Computers made The geeky cult of Jeff Bezos takes of DNA soup “self-tracking” the long view TechnologyQuarterly March 3rd 2012
Can the scientists keep up? The high-tech race to catch athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs
TQCOV-MARCH.2012.indd 1 20/02/2012 13:21 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Monitor 1
Contents
On the cover For decades athletes who take performance-enhancing drugs have maintained their lead over the scientists trying to catch them. Time and again, a new test is devised, only for a novel way to fool it to be found. But now it seems the bo ns may at last be What happened to the ying car? catching up, page 00
Monitor 1 Flying cars get a little closer, a new type of smart paint, high-tech autopsies, an open-source robo-surgeon, Transport: The goal of making ight as easy and accessible as road travel may liquid-fuelled microchips, mechanical pixels, hybrid be within reach. That raises the question of what to do about bad drivers helicopters, solar power for OR a generation of baby-boomers it plug gaps created by unregulated small the poor, deviceless devices Fhas been a source of huge disappoint- aircraft, but there was another reason to and military simulators ment. They grew up believing that one introduce it, says Carl Dietrich, Terrafu- day they would y to work in their very gia’s co-founder and chief executive: to Di erence engine own sky cars only to nd themselves still spur innovation and make it easier to get a 8 Unblinking eyes in the sky very much grounded. More than a century pilot’s licence. Part of the FAA’s remit is to The safety and privacy after the Wright brothers rst took to the promote ight, yet getting a licence is implications of drone aircraft air, personal aviation remains an unre- di cult and time-consuming. Safety is alised dream. But there have been some paramount, of course, but in theory this DNA computing recent signs of progress, thanks to ad- could be made simpler for people who 9 Liquid logic vances in technology and changes in want to y a simpler class of plane. How to build a computer out of regulation. More than a dozen ying cars The complexity of the certi cation molecular soup are in development, and Terrafugia, a rm process deterred anyone from designing based in Woburn, Massachusetts, is about small, easy-to-use planes, however. As a Energy storage to launch the rst commercial model, the result, says Mr Dietrich, you had an aver- 11 Packing some power Transition (pictured). age age of aircraft of over 40 years. The New ways to store electrical The Transition is perhaps best de- Lite-Sport category was introduced to energy in vast quantities scribed as a road plane, rather than a encourage the development of such air- ying car. It is essentially a small, $279,000 craft. Certi cation is simpler, and since the Inside story plane that has been designed to be legally category’s introduction there has been a roadworthy. Push a button and the wings owering of innovation. More than 120 13 Can the scientists keep up? fold up, allowing the pilot to start driving new models of small aircraft have entered The high-tech race to catch it like a car. It even runs on petrol, with a the market. drug-taking athletes range of 600 miles (1,000km) on the An aircraft that is simpler to certify and The quanti ed self ground or 400 miles in the air. Around 100 easier to y need not be any less safe. aircraft have been reserved, and the rst is Whereas once a pilot needed to know 16 Counting every moment due to be delivered later this year. Tech- how to triangulate his position using Why self-tracking might be the nically, the Terrafugia has been made ground-based radio beacons, portable future of health care possible by the availability of modern GPS units and altimeters can now do the engines, composite materials and comput- job. There are now o -the-shelf systems Brain scan erised avionics systems. But it has also that can give you the same kind of in- 18 Taking the long view taken advantage of the Lite-Sport aircraft strumentation capabilities as an airliner, A pro le of Je Bezos, Amazon’s category introduced by America’s Federal says Mr Dietrich. As a result, although forward-thinking leader Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2004. there are restrictions on ying at night or This category was partly intended to through bad weather, it is possible for 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012
2 someone to get a Lite-Sport licence with believe we could have a practical ying just 20 hours’ ying experience less time car within ve years, says Mr Bulaga. than many people spend learning to drive. Perhaps, but for whom, precisely? The Transition is being aimed at pilots Neither Mr Bulaga nor Mr Malloy is keen We’ve got it who want to be able to drive to the airport for the general public to use his vehicles. and take o without changing vehicles, or Most people can’t parallel park, so I can’t covered land at a distant airport and not be strand- see most people owning one of these ed. As its name implies, it is intended to be without killing themselves, says Mr a transitional product, a step on the way to Malloy. His $50,000 Hoverbike is intended Materials: Smart paint promises to true sky cars capable of taking o and as a cheaper alternative to a helicopter for make it easier to identify and repair landing almost anywhere. Such aircraft cattle-mustering. Mr Bulaga agrees: I cracks or corrosion in bridges and will require the development of more don’t want to see this in the hands of other infrastructure e cient motors and better control sys- everybody, because I have seen what tems, says Rob Bulaga, president of Trek everybody drives like. T WOULD be much easier to locate and Aerospace in Folsom, California, another Moreover, any bad practices on the Irepair damage to bridges, wind turbines company developing a ying car. road are likely to be exaggerated in the air and other dumb objects if those objects Trek is adapting a personal aerial because aircraft are harder and more could tell you what the problem was. vehicle concept originally developed for complicated to control than cars, says Ken Researchers at the University of Strath- DARPA, the research-funding agency of Goodrich, a research engineer at NASA’s clyde, in Britain, led by Mohamed Saa , America’s Department of Defence, to Langley Research Centre in Hampton, are therefore trying to give them a voice, create a civilian vehicle. This two-seater, Virginia. With a car there’s a one-to-one by devising a new sort of smart paint. the Tyrannos (pictured), has ducted pro- relationship between how much you turn It is composed of what sounds like a pellers powered by petrol engines, with a the wheel and how much the vehicle bizarre mixture: y-ash, a ne-grained battery backup. Although it has been turns, he says. In an aircraft if you make waste product from coal- red power possible to make such vehicles for de- an input on the stick or yoke, the ight stations; carbon nanotubes, cylindrical cades, they are notoriously di cult to y. path changes in all three directions. molecules made of elemental carbon; and It’s just basic physics, says Mr Bulaga. But Mr Goodrich thinks this problem two binding agents, sodium silicate and Any vehicle that takes o and lands can be xed. He has been working on sodium hydroxide. The result is a material vertically is unstable. To make it practical, creating control systems for aircraft that similar to cement, which makes a suitably computers are needed to make the con- are designed to make ying easier and tough paint. When it dries, the y-ash acts stant tweaks required to achieve stable safer. Essentially this means getting the as a coating, able to withstand the ele- ight. Without them, even just hovering is plane to y itself, but with some high-level ments in exposed places. The carbon like trying to stand on a beachball, he says. guidance from the pilot , he says. The nanotubes are there to conduct electricity. Chris Malloy agrees. He is currently automation interprets the inputs from the The smart bit is that the tubes’ conduc- installing a new computerised control stick at a behavioural level. That’s the tivity is a ected by cracks in, or corrosion system on his Hoverbike, an aircraft which long-term vision. The aim of his project is of, the painted surface. When put under is ridden like a motorbike but has ducted to enable a much larger number of people stress, for example, the nanotubes bend fans at the front and back instead of to become pilots. In Europe a similar and become less conductive. If inundated wheels. Originally I wanted the roll to be project was launched last year called by chloride ions, as a result of corrosion by controlled by the rider shifting their body myCopter, with the aim of developing salt water, their conductivity increases. weight, like a motorbike, he says, but he semi-autonomous aircraft for general use. This makes it possible to monitor damage. has had to revise this design. So far both With the FAA loosening its regulatory grip The voltage running through any part Trek Aerospace and Mr Malloy have only and with the cost and reliability of sensors of the painted area can be measured carried out tethered ight tests, but they and control systems improving, says Mr remotely, with an array of electrodes believe they can have their vehicles in Goodrich, all the necessary pieces for a distributed across its surface, and data for production within a few years. I truly ying car are at last coming together. 7 the entire structure dispatched, via a central transmitter, to a computer. Using a medical-imaging technique called electri- cal-impedance tomography, Dr Sa and his colleague David McGahon are devis- ing software that can draw a conductivity map of an entire painted structure. Nanotechnology has been used in paints before. Sometimes the goal is to bind the paint tightly to the material it has been applied to. Sometimes it is to chan- nel water molecules e ciently, thus keep- ing a surface clean. Some paints incorpo- rate tiny silver particles, which capture atmospheric pollutants. But Dr Saa ’s smart paint is new in several ways. It is cheap, so it is possible to imagine whole structures being built out of it, instead of cement. It is also versatile, theoretically able to detect a broad range of stresses and pollutants. If it performs well, there are currently 3,500 wind tur- bines and counting in Britain alone that The Tyrannos gets ready for take-o could do with a lick of it. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Monitor 3
diers but such scans are employed to tion of CT and MRI. The scans also had augment traditional post mortems, not di culty showing heart disease, a com- replace them. Some coroners in England, mon killer. However, radiologists were Reviving autopsy spurred on by the religious objections of good at identifying which diagnoses were Jews and Muslims, do allow scans rather sound and which needed to be re-evaluat- than conventional autopsies in certain ed by a full autopsy. When they felt con - cases. But the accuracy of these scans is dent in their diagnoses which was the unknown. Dr Roberts is the rst to provide case for 34% of CT investigations and 42% Medical technology: Using a scanner, data on whether scanning might replace of MRIs the discrepancy in the results rather than a scalpel, has the conventional methods. was lower. For CT scans, it was just 16%. potential to make autopsies faster, He and his colleagues examined 182 That is still a signi cant gap. But not all of cheaper and more accurate bodies in Manchester and Oxford. Radiol- it is because traditional methods are bet- ogists studied CT and MRI scans of these ter. In one case, scanning revealed a lethal ECHNOLOGY advances not only bodies, made diagnoses based on them, stroke that dissection missed. Tthrough new inventions, but also by explained their con dence in these diag- All this suggests that scans might play a the imaginative application of old ones. noses, and judged whether the scans useful role in determining causes of death. And one of the most ancient forms of might thus preclude the need for a full When a radiologist is con dent in the scienti c investigation, the post-mortem autopsy. Within 12 hours of each scan, a diagnosis from a scan, a traditional autop- autopsy, may be ripe for just such a tech- pathologist then performed a conven- sy might be unnecessary. Using scanners nological upgrade. According to a recent tional autopsy, so that Dr Roberts could might also make autopsies cheaper, by paper in the Lancet, published by Ian compare the new methods with the old. speeding the process up. A thorough study Roberts of the John Radcli e Hospital, in The scans were far from perfect. The of the costs of both approaches is still Oxford, it may soon be time to put away rate of discrepancy between the cause of needed, of course, and traditional au- the scalpel and retractor clamp, and re- death, as determined by radiology and by topsies are unlikely to disappear com- place them with the body scanner. conventional autopsy, was 32% for CT pletely. But for some deaths, a scan may The study of death is never a cheerful scans, 43% for MRI and 30% for a combina- prove better than a scalpel. 7 topic, but it has gone through a particular- ly gloomy patch in the past few decades. A recent tally by America’s Centres for Dis- ease Control and Prevention showed that in 2007 only 8.5% of deaths in America were investigated by autopsy. In 1972 the gure was 19.3%. Britain’s coroners are more active, but perhaps not more accu- rate. In Britain, 22% of deaths lead to an autopsy. According to a government re- view, however, one in four is of miserable quality. The upshot in both cases is not just that the causes of individual deaths may be misascribed. More seriously, data about the processes of disease are lost, and those diseases are thus not as well understood as they might have been. Relatives of the deceased, meanwhile, often do not like the idea of bodies being cut up at the behest of coroners. Britain’s health department therefore asked Dr Roberts to study whether scanning the dead in a way that is routine for the living An open-source robo-surgeon would help. His conclusion? It would. Rather than slicing the body with a knife, scanning slices it with radiation. Computerised tomography (CT) uses X -rays to collect information from many Robotics: A new, open-source medical robot promises to make surgery safer angles, and a lot of processing power to and more e ective, and stimulate further innovation in the eld convert that information into cross-sec- tional images of a body’s inner tissues. In AVENS have a bad reputation. Medi- Robot-assisted surgery today is domin- forensic cases CT scans are often used to Reval monks, who liked to give names ated by the da Vinci Surgical System, a spot fractures and haemorrhages. Dr to everything (even things that did not device that scales down a surgeon’s hand Roberts found them adept at noticing need them), came up with an unkind- movements to let him make tiny incisions. diseased arteries, as well. The other wide- ness as the collective noun for these That leads to less tissue damage, and thus spread scanning technique, magnetic- corvids. Blake Hannaford and his col- a quicker recovery for patients. Almost resonance imaging (MRI), uses radio leagues at the University of Washington, 2,000 da Vincis have been made, and they waves and is best suited for exploring the in Seattle, however, hope to change the are used in about 200,000 operations a detail of soft tissues. impression engendered by the word. They year around the world, most commonly Though both technologies have been are about to release a ock of medical hysterectomies and prostate removals. around for a long time, they have had only robots with wing-like arms, called Ravens, But the da Vinci is far from perfect. It is limited use in autopsies. America’s au- in the hope of stimulating innovation in immobile and weighs more than half a thorities conduct CT scans of dead sol- the nascent eld of robotic surgery. tonne, which limits its deployability, and it 1 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012
2 costs $1.8m, which puts it beyond the tems at least, they would be when they reach of all but the richest institutions. It entered the chip. At the heart of the device, also uses proprietary software. Even if however, the channels would be lined researchers keen to experiment with new Pumping ions with a catalyst that reacted with the elec- robotic technologies and treatments could trolyte and also acted as an electrode. a ord one, they cannot tinker with da When the uid was pumped around Vinci’s operating system. the chip a piece of chemistry called a None of that is true of the Raven. Origi- redox reaction would take place, as one nally developed for the American army Computing: Running a steady stream sort of vanadium ion gave up electrons to by Dr Hannaford and Jacob Rosen of the of uid through a chip could o er a the other sort. For that to happen, the University of California, Santa Cruz, as a handy way to supply cooling and electrons would have to pass between the prototype for robotic surgery on the bat- power at the same time channel systems via the wiring of the tle eld, it is compact, light and cheap chip. This would produce a current to (relatively speaking) at around $250,000. S MORE and more components are power the chip. The electrolytes would More importantly for academics, it is also Apacked onto computer chips, the then be pumped out of the chip, carrying the rst surgical robot to use open-source problems of getting electrical energy to heat away with them. Once cooled, they software. Its Linux-based operating sys- where it is needed in a microprocessor, would be reinvigorated back to their tem lets anyone modify and improve the and of dispersing the heat which that original ionic states by an external electric original code, creating a way for research- energy is turned into by the chip’s oper- current, and pumped back into the chip. ers to experiment and collaborate. ation, both become harder. The latest Although Dr Michel has not yet ap- Universities across America took aspiration of chip designers to stack the plied his idea to an entire chip, he has delivery of the rst brood of Ravens in things on top of one another so that their shown that the electricity-generation part February. At Harvard, Rob Howe and his components can communicate in three of the process can be made to work per- team hope to use a Raven to operate on a dimensions complicates matters still fectly well in a system of channels like beating heart, by automatically compen- further. But a group of engineers at IBM those found in a 3D chip. If the electrodes sating for its motion. At the moment, heart think they have a single answer to both can be connected successfully to the rest surgery requires that the organ be stopped problems. Bruno Michel and his col- of a chip, the result would be a new type and then restarted. At the University of leagues at the computer giant’s Zurich of liquid-fuelled computer. 7 California, Los Angeles, meanwhile, War- Research Laboratory, in Switzerland, ren Grundfest is working on ways to give propose using a liquid coolant that gener- the robot a sense of touch that is commu- ates electricity inside the chip itself. nicated to the operator. Pieter Abbeel and IBM is already working on the problem Ken Goldberg at the University of Califor- of cooling 3D chips. Its answer is to etch Pivoting pixels nia, Berkeley, will try teaching the robot to layers of tiny channels between the slivers operate autonomously by mimicking of silicon that carry the components. By surgeons. And Dr Rosen himself will work pumping uid through these channels it is on ways to get human and robotic sur- possible to carry heat out of a stacked chip geons to work together. fast enough to keeping it running nicely. Computer displays: A new type of Crucially, although individual labora- Dr Michel’s proposal is to use the same display that uses tiny mechanical tories will retain the rights to their own system to power the chips, too. Instead of mirrors to produce coloured dots particular innovations, the results of these a single network of channels running would work even in bright sunlight studies, and the improvements they sug- through a stacked chip of this sort, he gest, will be stored in an online repository suggests there should be two. Each would N A novel called The Di erence En- available to all. What happens after that is carry a uid doped with vanadium ions, Igine , published in 1990, William Gib- less certain. The research-oriented Raven but those ions would be in di erent oxida- son and Bruce Sterling described an al- has not yet been approved by American tive states in the di erent channel sys- ternative Victorian era of mechanical regulators, so all these investigations are, computers driven by steam, with their for the moment, restricted to operations results displayed on screens made of on animals or human cadavers. And there mechanical pixels. Steam-driven comput- is another, legal, problem. Intuitive Surgi- ers remain in the realm of science ction. cal, the company behind the da Vinci, Mechanical pixels, however, are begin- holds patents that could make launching a ning to see the light of day. commercial competitor tricky at least in Pixels are the dots, or picture ele- the immediate future. ments that make up the picture on a Once those patents expire, however, display screen. And one way of making the University of Washington could spin them change colour is to use what are o the Raven into a start-up company. In known as micro-electromechanical sys- the meantime, four more universities, tems, or MEMS, to move part of each pixel including two outside America, have around, creating iridescent interference expressed an interest in buying one of the patterns in the process. According to Wal- new robots. And even those without len Mphepö of National Chiao Tung Uni- $250,000 to spare can participate in its versity in Hsinchu, Taiwan, who is one of development. The University of Washing- those working on this idea, screens made ton is releasing a graphical simulation of this way should be as easy on the eye in the Raven that can be used to test its con- bright sunlight as the re ective electronic trol system virtually. Dr Hannaford hopes paper used in devices such as the Kindle. that robotics researchers and amateurs They would also use far less power than will then help to nd and x bugs in the today’s liquid-crystal displays. open-source code. 7 Mr Mphepö’s pixels are pieces of zirco- 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Monitor 5
2 nium dioxide, 30 microns across, that have been coated on one side with a layer of silver 1.23 microns thick. These tiny mir- rors can be tilted electrostatically, using a voltage applied by a thin- lm transistor of the sort employed to control liquid-crystal pixels. The upshot is a mirror whose angle with respect to the light incident upon it can be changed at will. Paradoxically, though, it is a mirror in which the silver, being on top, is the transparent layer (it is so thin that light passes easily through it) while the zirconium dioxide (which is normally a transparent substance) acts as the re ective surface. The reason is that zirconium dioxide has a much higher refractive index than silver: in other words, light slows down and bends more when travelling through zirconium oxide than when travelling through silver. It is the junction between the two materials which acts as the re ective surface. peaks and troughs of the incident and is that it is twice the average wavelength of The upshot is that the length of the re ected rays fall on each other. And this, visible light. This gives just enough room paths of rays of light entering the silver, depending on the wavelength of the light for the processes of ampli cation and bouncing o the mirror, and then return- concerned (and thus its colour), causes cancellation to take place. ing to the outside world (and so to the some colours to be ampli ed while others A similar technique is already used in a viewer) can be changed by varying the are cancelled out. The reason for choosing commercial display technology devel- angle of tilt. That, in turn, a ects how the 1.23 microns for the thickness of the silver oped by Qualcomm, an American elec- tronics company. But Mirasol, as Qual- comm’s method is known, merely uses MEMS to turn a pixel on or o (by re ect- ing either one wavelength of light or none No more whirly-splat at all). Mr Mphepö’s approach is more sophisticated, and does not require sep- arate sub-pixels for each of the three prim- ary colours to produce a full-colour image, Transport: Adding an electric Both of these manoeuvres would be which could improve the screen’s resolu- motor to a helicopter would make it less hazardous if the pilot could call on a tion. They may not be powered by steam, easier to perform an emergency second source of power to turn the but Mr Mphepö’s pixels may, in their own 7 landing following engine failure blades for a few seconds while he was way, rewrite history. performing them, and Jean-Michel Billig F A xed-wing aircraft loses power, the and his team at Eurocopter (part of Ipilot can at least rely on the wings to EADS, an aerospace and defence group) provide lift until the plane’s forward hope to provide just that. They are velocity falls below its stall speed. A introducing the fashionable idea of Starting from helicopter, by contrast, derives both hybrid-electric drive into helicopters. propulsion and lift from its blades. If The team have tted one of the rm’s scratch they stop rotating, a rapid and terminal AS350 helicopters with an electric mo- encounter with the ground beckons. tor and lithium-ion batteries to power it. To prevent that, the blades of most They are now testing the arrangement Technology and development: A new helicopters have a special clutch that to work out how much power is needed business model could help people in disengages them from the engine if the to keep the craft aloft during the transi- poor countries light their homes engine stops. The pilot must then tion to autorotation, and during aring. cheaply using solar power change the pitch of his craft to let it enter Mr Billig thinks Eurocopter will be able a mode called autorotation, in which to o er the system commercially in UNNY countries are often poor. It is a the rush of air as it descends keeps the about a year’s time. Sshame, then, that solar power is still blades whirling, thus providing lift that That raises the question of whether quite expensive. But it is getting cheaper slows the fall. The shift to autorotation is it might be feasible to build an all-elec- by the day, and is now cheap enough to be perilous, though, because it involves a tric helicopter. At the moment, the an- competitive with other forms of energy in reversal of the air ow through the swer is no (at least for manned craft), places that are not attached to electricity blades. The pilot must then perform a because of limited battery capacity. But grids. Since 1.6 billion people are still in second manoeuvre, known as aring, batteries are improving, and if they that unfortunate position, there is now a just before he hits the ground. This were good enough then an electrically large potential market for solar energy. The involves pitching the machine’s nose up powered helicopter would, like an problem is that although sunlight is free, a to reduce its forward velocity and in- electric car, be a more elegant solution lot of those 1.6 billion people still cannot crease the speed of rotation of the to the problem of locomotion than the a ord the upfront cost of the equipment in blades (and thus the amount of lift they serial explosions that keep an internal- one go, and no one will lend them the provide) to soften the landing. combustion engine ticking over. money needed to buy it. Eight19, a British company spun out of 1 6 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012
2 Cambridge University, has devised a a Kinect-like array of sensors with a small, clever way to get round this. In return for a shoulder-mounted projector. Armura deposit of around $10 it is supplying poor takes the idea a stage further by mounting families in Kenya with a solar cell able to Meaningful both sensors and projector in the ceiling. generate 2.5 watts of electricity, a battery This frees the user from the need to carry that can deliver a 3-amp current to store gestures anything, and also provides a convenient this electricity, and a lamp whose bulb is place from which to spot his gestures. an energy-e cient light-emitting diode. The actual detection is done by infra- The rm reckons that once the battery is Consumer electronics: An ambitious red light, which re ects o the user’s skin fully charged, this system is su cient to gesture-recognition system lets you and clothes. A camera records the various light two small rooms and to power a use your body instead of a range of shapes made by the user’s hands and mobile-phone charger for seven hours. portable electronic devices arms. Software then identi es di erent Then, the next day, it can be put outside arrangements of the user’s arms, hands and charged back up again. INECT, Microsoft’s video-game con- and ngers, such as arms-crossed, The trick is that, to be able to use the Ktroller that registers a user’s intentions thumbs-in, thumbs-out, book, palms-up, electricity, the system’s keeper must buy a from his gestures, will be the shape of palms-down and so on. scratch card for as little as a dollar on things to come if Chris Harrison, a re- According to Mr Harrison, the hands which a reference number is printed. The searcher at the Human-Computer Inter- alone are capable of tens of thousands of keeper sends this reference, plus the serial action Institute at Carnegie Mellon Uni- interactions and gestures. The trick is to number of the household solar unit, by versity, in Pittsburgh, has his way. Mr distinguish between them, matching the text message to Eight19. The company’s Harrison thinks the Kinect’s basic princi- gesturer’s intention to his pose precisely server will respond automatically with an ples could be used to make a technological enough that the correct consequence access code to the unit. panopticon that monitors people’s move- follows, but not so precisely that slightly Users may feel as though they are ments and gives them what they want, non-standard gestures are ignored. paying an hourly rate for their electricity. wherever they want it. The result is that if someone holds his In fact, they are paying o the cost of the Someone in a shopping mall, for ex- hands out like a book, information is unit. After buying around $80-worth of ample, might hold up his hand and see a displayed on each palm as if that palm scratch cards which Eight19 expects map appear instantly at his ngertips. This were a page. Folding his hands turns the would take the average family about 18 image might then be locked in place by the page. Arm movements will reveal the months the user will own it. He will then user sticking his thumb out. A visitor to a locations of particular exhibits or shops. have the option of continuing to use it for museum, armed with a suitable earpiece, And if someone fancies a bit of back- nothing, or trading it in for a bigger model, could get the lowdown on what he was ground music, the appropriate hand and perhaps driven by a 10-watt solar cell. looking at simply by pointing at it. And a arm movements will control which track In that case, he would then go through person who wanted to send a text mes- is played and at what volume. With clever the same process again, paying o the sage could tap it out with one hand on a use of microphones and directional loud- additional cost of the upgraded kit at a keyboard projected onto the other, and speakers, indeed, it may even be possible slightly higher rate. Users would thereby then send it by ipping his hand over. In to make phone calls. increase their electricity supply ascend- each case, sensors in the wall or ceiling Of course, Armura will only work in ing the energy escalator , as Eight19 puts would be watching what he was up to, areas where the technology to support it it steadily and a ordably. Simultaneous- looking for signi cant gestures and re- has been installed. But the same is true of ly, the company would be able to build a acting accordingly. mobile phones. It is a slightly disturbing payment record of its clients, sorting the Mr Harrison’s prototype for this idea, thought that if Mr Harrison’s technology unreliable from the rest. called Armura, started o as an extension can be made to operate routinely, the According to Eight19’s gures, this looks to a project he worked on at Microsoft. world’s streets and train carriages could be like a good deal for customers. The rm This was to project interactive displays lled with people making odd gestures at reckons that the average energy-starved onto nearby surfaces, including the user’s no one in particular hoping, as they do Kenyan spends about $10 a month on body. That project, OmniTouch, combined so, for enlightenment. 7 para n su cient to fuel a couple of smoky lamps plus $2 a month to have his mobile phone charged at a nearby market. Regular users of one of Eight19’s basic solar units will spend around half that, before owning it outright. Meanwhile, as the cost of solar technology falls, the whole system should get even cheaper. The company hopes to be able to supply users with a new, low-cost and robust sort of solar cell, printed onto plastic strips, within two years. So far the scheme has been tried out among a couple of hundred Kenyan fam- ilies. With the aid of a charitable loan to accelerate its roll-out, Eight19 is now in the process of dispersing another 4,000 solar units in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia. If its novel idea works, solar power will come within reach of a whole new set of cus- tomers and the days of the para n lamp could well be numbered. 7 From cordless phone to phoneless phone The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Monitor 7
Eastern country. Training in an area the size of a basketball court, 12 commandos wear goggles that display high-resolution 3D images delivered wirelessly (pictured). Real objects in the training area commin- gle with computer-generated ones such as buildings and enemies. A virtual insur- gent can be realistically displayed in the goggles of trainees who look in his direc- tion even if everybody is running. Train- ees wear electrodes that deliver a painful shock when they are struck by a virtual bullet or bomb blast. VIRTSIM records participants’ move- ments so that exer- cises can be re- viewed later from multiple angles. Superimposed graphics show such This is not a video game things as a trainee’s precise eld of vi- sion, so everyone can see exactly where he looked (or neglected Military technology: Elaborate systems that simulate combat in great detail to look) when clearing a room or before are changing the nature of training and the conduct of warfare itself getting shot. Users say the collection of such detailed data eliminates all excuses. OWARDS the end of the Gulf war in ministries are keen on simulators. Systems It is not just the technology that is T1991, an American armoured scout unit can even be linked up to allow people in becoming more elaborate. The latest in Iraq’s southern desert stumbled upon a di erent countries to train together. Anty- simulations also take into account psycho- much larger elite force of dug-in Iraqi cip Simulation, based in Paris, sells its logical factors, says Sébastien Saint-Luc of armour. Rather than retreating, the nine simulation software and equipment to DCNS, a French builder of warships and American tanks and 12 Bradley ghting more than 15 governments in Africa, Eu- submarines. The rm’s agship naval vehicles attacked. When the battle ended rope and North America. The simulations simulator, Solaris Battlelab, models in- about 25 minutes later, the Americans had range from laptops for control-room train- tangibles such as the e ect that bad news destroyed, by one tally, 28 Iraqi tanks, 16 ees to visually immersive studios, called (word that bombs have hit one’s defence armoured vehicles and 39 trucks without pods, for foot soldiers. Everyone interacts ministry, for example) has on the ability of su ering a single loss. The Battle of 73 simultaneously in the same virtual world. a vessel’s commanders to exchange infor- Easting, named after a map co-ordinate, is One network Antycip built for use by mation and make decisions during battle. now considered a masterpiece of Ameri- NATO allies links more than 400 sim- can tactical manoeuvring. It prompted ulation stations. Trainees see and hear the When simulation meets reality America’s Department of Defence to build virtual world from their own point of Another recent trend is the tighter in- a digital model of the battle for training. view, whether peering out from behind a tegration of simulators with real combat. Neale Cosby, the retired army colonel wall or approaching the scene in a heli- Chester Kennedy, vice-president of sim- who led the project at the Institute for copter. Antycip reports brisk business: its ulation engineering at Lockheed Martin, Defence Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia, sales rose by 15% in 2011to 11.5m ($15m). points to a 2007 battle in which insurgents says it let commanders watch the action Trainees’ stress can be ratcheted up by took advantage of a tactical error by Amer- on panoramic screens, select alternate injecting more and more problems into ican soldiers to kill some of them. Within points of view and identify potential simulations, says Robert Carpenter, depu- 24 hours Lockheed Martin had inter- improvements in weaponry and tactics. ty technology director at Australia’s Army viewed the survivors and then produced a The software was then upgraded so that it Simulation Group in Puckapunyal. Voice simulator that placed other soldiers in the could be played like a video game in or video communications can be delayed. same situation so the mistake would not which what if circumstances foggy Virtual enemies can quicken attacks or be repeated. The company now regularly night-time ghting against upgraded wield deadlier weaponry. This helps simulates real battles. vehicle armour, say could be tested. commanders determine when particular Indeed, simulation software is even Widely demoed in Washington, DC, dur- defences might collapse or which gun being used in combat, says Bruno de ing the 1990s, the model kick-started placements would be most e ective. Roodenbeke, a former French army gen- heavy-duty funding for combat sim- Motion Reality, a rm based in Mariet- eral who now advises MASA Group, a ulators, says Timothy Lenoir of Duke ta, Georgia, that provided some of the French rm that develops a simulator University, and began a technological technology used to animate Avatar , called Sword, used by France’s defence revolution that has transformed training King Kong and the Lord of the Rings ministry. In some types of ghting, senior and changed the way war is waged. lms, has built a mixed-reality ght sim- commanders have time to use simulation Simulation technology is not cheap. ulator , called VIRTSIM, in conjunction software to rule out losing strategies be- Lockheed Martin, an American defence with Raytheon, an American defence fore sending orders to commanders on the giant, recently sold two F-16 ghter-jet contractor. America’s Federal Bureau of battle eld, he says. The ability to get simulators for $24.5m. But training with Investigation began using the system in things wrong without loss of life repre- real equipment invites accidents and January at its academy in Quantico, Vir- sents a profound transformation in the generally costs even more, so defence ginia, and it has also been sold to a Middle conduct of war. 7 8 Di erence engine The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Unblinking eyes in the sky
Technology and society: Drone aircraft are no longer restricted to military use. They are being built and used by hobbyists, activists and estate agents, among others. What are the implications for safety and privacy?
HEN environmental activists start craft intended for civilian use can yet (2.5kg) and ts easily in the boot of a car. It Wusing drones to track down Japanese comply with the FAA’s sense and avoid can be assembled in minutes to provide an whaling vessels, as they did in December, rules, a ground observer or chase aircraft is immediate eye in the sky capable of stay- it is a sure sign that UAVs (unmanned aeri- required to keep the drone in sight at all ing aloft for 40 minutes at a time (after al vehicles) are no longer the sole preroga- times to act as its eyes. which its battery needs recharging). tive of the armed forces. Police around the The FAA’s rationale is that drones pilot- The Qube and similarly sized drones world are keen to use small pilotless air- ed remotely by operators on the ground have about the same kinetic energy as a craft to help them nab eeing criminals cannot see other aircraft in the sky in the large bird. In other words, the threat they and monitor crime scenes from above. way airborne pilots can. Its preferred ap- pose to other planes in the sky and proper- With price tags of a little more (and, in proach is for UAVs to be tted with equip- ty on the ground is akin to a bird strike. some cases, a good deal less) than the ment to avoid mid-air collisions and near That is not to be taken lightly, but is some- $40,000 of a patrol car, a new generation misses. One solution to the sense-and- thing society has learned to live with. of micro-UAVs is being recruited to replace avoid problem is to use an array of light- Moreover, such drones are expected to y police helicopters costing $1.7m and up. well below 400 feet (120 metres), and prob- Aside from helping enforce the law, any ably (like the rules governing model air- civilian activity that could be improved by craft) no closer than 3 miles (5km) from an having an aerial view monitoring tra c, airport. That is not exactly Class A airspace checking electricity cables and pipelines, used by commercial air tra c, making life- surveying forestry and crops, taking aerial threatening mid-air collisions unlikely. photographs, patrolling wooded areas for re would bene t from the use of UAVs. Nowhere to hide The limiting factor is not technological, but Safety is not the only concern associated regulatory. In America the Federal Avia- with the greater use of civilian drones, tion Administration (FAA) currently al- however. There is also the question of pri- lows the recreational use of drones, but vacy. In America, at least, neither the con- not commercial use: earlier this year estate stitution nor common law prohibits the agents in Los Angeles were banned from police, the media or anyone else from op- using drones to take aerial photos of prop- erating surveillance drones. As the law erties they were selling, for example. stands, citizens do not have a reasonable Change is coming, however. The Euro- expectation of privacy in a public place. pean Commission has held a series of That includes parts of their own backyards hearings on the subject, the most recent on that are visible from a public vantage February 9th, to determine a regulatory point, including the sky. The Supreme framework to enable the wider use of Court has been very clear on the matter. UAVs by civilians. In America, a bill The American Civil Liberties Union, a passed by the Senate on February 6th and weight acoustic probes coupled to a signal campaign group, says drones raise very now awaiting presidential approval re- processor. By ltering out wind noise, this serious privacy issues and are pushing quires the FAA to draw up new rules so set-up can listen for and locate other air- America willy-nilly toward an era of aeri- that the skies can be safely opened to craft in the sky and then transmit avoid- al surveillance without any steps to pro- drone ights from October 2015. ance instructions to the drone’s operator tect the traditional privacy that Americans That will be easier said than done. How, on the ground, or enable it to take evasive have always enjoyed and expected. for example, should a UAV respond if it action itself. One such system, developed The ACLU’s main worry is the use of loses its communications link with the op- by SARA, a contract-research rm based in drones for surveillance by the police. That erator on the ground? Should it automati- Cypress, California, weighs little more is a legitimate concern, but it is not hard to cally return to some pre-assigned location, than eight ounces (225 grams). imagine other ways in which UAVs will or head for the nearest open space? Should But given the small size of many erode privacy. Given the rapid progress be- it have a parachute arrangement like an drones, and the environments in which ing made in the eld, how long before pa- increasing number of private planes to they will be used, requiring them all to parazzi photographers are sending insect- lower it gently to the ground in an emer- have elaborate sense-and-avoid systems like drones to peek through celebrities’ gency, or put itself immediately into a stall? may be overkill. The majority of pilotless windows, for example? Or think of the Another question is how UAVs should planes that civilian agencies have their possibilities for the use of drones in indus- detect, sense and avoid other aircraft oper- eyes on are little bigger than model aircraft trial espionage. Given their potential for le- ating in the same airspace. So far the FAA and weigh much the same. One that is fan- gitimate use in law enforcement, agricul- has issued around 300 temporary permits cied by America’s 18,000 police forces is a ture, disaster recovery, construction and for testing drones in airspace where com- pilotless helicopter called the Qube. This security, it seems likely that thousands of mercial air tra c and private aircraft oper- four-rotor craft, made by AeroVironment drones will take to the air in the coming ate. But because none of the pilotless air- of Monrovia, California, weighs in at 5.5lb years. But expect the lawsuits to y, too. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 DNA computing 9
Computing with soup
Molecular computing: DNA is sometimes called the software of life. Now it is being used to build computers that can run inside cells VER since the advent of the integrated Ecircuit in the 1960s, computing has been synonymous with chips of solid silicon. But some researchers have been taking an alternative approach: building liquid com- puters using DNA and its cousin RNA, the naturally occurring nucleic-acid mole- cules that encode genetic information in- side cells. Rather than encoding ones and zeroes into high and low voltages that switch transistors on and o , the idea is to use high and low concentrations of these molecules to propagate signals through a kind of computational soup. Computing with nucleic acids is much slower than using transistors. Unlike sili- route that visits each city exactly once? in In a strand-displacement logic circuit, con chips, however, DNA-based comput- a test tube using specially sequenced DNA inputs take the form of free- oating single ers could be made small enough to operate molecules and standard molecular-biolo- DNA or RNA strands, and logic gates are inside cells and control their activity. If gy procedures (see box on next page). Solv- complexes of two or more such strands, you can programme events at a molecular ing such a speci c task is a far cry from one of which is the potential output signal. level in cells, you can cure or kill cells building a general-purpose computer. But Sticky tabs on the gates allow passing which are sick or in trouble and leave the it showed that information could indeed signals to latch on. If an input signal has a other ones intact. You cannot do this with be processed using interactions between base-pair sequence complementary to the electronics, says Luca Cardelli of Micro- strands of synthetic DNA. sequence on a gate, it binds to it, displacing soft’s research centre in Cambridge, Eng- Dr Adleman’s work prompted other re- the output strand and causing it to detach. land, where the software giant is develop- searchers to develop DNA-based logic cir- The free- oating output strand can then, in ing tools for designing molecular circuits. cuits, the fundamental building blocks of turn, trigger another logic gate, causing a At the heart of such circuits is Watson- computing, using a variety of approaches. signal to travel through the circuit in a cas- Crick base pairing, the chemical Velcro The resulting circuits can perform simple cade. Billions of copies of the input, gate that binds together the two strands of mathematical and logical operations, re- and output molecules are intermixed in a DNA’s double helix. The four chemical cognise patterns based on incomplete data molecular soup. Programming such a sys- bases (the letters of the genetic alphabet) and play simple games. Molecular circuits tem involves choosing speci c base se- that form the rungs of the helix stick to- can even detect and respond to a disease quences to make up the di erent gates and gether in complementary pairs: A (ade- signature inside a living cell, opening up the signal paths that connect them. nine) with T (thymine), and C (cytosine) the possibility of medical treatments In a paper published last year in the with G (guanine). By making single strands based on man-made molecular software. journal Science, Dr Winfree and his col- of DNA or RNA with speci c A, T, C and G league Lulu Qian described the use of sequences, researchers can precisely de- Liquid logic strand-displacement cascades to build cir- ne and predict which part of a strand will Erik Winfree’s group at the California Insti- cuits of increasing complexity, culminat- bind to another. These synthesised strands tute of Technology (Caltech) is one of the ing in a circuit made of 74 di erent DNA typically consist of fewer than 100 bases (a best-known in this emerging eld. In re- strands (pictured above) that was capable gene, by contrast, has thousands of bases). cent years it has made many nucleic acid- of calculating the square roots of four-digit Leonard Adleman, an American com- based digital logic circuits in test tubes, binary numbers. Together with their col- puter scientist, rst demonstrated the use linking up logic gates capable of simple op- league Jehoshua Bruck, they then built a of nucleic-acid strand interactions for com- erations (such as AND, OR and NOT) using tiny neural network, made up of four inter- puting in 1994. He solved a version of the a trick called strand displacement, pioneer- connected arti cial neurons, using a soup travelling-salesman problem given a net- ed by three Caltech researchers, Georg See- of 112 di erent interacting DNA strands. work of linked cities, what is the shortest lig, David Soloveichik and Dave Zhang. Each neuron was designed to re when the 1 10 DNA computing The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 DNA-based computers could be made small enough to operate inside cells and control their activity.
2 sum of its input signals exceeded a certain A group at the Swiss Federal Institute of do this by interfering with the activity of threshold, and could be con gured to as- Technology (ETH Zurich) led by Yaakov Be- the messenger RNA strands that transfer sign di erent weights to di erent inputs. nenson, in collaboration with Ron Weiss genetic information from the cell’s nucleus Such neural networks can recognise sim- of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- to its protein-making machinery. Dr Be- ple patterns, even when presented with in- ogy, is also creating circuits using enzymes. nenson and his team chose ve micro- complete data. But unlike Dr Rondelez’s circuits, which RNAs associated with cervical cancer and To test their neural network’s pattern- work in test tubes, these operate inside designed a classi er circuit able to detect recognition powers, Dr Qian made up a cells, piggybacking on the existing cellular them. Only if all ve are found at the right game to identify one out of four scientists. machinery found within them. Last year levels does the circuit activate, producing a Each scientist was represented by a di er- Dr Benenson’s team developed one of the protein that causes the cell to destroy itself. ent set of answers to four yes-or-no ques- most complex cell-based molecular cir- tions. A human player would add to the cuits created so far, though it is still much Computer-aided DNA test tube some (but not all) of the DNA simpler than systems built in test tubes. It Rather than injecting the necessary com- strands corresponding to one set of an- is capable of recognising the signature of ponents, the researchers tricked the cell swers. The circuit then guessed which sci- cervical cancer and destroying the host cell into producing them itself by adding in- entist was the closest match, showing its when it is found. structions for them, in the form of synthet- answer using di erent-coloured uores- The circuit works by looking out for ic genes, to the genetic instructions in the cent signals. The circuit took eight hours to short strands called microRNAs, which cell’s nucleus. We build the template in give its answer, but got it right every time. regulate some processes within cells. They the form of synthetic genes and the cell And this circuit should work in a volume turns them into components, says Dr Be- of a cubic micron (one-millionth of a me- nenson. So we are hijacking the pathway tre), says Dr Winfree, which is small Showing the way that already exists. But this trick is cur- enough to t into many sorts of cell. The experiment that launched DNA computing rently possible only for simple circuits. Milan Stojanovic at Columbia Univer- E With molecular circuits becoming sity is building circuits using a di erent steadily more complex, new software tools form of strand displacement based on cat- are being developed to design, model and alytic DNA strands, also known as deoxy- D B debug them. Microsoft’s researchers in ribozymes or DNAzymes. These are syn- Cambridge are working with experimen- DNA thetic single-stranded sequences that A G talists at Caltech, the University of Wash- are, among other things, capable of cutting ington and the University of Oxford on a nearby DNA strands in speci c places. programming language and simulator for DNA Dr Stojanovic makes a zyme into a C F strand-displacement circuits, called the logic gate by attaching a loop of DNA at DNA Strand Displacement (DSD) tool. Us- one end that prevents the DNAzyme from 1. Given a network of one-way roads linking seven ers specify a description of a DNA-based working. When one or more input strands towns, the aim is to determine if there is a route that circuit, including how individual DNA starts in town A, finishes in town G and visits each bind to complementary sequences on the town exactly once. First, short strands of DNA are strands are joined together, and the soft- loop, the loop breaks, activating the DNA- made to represent the links in the road network. ware then simulates its behaviour, ex- zyme and switching the gate on. It can then Because a road runs from town A to town B, AB plains Andrew Phillips, the head of Micro- strands are created. There are no roads between A interact with other strands, chopping them and C, so no AC or CA strands are created. For each soft’s biological-computation group. to trigger other gates or activate uorescent link in the network, about 100 trillion DNA strands Dr Phillips’s group is also developing tags that display the circuit’s nal output. are created. tools to model the machinery within cells, 2. Next, special “splint” DNA is mixed in, which Dr Stojanovic and his colleague Joanna causes the strands to join up where they have including a language called Genetic Engi- Macdonald have used this approach to matching letters. AD, for example, may join up with neering of Cells (GEC). Work is under way build simple DNA-based circuits capable DE to form ADDE. This longer strand in turn might with synthetic-biology researchers at the join up with EB to form ADDEEB. The result is a series of playing tic-tac-toe (though they take of longer strands, each of which represents a journey University of Cambridge to hook up these about half an hour to make each move). within the network. di erent biological modelling environ- Yannick Rondelez, a researcher in mo- 3. Using a chemical reaction called PCR amplification, ments. You could have a model of a DNA just the long strands that start with A and end in G DSD lecular programming at the University of are selected, so that only routes that begin in town circuit written in , which interfaces Tokyo, is creating circuits in test tubes in a A and end in town G remain. with a model of the cell machinery written way that more closely resembles the oper- 4. The strands are then drawn through an electrified in GEC, he says. It would then be possible gel. Strands of different lengths move through the DNA ation of natural cells. He is using enzymes gel at different speeds, sorting the strands by length. to simulate the operation of a circuit such as polymerases, nucleases and exo- Only the long strands consisting of six linked short that runs inside a cell and outputs drug nucleases that can also copy, cut and de- strands are then retained. (Because there are seven molecules when certain conditions are towns, a route that passes through each town once stroy nucleic-acid strands. In cells, en- must consist of six links.) met, for example. zymes are the basis of the natural circuits 5. Finally, the remaining long strands are filtered to Treatments based on molecular com- that switch genes on and o , maintain bio- ensure that they contain each letter at least once, puters are still some way o . Today’s most because a valid route must visit every town. Any DNA logical rhythms and produce molecular strands that fail to contain an A are first discarded; elaborate circuits operate on work answers in response to environmental then any strands that lack a B, and so on. Any strands benches, not inside cells. But the border be- stimuli. Dr Rondelez has used his enzyme- left over must represent valid routes. In this case, tween computing and biology is vanishing the only valid route is encoded by the long strand based approach to build a molecular oscil- ABBCCDDEEFFG: A to B to C to D to E to F to G. fast, and the process of hijacking the infor- lator, which should be a useful addition to mation-processing potential of DNA to Source: The Economist the molecular-computing toolbox. build logic circuits has only just begun. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Energy storage 11
Surely the answer is to use giant batter- ies? Although batteries can deliver power for short periods, and can smooth out the bumps as di erent sources of power are switched on and o , they cannot provide grid scale performance, storing and dis- charging energy at high rates (hundreds of megawatts) and in really large quantities (thousands of megawatt hours). So other technologies are needed and growing de- mand, driven chie y by wider use of inter- mittent renewable-energy sources, is sparking plenty of new ideas.
It’s got potential The most widely used form of bulk-energy storage is currently pumped-storage hy- dropower (PSH), which uses the simple combination of water and gravity to cap- ture o -peak power and release it at times of high demand. Pumped-hydro facilities typically take advantage of natural topog- raphy, and are built around two reservoirs at di erent heights. O -peak electricity is used to pump water from the lower to the higher reservoir, turning electrical energy into gravitational potential energy. When power is needed, water is released back down to the lower reservoir, spinning a turbine and generating electricity along the way. PSH accounts for more than 99% Packing some power of bulk storage capacity worldwide: around 127,000MW, according to the Elec- tric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the re- search arm of America’s power utilities. Yet despite its dominance, traditional PSH has limited capacity for expansion. The kind of sites needed for such systems Energy technology: Better ways of storing energy are needed if electricity are few and far between. As a result, sever- systems are to become cleaner and more e cient al rms are devising new forms of PSH. One ambitious idea (pictured) is the UMMER in Texas last year was the hot- weight. One problem is that wind energy Green Power Island concept devised by Stest on record. Demand for power accounted for 9,500MW of ERCOT’s total Gottlieb Paludan, a Danish architecture spiked as air conditioners hummed across capacity, and the wind does not blow all rm, together with researchers at the Tech- the state. The Electric Reliability Council of the time. It tends to be strongest at night, nical University of Denmark. This in- Texas (ERCOT), the state grid operator, only when demand is low. Moreover, power volves building arti cial islands with narrowly avoided having to impose rolling rms are required by regulators to main- wind turbines and a deep central reservoir. blackouts. To do so, it had to buy all the tain a safety margin over total estimated When the wind blows, the energy is used electricity it could nd on the spot market, demand of 13.75%, in ERCOT’s case in or- to pump water out of the reservoir into the in some cases paying an eye-watering 30 der to ensure reliable supply. sea. When power is needed, seawater is al- times the normal price. If only it were easier for ERCOT and lowed to ow back into the reservoir, driv- On paper at least, ERCOT ought to have other utilities to store excess energy, such ing turbines to produce electricity. had plenty of power. In 2010 it reported as that produced by wind turbines at night, Gravity Power, a start-up based in Cali- 84,400 megawatts (MW) of total genera- for later use at peak times. Such time shift- fornia, has devised a system that relies on tion capacity, well over last summer’s peak ing would compensate for the intermit- two water- lled shafts, one wider than the demand of 68,294MW. In theory, this is tent nature of wind and solar power, mak- other, which are connected at both ends. enough to produce some 740 billion kilo- ing them more attractive and easier to Water is pumped down through the small- watt hours (kWh) of electricity a year integrate into the grid. Energy storage also er shaft to raise a piston in the larger shaft. more than double the 319 billion kWh that allows peak shaving . By tapping stored When demand peaks, the piston is al- ERCOT’s customers actually demanded energy rather than ring up standby gener- lowed to sink back down the main shaft, during 2010. In electricity generation, how- ators, utilities can save money by avoiding forcing water through a generator to create ever, aggregates and averages carry little expensive spot-market purchases. electricity. The system’s relatively compact 1 12 Energy storage The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Time-shifting would compensate for the intermittent nature of wind and solar power.
2 nature means it can be installed close to ar- Strasfurt, Germany, in 2013, says Peter and gives utilities and grid operators more eas of high demand, and extra modules Moser, the head of RWE’s research arm. exibility than solar power usually pro- can be added when more capacity is need- Several smaller out ts are also develop- vides. BrightSource is planning to equip ed, says Tom Mason, the rm’s boss. ing more e cient forms of CAES. SustainX, three of its plants with SolarPLUS. Another company looking to harness a company spun out of Dartmouth Uni- the potential of gravity is Advanced Rail versity’s engineering school and sup- Changing the rules Energy Storage (ARES), based in Santa ported by America’s Department of Ener- The potential market is huge: according to Monica, California. Its system uses modi- gy (DOE) and GE, among others, has Pike Research, a market-research rm, $122 ed railway cars on a specially built track. developed what it calls isothermal billion will be invested in energy-storage O -peak electricity is used to pull the cars CAES , which removes heat from the com- projects between 2011 and 2021. It predicts to the top of a hill. When energy is needed, pressed air by injecting water vapour. The that the bulk of this spending will go to- the cars are released, and as they run back water absorbs the heat and is then stored wards new forms of CAES. Green-minded down the track their motion drives a gen- and reapplied to the air during the expan- governments and regulators are taking a erator. Like PSH, the ARES system requires sion process. And rather than relying on closer interest in the technology. California speci c topography. But William Peitzke, salt caverns, SustainX uses standard steel has passed a law requiring utilities to con- the rm’s boss, says ARES delivers more pipes to store the compressed air, allowing sider storage in their plans. Germany’s en- power for the same height di erential. He its systems to be installed wherever they vironment ministry last year proposed a also says it is more e cient, with a round- are needed. The rm has built a 40 kilowatt project to assess technology develop- trip e ciency the ratio of energy out to demonstration plant and is partnering ments and funding needs for energy stor- energy in of more than 85%, compared with AES, a utility, to build a 1-2MW sys- age. And the British government’s low- with 70-75% for PSH. A demonstration sys- tem. General Compression, a Massachu- carbon networks fund is being used to tem is being built in California, and should setts-based company also backed by the build some demonstration projects. become operational in 2013. DOE, has developed an isothermal CAES Yet large-scale deployment of bulk stor- The second-biggest form of bulk-ener- system focused on providing support to age systems will require regulatory as well gy storage, though it is dwarfed by PSH, is wind farms. With the backing of Conoco- as technical progress. Storage systems do compressed-air energy storage (CAES). Phillips, an energy giant, it is building a not t neatly into regulatory frameworks This involves compressing air and storing 2MW demonstration plant in Texas. that distinguish between power providers it in large repositories, such as under- Another way to store energy is in the and grid operators, since they can be used ground salt caverns. During peak hours the form of heat. That is the approach taken by by both. Their ability to take power o the air is released to drive a turbine. There are Isentropic, a company based in Cam- grid, store it, and then release it later creates only two commercial CAES plants in oper- bridge, England, with a system it calls potential problems for current tari , bill- ation: one in Huntorf, Germany, and the pumped heat electricity storage (PHES), ing and metering approaches, notes the other in McIntosh, Alabama. The big draw- which uses argon gas to transfer heat be- EPRI in a recent report. Nor is it clear back of CAES is its ine ciency. According tween two vast tanks lled with gravel. In- whether power companies will be al- to RWE, a German utility, the Huntorf coming energy drives a heat pump, com- lowed to pass on the cost of storage facili- plant is only 42% e cient, and the one in pressing and heating the argon and ties to their customers. But given the tech- Alabama is only slightly better. The pro- creating a temperature di erential be- nology’s potential to make power grids blem is that air heats up when pressurised tween the two tanks, with one at 500°C cleaner and more reliable, it seems likely and cools down when expanded. In exist- and the other at -160°C. During periods of that changes to the rules are in store. 7 ing CAES systems energy is lost as heat high demand, the heat pump runs in re- during compression, and the air must then verse as a heat engine, expanding and be reheated before expansion. The energy cooling the argon and generating electric- to do this usually comes from natural gas, ity. Isentropic says its system has an e - reducing e ciency and increasing green- ciency of 72-80%, depending on size. house-gas emissions. BrightSource Energy, an energy com- As with hydro storage, e orts are under pany based in Oakland, California, has way to adapt the basic concept of CAES to signed a deal with Southern California Ed- make it more e cient and easier to install. ison, a utility, to implement a system that RWE is working with GE, an industrial con- stores energy in molten salt. BrightSource glomerate, and others to commercialise a generates electricity using an approach compressed-air system that captures the called concentrated solar power, in which heat produced during compression, stores computer-controlled mirrors, known as it, and then reapplies it during the expan- heliostats, focus the sun’s heat to boil wa- sion process, eliminating the need for addi- ter and turn a steam turbine. But this ap- tional sources of heat. Having proven the proach works only while the sun is shin- theoretical feasibility of this concept, the ing. The storage system, called SolarPLUS, partners must now overcome the technical uses a heat exchanger to transfer some of hurdles, which include developing pumps the heat captured by the heliostats to the to compress air to 70 times atmospheric molten salt. It is then run back through the pressure, and ceramic materials to store heat exchanger to drive the steam turbine heat at up to 600°C. The aim is to start when needed. This allows BrightSource’s building a 90MW demonstration plant in plants to deliver energy even after dark, Gravity Power’s subterranean hydropower The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Inside story 13
Can the scientists keep up?
Drugs and sport: The twists and turns of the long-running race between drug-taking athletes and bo ns trying to catch them HE idea of stimulating the body’s per- At the Mexico City games Tformance with all manner of concoc- in 1968 the rst athlete was tions is as old as mankind. The Inca nabbed for doping. His drug of chewed coca leaves to pep them up when choice was ethanol, found in al- doing strenuous work. Nordic warriors coholic drinks and easily picked munched mushrooms before going into up in a urine sample. Of precious lit- battle to dull the inevitable pain. Ancient tle use to swimmers or sprinters, it Olympians chomped opium, among other can help a pentathlete who needs, things, to give them a competitive edge. It among other things, to aim a ri e ac- wasn’t until the 1950s that such practices curately. Like other so-called depressants, became frowned upon. ethanol slows down the pulse rate and re- The shift in attitudes was spurred by the duces muscle tremors that can make a shot emergence of modern competitive sport. go o target. Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a Sports authorities, athletes appalled at un- Swede who tried to take advantage of this, gentlemanly behaviour or, more cynically, was disquali ed. those who lacked access to stimulants, Various heart-control drugs have a sim- cried foul. Any arti cial enhancement was ilar calming e ect, a boon to archers unfair , they complained, and must be and shooters. But they are often not eradicated. At the same time, rewards for as easy to detect as ethanol. At the the boost that drugs can provide bal- Munich Olympics in 1972, there- looned. Sportsmen were increasingly pre- fore, the IOC introduced some pared to go to any length to outdo their newfangled chemical tools: gas competitors, and devised novel ways to chromatography and mass foil the scientists tasked with catching spectroscopy. Gas chromato- cheats. An arms race began, and has con- graphy works by vaporising tinued apace ever since, with many twists extracts of urine and passing and turns along the way. them through a long tube, along which some constitu- And they’re o ent compounds move more The contest between athletes and scien- quickly than others. The tists was sparked in 1959 when Gene Smith mass spectroscope at the end and Henry Beecher, at Harvard University, of the tube then ionises the showed that short-distance swimmers emerging substances and who were given amphetamines did in- measures their characteristic deed swim faster than those who received mass-charge ratio. The result is a placebo. It was the rst study to show a chemical signature that can be that drugs had any real physiological ef- compared with signatures de- fect. Others reached similar conclusions. rived from urine samples spiked The performance enhancement was with known performance-en- small: just 2%. But this was enough to tip hancing drugs to see if an athlete the scales, especially in highly competitive has taken anything untoward. events where a photo nish decides the This method enabled the winner. So in 1964 the International Olym- IOC to catch seven athletes pic Committee (IOC) banned the use of who had taken banned sub- performance-enhancing drugs in the stances. Some had taken amphet- Olympics and introduced testing to keep amine, or one of two similar sub- athletes in line. And where the IOC leads, stances called phenmetrazine other sports bodies follow. The Olympic and ephedrine. Two cyclists games therefore provide a microcosm of were nicked for using niketha- the race between dopers and judges. mide, which the IOC had 1 14 Inside story The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Rather than using arti cial testosterone-like substances that could be spotted, athletes switched to using natural testosterone instead.
2 banned, but which the International Cy- humans. When samples of urine stashed (EPO), a hormone involved in the produc- cling Union had not. away after the Moscow Olympics were tion of red blood cells. It can be used to Gas chromatography and mass spec- brought in for epitestosterone-ratio testing, boost the number of these cells in anaemic troscopy are powerful tools. But altogether it was clear that doping had taken place. No patients to healthy levels. But WADA o - di erent methods are required to detect action could be taken because the stored cials knew that because red blood cells car- anabolic androgenic steroids, which mim- samples were anonymous. But at the 1984 ry oxygen to muscles, having more of ic the e ects of testosterone and other hor- Olympics 11 athletes were found to be us- them increases endurance. The side-e ect mones in the body. In the 1950s doctors ing testosterone or testosterone-like drugs of thicker blood, though, is increased risk started using them to treat patients with that would not have been detected prior to of cells clogging blood vessels, which can wasting diseases, because they help Dr Donike’s ndings. They were not all cause a stroke or heart failure a chance strengthen bones and rebuild tissues. The weightlifters. Suspicious ratios were also many dopers would be willing to take in IOC realised that they also o ered cheats a found in volleyball players, runners, wres- return for superior performance. way to build up more muscle than was tlers and discus throwers. possible through training. Unlike stimu- By 1988, though, athletes had found a The plot thickens lants, which must be taken in high doses to way to sabotage the older techniques, During the 1990s no tests existed that could be e ective, making them easier to spot, which were still e ective against users of di erentiate natural erythropoietin from the chromatography-spectroscopy combo drugs other than testosterone. Diuretics, the arti cial kind. Looking at red blood was blind to the tiny doses which were which increase the amount of water bo- cells was no use, because their level varies enough to make steroids count. dies release through urine, dilute the sam- from person to person. Most people’s A breakthrough came in 1972, too late ple and make substances in it harder to de- blood contains 40-45% red blood cells. But for the Munich Olympics. Raymond in some people the gure can reach 50% Brooks and others at St Thomas’s Hospital without any manipulation. A blood test re- in London developed the immunoassay vealing a 51% red-blood-cell count would test. David Cowan, head of the Drug Con- be considered imsy evidence; the suspect trol Centre at King’s College London and could be a lucky athlete endowed with director of the anti-doping laboratory for thicker blood. this year’s London Olympics, likens it to a A year before the Sydney games in lock-and-key mechanism: the steroids in 2000, however, the IOC got a helping hand urine were the keys, and the locks were from the French national anti-doping lab- speci c compounds known to bind with oratory and scientists from the Australian them, which were added to the sample. Sport Institute. The French researchers had Even minuscule quantities of steroids developed a test that examined the molec- were enough to trigger a reaction which ular composition of various forms of the could then be detected. hormone. All EPO molecules are made up At the Montreal games in 1976 a total of of the same protein backbone, but the 1,786 urine samples were analysed and 11 French lab noticed that some side-chains people were found guilty of doping. Eight di ered between natural and arti cial were weightlifters using anabolic steroids. forms. The Australians, meanwhile, had Three had won medals, which they were devised a test that looked for changes in subsequently forced to return. Four years blood characteristics, in particular a raised later in Moscow none of the 1,645 samples number of young blood cells (reticulo- collected was found to contain steroids. cytes) released as a result of EPO use. But by the time of the Los Angeles games in In 2003 WADA discovered that a new 1984 it had become clear that the reason version of EPO, known as CERA-Mircera, was not new-found abstemiousness. The tect. This time, however, the IOC was was being developed. Unlike earlier variet- old, detectable steroids had simply been ahead of the game. It warned athletes in ies, which needed to be taken three times a replaced by new, undetectable ones. Rath- Seoul that year that diuretics were out of week and could be detected in urine, the er than using arti cial testosterone-like bounds, and also gured out how to identi- new drug could be taken once a month substances that could be spotted using the fy the most common diuretics. Four ath- and rarely made it into urine at all. It was immunoassay test, athletes had switched letes were caught with such compounds in probably the greatest challenge the anti- to using natural testosterone instead. Be- their urine. Whether actual performance- doping research community had ever cause testosterone levels vary widely from enhancing drugs were present could not faced, says Olivier Rabin, director of sci- one person to another, it was impossible to be determined, but since diuretics were ence at WADA. The agency therefore en- say whether an athlete was cheating or banned, disquali cation followed. listed the help of Roche, the Swiss pharma- was simply blessed with naturally high By the 1990s anti-doping sleuths could ceuticals company that had developed levels of the hormone. detect depressants, diuretics, steroids and CERA-Mircera for medical use. It took three This changed when a research group hormones. But when the World Anti-Dop- years to work out how to detect it. led by Manfred Donike at the German ing Agency (WADA) was founded in 1999 The solution was a screening procedure Sport University in Cologne discovered to thwart drug users in all sports, these in which serum samples were mixed with that there is a natural ratio between testos- were no longer the biggest worry. In the antibodies that were biochemically pro- terone and another, related hormone, 1980s pharmaceutical laboratories gured grammed to latch onto anything that called epitestosterone, in normal, healthy out a way to manufacture erythropoietin looked like EPO. These antibodies were 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Inside story 15
2 bound with another substance which blood, it can still be identi ed as having an extraordinary body. glowed green on contact with EPO. To come from a di erent person. This has But it turns out that the viruses that make doubly sure that the glow was due to prompted some athletes to infuse them- smuggle genes into the body leave behind the presence of the drug and not some oth- selves with their own blood. Although this markers which can be discerned. For now, er e ect, a modi ed version of the French might, at rst blush, sound futile, with the then, genetic cheating can be detected. But side-chain test was used, though this took right tools and techniques it is possible to this will probably not be the case for long. longer and was more cumbersome. We draw o blood and store it in a freezer for I am certain that viruses will be invented knew athletes would challenge accusa- later use. The technique may weaken them that won’t leave traces, says Patrick Scha- tions and needed to be sure to make our temporarily but blood levels return to nor- masch, the IOC’s medical director. The key, ndings robust enough to face legal chal- mal in a few days if they eat properly and he argues, is keeping track of the athlete’s lenges, says Dr Rabin. rest. Months later, just before a major com- overall physiological pro le using a bio- The hard work paid o . At the Beijing petition, athletes can tap their stash. logical passport. For decades we have Olympics of 2008, ve athletes were The latest technique, devised to combat been looking for the mere presence of sub- caught and disquali ed for using drugs this, and other forms of doping, is the bio- stances, he says, but with these kinds of that tinkered with EPO receptors. This was logical passport. This involves frequent doping techniques available, this is no lon- a turning-point. It showed that by col- testing of athletes to keep track of nine key ger enough. laborating with the drug companies we blood characteristics over a period of time. But what if athletes had genetic en- could bring the days of playing catch-up As a consequence an athlete’s typical bio- hancements applied early on in their ca- with the cheaters to an end, says Dr Rabin. logical markers are known. If his normal reers, before enrolling in the biological- Even this, though, is not the end of the red-blood-cell proportion is 46%, say, and it passport scheme, or even as children? Re- story. Working with drugs companies is no is then found to be 50% during a competi- gardless of age, when you have an extra help against doping ruses which do not in- tion, that would be a sign of foul play. copy of a gene inserted into your body it volve the use of drugs. Key among these is throws o homeostasis, and we can notice blood transfusion. An extra dose of red Building a better athlete that things are not biochemically in bal- blood cells, providing extra endurance, is Even as blood doping becomes easier to ance, says Dr Schamasch. Any such far- similar to what can be achieved with detect, more problems loom. The biggest reaching intervention is bound to leave EPO except that it is faster and less risky. concern is genetic manipulation. WADA clues in the body. Athletes can take blood from people with frets that athletes may start improving When the race between cheats and the same blood type, or from those with a their bodies by tinkering with their genes. their pursuers began in the run-up to the compatible blood type. For instance, a virus could be used to smug- Mexico City games, Dr Rabin recalls, am- Consequently, ways have been found gle a gene into the body which spurs the phetamines were the big fear. We over- to detect whether athletes have boosted production of EPO or increases the produc- came that. And now we fear genes, but we their red blood cells through transfusion. tion of muscle-building hormones. That will overcome this too. He can point to Type-O blood in a type-A person, say, is a could leave anti-doping detectives with clear progress in the past six decades. We dead giveaway. And even if a type-A ath- the illusion that the hormone levels or are not yet ahead of the cheaters but we lete has infused himself with type-A blood-cell counts are simply the product of are nally running neck and neck. 7 16 The quanti ed self The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the notion of marrying technology with self-improve- ment originated in San Francisco, where Gary Wolf, a journalist and author, co- founded the Quanti ed Self blog in 2007. This led to regular meetings, which are now held in about 50 cities around the world. Quanti ed Self conferences were held in 2011 in America and Europe. Al- most everything we do generates data, says Mr Wolf. At the moment, he says, data from phones, computers and credit cards are mostly used by companies to target ad- vertising, recommend products or spot fraud. But tapping into the stream of data they generate can give people new ways to deal with medical problems or improve their quality of life in other ways.
Quantify this Self-quantifying is being taken seriously by start-ups, in Silicon Valley and else- where, which are launching new devices and software aimed at self-trackers. It may even provide a glimpse of the future of health care, in which a greater emphasis is placed on monitoring, using a variety of gizmos, to prevent disease, prolong lives and reduce medical costs. To see how self-tracking can pay divi- dends, consider the example of David (not Counting every moment his real name), an investment banker in London. With his routine of early starts and 11-hour days, he found that he had trouble falling asleep, and worried that this a ected his concentration at work. He started using a headband made by Zeo, a start-up based in Newton, Massachusetts. Technology and health: Measuring your everyday activities can help improve It tracks sleep quantity and quality by mea- your quality of life, according to a cionados of self-tracking suring brainwave activity to determine how long the wearer spends in light, deep HE idea of measuring things to chart ing data about their everyday activities can and rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. Tprogress towards a goal is common- help them improve their lives an ap- David recorded his sleep data along place in large organisations. Governments proach known as self-tracking , body with information on his diet, health sup- tot up trade gures, hospital waiting times hacking or self-quantifying . plements, exercise and alcohol consump- and exam results; companies measure In some ways this is not a new idea. tion, uploading it all onto the Zeo website. their turnover, pro ts and inventory. But Athletes and their coaches commonly He also tried interventions such as taking the use of metrics by individuals is rather make detailed notes on nutrition, training magnesium supplements, cutting out caf- less widespread, with the notable excep- sessions, sleep and other variables. Similar feine and changing the lighting conditions tions of people who are trying to lose tactics have long been used to combat in his bedroom. Using the readings from weight or improve their tness. Most peo- health problems like allergies and mi- the headband, he could see how each of ple do not routinely record their moods, graines. But new technologies make it sim- these things a ected his sleep. sleeping patterns or activity levels, track pler than ever to gather and analyse perso- He found that drinking too much alco- how much alcohol or ca eine they drink nal data. Sensors have shrunk and become hol undermined his sleep quality, but also or chart how often they walk the dog. cheaper. Accelerometers, which measure determined that taking magnesium sup- But some people are doing just these changes in direction and speed, used to plements helped him sleep more soundly things. They are an eclectic mix of early cost hundreds of pounds but are now and reach deep sleep more quickly. He adopters, tness freaks, technology evan- cheap and small enough to be routinely in- now sleeps for an average of seven-and-a- gelists, personal-development junkies, cluded in smartphones. This makes it half hours a night, up from six hours be- hackers and patients su ering from a wide much easier to take the quantitative meth- fore he began his self-tracking experiment. variety of health problems. What they ods used in science and business and ap- I feel more relaxed, sharper and more share is a belief that gathering and analys- ply them to the personal sphere. switched on, he says. Seeing the facts on 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 The quanti ed self 17 Self-tracking may provide a glimpse of the future of health care, based on monitoring and prevention.
2 your computer screen makes them di - is also uploaded wirelessly to a website cult to ignore. that analyses and displays the data and lets Many of the 250 people who attended users compare notes with their friends. the Quanti ed Self Europe conference in Jawbone, also based in San Francisco, has Amsterdam last November had similar released the Up, a wristband that commu- stories to tell. Robin Barooah, a software nicates with an iPhone and can also mea- designer, said he had lost 20kg by monitor- sure physical activity and sleep patterns. ing his after-lunch mood using ashcards, Basis, another San Francisco start-up, is which heightened his awareness of how about to launch a wristwatch-like device di erent foods made him feel. Sara Rig- capable of measuring heart rate, skin con- gare, an engineer from Sweden, described ductance (related to stress levels) and sleep how she used an iPhone app to determine patterns, all of which can then be dis- the best drug combination to control her played on a health dashboard . Parkinson’s Disease, and a Nintendo Wii GreenGoose, yet another San Francisco game to monitor and improve her balance. start-up, has devised tiny motion sensors Christian Kleineidam, a student from that can be attached to everyday items, Berlin who su ers from a spinal condition, sending a wireless signal to a base-station explained how he used a device to mea- whenever the item is used. A sensor can be sure his breathing and identify which re- heart rate, posture, motion and tempera- attached to a toothbrush, for example, or a laxation exercises were most e ective. This ture and relating the data with her mood. watering can, or the collar of a dog, making helped him improve his lung function by She found that taking dummy pills la- it possible to measure and track how often 30%. Also discussed was Asthmapolis, a belled happy , calm , focus and will you brush your teeth, water your plants or start-up based in Madison, Wisconsin, power had a noticeable impact, even walk your dog. The company’s aim is to es- which has developed a device called the though she knew they were placebos. tablish a platform for the gami cation of Spiroscout. It is a sensor that attaches to an But with careful design of experiments everyday activities. asthma inhaler and uses satellite-position- there is scope for self-tracking to produce Large technology companies are also ing data to enable patients and researchers useful data. The Zeo, for example, has al- keeping an eye on self-tracking technol- to work out which environments make ready generated the largest-ever database ogy. The Amsterdam conference was spon- their condition worse (such as proximity on sleep stages, which revealed di erences sored by Philips, Vodafone and Intel, all of to a particular type of crop). Many people between men and women in REM-sleep which regard health-tracking as a promis- mentioned Boozerlyzer, an app for An- quantity. Asthmapolis also hopes to pool ing area for future growth. Philips has droid smartphones that helps people track data from thousands of inhalers tted launched Vital Signs, an experimental app their drinking and uses simple games to with its Spiroscout sensor in an e ort to for Apple devices that uses the built-in help them measure the e ect of alcohol on improve the management of asthma. And camera to measure the user’s heart rate their co-ordination, reaction times, memo- data from the Boozerlyzer app is anony- and breathing rate, and chart them over ry and emotions. And there was much talk mised and aggregated to investigate the va- time. Intel has developed an app called of the potential to encourage self-tracking riation in people’s response to alcohol. Mobile Therapy that pops up randomly through gami cation turning everyday and asks users to record their mood, to see activities into games by awarding points Keeping track how it varies during the week. and trophies and encouraging people to This may sound creepy, but tens of thou- As populations age and health-care compete with their friends. sands of patients around the world are al- costs increase, there is likely to be a greater Some self-quanti ers can come across ready sharing information about symp- emphasis on monitoring, prevention and as a little odd. Not everyone carries out ex- toms and treatments for hundreds of maintaining wellness in future, with pa- periments to see whether wearing orange- conditions on websites such as Patients- tients taking a more active role an ap- tinted glasses or performing regular hop- LikeMe and CureTogether. This has yield- proach sometimes called Health 2.0 . ping exercises can improve sleep quality, ed valuable results, such as the nding that With their sleep monitors and health dash- or whether (as has been claimed) eating patients who su ered from vertigo during boards, the a cionados of self-tracking butter improves arithmetic ability. An ob- migraines were four times more likely to may end up being seen as pioneers of this vious problem is that self-quanti cation have painful side e ects when using a par- model. Mr Wolf draws an analogy with experiments lack the rigorous controls and ticular migraine drug. The growing num- the Homebrew Computer Club, which double-blinding of pharmaceutical trials. ber of self-tracking devices now reaching met in Silicon Valley in the 1970s and went There could also be placebo e ects. the market will increase the scope for large- from a hobbyists’ group to the basis of a With self-tracking you never really scale data collection, enabling users to an- new industry. We were inspired by our know whether it is your experiment that is alyse their own readings and aggregate knowledge of this history of personal a ecting the outcome, or your expecta- them with those of other people. computing, he says. We asked ourselves tions of the experiment, says Nancy The thumb-sized Fitbit, for example, what would happen if we convened ad- Dougherty, a self-tracking enthusiast who made by a company of the same name vanced users of self-tracking technologies works as a hardware engineer at Proteus based in San Francisco, clips onto a belt to see what we could learn from each oth- Biomedical, a medical-devices company and uses an accelerometer and altimeter to er. Self-tracking may look geeky now, but in Redwood City, California. Using an ad- measure activity levels and sleep patterns. the same was once true of e-mail. And hesive patch developed by Proteus, she A readout shows steps walked, stairs what geeks do today, the rest of us often has experimented with measuring her climbed and calories burned. Information end up doing tomorrow. 7 18 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Taking the long view
when Amazon moved into the business of providing cloud-computing services to Je Bezos, the founder and chief technology rms which seemed an odd executive of Amazon, owes much of choice for an online retailer. But the com- his success to his ability to look pany has since established itself as a beyond the short-term view of things leader in the eld. A big piece of the story we tell ourselves about who we are is that NSIDE a remote mountain in Texas, a we are willing to invent, Mr Bezos told Igargantuan clock is being pieced togeth- shareholders at Amazon’s annual meeting er, capable of telling the time for the next last year. And very importantly, we are 10,000 years. Once the clock is nished, willing to be misunderstood for long people willing to make the di cult trek periods of time. will be able to visit the vast chamber More recently, nancial analysts have housing it, along with displays marking grumbled about the company’s wafer- various anniversaries of its operation. On thin margins and the hefty investment it is a website set up to track the progress of making in its Kindle range of e-readers, the this 10,000-year clock (10000year- most advanced of which, the Kindle Fire, clock.net), Je Bezos, who has invested is a fully edged tablet computer. Ama- $42m of his own money in the project, zon’s move into hardware with the origi- describes this impressive feat of engineer- nal Kindle, launched in 2007, was another ing as an icon for long-term thinking . unexpected move. The devices have That description applies just as much proved wildly popular, but Mr Bezos has to Mr Bezos himself. The founder and kept details of sales gures and pro tabili- chief executive of Amazon has often ty secret. The assumption is that Amazon ru ed investors’ feathers by sacri cing is trading short-term pro ts in order to short-term pro ts to make big bets on new establish its dominance in the booming technologies that, he insists, will produce e-book market. But nobody really knows. richer returns for the company’s share- Investors are paying a lofty premium for holders in future. He laid out this philoso- a company whose investment cycle is phy in his rst letter to shareholders, going to extend a decade and which o ers penned in 1997, which was entitled It’s all limited visibility, says Colin Gillis of BGC about the long term . Partners, a brokerage rm. Some of these gambles have paid o Such remarks do nothing to sway Mr handsomely, transforming Amazon from Bezos, who is convinced that rapid techno- an online retailer of books and other logical change creates huge opportunities physical products into a technology behe- for companies bold enough to seize them. moth with $48 billion of revenues in 2011 There is room for many winners here, he and strong positions in elds from cloud says. But he believes Amazon can be one computing to tablet devices. They have of the biggest thanks to its unique culture also enhanced Mr Bezos’s reputation as a and capacity for reinventing itself. Even in technological seer. In the last few years its original incarnation as an internet there has been a re-acceleration of the rate retailer, it pioneered features that have of change in technology, he says. His since become commonplace, such as impressive ability to identify and pro t allowing customers to leave reviews of from the resulting disruptions means he is books and other products (a move that widely seen as the person best placed to shocked literary critics at the time), or ll the shoes of the late Steve Jobs as the using a customer’s past purchasing history industry’s leading visionary. to recommend other products, often with Mr Bezos’s willingness to take a long- astonishing accuracy. term view also explains his fascination with space travel, and his decision to The view from the garage found a secretive company called Blue Amazon’s culture has been deeply in u- Origin, one of several start-ups now build- enced by Mr Bezos’s own experiences. A ing spacecraft with private funding. It computer-science graduate from Prince- might seem like a risky bet, but the same ton, he returned to his alma mater last was said of many of Amazon’s unusual year to give a speech to students that moves in the past. Successful rms, he provided some fascinating insights into says, tend to be the ones that are willing to his psychology as an entrepreneur. He explore uncharted territories. Me-too explained that he had been a garage companies have not done that well over inventor from a young age. His creations time, he observes. included a solar cooker made out of an Eyebrows were raised, for example, umbrella and tin foil, which did not work 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 3rd 2012 Brain scan 19
Perhaps his most outlandish bet is that on Blue Origin, one of several space ight start-ups.
2 very well, and an automatic gate-closer promote sales of the Kindle, by letting initiatives that have yet to prove their made out of cement- lled tyres. customers try it in person. The success of worth. Amazon has branched out into That passion for invention has not Apple’s hugely pro table chain of retail own-brand products, has set up specialist deserted Mr Bezos, who last year led a stores shows that even in the era of e- e-commerce sites in several premium patent for a system of tiny airbags that can commerce, there are some things people markets and is dabbling in moviemaking be incorporated into smartphones, to prefer to buy the old-fashioned way. and television production. prevent them from being damaged if If Amazon does one day move into Perhaps his most outlandish bet is that dropped. Even so, in the 1990s he hesitated bricks-and-mortar retail, it would not be on space ight. Blue Origin is one of sever- to leave a good job in the world of nance the rst time that Mr Bezos had taken a al start-ups aiming to open up space travel to set up Amazon after a colleague he leaf from the book of Jobs. Like Apple’s to paying customers. Like Amazon, the respected advised him against it. But Mr visionary leader, he has a strong sense of company is secretive, but last September it Bezos applied what he calls a regret showmanship, which was on display at revealed that it had lost an unmanned minimisation framework , imagining the carefully choreographed launch of the prototype vehicle during a short-hop test whether, as an 80-year-old looking back, Kindle Fire last year. Mr Bezos can also be ight. Although this was a setback, the he would regret the decision not to strike an intense and demanding manager. But announcement of the loss revealed for the out on his own. He concluded that he most importantly, he shares with Mr Jobs rst time just how far Blue Origin’s team would, and with encouragement from his an innate understanding of the impor- had advanced. So little was known about wife he took the plunge as an entrepre- tance of thinking about high-tech pro- Blue’s status that the amount of progress it neur. They moved from New York to ducts from the customer’s point of view. had evidently made further enhanced its Seattle and he founded the company, in reputation, says Mike Gold, an executive time-honoured fashion for American Keeping it simple at Bigelow Aerospace, another space technology start-ups, in his garage. During the design of the original Kindle, start-up. In a post on Blue Origin’s website, This may explain why Mr Bezos is so for example, Mr Bezos insisted that the Mr Bezos said the crash was not the keen to ensure that Amazon preserves its e-reader had to work without needing to outcome that any of us wanted, but we’re own appetite for risk-taking. As compa- be plugged into a PC. That meant giving it signed up for this to be hard. nies grow, there is a danger that novel wireless connectivity. But he also wanted Staying on top in the fast-changing ideas get snu ed out by managers’ desire it to work everywhere, not just in Wi-Fi world of technology is hard, too. Mr Bezos to conform and play it safe. You get social hotspots, and without the need for a is bound to be the target of more criticism cohesion at the expense of truth, he says. monthly contract. This prompted the as his company’s hefty investments in He believes that the best way to guard Kindle team to devise a new business new areas continue to put a dent in its against this is for leaders to encourage model, striking deals with mobile-phone bottom line. His next move could be into their sta to work on big new ideas. It’s operators to allow Kindle users to down- smartphones or a video-streaming service like exercising muscles, he adds. Either load e-books without having to pay net- that competes with Net ix, but it is just as you use them or you lose them. work fees. The ability to download books likely to be something entirely unexpect- Amazon’s unexpected move into cloud anywhere does not simply make life ed. By being unusually patient, he hopes computing is a good example. The com- easier for users; it also encourages them to to create businesses that rivals will nd pany had developed ways to allocate buy more books. The Kindle is an e-reader, harder to assail. As the investments in computing capacity exibly in order to but it is also a portable bookshop. both Blue Origin and the 10,000-year deal with the mountains of data being Similarly, with the Kindle Fire, Mr clock show, it is the challenge of reaching generated by its retail operations. This led Bezos recognised that a tablet computer for distant horizons that really makes to the idea that the same know-how could designed chie y for consuming entertain- Amazon’s boss tick. 7 be used to solve similar problems at other ment content is no use unless there is companies, too, and Amazon Web Ser- plenty of such content available. For many AWS O er to readers vices ( ) was born. It is now used by other tablet manufacturers, the question Reprints of Technology Quarterly are available hundreds of thousands of rms, ranging of getting content onto their devices from the Rights and Syndication Department. from start-ups such as Spotify, a music- seems to be an afterthought; but Amazon, A minimum order of ve copies is required. streaming service, to established compa- like Apple, has assembled an ecosystem of nies like Ericsson, a Swedish telecoms books, apps, video and music to accompa- Corporate o er giant. The rm does not break out AWS’s ny its device. Moreover, Amazon can use Customisation options on corporate orders of revenues, but Gartner, a consulting and cross-subsidies from the sale of digital 100 or more are available. Please contact us to discuss your requirements. research out t, has estimated that they content to keep the price of the Fire down, For more information on how to order special exceeded $1billion in 2011. something that rival tablet-makers who reports, reprints or any queries you may have Mr Bezos is coy about where he might do not sell content cannot do. Once again, please contact: place more big bets in future, but there Mr Bezos is playing a long-term game in have been persistent rumours that Ama- the hope of establishing the Fire as the The Rights and Syndication Department zon might launch a smartphone, possibly main rival to the iPad. The Economist as soon as this year. With Amazon’s video- Not all of his bets succeed. Who re- 26 Red Lion Square London WC1R 4HQ streaming and music services, Mr Bezos members Amazon Auctions, for example, Tel +44 (0)20 7576 8148 clearly has Net ix and Apple in his sights. or Amapedia, Amazon’s attempt to build a Fax +44 (0)20 7576 8492 And in recent weeks there has been specu- Wikipedia-like user-generated product e-mail: [email protected] lation that Amazon is toying with the idea directory? Even more numerous are the www.economist.com.rights of opening a bricks-and-mortar shop to bets that Mr Bezos has placed on new