail devices. try in years to come. 7 dustrially competitive. RIM cannot aord to rest on its laurels. Having created a new category with the A quantum leap BlackBerry, it now faces a host of rivals, Oer to readers Q Reprints of this survey are available at a price of Putting this philosophy into practice, Mr including Palm’s Treo, the Motorola £2.50 plus postage and packing. Lazaridis made further donations in 2004 and the Nokia E61. As e-mail becomes a A minimum order of ve copies is required. and 2005, totalling C$50m, to found the standard feature on expensive mobile Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) phonesaccording to Gartner Group, a Corporate oer at the University of Waterloo and to link consultancy, some 100m smartphones Customisation options on corporate orders of it to the university’s nanotechnology pro- will be sold this yearBlackBerry will 500 or more are available. Please contact us to discuss your requirements. gramme. A decade ago quantum comput- have to try harder to dierentiate itself. ing was just the sort of pie-in-the-sky Similarly, RIM’s pioneering push Send all orders to: topic that theoretical physicists of the e-mail technology, whereby incoming The Rights and Syndication department kind which populate the Perimeter Insti- messages are sent straight to the device 26 Red Lion Square tute loved to talk about, but which immediately, has now been replicated by London WC1R 4HQ seemed far removed from any practical rivals such as Microsoft. Tel +44 (0)20 7576 8000 application. But that is no longer so. Even so, Mr Lazaridis is optimistic Fax +44 (0)20 7576 8492 Quantum computing turns to its own about RIM’s prospects. The BlackBerry is e-mail: [email protected] advantage some of the apparent limita- not just a device, he insists, but a compo- tions that quantum physics imposes on nent of an entire solution that includes the atomic worldwhere Heisenberg’s the server technology and partnerships uncertainty principle rules and particles with operators to provide network ac-