Digital blueprints What happened Looking up for buildings to wave power? Mr Wikipedia TechnologyQuarterly June 7th 2008 Drinking the ocean How desalination works TTQCOVERJune.inddQCOVERJune.indd 1 227/5/087/5/08 116:34:326:34:32 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 7th 2008 Monitor 3 Contents On the cover There is lots of water on earth, but 97% of it is too salty for human consumption. As concern grows over water’s scarcity, there is growing interest in desalination, which turns salty water into fresh water. How does it work, and can it provide a quick technological x? Page 20 Monitor 3 Watching while you surf, how Watching while you surf to stop cars, the rise of the low•cost laptop, underground delivery by rail, renumbering the internet, oating wind turbines, smart appliances, monitoring the post, neutron scanning, and new approaches to web browsing Online advertising: New ad•targeting systems, which determine users’ interests by monitoring which websites they visit, are proving controversial Rational consumer S IT a worrying invasion of privacy for to return to work the next day prompts 13 Changing gears web surfers, or a lucrative new business New types of gearbox explained I him to click on an advertisement and model for online advertising? A new book a minibreak for the next weekend. behavioural approach to targeting in• To advertisers, this all sounds great. Computing ternet advertisements, being pioneered by Behavioural•targeting rms are doing the 14 Digital models of buildings companies such as Phorm, NebuAd and rounds in Europe and America o ering From blueprints to databases FrontPorch, is said to be both of these the prospect of working out what web things. The idea is that special software, surfers are thinking, perhaps even before Wave power installed in the networks of internet• they know themselves. If this really 18 The coming wave service providers (ISPs), intercepts web• works, advertisers will be prepared to pay A story of ups and downs page requests generated by their sub• more to place ads, since they are more scribers as they roam the net. The pages in likely to be clicked on. That in turn means Case history question are delivered in the usual way, that websites will be able to charge more 20 Tapping the oceans but are also scanned for particular key• for their advertising slots. A small cut also The rise of desalination words in order to build up a prole of each goes to the ISP that originally gathered the subscriber’s interests. These proles can prole information. Telemedicine then be used to target advertisements The companies involved suggest that more accurately. internet users will welcome all this, since 23 The future of health care Suppose a web user is idly surng a It may be closer than you think more accurate targeting will turn internet travel blog one Sunday afternoon. He advertising from an annoying distraction visits pages containing words such as into a genuinely helpful service. This idea Open•source hardware holiday, ight and hotel. The beha• that we don’t provide a service by doing 25 Open sesame vioural•targeting software watching him this is as far from the truth as it’s possible The virtues of letting everyone in inside the ISP’s network registers and to be, says Kent Ertugrul, the boss of categorises this apparent interest in travel. Phorm. It creates a situation where Brain scan Later, when he logs on to a social•net• there’s less rubbish bombarding you. 27 Truth and consequences working site to see what his friends are up But not everyone likes the idea. Oppo• A prole of Jimmy Wales, the to, advertisements for an airline or hotel nents of behavioural targeting have kicked co•founder of Wikipedia chain pop up alongside the postings and up the biggest fuss in Britain, which is photos. The depressing prospect of having where the technology seems to be making 1 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly June 7th 2008 2 the most progress: the three biggest ISPs that, by o ering ISPs a chance to get their (BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk), which hands on a slice of the fast•growing on• together account for around 70% of the line•advertising pie. Behavioural•targeting market, have all signed up to use Phorm’s rms also like to portray themselves as technology. Since news of their plans feisty underdogs taking on mighty Google, emerged in February, over 13,000 people which is itself the cause of concern about have signed an online petition opposing online privacy. Phorm points out that its the system. Legal and networking experts system does not retain detailed informa• have argued that it constitutes an unau• tion about web usage as it builds its user thorised wiretap, and is therefore illegal. prolesin contrast to Google, which Richard Clayton, a computer•security keeps records of users’ search queries for expert at Cambridge University who has up to two years. (The European Commis• taken a close look at Phorm’s systems, did sion recently called upon Google to delete not like what he saw. Proponents of beha• such information after six months.) If vioural targeting, he concluded, assume people knew what was stored right now, that if only people understood all the they’d be shocked, says Phorm’s Mr technical details they’d be happy. I have, Ertugrul. His company’s system, he says, is and I’m still not happy at all. the model for privacy online. Phorm, which is now trying to get Even so, most web users are happy to American ISPs to adopt its technology too, strike an implicit deal with Google: it emphasises that consumers will be given provides an excellent free search engine in the option to opt out of the system if they return for the ability to display relevant do not wish to use it. It points out that advertisements. The quid pro quo with information about individuals’ surng behavioural targeting, says Mr Ertugrul, is habits remains within the custody of the that ISPs will start making money from becoming less e ective as new traction• ISP (which already has access to such online advertising, which they can then control systems become more widely information anyway), and that user pro• spend on upgrading their networks, with• deployed. At the same time, run•at les merely associate keywords with an out raising prices for subscribers. This is a tyres are making another common anonymous serial number, rather than a way of funding the internet, he says. method of stopping a vehicleplacing a name. Its proling system ignores sensi• Behavioural targeting is not necessarily strip of spikes across its pathless e ec• tive pages, such as those from online• a bad idea, but imposing it without telling tive. Even cars with ordinary tyres are not banking sites, and will not be used to people is likely to annoy them when they always incapacitated by the spikes. Some target advertising for pornographic sites. nd out about it. Without adequate dis• career along on their wheel•rims at up to Critics worry, however, that behaviou• closure, an opt out system looks like 160kph (100mph), says Geo rey Alpert, an ral targeting fundamentally undermines snooping; but an opt in system, given all expert in vehicle•pursuit litigation at the the trusting relationship between ISPs and the fuss, now looks like a tough sell. 7 University of South Carolina, in Colum• their subscribers, by allowing a third party bia. The result is a lot of desperate high• to monitor what millions of people are speed chases, one in four of which result doing. They also worry about Phorm’s in someone getting injured, and causing previous behaviour. Until last year it was 400 deaths a year in America alone. known as 121Media, and it gathered in• Stop that car! One way to avoid the need for chases formation about internet users’ interests would be to track felonious vehicles elec• by getting them to download adware, tronically, instead of running after them. which was included in bundles with other StarChase, a company based in Virginia pieces of software. This software then Beach, Virginia, has developed a way to do monitored users’ surng habits and used just that. A pneumatic cannon is mounted the resulting data to target pop up ad• Transport: New technological tricks on the pursuit car. With the help of a vertisements of the kind that once and devices are being developed to guiding laser, it shoots a satellite•based blighted the web. enable police ocers to track and tracking device, smothered in epoxy goo, All this was legal, but it won 121Media halt suspect vehicles onto the target vehicle, allowing the police few friends among PC users, who found to track the suspect without endangering its software dicult to remove from their T MAKES a spectacular sight. To stop a the public. The Los Angeles Police Depart• machines. The revelation that the com• Ieeing car, a pursuing policeman nudges ment plans to deploy the system this year. pany, since renamed Phorm, conducted a the front of his own car against the rear From the police’s point of view, howev• secret trial of its new technology with BT corner of a fugitive vehicle. Then, by er, it would be better if they could actually in 2006 and 2007, monitoring thousands turning into the pursued car, the ocer stop a runaway car by satellite, not just of customers without telling them, has not forces it into a jolting tailspin that brings it track it. General Motors plans to allow helped its image.