Will mobile phones The digital divide, Dispensing justice kill off the iPod? seen from below through software page 16 page 22 page 34 TechnologyQuarterly March 12th 2005

Change is in the air The technology of smoother, smarter air travel

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Contents Humanoids on the march

Robotics: Humanoid robots are becoming ever more advanced. Are the rms making them just interested in publicity, or are they chasing a new market? IRST came Asimo, Honda’s childlike ruthless assassin of Terminator. Hu- Frobot, which was introduced to the manoid robots have walked into our col- world in 2000. Sony responded with lective subconscious, colouring our On the cover QRIO (pronounced curio) in 2003. Now views of the future. New technologies, from a competition has broken out between But now Japan’s industrial giants are mobile-phone check-in to Japan’s industrial rms to see which of spending billions of yen to make such ro- wireless luggage tags and them can produce the most advanced hu- bots a reality. Their new humanoids rep- on-board mobile telephony, manoid robotand South Korean rms resent impressive feats of engineering: will make air travel smoother are getting involved, too. They are seri- when Honda introduced Asimo, a four- and swifter for passengers, ous about humanoids, says Dan Kara of foot robot that had been in development while also boosting the Robotics Trends, a consultancy. They for some 15 years, it walked so uidly that fortunes of beleaguered have made a conscious decision to head its white, articulated exterior seemed to airlines. What it all means for in that direction. Corporate rivalry, ad- conceal a human. Honda continues to you, the Economist-reading vancing technology and a desire for pub- make the machine faster, friendlier and traveller: pages 18-20 licity, together with a fascination for more agile. Last October, when Asimo machines that resemble their human cre- was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame ators and the distant prospect of a vast in Pittsburgh, it walked on to the stage Monitor new market, have conspired to create a and accepted its own plaque. 3 Humanoid robots, a new unit of fresh breed of robots. At two and a half feet tall, Sony’s computing capacity, electronics The idea of humanoid robots is not QRIO is smaller and more toy-like than and the environment, novel uses new, of course. They have been part of Asimo. It walks, understands a small for camera-phones, bespoke the imaginative landscape ever since Karl number of voice commands, and can materials, speech-recognition Capek, a Czech writer, rst dreamed navigate on its own. If it falls over, it gets chips, software-retail kiosks, them up for his 1921 play Rossum’s Uni- up and resumes where it left o. It can medicated contact lenses, and versal Robots. (The word robot comes even connect wirelessly to the internet telephony’s spiritual connection from the Czech word for drudgery, ro- and broadcast what its camera eyes can bota.) Since then, Hollywood has pro- see. In 2003, Sony demonstrated an up- Rational consumer duced countless variations on the theme, graded QRIO that could run. Honda re- 16 The device that ate everything from the sultry False Maria in Fritz Lang’s sponded last December with a version of Will mobile phones kill the iPod? silent masterpiece Metropolis to the Asimo that runs at twice the speed. wittering C-3PO in Star Wars and the In 2004, Toyota joined the fray1 Reports 18 Change is in the air The technology of smarter, smoother air travel 21 Behind the digital divide The view from the ground in rural India

Case history 25 United we nd How collaborative ltering nds things you weren’t looking for

Reports 28 Dusting for digital ngerprints The growing importance of forensic computing 30 AI am the law Articial-intelligence software that dispenses digital justice

Brain scan 33 The future, just around the bend Are Ray Kurzweil’s visions of the future as crazy as they seem? Fanfare for the increasingly common man-shaped robot 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

2 with its own family of robots, called Partner, one of which is a four-foot hu- manoid that plays the trumpet. Its ngers work the instrument’s valves, and it has Who wants to mechanical lungs and articial lips. Toyota hopes to oer a commercial ver- buy a computon? sion of the robot by 2010. This month, 50 Partner robots will act as guides at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. Grid computing: Electricity is sold by Other Japanese companies including the kilowatt-hour. Now a researcher Fujitsu, Sanyo, Hitachi, Mitsubishi and has proposed that computing power Epson have also built humanoid robots, should be sold by the computon most of which walk around and under- stand a few simple voice commands. AST month, Sun Microsystems, a big Kawada Industries, a Japanese construc- Lcomputer-maker, announced the de- tion rm, has devised a ve-foot robot tails of its plans to rent computers over called HRP-2 Promet with the ability to the internet. Instead of crunching num- put one foot directly in front of the other, bers on their own in-house machines, as if walking the plank. It is intended to customers of the Sun Grid service can help carry light loads on building sites. pay $1 for every hour that they use a pro- South Korea is also entering the game. cessor on one of Sun’s computers, and $1 The Advanced Institute of Science and The Daleks could never do this per month for every gigabyte of storage. Technology has created Hubo a child- This is the sort of thing people have in sized humanoid robot. And Samsung, a of the various humanoid robots attest, mind when they talk about grand, but of- South Korean consumer-electronics this is currently their main function. The ten vague, visions of utility computing giant, is rumoured to be working on a Asimo humanoid robot from Honda or grid computing, in which computer humanoid robot of its own as well. makes news wherever it goes, says power is supplied when needed, like Despite their sudden proliferation, Honda’s website, while Sony calls QRIO electricity, over a network by a central however, humanoids are still a mechani- a corporate ambassador. provider. Unveiling the service on Febru- cal minority. Most of the world’s robots In the longer term, humanoid robots ary 1st, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s number are faceless, footless and mute. They are could be pressed into service as domestic two, submitted a computing job to the bolted to the oors of factories, stamping helpersand since homes are designed Sun Grid. In a ash, the answer was out car parts or welding pieces of metal, for use by people, humanoids might in- ready, at a cost of $12: in a few seconds, 12 machines making more machines. Ac- deed be the best shape. We human be- processor-hours of work had been car- cording to the United Nations, business ings have engineered our environment to ried out by hundreds of processors. orders for industrial robots jumped 18% accommodate our physiology, observes It is all very clever. But oerings such in the rst half of 2004. They may soon Jerey Smith of Honda. So a very e- as Sun Grid, while novel, do not solve the be outnumbered by domestic robots, cient shape for operating in that world is ultimate problem: the ecient allocation such as self-navigating vacuum cleaners, a humanoid one. of networked computing resources. Peo- lawn mowers and window washers, In particular, robot-makers expect ple do not think of their computing needs which are selling fast. But neither indus- great demand for helper robots as mil- in terms of, say, 50 processor-hours; in- trial nor domestic robots are humanoid. lions of baby-boomers reach old age. stead, they have specic tasks of varying And a good thing too, says Hans Mora- There will be far more people in the fu- importance and urgency, and want to get vec, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon Uni- ture in need of assistance in their homes those tasks done economically, using versity. The human shape is an than people willing to do those jobs, whatever resources are available. evolutionary accident, he says, and says Mr Smith. I think the rst applica- The issue therefore comes down to slavishly imitating it is more about show tions will be in assisted living environ- economics as much as technology. As business than good engineering. Even ments, and once the cost has dropped to long as the number of computers and us- though robotic technology has advanced the price of a car, you may then see them ers is smallas in a cluster, rather than a rapidly, Dr Moravec says it is still far too in homes. Hideki Komiyama of Sony genuine gridresource allocation can be early to pretend that any machine can agrees. Robots are going to be a part of done socially, or by an omniscient ad- truly emulate human capabilities. A everyday life, he says. They’ll be as ministrator who simply decides who will three-armed, wheeled cylinder that common as cell phones. be allowed to do what. But as soon as the crawls up stairs and folds up like a house- But even if a mass market for human- grid becomes big, any such arrangement plant when not in use may be a better oid robots never materialises, there is a will fail for the same reason that the So- conguration than a big mannequin, he third and nal justication for building viet Union’s economy broke down. Valu- says. Takeo Kanade, another Carnegie them: because it is dicult. By develop- ing and prioritising millions, perhaps Mellon roboticist who has academic ties ing humanoids, companies can both billions, of dierent transactions is too to the eld on both sides of the Pacic, demonstrate their technological prowess complex for any central planner. Only a agrees. The human body itself is not nec- and benet from ancillary breakthroughs market mechanism of some sort can essarily the best design for a robot, con- that emerge along the way. Just as the maintain order. trary to most people’s convictions that goal of putting a man on the moon re- Building just such a market mecha- evolution has made us the perfect mach- sulted in unforeseen technological ad- nism is the nut that Bernardo Huberman, ine, he says. vances that were often applied outside a researcher at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and But while the humanoid form may the eld of space travel, the robot-makers his team have been trying to crack. The not be perfect, there are some good rea- believe that tackling the seemingly key, Dr Huberman realised, was to have a sons to emulate it. In the short term, hu- impossible now could pay big dividends system that can allow users to assign dif- manoid robots generate huge amounts of later. So expect the march of the human- ferent priorities to tasks, to reect their publicity: as the gruelling tour schedules oids to continue. 7 importance. This rules out any system 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Monitor 3

2 that would simply give each user a prior- stances. But it is just one of three pieces of ity without dierentiating that user’s EU legislation with which electronics many tasks. It also rules out a reservation- manufacturers must comply. Another is style system of the sort that airlines use, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equip- since a lot of processor cycles (like aero- ment (WEEE) directive, which came into plane seats) would end up unused, and eect in August 2004 and requires manu- the system would not be able to accom- facturers to take back and recycle electri- modate new tasks as they arose, even if cal products. Finally, the Registration, they were extremely urgent. In a grid, it Evaluation, Authorisation and Restric- must be assumed, demand is changing tion of Chemicals (REACH) directive re- constantly and unpredictably, and so is quires rms to register the chemicals they supply (since individual host computers use in their manufacturing processes. on the grid come and go). Although these rules apply only in the Mr Huberman’s answer is Tycoon, a EU, their eects are being felt around the piece of software for computing grids world. We cannot aord to run two pro- that turns them into a sort of stockmark- duction lines, says David Lear, Hewlett- et or clearing house, he says. Users start Packard’s director of Environmental Strat- by opening a bank account and getting egies and Sustainability. We will be credits. They then open a screen that producing just one product for the world- shows all the available processors, their wide market. And component suppliers, current workloads, and a price list. Users wherever they are, must ensure that they place bids for various processors, using a comply with the new rules if their parts sliding price dial that looks like a volume end up in products sold in Europe. control. Allocation is proportional, so Similar rules are also being adopted that if one user bids $2 and the other $1, elsewhere. China’s Ministry of Informa- the rst gets two-thirds of the resource tion Industry is basing its rules on RoHS. and the second one-third. If the deadline In America, the Environmental Protec- of one task suddenly moves forward, the tion Agency has remained quiet on the is- user can up his bid and immediately get sue, preferring instead to let the industry more processor cycles for that task. As us- regulate itself. As a result, many states are ers consume cycles, the software deducts introducing their own regulations. The credits from their account. EPA is not taking a leadership role, which The HP team has so far tried out leaves companies trying to deal with Tycoon on a cluster of 22 Linux servers each state individually, says Mike distributed between HP’s headquarters Kirschner of Design Chain Associates, an in Palo Alto, California, and its oces in Electronics, electronics-manufacturing consultancy. Bristol, England. Tycoon did well in these California’s rules, for example, are based tests, and several amusing animated on the directives. lms were rendered using its system. HP unleaded Complying with the rules is no small has now given Tycoon to CERN, the task. The RoHS rules’ main target is lead, a world’s largest particle physics labora- Environment: New European rules toxic substance that is used to x compo- tory and a hotbed of grid-computing re- will force electronics rms to nents to circuit boards, is an ingredient in search, for more testing. eliminate toxic substances and take plastic casings and is found in the glass of This is only the beginning, of course. back and recycle their products cathode-ray-tube monitors. According to Mr Huberman reckons that Tycoon, in its Californians Against Waste, an environ- current form, could run clusters of 500 N LATE 2001, Dutch ocials blocked a mental lobby group, the 315m computers host computers with perhaps 24 simulta- Ishipment of 1.3m Sony PlayStation and monitors that became obsolete in neous users. But the ultimate vision of games consoles because their cables con- America alone between 1997 and 2004 grid computing is for one gigantic net- tained levels of cadmium higher than contained 550,000 tonnes of lead. work spanning the globe and accommo- those permitted by local law. Cadmium The RoHS rules specify that compo- dating unlimited numbers of users. So a does not pose any health risks when used nents must contain less than 0.1% lead. lot still needs to happen. as a stabiliser and colouring agent in plas- This means that the solder used to x For a start, the metaphor for comput- tics, but incorrect disposal of such plas- components to circuit boards, which con- ing grids as utilities, similar to water or tics can cause long-term environmental sists of a mixture of 63% tin and 37% lead, electricity supplies, is misleading, since damage, and a law limiting the levels of must be replaced with a mixture of tin, there is no equivalent of litres or kilowatt- cadmium was introduced in the Nether- silver and copper which costs 150% more. hours. Processor cycles are just one com- lands in 1999. Sony suspended ship- In addition, the lead-free solder melts at a ponent of computing resources, along- ments of several products while it higher temperature, which means manu- side memory, disk storage and addressed the problem, and lost 110m facturing processes have to be changed bandwidth. Mr Huberman would like to ($100m) in sales as a result. The case gives too. As a result, the new rules will have combine all of these factors into one a foretaste of what could happen next signicant nancial implications for elec- handy unit, which he wants to call a year, when similar legislation comes into tronics and computer manufacturers, computon (a cross between computa- force across the European Union. adding 1% to the cost of a PC and 2% to the tion and photon, the name for a packet The Restriction of Hazardous Sub- cost of a mobile phone, according to of electromagnetic energy). Tycoon’s de- stances (RoHS) legislation, which will ap- Sanmina SCI, a contract manufacturing scendants would then help to allocate ply throughout the EU from July 2006, rm based in San Jose, California. WEEE, computons across the grid’s global mar- bans products containing any more than meanwhile, will add about $5 to the price ket. Of course, Mr Huberman adds, that trace amounts of lead, mercury, cad- of each PC sold in Europe, according to will happen in a dierent decade. 7 mium and three other hazardous sub- Gartner, a consultancy. 1 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

2 But the manufacturing and recycling relevant elds of a new address-book en- will arrive. There is no need to key in a costs pale in comparison with the costs of try. A similar feature can be found on ddly internet address. Semacode has ensuring compliance. Proving compli- phones made by LG, a rival South Korean also teamed up with Qwest, an Ameri- ance is turning out to be very dicult, rm. Sanyo, a Japanese handset-maker, can telecoms rm, to run a series of vir- says Mark Newton, manager of environ- has also made an OCR-capable phone. tual treasure hunts. Hundreds of children mental aairs at Dell, the world’s leading Rather than reading business cards, how- rampage through a city centre in teams, PC seller. We have to contact our supply ever, it is able to capture pictures of Eng- hunting for Semacodes and claiming chain to catalogue each component. The lish text, which it then does its best to them by taking snapshots of them. number of parts that need to be cata- translate into Japanese. Such novel applications are possible, logued by big companies like Dell runs All this may sound gimmicky, but it is says Mr Woodside, because the devices into the tens of thousands. a logical progression from existing usage are not just cameras, but are also phones Meanwhile, REACH is creating pro- patterns in Japan, where camera-phones with wireless internet connectivity. Fur- blems for companies such as Intel. The have been available for several years. thermore, modern mobile-phone operat- legislation requires companies to docu- Commuters can often be seen taking ing systems, including the Symbian ment which chemicals they use in their snapshots of train timetables with their software that powers many Nokia hand- production processes. But not everyone phones, says Gerhard Fasol of Eurotech- sets, allow users to download and run wants to reveal this information, for com- nology, a consultancy based in Tokyo. small pieces of software on the phones. petitive reasons. This is raising a signi- That way, they can simply call up the Indeed, one of the motivations for adopt- cant number of intellectual property photograph whenever they want to nd ing the Symbian software was to encour- issues for us, because we use those chem- out when the next train is due. age just this kind of innovation, says icals in our manufacturing process, says Phones with OCR software face the Mika Setala of Nokia. an Intel spokesman. There are only a problem, however, that text is meant to Although Semacode’s software was handful of people in Intel that have ac- be read by humans, not machines. But originally designed only for Symbian- cess to that information, and we don’t the opposite is true of bar-codes. The Jap- based phones, Mr Woodside has since re- want to register it publicly. anese arm of Amazon, an online retailer, leased software to allow any camera- Slightly higher costs and teething trou- oers a service that allows subscribers to phone to scan his Semacodes. The user bles are inevitable as the new rules are in- carry out a cheeky price check while sends a photo of the Semacode to a spe- troduced. But they may well be a price browsing a bookstore. Snap a picture of cial number as a picture message, and re- worth paying. For the result of the new the bar-code on a book or CD, and a quick ceives a text message in reply containing European rules should be to reduce the over-the-air look-up will tell you if Ama- the Semacode’s embedded information. environmental impact of computers and zon’s price is lower. Japanese consumers It might not be what the mobile oper- other electronic devicesnot just in Eu- can even use the technology to nd out ators had in mind when they launched rope, but in the rest of the world too. 7 how fresh their sh is. Scan the bar-code their picture-messaging services, but it on its packaging, and a text message ar- does at least generate trac and revenue rives in seconds detailing when it was for them. Nico MacDonald, a design and caught, on which boat, and even the technology strategist with Spy, a consul- name of the sherman who reeled it in. tancy based in London, notes that tech- Phones with eyes The next step is to enable phones to nologies often thrive when people start read two-dimensional bar-codes, which using them for purposes beyond those are small squares containing an assort- for which they were originally intended. ment of black and white dots. Although With camera-phones, that process would an unfamiliar sight in most countries, appear to be well under way. 7 such bar-codes are already quite com- Mobile devices: Camera-phones are mon in Japan, where they are known as not just for taking pictures. They can quick-response (QR) codes. Many peo- be used for other things too, from ple have QR-codes on business cards, shopping to treasure hunts says Mr Fasol, so that their contact details can be quickly uploaded to a phone. AVE you sent a picture message from Other applications include buying tickets Hyour camera-phone lately? No, we for a concert or listening to a sample song didn’t think so. Mobile operators had on a CD, just by scanning the QR-code on hoped that the popularity of text mes- a poster or a CD case. A code can contain sagesover 2 billion of which are sent ev- an internet address, and scanning it ery day worldwidewould lead prompts the phone to load the relevant naturally to a boom in picture messaging, page. The same technology is being pro- where you pay a bit more to send a photo moted in America by rms such as Scan- along with your words. But picture mes- buy, in New York, and NeoMedia saging remains a minority sport. It turns Technologies, in Fort Myers, Florida. out, however, that the cameras that can But perhaps the most imaginative now be found in most modern handsets uses of two-dimensional bar-codes come can do more than just take snapshots: from Semacode, a rm based in Ontario. they can do all sorts of other things too. Simon Woodside, a graduate student Just last month, Samsung launched a from the University of Waterloo who new phone, the sph-A800, that uses its founded the company, has applied Se- built-in two-megapixel camera as a busi- macodes to bus stops in California. ness-card scanner. You take a photo of a When travellers scan the code, software business card, and optical character rec- on their phones interprets it and calls up ognition (OCR) software scans the image a web page providing up-to-the-minute for text which you can then insert into the information about when the next bus A bar-coded bus stop The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Monitor 5

its parsimonious use of materials. Such precise control over the mate- rial’s structure makes possible materials with useful but unusual properties. For example, some materials, such as cork, have what is called, after a French scien- tist who studied the phenomenon, a negative Poisson ratio. Instead of bulg- ing at one end when squeezed at the other, cork distributes the load and so narrows across its lengthwhich is why a cork is easy to push back into a bottle. This property would be desirable in a material for making helmets, says Mr Mahdavi. Most helmets are a bit like eggs: good at withstanding compressive forces across the entire shell, but not so protec- tive against localised impacts. Using mi- crostructured materials, it should be possible to design a helmet that is better able to withstand localised impacts, by absorbing them throughout the helmet. But the obvious application for the new technique is in aviation. Planes al- ready use metallic foam in non-load- bearing parts, to reduce weight. Mr Mah- davi says his technique could control the Material benets size and positioning of the bubbles in such foam, and so determine the mate- rial’s strength and rigidity. Aeronautical engineers are always try- ing to nd ways to reduce weight, says Materials science: A novel technique combines existing technologies to make Brian Bell of BAE Systems Advanced customised microstructured materials with specic properties Technology Centre in Bristol, which funded the research. In civil aviation it is ITH Airbus’s giant A380 airliner of smaller subsections of the structure. mainly to achieve fuel benets, but in Wabout to take to the skies, you might Each one of these subsections is then other elds it can help increase man- think planes could not get much bigger treated as a separate object with its own oeuvrability or an aircraft’s load-bearing and you would be right. For a given de- set of forces acting on itand each sub- capacity. The new technique is particu- sign, it turns out, there comes a point section calls for a dierent microstructure larly attractive, says Mr Bell, because it where the wings become too heavy to to absorb those local forces. has the potential to get rid of the need for generate enough lift to carry their own Designing so many microstructures joints. This is highly desirable in stealth weight. But a new way of designing and manually would be a huge task, so the re- aircraft, because joints show up on radar. making materials could get around that searchers apply an optimisation pro- However, given the level of regulation in problem. Two engineers at University gram, called a genetic algorithm, instead. the aviation industry it will be a long College London, Sia Mahdavi and Sean This uses a process of randomisation and time before the new technique can be ex- Hanna, have devised an innovative way trial-and-error (akin to mutation and se- ploited, particularly in civil aviation, says to customise and control the properties lection in biological evolution) to search Mr Bell. of a material throughout its three-dimen- the vast number of possible microstruc- Scientists have been trying to nd sional structure. tures to nd the most suitable design for ways to control material properties for a In the case of a wing, this would make each subsection. long time, says Paul Lagace, an aeronauti- possible a material that is dense, strong Armed with these designs, the only cal and astronautical engineer at the and load-bearing at one end, close to the way to build such an intricate and com- Massachusetts Institute of Technology. fuselage, while the extremities could be plex object is to use rapid prototyping But it has never before been achieved made less dense, lighter and more exi- technology, which enables three-dimen- with such precision. The new approach is ble. It is like making bespoke materials, sional objects to be printed, one layer at extremely attractive for space applica- says Mr Mahdavi, because you can cus- a time, using anything from polymers to tions where performance is often more tomise the physical properties of every metals. Often the strength, density or important than cost. There are certain sce- cubic millimetre of a structure. thickness of a structure is dictated by the narios, says Dr Lagace, where you might The new technique combines existing largest forces it has to withstand. But want to use a material because of its sur- technologies in a novel way. It starts by these forces may only apply to certain face properties, but you might not want using nite-element-analysis software, of parts of the object, says Mr Mahdavi. The that property all the way through the ma- the type commonly used by engineers, to new technique makes it possible to pro- terial. For example, making a component create a virtual prototype of the object. vide strength only where it is needed, resistant to temperature changes some- The software models the stresses and making the rest of the structure lighter. times comes at the cost of strength. Using strains that the object will need to with- The result is a porous, honeycomb-like the new method you could have your stand throughout its structure. Using this structure (an example is pictured above) cake and eat it, by designing a strong core information it is then possible to calcu- that is capable of withstanding the ap- to a structure that has a weaker, tempera- late the precise forces acting on millions plied forces, but weighs very little due to ture-resistant surface, he says. 7 6 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

same thing with a dedicated chip con- sumes far less power. Computationally dicult tasks often start out in software, The talking cure and are implemented in hardware later. A wider choice of You do them in software rst, because it’s easier, says Rob Rutenbar, professor software of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon and the lead engineer Speech technology: Good speech on the In Silico Vox speech-chip project. Software: A new kiosk-based recognition requires a fast PC. A You redo them in hardware later to max- approach to selling software on the chip-based implementation could imise their performance. high street makes obscure but useful make the technology more portable Computer graphics, for example, have titles available to a far larger market already been through this transition from F YOU have sausage-sized ngers, nd software to hardware. A few years ago, CHAIN of high-street shops that sell Ipen-driven handheld computers a d- PCs would grind to a halt as they tried to Asoftwareisn’t that a step back- dle or have never got the hang of predic- render complicated graphics. This no lon- wards? Doesn’t the future lie in high- tive text on your mobile phone, a new ger happens today, because specialised speed software downloads over broad- chip might provide a sympathetic ear. It is graphics chipsfrom companies such as band links, or the replacement of being devised by a team of researchers ATI and Nvidiado the hard work. Bob packaged software with constantly up- from Carnegie Mellon University and the Brodersen of the University of California, dated, web-based alternatives? Not ac- University of California at Berkeley to do in Berkeley, has calculated that moving cording to Daniel Doll-Steinberg. He is one thing, and one thing only: speech rec- an application from a general-purpose the founder of SoftWide, a company that ognition. Using a new, hardware-based software implementation to a specialised is promoting a new way to sell software: approach to the problem, the researchers chip can improve eciency by a factor of from kiosks that produce disks and pack- hope to create a chip that performs 10,000 (the eciency metric being mil- aging, on demand, inside high-street speech recognition much more eciently lions of calculations per milliwatt of shops. Is he mador might he have dis- than is currently possible using software- power consumed). covered a vast untapped market? based recognition systems. If they are The researchers were recently Mr Doll-Steinberg originally set out to right, it might soon become possible to awarded a $1m grant by America’s Na- increase the range of software that could dictate an e-mail into your BlackBerry, or tional Science Foundation to develop be sold in existing shops. With limited edit your mobile phone’s address book their speech chip. The grant was made on shelf space, most shops stock only a few using voice commands alone. the basis that a speech-recognition chip dozen titles. So his rm, SoftWide, de- Speech-recognition software has been would have applications in homeland se- vised a kiosk-based system that can store on the market for over a decade, and in curity. But what starts out as government thousands of pieces of software on a the past ve years it has become ad- or military technology often ends up in hard disk, burning a disk only when a vanced enough to displace keyboard en- commercial applications, as packet- customer wants to buy a particular title. try, for some users at least. But switched networks and the global-po- The rst kiosks were tested in WH Smith, speech-recognition packages such as sitioning system demonstrate. a British retail chain, and in Fnac stores in IBM’s ViaVoice and ScanSoft’s Dragon Besides doing away with the need to France. But having some titles in boxes on NaturallySpeaking require a powerful use ddly controls on handheld comput- the shelves, and others provided by ki- desktop computer. Ask a portable device ers, mobile phones and music players, a osks, was confusing. So Mr Doll-Stein- to do the same kind of computational speech-recognition chip would have berg decided that SoftWide should open heavy-lifting, however, and its battery other uses too: it could form the basis of a its own chain of shops. The rst two will be at within minutes. Why would a powerful, portable interpreting device, opened in London in 2002, and have chip-only solution be any better? for example, or allow car drivers to since been followed by three more. The reason is simple: doing something change radio stations or operate naviga- The kiosk-based approach means that in software is more exible, but doing the tion systems by speech alone. compared with other software retailers, Encapsulating the latest speech-recog- SoftWide’s shops sell an entirely dierent nition in hardware will not be easy, but range of software to an entirely dierent the Carnegie Mellon researchers have the type of customer. In computer super- appropriate experience. They helped to stores, 60% of software sold is games, and develop much of today’s successful about 35% is business software. In Soft- speech-recognition technology, includ- Wide’s stores, in contrast, 50% of the soft- ing the Sphinx software that forms the ware sold is educational and reference basis for many commercial speech-recog- software (much of which is otherwise nition systems and was developed with only available by mail order), 30% is busi- funding from the Defence Advanced Re- ness software and only 20% games. More search Projects Agency (DARPA). The re- than half of SoftWide’s customers are searchers hope to have a working women, and many are pensioners. prototype within two years. SoftWide’s unusual model has a num- Even so, ddly keypads are not going ber of benets over superstores and on- away any time soon. You cannot use a line downloads, Mr Doll-Steinberg speech-driven device to make a note insists. It makes it possible to oer cus- while talking on the phone, for example, tomers advice, which is hard to come by or to send a surreptitious text message in big superstores where shelves must be during a boring meeting. Despite being kept stocked. Users feel more comfortable small and annoying, keypads will persist. with physical disks than with down- But for the less dextrous, the new chips loads, which can go wrong, cannot be re- cannot come soon enough. 7 sold, and are unsuitable as gifts. And 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Monitor 7

2 popular products cannot sell out. uncontrolled release of medicine that is Mr Doll-Steinberg believes he has dis- depleted after only a few hours. Another covered a huge untapped market. In Brit- approach, now being pursued by Anuj ain, the educational and reference market Chauhan at the University of Florida, in- is worth £50m ($96m), and has been in volves incorporating drug-lled nano- decline since WH Smith pulled out in particles into a lens mixture. While this 2000. Its stores stocked only 50 titles; research would, in theory, produce a SoftWide’s kiosks hold more than 2,000, timed-release system like Dr Chow’s, it is including programs to help people learn still in its early design stages. yoga, stop smoking, design a garden, pre- The idea of using channels also allows pare for a driving test, write business for exibility in the type of medicine that plans and complaint letters or ll in gov- can be incorporated into the lenses. Some ernment forms. Most of the people who drugs are water-soluble, and these would come into our stores have never bought be trapped within the water-lled chan- software before, says Mr Doll-Steinberg. nels. Others, however, are water-insol- They say: ‘I didn’t know you could do uble, and would be kept in the nanoscale that on a computer’. Such software, he spaces between the channels. In either says, should not be relegated to an ob- case, the rate of leaking into the eye can scure niche. He estimates that the market still be controlled. could be worth more than £600m. Dr Chow also made sure that his Admittedly, these are not sexy or ex- Transparently better? lenses do not suer from one of the most citing pieces of software. They lack the important problems that confronts this massive advertising campaigns that ac- and Nanotechnology in Singapore are, sort of research: being incompatible with company blockbuster games. But they however, giving drug-loaded lenses a an actual human eye. Dr Chow has tested are actually useful, and serve as a re- new look. Edwin Chow, the leader of the his lenses successfully with human cells, minder of the unexploited power of group and inventor of the medicated and the solution that he uses for fabrica- home computers. SoftWide could well be lenses, used a well-known nanotechnol- tion allows the nal lenses to be nano- on to something. 7 ogy fabrication method for making small porous, thereby letting gases and channels that, for the rst time, has been tear-uid cross into and out of a lens. Dr modied to transport drugs successfully Chow claims that this new form of drug to the eye through contact lenses. delivery could both reduce drug waste The benets of loading contact lenses and result in higher patient compliance Better than a with medication are many. When some- with treatment. That would be a one applies an eye drop, almost 95% of welcome sight to ophthalmologists. 7 poke in the eye the solution is washed away with tears. Some of the medicine even drains into the nasal cavity, where it can enter the Medical technology: Medicated bloodstream and thus, potentially, cause contact lenses could be an easier, side-eects. For example, a drug called A spiritual more eective and safer way to Timolol, which is used to treat glaucoma, deliver drugs than eye drops has been known to result in heart pro- blems. In addition, the dose of medicine connection T IS not surprising that Leonardo da in drops can be inconsistent and dicult IVinci had the earliest sketches of con- to control, since drops give an initial burst tact lenses. But as with the helicopter and of medication when they are applied, Technology and society: Around the his other prescient ideas, a prototype for rather than a steady, controlled dose. world, mobile phones seem to have a vision-correcting lenses had to wait. In Dr Chow’s lenses aim to solve these spiritual or supernatural dimension this case, it was almost 400 years after Da problems, and they do so in a surpris- that other forms of technology lack Vinci that the rst transparent vision-cor- ingly straightforward way. When an or- recting contact lens was developed. At dinary contact lens is made, the steps are HOSE who go into the priesthood are this time, however, these bulky, full-eye fairly simple: mix the lens solution, pour Tsaid to have a calling from God. Now caps could not compete with the comfort it into a mould and let it harden. The the purveyors of faith the world over are of the standard spectacle. It was only in same type of process is used to make using mobile phones to give believers a 1961 that a Czechoslovak chemist called medicated lenses. It is only the lens sol- call in a more literal sense. Catholics can Otto Wichterle brought the world the rst ution that makes the medicated variety sign up for daily inspirational text mes- soft plastic lenses. dierent. First, the drugs are added to the sages from the pope simply by texting Since its inception, the soft contact solution. Second, the solution contains a Pope On to a special number (53141 in lens has held promise as a way of trans- mixture of molecules that, when they set, Ireland, for example). The Irish Jesuits of- porting antibiotics and other drugs to the create a network of tiny channels that are fer a service called Sacred Space, accessi- eye. The concept is simple enough: apply 100,000 times smaller than the width of ble via smartphone, which encourages a drug to a contact lens, and then apply a strand of hair. These channels act as users to spend ten minutes reecting on a the lens to the eye. Unfortunately the conduits for a drug to be released when specially chosen scripture for the day. In technical hurdles proved dicult to sur- the lens comes in contact with eye uid. Taiwan, limited-edition phones made by mount, and current treatments for infec- Dr Chow claims that by adjusting the Okwap, a local handset-maker, oer tions and diseases such as glaucoma still channel size, medicine can be adminis- Matsu wallpaper and religious ringtones, come in the form of pills or, more com- tered over the course of hours or days. along with a less tangible featureeach monly, eye drops. Other recent research in this eld has one has been specially blessed at a tem- Recent advances in contact-lens fab- explored the idea of soaking a lens in a ple to Matsu. And Muslims around the rication at the Institute of Bioengineering drug-laden solution, but this results in an world can use the F7100 handset, 1 8 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

2 launched last July by LG of South Korea, anthropologist at the number. In Cantonese, the number four both to remind them of prayer times University of South- sounds like the word for death, and is (the phone has an alarm system that ern California. Fash- therefore unlucky, while the number works in 500 cities) and to nd the di- ion models don them eight sounds like the word for fortune, rection of Mecca using the hand- like jewellery and strut and is therefore lucky. It’s not uncom- set’s built-in Mecca indicator the catwalk, teenage girls mon even for migrant workers to pay up compass (see picture). in Japan use them as lock- to a month’s salary for a lucky telephone Mobile phones also make it ets, sticking photographs of number, says James Katz, professor of easy to donate money to reli- their friends into their bat- communications at Rutgers University. gious groups. In Britain, a tery compartments, and some Since phones are the most personal of all company called MS Wireless Ghanaians even choose to be high-tech devices, it is hardly surprising Marketing oers a TXT & buried in giant mobile-phone that their use should reect the entire Donate Islamic Prayer cons. spectrum of personal beliefs. 7 Alert service for £0.25 Mobile phones are a uniquely ($0.48) per day. The prots personal form of technology, thanks go to Muslim charities such as in large part to their mobility. When Muslim Hands and Islamic Relief. There you leave the house, you probably take are also dozens of Christian charities that your keys, your wallet and your phone. Bright sparks accept text-message donations. Laptop computers are carried by far Phones and religious beliefs do not al- fewer people, and do not have the same ways mix smoothly, however. Finnish personal associations. Mobile phones Innovation Awards: We invite authorities shut down a service which provide scope for self-expression, nominations for our annual claimed to oer text messages from Jesus through the choice of ringtone and prizes recognising innovators for 1.20 ($1.55) each, and bishops in the screen wallpaper. At the same time, mo- text-mad Philippines put a stop to people bile phones’ ability to communicate with The Economist’s fourth annual Innova- attending confession and receiving ab- unseen, distant people using invisible ra- tion Summit and Awards will take solution via text messages. dio waves is almost magical. Indeed, the place in London on November 15th. That technology and religion can be notion that phones might be capable of This year’s theme will be Making the so intertwined is not new. After all, the supernatural or spiritual communication business of innovation work. Speak- rst book to roll o Gutenberg’s new-fan- goes right back to the inventor of the tele- ers from industry and academia will gled printing press was the Bible. But un- phone himself, Alexander Graham Bell. examine the latest trends in the man- like the personal computer, which has According to Avital Ronell, a professor agement of innovation, from the lab- remained paradoxically impersonal, the of philosophy at New York University oratory to the marketplace. At an mobile phone has transcended its prag- and the author of The Telephone Book: associated awards ceremony, we will matic beginnings as a yuppie business Technology, Schizophrenia, and Electric also honour successful innovators in a tool and has burrowed its way into pop- Speech, Bell was just as interested in us- range of elds. ular consciousness, says Mizuko Ito, an ing his invention to contact the dead as he Accordingly, readers are invited to was in talking to his associate Thomas nominate outstanding innovators in Watson. Bell and Watson had attended the categories of bioscience; energy regular seances in Salem, says Dr Ronell. and the environment; computing and Bell even drew up a contract with his telecoms; our open-ended no bound- brother, agreeing that whoever lived the aries category, covering materials sci- longest should try to contact the other. ence, nanotechnology and other For his part, Watson was an avid medium emerging elds; and social and econ- who spent hours listening to the weird omic development, a category intro- hisses and squeals of early telephone duced last year to recognise individuals lines in case they proved to be the dead who have pioneered novel technol- trying to make contact. ogies and business practices that im- The telephone still maintains such prove everyday lives. Continuing in ghostly connections. In China, people this vein, we are introducing a further celebrating the Hungry Ghost Festival two new awards this year, for innova- burn life-sized paper egies of every- tion in business processes (including thing from televisions to mobile phones manufacturing and fullment pro- so that the dead can enjoy them in the af- cesses) and in consumer products (in- terlife. These phone oerings enable the cluding design and marketing as well dead to call each other, rather than the as technological innovation). living. Why shouldn’t the dead be as Please submit nominations by technologically advanced as we are? e-mail to [email protected] asks Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist including the nominee’s name, current who works for Intel, the world’s largest aliation and contact information, chipmaker. She spent two years in Asia and a 100-word summary explaining conducting eld research about attitudes why the nominee deserves to win the to technology in dierent countries. In award in a particular category. The sub- parts of southern China, she found, it is missions will be judged by a panel of customary to take your mobile phone to Economist journalists and technology a local Buddhist monk for blessing. experts, including several previous Even phone numbers can have super- winners. The deadline for nominations natural connotations. In Beijing, a man is May 16th. Answering the call recently paid $215,000 for a lucky phone The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Rational consumer 9

The device that ate everything?

spectrum between phone and PDA. And populated with a variety of devices. at the end-points of this spectrum, un- Not all of these new hybrid devices are Consumer electronics: Will adorned phones and PDAs still exist. primarily phones. Brian Modo, an ana- snazzy mobile phones gobble up What is often characterised as a battle to lyst at Deutsche Bank, says he expects to the death between the two devices has see more consumer-electronics devices in digital cameras, music players more in common with a marriage which which the phone is a secondary compo- and other portable devices? has resulted in a gaggle of children. If you nent, as in the BlackBerry e-mail device, want a device with both phone-like and or Nokia’s N-Gage gaming console, both IGHT the Apple iPod, the coolest PDA-like features, you can choose the one of which can look rather odd when used Mdigital gizmo of the moment, be that most closely matches your needs. for making voice calls. Sony, for example, doomed? It sounds unthinkable. But at A similar process is under way with is also working on a plug-in adaptor for its the 3GSM mobile-telecoms conference in cameras. At one end of the spectrum are PSP portable gaming console that will en- Cannes last month, the mobile phone camera-less phones; at the other are able it to be used as a mobile phone. was repeatedly invoked as a potential phone-less cameras. And in the middle iPod killer. The increasing sophistica- are a growing number of hybrids. Most of Stick to your knitting tion of mobile phonesmany of which them are primarily phones, with cameras Yet even as all these weird and wonderful now include music playback among their added as an afterthought. But the rst hybrids proliferate, there will still be a role growing list of functionsraises ques- fully edged cameras with wireless for dedicated devices. One reason, notes tions about the long-term prospects for connectivity are starting to appear. Kodak Paul Jackson, an analyst at Forrester Re- dedicated music players, digital cameras is launching a camera with built-in Wi-Fi; search, is that hybrids cut corners on fea- and other devices. Surely most people Samsung has developed a camera with a tures and component costs. A $400 would prefer a single converged device built-in phone; NEC already sells such a camera will always outperform a $400 to a pocket full of separate ones? device in the Chinese market. camera-phone in which photography is Never mind that all-in-one devices for Now the same process is starting to secondary to telephony. Of course, even a use in the home have not been a huge suc- happen with phones and music players. basic camera is better than none at all: cess. In the case of portable gizmos, a con- Many phones already have music-play- sales of disposable lm-cameras, the tra- verged device could have more appeal: it back functions, though most can store ditional camera of last resort, have takes up less room and is always with only a handful of tracks. But Samsung’s stopped growing as camera-phones have you. Sales of smartphones now exceed new SPH-V5400 handset has a built-in proliferated. But for special occasions those of handheld computers, or per- hard disk, enabling it to store hundreds. such as weddings or holidays, says Mr sonal digital assistants (PDAs), and cam- O2, a British mobile operator, sells a Jackson, people will still reach for a dedi- era-phones far outsell digital cameras (see music player that can download tracks cated camera. Similarly, while it is handy chart). As mobile phones become more through a nearby phone. Last week Sony to have a handful of favourite music sophisticated, will they gobble up other Ericsson unveiled its rst Walkman- tracks on your phone, that is no substitute portable devices? Will the mobile phone branded music phone, the W800. And for a dedicated player on a long journey. become the device that ate everything? Apple has struck a deal with Motorola, As well as oering superior perfor- Not necessarily. As the examples of which has devised a handset compatible mance, dedicated devices also tend to be the mobile phone’s collision with the with the iTunes software that runs the easier to use than hybrids. The iPod does PDA and the digital camera illustrate, the iPod. Once again, the spectrum between one thing and does it well; putting to- notion of convergence is misleading. mobile phone and music-player is being gether a music playlist on a mobile phone, When digital devices meet, they do not so in contrast, is a ddle. Separate devices much converge as procreate, producing also allow users to mix and match pro- some surprising-looking ospring. Poor relations? ducts from dierent vendors if they so Consider the PDA rst. Five years ago, Worldwide unit sales, 2004, m choose. This increases choice and means phones and PDAs were distinct devices: there is no single point of failure. 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 phones did not contain calendars or Phones are not so much omnivorous e-mail programs, and PDAs could not Mobile phones * as promiscuous. The future belongs not make phone calls. Then the two catego- solely to all-in-one super-phones, though Digital cameras ries began to overlap, with devices such they will appeal to some people, but to a as the Sony Ericsson P900 (a phone with MP3 players† far wider range of gizmos, including dedi- PDA functions) and the Treo (a PDA with a cated devices, digital jacks-of-all-trades, built-in phone). The end result is not a sin- PDAs and every imaginable combination in be- gle, hybrid device, but a bewildering ar- *Camera-phones tween. The best way to describe it is not Source: IDC †Flash-based and hard-disk players ray of devices that populate the entire convergence, but divergence. 7 10 Reports The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

Mr Feldman, and then between airlines that partner on particular routes. What of smaller, regional carriers? Linking up smaller airlines is not as tricky as it might seem, notes James Peters of SITA, a company that provides technol- ogy and infrastructure to the aviation in- dustry. SITA runs a reservations system called Gabriel, which is used by more than 160 airlines, many of them small car- riers in Africa and Asia. Support for elec- tronic ticketing was added to Gabriel at the end of 2004. Problem solved, then? Not quite. What will take time, says Mr Pe- ters, is establishing commercial agree- ments between airlines, changing procedures and training sta. The tech- nology and standards for electronic ticket- ing are well established, says Mr Change is in the air Feldman. But to implement it requires changes in business processes. The cost savings ought to encourage airlines to get moving, however. compete for customer loyalty. What will Doing away with paper tickets also all this mean for air travellers? means the check-in process can be com- Smart travel: New technologies The rst plank of IATA’s plan is to pletely overhauled, the second compo- promise to make air travel eliminate paper tickets by the end of 2007. nent of IATA’s four-part initiative. For In many parts of the world they are al- once a ticket is no longer a physical item, smoother for passengers and cut ready an endangered species: only about there is no need to be at the airport to costs for beleaguered airlines 20% of tickets issued in America are paper present it: instead, you can check in for ones, and almost all of those are for inter- your ight from home via the web, or ET ready to change the way you travel. national ights. But globally, electronic even while on the move via your mobile GThat is the message from Giovanni tickets still account for only 35% of all tick- phone. In each case, the boarding card is Bisignani, the head of the International ets issued, up from 10% in 2001. issued in the form of a two-dimensional Air Transport Association (IATA), an in- With a paper ticket, details of the pas- bar-code, an apparently random grid of dustry body that co-ordinates aviation senger’s journey are stored in a magnetic black-and-white dots. This pattern, which rules and standards. He still wants you to strip that can be read by special readers. can be printed out from a PC or displayed travel by plane, of course, as 1.8 billion With an electronic ticket, these details are on the screen of a mobile phone, is then passengers did in 2004, and 1.9 billion stored in an airline database, and are re- scanned at the gate before boarding. Sev- will do this year. But with commercial trieved using a unique look-up code. This eral airlines already allow online check-in aviation in a sorry state as a result of ter- means there is no need to issue a physical over the web. It is more convenient for rorist attacks, an economic slowdown, ticket to the passenger: instead, the code passengers, since it means less standing in SARS, the Iraq war and high oil prices, he can be delivered via the internet or over line at the airport; they can even see what believes the best treatment for the indus- the phone. It is much more convenient for choice of seats is available on-screen, and try is a strong dose of technology that passengers, particularly when buying make their choice accordingly. It also could both reduce costs for airlines and tickets online, and results in huge savings saves airlines money, by reducing the make travel simpler and smoother for for airlines: an e-ticket costs around $1 to need for check-in facilities and sta. passengers. IATA’s grand plan to do this, issue and process, compared with $10 for The next step, says Mr Peters, is to ex- called Simplifying the Business, was a paper ticket. Eliminating paper tickets tend online check-in to mobile phones. launched in Geneva last November. It could save the industry over $2.7 billion a SITA has developed such a system in con- calls for a drastic overhaul of four aspects year, says Michael Feldman of IATA. junction with Siemens, and began testing of the air-travel processtickets, boarding it with a Brazilian airline last November. passes, check-in and baggage handling No tickets, please Check-in is handled by a small piece of with an aggressive timetable that should Implementing e-ticketing within a single software on the phone, downloaded like start to deliver results this year. airline is relatively straightforward. But a game or a ringtone. The software estab- At the same time, other new technol- interline ticketing (in other words, tick- lishes a wireless connection with the res- ogies are reshaping the nature of air tra- ets for a journey involving more than one ervation system, oers a choice of seats, vel. In-ight internet access, and even the airline) is trickier, because it requires dif- and then retrieves the boarding-pass bar- use of mobile phones, could soon be- ferent airlines’ databases to talk to each code, which is stored in the handset. come commonplace, on some routes at other. Getting rid of paper tickets, then, in- The system can be congured to send least. Entertainment systems are becom- volves linking up the airlines. This is hap- passengers a text-message reminder two ing increasingly sophisticated as airlines pening rst within airline alliances, says hours before the ight; clicking a link in1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Reports 11 Check-in can be handled by a small program on your phone, downloaded like a game or a ringtone.

2 the message launches the check-in pro- up the status of your ight, and then ticket. This approach is being champi- cess. Several airlines plan to introduce check in for it. oned by Delta, an American carrier that is mobile check-in later this year. But bar- The fourth part of IATA’s plan is the particularly enthusiastic about RFID tags. code boarding passes cannot be used for most ambitious, and will probably take It has the advantage that pre-printed tags interline ights unless all the airlines and the longest: switching baggage labels are cheap: they cost around $0.05. airports along the route support them. from printed bar-codes to wireless tags The drawback with this approach, Like electronic tickets, bar-code boarding based on radio-frequency identication however, is that the association between passes will be adopted rst by individual (RFID) technology. The aim is to reduce tag and passenger is stored in the airline’s airlines, and then by alliances, before be- the number of misplaced items of bag- database. So every time the tag is read, a coming ubiquitous. gage, a headache for passengers and air- real-time connection to that database is The third component of IATA’s plan is lines alike. Of the 1.5 billion bags carried needed to work out how to route the bag. an expansion in the use of self-service ki- on commercial ights each year, around It works well for a single airline, but when osks, which are already popping up in air- 0.7% go astray. Dealing with each lost bag more than one airline is involved, links ports around the world. Again, the costs airlines an average of $100, or are needed between their databases. That benets are speedier service for passen- around $1 billion a year for the industry as is why many in the industry favour a sec- gers and savings for airlines: a self-service a whole, not to mention the loss of cus- ond approach involving the more expen- check-in costs $0.16 on average, compared tomer goodwill. A big part of the problem sive tags. These have the advantage that with $3.68 using human agents, according is that crumpled or torn bar-code labels data can be written into them, including to Forrester Research, a consultancy. are misread by the machines that process passenger and routing details, when the baggage as it travels between passenger bag is checked in. This information then Do it yourself travels along with the bag, without According to a survey carried out by the need for any database look-ups. SITA, airlines expect a majority of All of this depends on the de- their passengers to be using kiosks velopment of an international stan- for check-in by 2008. On busy routes dard, and that will require extensive thronged by frequent travellers, ki- testing. At the moment, says Mr osks are already so popular that it is Feldman, the emphasis is on limited necessary to queue up to use them. trials involving pairs of airports and Rather than installing more kiosks all airlines. In one recent example KLM over the place to handle peak de- and Japan Airlines tested RFID tag- mand, it makes more sense to switch ging of baggage on the Schiphol- from airline-specic kiosks to shared Narita route. Another trial, at Mon- ones, which can handle passengers treal airport, involves kiosks that from several airlines. This makes it generate RFID baggage tags at easier to scale check-in capacity to check-in, making self-service meet demand, and enables even check-in possible even for passen- small airlines to oer self-service gers with hold luggage. RFID tags check-in. Such shared machines, will be widely adopted only if air- which conform to a standard drawn lines, airports and ground-handling up by IATA, are known as common- sta can be convinced that they are use self-service (CUSS) kiosks. The a good idea, says Mr Feldman. The rst CUSS kiosks to serve multiple cost of the switch will also have to airlines were introduced last April in be justied. But as RFID is adopted Toronto by SITA. Passengers are pre- and plane: the accuracy of printed bar- in other industries, economies of scale sented with a common welcome screen, codes can be as low as 80%. RFID tags, in ought to reduce costs. select an airline, and that airline’s own contrast, have accuracy rates exceeding All of these technologieselectronic check-in software then pops up. 95%. As a bag with an RFID tag passes tickets, remote check-in, kiosks and RFID The switch to CUSS machines makes it through a scanner, a pulse of radio waves tagshave already been adopted, to vary- feasible to put kiosks in places other than awakens the tag, which responds by ing degrees, by forward-thinking airlines the airport, such as car-rental oces, rail- transmitting a small burst of data. and airports around the world. The aim of way stations or hotel lobbiesplaces Trials with RFID tags have been going IATA’s initiative is to introduce standards, where a row of airline-specic kiosks on for several years. But so far, adoption to ensure interoperability, promote adop- would have taken up too much room and has been hampered by the high cost of the tion, and make the benets of these tech- cost too much. Airlines are now examin- tagsnow down to about $0.25, but still nologies available to the whole industry. ing the business case for putting kiosks in too muchand a disagreement over The switch from proprietary, airline-spe- all kinds of places where passengers con- which of two approaches to pursue. One cic technologies to open standards will, gregate, says Mr Feldman. Another trend, approach is to use pre-printed RFID tags however, reduce the airlines’ scope for says Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at For- that contain a unique identity code that dierentiation. If all passengers are using rester Research, is to integrate other, non- cannot be changed. When the bag is the same facilities, how can airlines dis- airline services into kiosks. It would then, checked in, the tag is applied, and the air- tinguish themselves from their rivals? for example, be possible to use a kiosk in a line’s computer systems associate the Primarily through the routes they y hotel lobby to check out of the hotel, look tag’s code with the passenger’s electronic and the prices they charge, of course; and1 12 Reports The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

China Airlines and SAS plan to market research found that long-haul follow suit. The service typi- travellers expressed more interest in in- cally costs $30 on ights of six ternet access and text-messaging than hours or more, and $20 on voice calls, and Mr Harteveldt says his re- ights of between three and six search has found that very few travellers hours. A similar system is of- want to make voice calls while in the air. It fered by Tenzing, a subsidiary may be that the voice market will be still- of Airbus. It recently estab- born, and more discreet data communica- lished a joint-venture with tions will predominate. SITA called OnAir, with a view to exploiting what is expected Flying into the future to be the next big trend in air- Putting all these pieces together, it seems borne communications: the in- that technology could soon make air tra- ight use of mobile phones. vel smoother, swifter, more fun and more Contrary to popular belief, productive. But there are two potential the main impediment to the problems. The rst is that customer ser- use of mobile phones on vice could end up taking a back seat to cut- planes is not interference with ting costs. Even now, some travellers are the aircraft’s avionics systems. suspicious of electronic tickets, notes Ms On a typical long-haul ight, McKinley. Similarly, not everyone wants 2 the quality of their in-ight service. But says Mike Fitzgerald of Altobridge, a rm to use kiosks; some people would rather while technology would seem to make that makes technology to bridge satellite stand in line and talk to a human. Mr Feld- competitive dierentiation within the air- and cellular networks, 20 mobile phones man, however, notes that dierent air- port more dicult, it is simultaneously in- are left switched on. Instead, the problem lines are using technology to serve creasing the scope for dierentiation in is that airborne mobile phones disrupt dierent types of customers. Some see the air, through the provision of ever mobile networks on the ground. An air- technology as a cheap way to provide no- more elaborate in-ight services. liner with 500 phones on board, whizzing frills services to economy-class travellers, In-ight entertainment is now a criti- across a city, would befuddle the network while passengers prepared to pay more cal part of how airlines position them- as the phones busily hopped from one are given more personal attention; other selves, say Mr Harteveldt. One of the base-station to the next. airlines see technology as a way to appeal most advanced entertainment systems in But the technology now exists to allow to frequent travellers who want fast ser- current use is Virgin Atlantic’s V:port, cur- passengers to get around this problem. A vice and like to be in control. So passen- rently available in 13 of the airline’s 31 air- small base-station, called a picocell, is gers will still have a choice. craft, and being installed in all its new installed on the plane, and connected to Another problem is that, as airport aircraft. Its most notable feature is video the telephone network via a satellite link. procedures are streamlined by airlines, on demand, with 300 hours of lms and The aircraft cabin is shielded to prevent the lack of co-ordination over security television shows that can be called up by handsets from making contact with base- procedures will become increasingly ap- any passenger at any time. The video is stations on the ground. Instead, they parent. CUSS kiosks, for example, have stored on hard disks on a central server roam on to the network signal from the been designed to support biometric tech- and is streamed to each seat. V:port also picocell. Since the picocell is so nearby, nologies such as face-scanning or nger- has a music-on-demand service and a se- the handsets can operate at very low prints in future, since governments intend lection of games, some of which (such as power to maintain contact with it, which to incorporate them into passports. So far, a trivia quiz) support multi-user play be- eliminates interference with networks on however, there is no international stan- tween passengers. All this, says Lysette the ground. Picocell systems have been dard, and questions remain about the reli- Gauna, Virgin’s head of in-ight enter- tested on several ights, including a ight ability of the technology. We are trying tainment, reinforces Virgin’s association over the Pacic last August, and a test over to take into consideration where all of this with fun and innovation. Similar systems Geneva to demonstrate that ground- is going, but there is still no clear global di- will become available on rival airlines in based networks were not aected. Get- rection on which biometrics are going to future, says Ms Gauna, so Virgin is already ting nal regulatory approval will take be applicable and where, says Mr Feld- developing an improved system. most of 2005, says Mr Peters, so commer- man. Variations in security rules could Another trend is the growing availabil- cial service will begin in 2006. According limit how smooth travel can be. ity of internet access on board aircraft. to SITA’s annual airline survey, more than Looking ahead, IATA’s journey of the The state of the art here is Boeing’s Con- 20% of global airlines plan to introduce in- future scenario imagines a seamless sys- nexion service, which uses a satellite ight mobile telephony by 2007. tem in which security and immigration broadband connection to create a Wi-Fi When the technical and regulatory procedures are also implemented via hotspot inside the cabin. Lufthansa was rules have been sorted out, however, the check-in kiosks, so that there is no need to the rst airline to deploy the service, in small matter of in-ight phone etiquette present the same documents repeatedly May last year, and it intends to make it will remain. I have concerns that it will while moving through the airport. But available on all long-haul routes by the be extremely annoying, says Nancy Mc- this is a long-term vision. For now, the va- middle of 2006. Japan Airlines and All Kinley of the International Airline Passen- rious plans to transform travel over the Nippon Airways have also adopted the gers Association, a body that represents next couple of years would appear to be technology, and Singapore Airlines, frequent travellers. However, OnAir’s quite ambitious enough already. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Reports 13

That is why, even though Mr Gates made his fortune from computers, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, now the rich- est charity in the world, concentrates on improving health in poor countries. The backlash against ICTs is under- standable. Set alongside the medieval liv- ing conditions in much of the developing world, it seems foolhardy to throw money at fancy computers and internet links. Far better, it would appear, to spend scarce resources on combating AIDS, say, or on better sanitation facilities. Indeed, this was the conclusion reached by the re- cently concluded Copenhagen Consen- sus project, which brought together a group of leading economists to prioritise how the world’s development resources should be spent. The panel came up with Behind the digital 17 priorities: spending more on ICTs was not even on the list. Still, it may be somewhat hasty to divide write o rural technology altogether. Charles Kenny, a senior economist at the search Foundation (MSSRF). The centres, World Bank who has studied the role of established with the aid of international ICTs in development, says that traditional Development: Much is made of donor agencies and local government cost-benet calculations are in the best of the digital divide between support, oer villagers a range of in- cases an art, not a science. With ICTs, he rich and poor. What do people formation, including market prices for adds, the picture is further muddied by crops, job listings, details of government the newness of the technologies; econo- on the ground think about it? welfare schemes, and health advice. mists simply do not know how to quan- A conservative estimate of the cost of tify the benets of the internet. N THE village of Embalam in southern the equipment in the Embalam centre is IIndia, about 15 miles outside the town 200,000 rupees ($4,500), or around 55 The view from the ground of Pondicherry, Arumugam and his wife, years’ earnings for Thillan. Annual run- Given the paucity of data, then, and even Thillan, sit on the red earth in front of their ning costs are extra. When asked about of sound methodologies for collecting the thatch hut. She is 50 years old; he is not the centre, Thillan laughs. I don’t know data, an alternative way to evaluate the sure, but thinks he is around 75. anything about that, she says. It has no role of ICTs in development is simply to Arumugam is unemployed. He used to connection to my life. We’re just sitting ask rural residents what they think. work as a drum-beater at funerals, but here in our house trying to survive. Applied in rural India, in the villages then he was injured, and now he has trou- Scenes like these, played out around served by the MSSRF, this approach re- ble walking. Thillan makes a little money the developing world, have led to some- veals a more nuanced picture than that as a part-time agricultural labourer thing of a backlash against rural deploy- suggested by the sceptics, though not an about 30 rupees ($0.70) a day, ten days a ments of new information and entirely contradictory one. month. Other than that, they get by on communications technologies, or ICTs, as Villagers like Arumugam and Thillan meagre (and sporadic) government dis- they are known in the jargon of develop- older, illiterate and lower casteappear to ability payments. ment experts. In the 1990s, at the height of have little enthusiasm for technology. In- In the new India of cybercafés and the technology boom, rural ICTs were deed, Thillan, who lives barely a ve-mi- software tycoons, Arumugam and Thil- heralded as catalysts for leapfrog de- nute walk from the village’s Knowledge lan, and the millions of other villagers velopment, information societies and Centre, says she did not even know about around the country like them, seem like a host of other digital-age panaceas for its existence until two months ago (even anachronisms. But just a few steps out- poverty. Now they have largely fallen out though the centre has been open for sev- side their section of the villagea section of favour: none other than Bill Gates, the eral years). When Thillan and a group of known as the colony, where the un- chairman of Microsoft, derides them as eight neighbours are asked for their de- touchables traditionally livethe sheen distractions from the real problems of de- velopment prioritiesa common man’s of India’s technology boom is more evi- velopment. Do people have a clear view version of the Copenhagen Consensus dent in a green room equipped with ve of what it means to live on $1 a day? he they list sanitation, land, health, educa- computers, state-of-the-art solar cells and asked at a conference on the digital divide tion, transport, jobsthe list goes on and a wireless connection to the internet. This in 2000. About 99% of the benets of on, but it does not include computers, or is the village’s Knowledge Centre, one of having a PC come when you’ve provided even telephones. They are not so much 12 in the region set up by a local non-prot reasonable health and literacy to the per- sceptical of ICTs as oblivious; ICTs are ir- organisation, the M. S. Swaminathan Re- son who’s going to sit down and use it. relevant to their lives. This attitude is ech-1 14 Reports The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

I’m illiterate, says one sherman. I don’t know how to use a computer, and I have to sh all day.

2 oed by many villagers at the bottom of the tre, transforming Embalam into some- such as Mr Gates so sceptical of their ap- social and economic ladder. In the shing thing of a local information hub. plicability to the developing world. community of Veerapatinam, the site of At the centre itself, Kasthuri, a female Indeed, Ashok Jhunjhunwala, a pro- another MSSRF centre, Thuradi, aged 45, volunteer who helps run the place, says fessor at the Indian Institute of Technol- sits on the beach sorting through his that the status of women in Embalam has ogy in Chennai (formerly Madras), argues catch. I’m illiterate, he says, when asked improved as a result of using the comput- that cost is the deciding factor in deter- about the centre. I don’t know how to ers. Before, we were just sitting at home, mining whether the digital divide will use a computer, and I have to sh all day. she says. Now we feel empowered and ever be bridged. To that end, Dr Jhunjhun- But surely technology can provide in- more in control. Some economists might wala and his colleagues are working on a formation for the likes of Thuradi, even if dismiss such sentiments as woolly number of low-cost devices, including a he does not sit down in front of the com- headed. But they are indicators of a sense remote banking machine and a xed puters himself? Among other things, the of civic pride and social inclusiveness wireless system that cuts the cost of access centre in this village oers information on that less conventional economists might by more than half. But such innovation wave heights and weather patterns (in- term human development or well-being. takes time and is itself expensive. formation that Thuradi says is already Perhaps a more immediate way of ad- available on television). Some years ago, A question of priorities dressing the cost of technology is to rely the centre also used satellites to map the Given the mixed opinions on the ground, on older, more proven means of deliver- movements of large schools of sh in the then, the real issue is not whether invest- ing information. Radios, for example, are ocean. But according to another sher- ing in ICTs can help development (it can, already being used by many develop- man, this only beneted the rich: poor in some cases, and for some people), but ment organisations; their cost (under $10) shermen, lacking motorboats and navi- whether the overall benets of doing so is a fraction of the investment (at least gation equipment, could not travel far outweigh those of investing in, say, edu- $800) required for a telephone line. In Em- enough, or determine their location pre- cation or health. Leonard Waverman of balam and Veerapatinam, few people ac- cisely enough, to use the maps. the London Business School has com- tually ever sit at a computer; they receive Such stories bring to mind the uneven pared the impact on GDP of increases in much of their information from loud- results of earlier technology-led develop- teledensity (the number of telephones speakers on top of the Knowledge Centre, ment eorts. Development experts are fa- per 100 people) and the primary-school or from a newsletter printed at the centre miliar with the notion of rusting completion rate. He found that an in- and delivered around the village. Such tractorsa semi-apocryphal reference to crease of 100 basis points in teledensity old-fashioned methods of communica- imported agricultural technologies that raised GDP by about twice as much as the tion can be connected to an internet hub littered poor countries in the 1960s and same increase in primary-school comple- located further upstream; these hybrid 1970s. Mr Kenny says he similarly antici- tion. As Dr Waverman acknowledges, networks may well represent the future of pates a fair number of dusty rooms with however, his calculations do not take into technology in the developing world. old computers piled up in them around account the respective investment costs But for now, it seems that the most the countryside. and it is the cost of ICTs that makes people cost-eective way of providing informa- That may well be true, but it does not tion over the proverbial last mile is of- mean that the money being channelled to ten decidedly low-tech. On December rural technology is going entirely unap- 26th 2004, villagers in Veerapatinam had preciated. Rural ICTs appear particularly occasion to marvel at the reliability of a useful to the literate, to the wealthier and truly old-fashioned source of informa- to the youngerthose, in other words, tion. As the Asian tsunami swept towards who sit at the top of the socio-economic the south Indian shoreline, over a thou- hierarchy. In the 12 villages surrounding sand villagers were gathered safely in- Pondicherry, students are among the land around the temple well. About an most frequent users of the Knowledge hour and a half before the tsunami, the Centres; they look up exam results, learn waters in the well had started bubbling computer skills and look for jobs. Farmers and rising to the surface; by the time the who own land or cattle, and who are wave hit, a whirlpool had formed and the therefore relatively well-o, get veteri- villagers had left the beach to watch this nary information and data on crop prices. strange phenomenon. Outside the Embalam colony, at a vil- Nearby villages suered heavy casual- lage teashop up the road from the temple, ties, but in Veerapatinam only one person Kumar, the 35-year-old shop owner, died out of a total population of 6,200. speaks glowingly about the centre’s role The villagers attribute their fortuitous in disseminating crop prices and informa- escape to divine intervention, not tech- tion on government welfare schemes, nology. Ravi, a well-dressed man stand- and says the Knowledge Centre has made ing outside the Knowledge Centre, says his village famous. He cites the digni- the villagers received no warning over the taries from development organisations speakers. We owe everything to Her, he and governments who have visited; he says, referring to the temple deity. I’m also points to the fact that people from 25 telling you honestly, he says. The surrounding villages come to use the cen- Now that’s what I call antivirus technology information came from Her. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Case history 15 United we nd

Computing: Collaborative ltering software is changing the way people choose music, books and other things, by helping them nd things they like, but did not know about ACH year, thousands of lms are Ereleased and tens of thousands of books published. A big city has thou- sands of restaurants. How does one deal with such abundance? Reading reviews of lms, books and restaurants can pro- vide a guide, but there are more reviews than one has the time to read, and you cannot be sure that the reviewer’s taste matches your own. Word-of-mouth rec- ommendations can help in that regard; friends, after all, are often friends because they share similar tastes. For many people, technology now plays an increasing role in making such choices and navigating through large numbers of alternatives. But while this might sound like a job for an internet search engine, keyword-based search en- gines (such as Google) have a funda- mental constraint: they can only help you nd something if you already have an idea of what it is. Two people’s idea of good music may dier substantially, but Google would return the same results to both of them. To nd things you might like, but are not already familiar with, re- quires a dierent technology, known as collaborative ltering. This increasingly pervasive technol- ogy looks for patterns in people’s likes and dislikes, and uses those patterns to help people nd things they did not know they were looking for. Computer scientists term this task, in a welcome re- spite from jargon, nd good things. Collaborative ltering also has the power to do the converse, keep bad things away, for instance by ltering unsolic- ited commercial e-mail messages, or spam. Systems that use collaborative l- ters to keep spam away already exist, though there are many other ways to do the same thing. Finding unknown good things, however, can at present only be done using collaborative ltering. The idea has been around for over 15 years. Early prototypes at Xerox PARC, a corporate research facility in Palo Alto, California, date back to the early 1990s. But the delay between the genesis of the idea and its widespread implementation 1 16 Case history The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

2 turned out to be quite long, for two rea- users. If I liked a book and you liked the sons. First, a successful collaborative-l- People who liked this also liked... same book, then I am likely to like things tering system is computationally How collaborative filtering works you like. However, this so-called user- demanding and becomes rapidly more USER-USER user collaborative ltering turns out to so as the number of users increases. A FILTERING have very poor performance when prototype system might have a few thou- scaled up to millions of users. The pro- sand users, which is manageable, but a Tom Dick Harry Jane blem is that the relationships between real-world system will have millions users must be constantly recalculated, Item A and the dierence in scale introduces which is too computationally costly. Item B new challenges, which have been only ITEM-ITEM This is why Badrul Sarwar and his col- recently overcome. FILTERING leagues at the University of Minnesota, in Item C The second reason is that for collabo- Minneapolis, pioneered so-called item- rative ltering to reach its potential, it has Item D item collaborative ltering systems in to be seamless. Early incarnations of the 2001. (Other groups, including Amazon, technology required users to state their User-user filtering had similar ideas around the same time.) tastes explicitly, by going to special web- Recommendations are made by finding users with Item-based ltering works by periodi- similar tastes. Tom and Dick seem to have similar sites and lling in on-screen forms, before tastes, since they both liked item B, and both cally taking a snapshot of everybody’s being presented with recommendations. disliked item C. That suggests that, in general, Dick item rankings. It then computes the simi- But a system that is integrated into an on- agrees with Tom. So item A will be recommended to larities between items as follows. For a line store, and recommends one product Dick. The problem with this approach is that the given item, such as a book, it nds all the relationships must be constantly recalculated, and to you as you are buying another, is far this becomes impractical with millions of users. other items that were also ranked by peo- superior because it requires no interven- ple who ranked the original book. The l- tion by the user. The business challenge Item-item filtering tering software then looks for other items Recommendations are made by finding items that of collaborative ltering lies as much in have similar appeal to many users. Consider item D. that were given a similar rank to the origi- creating a seamless interface as it does in Two users who liked item D, Harry and Jane, also nal item by many people (see diagram). generating the right suggestionsso the liked item A. That suggests that, in general, people The details of what it means to be technology has had to await the wide- who like Item D will also like item A. So Item A will be similar vary from system to system. In- recommended to Dick. This approach can be scaled spread adoption of internet shopping, to up over millions of items and millions of users. deed, one key aspect of getting a system which it makes a natural adjunct. to make good recommendations is hav- Now that both of these conditions ing an appropriate mathematical deni- have been met, however, collaborative clickstreamthe sequence of links tion of similarity. The simplest approach, ltering has started to pop up all over the clicked on by a person browsing on the which is to measure the average dier- place. Anyone who shops online is used web. These dierent methods can then ence in rankings, works fairly well. And to having books and music recom- either be aggregated into a single score, or there are various tricks that can be used to mended to them as they browse and buy; stored separately to allow more detailed increase performance, such as introduc- the technology is also used on DVD- analysis. And sometimes, consumers will ing a bias against very popular items: rental sites to recommend lms. Having be asked to score the same item in dier- there is little value in recommending a changed the way many people choose ent waysfor instance, what one thought bestseller such as The Da Vinci Code to books, music and lms, collaborative l- of the food at a restaurant, and what one people, because they have probably tering is moving into new areas. It can thought of the service. heard of it already. help people to choose which pro- The result is a mountain of data, the The benet of item-item ltering is grammes to watch on television, which size of which is the main challenge when that this elaborate similarity calculation restaurants to go to, even where to go on it comes to searching it for patterns. But need only be done infrequently. Then, holiday. But how does it work? And things are helped slightly by the sparse- when a user ranks a new itemby pur- should users be worried about collabora- ness of the data. The vast majority of chasing it, ranking it, visiting its web tive ltering’s impact on privacy, or the items do not have a ranking, implicit or page, or whateverthe system can simply possibility that recommendation sys- explicit, from any given user. Even the call up a pre-calculated list of items that tems can be rigged? busiest users have rarely ranked more are also likely to appeal to that user. This than 1% of the items. Amazon, for in- is what allows Amazon to handle over Tell me what I want stance, sells over 2m books through its 30m customers and give instant recom- Collaborative ltering starts o by col- online store. The sparseness of the data is mendations, even as the list of items that lecting data on individuals’ preferences. a saving grace, because it allows various have been ranked by a customer changes, This can be an explicit process, by which mathematical techniques to be brought since merely calling up the web page for a a user ranks a book (or CD, or restaurant) into play which vastly speed up the pro- particular book counts as a ranking. All on a numerical scale, typically on a scale cess of generating recommendations. the calculations are done by Amazon’s of one to ve. It can also be an implicit There are two basic ways of doing powerful server, which creates a list of processa purchase, for instance, is a this. The rst idea was proposed in 1992 recommended items and seamlessly clear indication that an individual is in- by Dave Goldberg and his colleagues at stitches that list into the next page sent to terested in the item in question. But im- Xerox PARC, who also coined the term the user’s web browser, neatly excluding plicit measures can also be more subtle; collaborative ltering. Their approach items they have already purchased. for instance, the amount of time spent was to recommend items to a user based The TiVo personal video recorder, on viewing a web page, or even just the directly on that user’s similarity to other the other hand, which can recommend 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Case history 17 A search-engine user hunts alone; the user of a collaborative-ltering system is part of a crowd.

2 programs based on your (and other us- ent sites. Dr Canny worries that this ers’) previous viewing habits, works in a favours retail monopolies, since they will dierent way: the recommendations are have the most data from which to gener- generated by each TiVo box, not by a cen- ate recommendations. His scheme dem- tral server. The server generates a matrix onstrates that personal data could, that relates the popularity of dierent instead, be aggregated by users them- shows to each other, akin to the pre-cal- selves. Your taste in books can then be culated item lists used by Amazon to gen- used to generate recommendations, by erate recommendations. But the task of aggregating your purchasing histories making recommendations is then left to from several online bookstores. the individual TiVo boxes, which use that matrix, combined with the data they Fiddling the lters have stored locally about the viewer’s A second concern about collaborative l- preferences, to suggest shows that might tering is that as it grows in importance, be of interest. As well as unloading much people may increasingly try to manipu- of the work on to the individual boxes, late it: publishers, for example, might this has the added virtue of preserving start recommending their own books. privacy: the central server never stores Last November, Michael O’Mahony of data about individual users, just aggre- University College, Dublin, published a gated data about viewing trends. paper demonstrating that even today’s That is just one way to address what most advanced collaborative ltering sys- is, for privacy advocates, a major concern tems are not all that robust when sub- about collaborative ltering: that to make jected to malicious users seeking to mendations made by collaborative-lter- recommendations, it is necessary to subvert their ranking systems. None of ing systems can be. This arises from the gather information about many people the existing systems is explicitly designed fact that people’s opinions change. You in a central repository. But there are other to combat malicious use. Can such rec- may enjoy a new album at rst, and give ways too. Indeed, a scheme proposed by ommendation spam be prevented? it a good score, but change your mind John Canny, of the University of Califor- Nolan Miller, of Harvard University’s after a few weeks once the novelty has nia at Berkeley, shows that it is, in fact, Kennedy School of Government, and his worn o. But your old score still stands. possible for a group of individuals to colleagues believe that it can, and have A recent study by Jonathan Herlocker pool their opinions and generate recom- outlined a way to do it. Their scheme uses of Oregon State University and his col- mendations without revealing their own probabilistic techniques to determine leagues evaluated several lm-recom- personal preferences to others. whether a score is likely to be honest, mendation systems based on collabora- Each individual encrypts their data us- by spotting unusual-looking patterns in tive ltering. Using a ve-point scale, it ing what is called a one-way hasha scoring. Dozens of accounts created on compared the scores users would be ex- function that is very easy to compute in the same day, all of which give high pected to give particular lms, based on one direction, but virtually impossible in scores both to a bestseller and a new their known preferences, with the scores the other (without a key, at least). The book, for example, might be an orches- they actually gave. The predicted and ac- computations are then performed using trated attempt by a publisher to get fans tual scores diered by at least 0.73 points. the encrypted data. This is possible be- of the former to buy the latter. Honest us- Dr Herlocker speculates that this might cause many modern encryption schemes ers are rewarded, and dishonest ones be evidence for a fundamental limit to have the helpful property that perform- punished, through a points-based system the accuracy of recommendation sys- ing calculations on encrypted data pro- akin to a loyalty scheme, so that honest tems based on collaborative ltering. duces the same answer as manipulating users might earn discounts or store credit. There is no point in making suggestions the unencrypted data and then encrypt- The scores used to compute recom- any more nely tuned than the variations ing the result. The resulting matrix of mendations are the ones corrected for in an individual’s own opinions. Dr Her- recommendations is then decrypted in- honesty, not the original, potentially ma- locker may well be correct, or the technol- crementally, since each user can only licious scores. Dr Miller’s system is not ogy may just have further to go. decrypt a small part of it. Eventually, the yet ready for commercial application; it But the value of collaborative ltering whole matrix is decrypted and made makes assumptions about the statistical has, in any case, already been estab- available to everyone. But, says Dr distribution of people’s recommenda- lished. It helps people nd things they Canny, at no stage does unencrypted in- tions that may not correspond to their might otherwise miss, and helps online formation about a user’s preferences real-world behaviour, for example. But it retailers increase sales through cross-sell- leave their own machine. points out a line of research that could ing. Where the user of a search engine is This sort of scheme has the advantage, preserve the integrity of collaborative-l- on a solitary quest, the user of a collabo- he says, that users can store personal in- tering systems under attack. If the rise of rative-ltering system is part of a crowd. formation themselves, without having to spam e-mail is any guide, it makes sense Search, and you search alone; ramble surrender it to a central authority (such as to think about such problems now, be- from one recommendation to another, an online retailer), while still beneting fore they become widespread. and you may feel a curious kinship with from the power of collaborative ltering. But even if the problems of privacy the like-minded individuals whose opin- At the moment, users’ personal informa- and dishonesty can be overcome, there ions inuence your ownand who are, in tion is sprinkled around on several dier- may be a limit to how accurate the recom- turn, inuenced by your opinions. 7 18 Reports The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

end of this year. Last year the labs pro- cessed 107.9 terabytes of data, roughly Dusting for digital equivalent to more than 4.5m boxes of pa- per lled with text. Douglas Schmidt- knecht of the RCFL National Programme ngerprints Oce says the amount of data being ana- lysed is growing exponentially. versity computer laboratories, using false While the public perception of com- or stolen accounts. The investigators re- puter crime is that it is carried out by mali- sponded to one of his messages, embed- cious hackers and script kiddies, the Forensic computing: As ding tiny invisible graphics called web greatest threat is often from within. criminals and crime-ghters go bugs in their replies in an attempt to de- There’s a huge rise in the number of digital, analysing clues from termine the network address of the recipi- cases of intellectual-property theft, says computers is a growing eld ent’s machine. But he spotted their ruse. Gordon Stevenson, managing director of Finally, he issued a $17m extortion de- Vogon International, a forensic-comput- VERY new technology leads to new mand in an e-mail that contained per- ing and data-recovery rm based in Bices- Eforms of crime. As a Chicago police- sonal details consistent with a primary ter in England. Most of Vogon’s forensic man once put it: No other section of the suspect who had, by this time, been iden- work involves conducting investigations population avail themselves more readily tied by the psychologists. The suspect for corporations that suspect employees and speedily of the latest triumphs of sci- was followed as he drove to one of the of wrongdoingand half of these cases ence than the criminal class. He was university computer laboratories from concern intellectual-property theft. Mr speaking in 1888, about the electric tele- which incriminating e-mails had been Stevenson points out that employees can graph. But he could just have easily been sent. He was then arrested, and a search of easily make copies of crucial data, from speaking about computers and networks his house produced evidence of his cam- corporate databases to product blue- today. As criminals adopt new technol- paign against the patent rm, along with prints. They can e-mail it to themselves ogies, crime-ghters must follow suit, de- hand-grenade components and ingredi- at home, he says. vising new ways to gather and analyse ents for the deadly toxin ricin. evidence. In the case of modern digital This kind of computer-based investi- Tools of the trade technology, the result is the growing eld gative work, which involves tracing the Forensic computing, like traditional fo- of forensic computing. digital footprints left by criminals on ma- rensic science, relies on a range of tools The scope for using technology in chines and networks, is becoming ever and techniques. Special software is used criminal ways, and the complexities of more important. In 1999, America’s Fed- to gather evidence from storage devices catching people who do so, are illustrated eral Bureau of Investigation helped to and to apply cryptographic tags to verify by the case of a 42-year-old Maryland launch the rst Regional Computer Foren- that it has not been tampered with during man who pleaded guilty last October to sics Laboratory (RCFL) to support federal, the investigation. There are specialist attempted extortion after sending threats state and local law-enforcement agencies. search tools, e-mail scanning tools and and demands by e-mail, and was sen- There are now six such labs across the disk-analysis tools; tools to gather in- tenced to 63 months in prison. For more country, and seven more will open by the formation over a corporate network1 than two years the man had sent sexually explicit e-mails to the clients of a patent rm using a forged e-mail address which made it appear as though the messages came from the company’s own execu- tives. Analysis of the company’s comput- ers ruled out the possibility of a malicious insider. Instead, further analysis of the e- mails revealed that they actually origi- nated from multiple homes in a suburban area just outside of Washington, DC. The real culprit successfully created this con- fusion by driving around with a laptop and an antenna that could detect unse- cured Wi-Fi wireless networks. Having found a network, he could then use it to send untraceable e-mails from his car. The investigators used clinical psy- chologists to create a prole of the person behind the extortion attempts, and found that the home owners from whose net- works the messages had originated did not match the prole. The man was also sending messages from several local uni- The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Reports 19

Evidence can be gathered from hard disks, networks, and devices such as mobile phones.

2 when investigating internal incidents; disks generally store information in nar- new challenges for investigators, says tools that monitor network trac for sus- row, concentric circles on each disk, along Eoghan Casey of Stroz Friedberg LLC, a picious behaviour; administrative tools a track about 400 nanometres (billionths computer-security and forensic consul- to keep track of evidence from multiple of a metre) wide. Since the track is so nar- tancy that took part in the investigation cases, to plot events on timelines for anal- row, new data do not always get written that followed the collapse of Enron, an en- ysis, and to generate reports. The leading directly on top of old, slivers of which re- ergy company, in 2001. The fact that vendor of forensic-computing tools is main at the track’s edges. By picking up many handhelds are connected to net- Guidance Software of Pasadena, Califor- this information, it is sometimes possible works increases the amount of data they nia. Its EnCase software, which bundles to reconstruct les that have been deleted generate, says Mr Casey, who also edits together these sorts of features in various or deliberately overwritten. Digital Investigation, a quarterly journal. combinations, has 14,000 government Network trac can also be used as the and corporate users worldwide and is basis of an investigation. Recording all the Making the case used by over 90% of America’s law-en- data owing across a network is impracti- When presenting digital evidence in forcement agencies. cal, but it is possible to monitor patterns court, investigators must be able to dem- The rst step in most investigations is of trac, types of trac, attempts to ac- onstrate its integrity and provenance. to make a copy of the original evidence, cess particular machines or parts of a net- You don’t just walk into the court and say typically by removing the hard disk from work, and so on. So-called intrusion- ‘Here’s a hard drive’, says Mark Pollitt, a computer and making a perfect copy of detection systems do just that, sounding the former head of the FBI’s RCFL net- its contents without altering the original. an alarm when something suspicious work who is now an independent secu- To do this, the source disk is copied to a tar- happens. The logs generated by such sys- rity consultant. As with physical get disk using a tool known as a write tems can therefore reveal telling details evidence, which must be stored and han- blocker which only permits a one-way about network activity. Other network dled appropriately, this can involve pro- ow of information. The resulting stream tools examine the contents of data pack- cedures (such as timestamping) to ensure of data can then be reconstructed into its ets zipping across the network, and record that digital evidence has not been tam- original les (which are usually sprinkled selected streams of data for subsequent pered with or mixed up. The need to take in chunks across the disk) by consulting playback and analysis. Such systems can these extra steps has not discouraged peo- the disk’s directory, a table that lists the lo- capture e-mails to or from specied peo- ple from introducing digital evidence. Mr cations of the constituent chunks of each ple, reconstruct instant-messaging con- Pollitt notes that ve years ago, a motion le. Further analysis can reveal leftover versations and even record and replay for electronic discovery in a civil lawsuit chunks from deleted les, or previous ver- voice-over-internet phone calls. was the exception rather than the rule. sions of documents. As well as gathering evidence from Now, he says, virtually every lawsuit in- Similar tools are available to consum- hard disks and network trac, investiga- volves this type of request. ers to recover data from corrupted disks or tors must also stay abreast of the rapid A decade ago, companies oering fo- undelete lost les. But forensic investi- evolution of portable devices. Data can be rensic-computing and data-recovery ser- gators can go one step further, using spin copied on to a music player or keychain vices dealt mostly with government stand testersdevices normally used by ash drive, or hidden on the memory card requests. But these days they are often disk-drive manufacturers to test their pro- of a digital camera. These devices provide called on directly by businesses and law- ducts. These rely on the fact that modern new sources of evidence, but also create yers investigating intellectual-property theft or inappropriate use of corporate systems by insiders. A common com- plaint from specialist investigators in such cases, however, is that investigations by incompetent sta can contaminate the evidence. What they don’t realise is that they’ve muddied the water, laments Nouman Mir, a forensic-computing spe- cialist at Data Recovery UK, a British rm. That companies are unaware how to handle digital evidence is not surprising, since such cases are generally hushed up. That, in turn, causes the scale of the pro- blem to be underestimated. But there are ways around this. Britain’s National High- Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) lets companies provide details about security breaches in condence. This contributed to a ve-fold increase in the number of rms partici- pating in the NHTCU survey last year, compared with 2003. Better data, ever more elaborate tools and greater aware- ness will be needed if the crime-ghters are to keep up with the criminals. 7 20 Reports The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

predict what the likely outcome would be if it went to court. The system, developed and now operating in Australia, is proving to be very helpful in getting couples to set- tle their disputes without having to go to court, says Andrew Stranieri, an AI expert at the University of Ballarat, in the Austra- lian state of Victoria. Dr Zeleznikow and Dr Stranieri have teamed up and launched a company, called JustSys, to develop AI-based legal systems. GetAid, another of their cre- ations, is being used in Australia by Victo- ria Legal Aid (VLA) to assess applicants for legal aid. This is a complicated process that normally consumes about 60% of the authority’s operational budget, because it involves assessing both the client’s nan- cial status and the likelihood that his or her case will succeed. Although both these systems are only available for use by lawyers and media- tors, it is the clients who benet, says Dr Zeleznikow. With SplitUp, a client can avoid going to court with a claim that will AI am the law surely lose and is instead given a chance to nd a more realistic solution. With Get- Aid, although it may appear to be the legal professionals who are directly beneting, sisting lawyers but actually performing there is a real knock-on eect for the client, some of their functions, could turn the says Domenico Calabro, a lawyer with Computing: Software that gives profession on its head. Such software VLA. Automating the application process legal advice could shake up the could both improve access to justice and frees up lawyers and paralegals so they massively reduce legal costs, both for the can spend more of their time actually legal profession by dispensing client and the courts. representing people rather than process- faster and fairer justice That is not to say that laptops will soon ing applications, he says. be representing people in court. But when IVEN the choice, who would you a civil case goes to court it is usually a Anatomy of an articial lawyer Grather trust to safeguard your future: good indication that all other options What makes both these programs so a bloodsucking lawyer or a cold, calculat- have failed. Technology has the potential smart is that they do more than just fol- ing computer? Granted, it’s not much of a to preclude this last resort. You move low legal rules. Both tasks involve looking choice, since neither lawyers nor comput- from a culture of dispute resolution to dis- back through past cases and drawing in- ers are renowned for their compassion. pute avoidance, says Richard Susskind, a ferences from them about how the courts But it is a choice that you may well en- law professor who is technology adviser are likely to view a new case. To do this, counter in the not-too-distant future, as to Britain’s Lord Chief Justice. Making le- the programs use a combination of two software based on articial intelligence gal advice more accessible, he says, means common AI techniques: expert systems (AI) starts to dispense legal advice. Instead people are more likely to seek advice be- and machine learning. of paying a lawyer by the hour, you will fore getting themselves into trouble. Expert systems are computer-based have the option of consulting intelligent Some such programs already exist on- distillations of the rules of thumb used by legal services via the web. While this line and are currently being used by law- experts in a particular eld. SplitUp, for might sound outlandish, experts believe yers, says John Zeleznikow, a computer example, uses an expert knowledge that the advent of smart software capable scientist at the University of Melbourne base of 94 dierent variables, which are of giving good, solid legal advice could in Australia and one of the orchestrators the factors identied by legal experts as revolutionise the legal profession. of this transformation. Although current most important to judges dealing with What is arguably one of the most con- programs are designed to help lawyers domestic-property disputes. Because no servative of all professions has already give advice, this is just the beginning. The two cases are ever the same, and because been quietly undergoing a technological trend, he says, is to make such services judges use dierent degrees of discretion, revolution: many lawyers now use auto- available to the masses. One service is de- it is not enough simply to apply a set of mated document-retrieval systems to signed to help resolve property disputes rules to these variables, however. store, sort and search through mountains between divorcing couples. Aptly named Hence the need for machine learning, of documents. But the introduction of SplitUp, the system can examine a client’s a technique in which a decision-making smarter programs, capable of not just as- case and, by scrutinising previous rulings, system is tuned using historical exam-1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Reports 21 Smart software could make legal advice more readily available and rulings more consistent.

2 ples, and adjusting the model to ensure it in re-interpreting statutes laid down by says Mr Forsyth. People have great di- produces the correct answer. The system Parliament, says Blay Whitby, an AI culty rationalising why one person gets is trained using a sample of previous expert at the University of Sussex. Any one punishment, while someone else cases to learn how these variables have change to the status quo should be the ends up with a lesser sentence, he says. been combined by judges in the past. All subject of proper, informed democratic Some judges are already using soft- of this builds an accurate model of the de- debate, he says. ware tools to address this issue, but these cision-making process a judge might use, Such concerns still linger, but attitudes are mainly statistical packages which give and allows it to be applied to new cases, seem to be shifting, says Mr Forsyth, as a judges nothing more than a sense of how says Dr Zeleznikow. GetAid also makes new generation of more technology- similar convictions have been sentenced inferences, but instead of working out savvy lawyers emerges. In 1999, a Texas in the past, says Uri Schild, a computer sci- what the courts will award the client, its court banned a basic self-help software entist at Bar-Illan University in Israel. intelligence lies in its ability to predict package, Quicken Family Lawyer, on the However, these programs are now be- whether the client has a winnable case. grounds that the software was, in eect, coming more sophisticated. Dr Schild has Both systems are incredibly accurate, practising law without a licence. Yet with- developed a system that attempts to go says Mr Calabro. Tests of GetAid, carried in 90 days this decision was overturned. one stage further, by considering not just out by VLA, showed that when 500 past This indicates a willingness among the nature of the crime, but also the of- applications were fed into the system it judges, at least, to tolerate the technology. fender’s previous conduct. gave the same result as the actual out- Magistrates and judges are often under come 98% of the time. The remaining 2% considerable time constraints when were then re-examined and found to be working out sentences, and are unable to borderline cases. All 14 of VLA’s oces give detailed consideration to the of- now use GetAid, and the Australian au- fender’s previous convictions. So Dr thorities are considering rolling it out in Schild’s system evaluates an oender’s re- the country’s other seven states. cord and creates a brief overview for the Some may regard all this as too imper- judge to peruse, including the number of sonal, but those people can probably con- previous oences, how serious they are, tinue to aord a human lawyer, says Dr their frequency, and so on. For each cate- Susskind. Most of the people on the re- gory the program indicates how signi- ceiving end of this technology are not get- cant it is to the case in hand. Another ting any legal advice at all at the moment. program, from JustSys, appears to push Stuart Forsyth, a consultant for the Ameri- things even further. The Sentencing In- can Bar Association’s Futures Committee, formation System helps judges construct points to a growing trend in America of and record their arguments for deciding people representing themselves in court. upon a sentence. The decisions still come This happens in more than half of all do- from the judges, says Dr Zeleznikow, but mestic disputes and an even larger pro- the system helps them justify their deci- portion of some other types of case. This sions by mapping out their reasons. is worrying, says Mr Forsyth, because People have to be kept in the loop be- these people are probably not doing a cause of accountability, says Dr Whitby. very good job for themselves. But the technology itself need not be Internet-based legal-advice software feared as a new entity. On the contrary, could not only create a more level playing the same AI techniques have been help- eld but in doing so could also dramati- ing engineers and businesses for years, in cally alter the nature of legal guidance, Americans may like lawsuits, but they elds from marketing to oil-drillingand says Dr Susskind. Instead of being a one- like technology even more. they would not have been so widely to-one advisory service, it could become a One reason for optimism, suggests Dr adopted if they did not work. The real is- one-to-many information service. Law- Zeleznikow, is the way in which the pro- sue is one of acceptance, he says. yers, of course, might not regard this as grams are designed to be used. To have a None of these systems threatens to put such a good thing. So it is not surprising machine making legal decisions about a lawyers and judges out of a job, nor is that that AI has traditionally been frowned person’s welfare would be morally unten- the intention. They do things that people upon within the legal profession. able in many situations, he says. So these do at the moment, says Dr Zeleznikow, days, programs are designed to have but they could be quicker and cheaper. Lawyer v computer built-in safety checks to prevent them What the systems still lack is the ability to In the 1980s, a program designed to help from overstepping this ethical line. For ex- exercise discretion, and that is not likely to lawyers interpret immigration law laid ample, GetAid cannot reject applicants, change for the foreseeable futureso hu- down by the British Nationality Act but can only approve them: the rest are re- mans need not worry about losing their caused consternation among academics ferred to a legal ocer for reconsideration. jobs to an army of robo-lawyers. But and lawyers alike. Shockingly, it could be Another example concerns the systems smart software has the potential to make used by lawyers and non-lawyers alike. used by judges to help them in the com- legal advice more readily available, un- Critics were worried that bypassing law- plex and arcane process of sentencing. necessary court battles less frequent, and yers might pose a threat to democracy, be- There is a real drive for sentencing to be- rulings more consistent. Surely not even a cause of the important role lawyers play come more transparent and consistent, lawyer could argue with that. 7 22 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005

LAME it on Tom Swift. For it was Swift, the case of videophones, they have ar- B the ctional teenage genius who rived, but nobody wants to use them). repeatedly saved the world with his sci- But Mr Kurzweil insists he is not trying to entic savvy, who inspired Ray Kurzweil oversell the future. He works with a team to become the inventor, engineer and of ten people, researching big technologi- prognosticator he is today. I started read- cal trends, examining them closely, and ing those books when I was about nine then methodically plotting where they years old, and couldn’t put them down, will lead. I’m an engineer, he says. I he says. It wasn’t just the solartrons, div- like to measure things. And if those mea- ing seacopters and triphibian atomicars surements lead somewhere improbable, that mesmerised him; it was the way the so be it. He is just passing the news along. irrepressible Swift applied his mind, and He is not outlandish; the future is. the technology it conceived, to solve hu- His predictions may sound wide- man, often personal, problems. I was eyed, but Mr Kurzweil himself is not. As smitten by the power of ideas to change he sips a cup of green tea, his calmness the world, says Mr Kurzweil. makes it easy to imagine the shy, solitary It is as good a way as any to explain boy who grew up reading books and tin- how a shy boy growing up in a nan- kering with electronic circuits. And while cially pinched household in Queens, he relishes wandering into controversial New York, managed to transform himself areas where he can play the role of agent into a restless thinker who has since provocateur, he maintains he has arrived founded nine businesses, written ve at his conclusions scientically. Being an books (with a sixth on the way), won the inveterate measurer, he says he has American National Medal of Technology looked back not decades, but eons, and and the Lemelson-MIT prize for inven- has found that the organisation of in- tion and innovation, and who relent- formation has been accelerating at an ex- lessly preaches the gospel of accelerating ponential pace for millions of years. technological advance that will soon We are just beginning to see the results strain our ability to comprehend what of this eect now, he argues, because we lies ahead. have reached the knee of the curve, Like his boyhood hero, Mr Kurzweil where a slowly rising trend line suddenly cannot seem to keep his ngers out of the rockets upward. That is why many of his future. He keeps venturing on to the predictions seem so implausible, he says: bleeding edgehis critics say the lunatic the notion that exponential change is fringeof science to imagine futures subtle is what most futurists and scien- where computers are as intelligent as we tists miss. Mr Kurzweil calls it the Law of are, millions live in virtual reality and im- Accelerating Returns, and it underpins mortality is not only possible, but likely. most of his predictions. It will all unfold, he says, over the next 25 Ray takes ideas everyone accepts, The future, years as overlapping technological revo- and follows them to logical conclusions lutions in genetics, nanotechnology and that almost no one accepts, says Neil robotics render the world radically dier- Gershenfeld, a professor at the Massa- just around ent from the place it is today. chusetts Institute of Technology. Admit- The futuristic landscapes that Mr tedly, at times Mr Kurzweil goes a bit far Kurzweil paints have often been derided for specialists versed in the limitations of the bend as outlandish. Nevertheless, he says he a particular eld, but he does it with stands by his record. In his rst book, care, and he does his homework, says Dr Ray Kurzweil is an The Age of Intelligent Machines, pub- Gershenfeld. He lters out the clutter accomplished inventor, but lished in 1990, he predicted that in just a and identies important trends with re- few years a global computer network markable accuracy, says Ralph Merkle, he is best known for his wild would emerge. In late 1993, the web hit director of the Georgia Tech Information prognostications about the the mainstream and never looked back. Security Centre and an expert in nano- future. Is he as crazy as he He also predicted that a computer would technology. Yet while accuracy is impor- sounds? defeat a chess champion by 1999: sure tant, Mr Kurzweil’s supporters say that enough, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated Garry his most important role lies in driving Kasparov in 1997. Well, shrugs Mr Kurz- home to as many people as possible the weil, I was o by a couple of years. idea that radical change lies just around Making predictions, particularly the corner. He plays at a valuable about the future, is a dangerous business, boundary between working scientists of course: long-awaited technologies and futurists, visionaries and science-c- such as ying cars, space hotels and vid- tion kooks, says Dr Gershenfeld. It’s eophones have yet to materialise (or, in useful to have such ‘points of innity’. 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2005 Brain scan 23 Mr Kurzweil plays at the boundary between scientists, futurists, visionaries and sci- kooks.

2 From the age of ve, Mr Kurzweil says tern-recognition software to spot trends he knew he wanted to be an inventor. By and automate stockmarket transactions. the age of 12 he was building and pro- As wide-ranging as these enterprises gramming computers, and as a young appear, one common theme unites them: teenager he appeared on I’ve Got a Se- a fascination with pattern recognition, cret, a popular American quiz show. Mr which Mr Kurzweil argues is at the heart Kurzweil walked on to the stage, played a of human intelligence. Many of his in- classical piano piece for the celebrity ventionsfrom optical character-recogni- panel and then shared his secret with the tion software to CyberArt’s paintings to host and audience: the piece he had just FatKat’s transaction engineattempt to played was written by a computer, and imbue machines with something like hu- he had programmed the computer that man intelligence, and often blur the line created it. By the time he was an under- between art and science. Perhaps the graduate at the Massachusetts Institute of most unorthodox example is Ramona, a Technology, studying computer science computer-generated female singer who is under articial-intelligence guru Marvin also Mr Kurzweil’s virtual alter-ego. Minsky and creative writing with play- Not even Tom Swift could have come wright Lillian Hellman, Mr Kurzweil was up with this. At the TED (technology, nding ways to prot from his program- entertainment, design) conference in Mr Kurzweil in his Wonder years ming prowess. 2001, Mr Kurzweil wanted to demon- In 1967, he hatched an idea for com- strate how virtual reality can allow peo- others, he says they are just part of a natu- puter software that would help high- ple to reinvent themselves. That is one ral evolutionary progression. Apes would school students nd a college that of the benets of virtual reality, he says. have seemed impossible to the rst lung- matched their interests and skills. Stu- You don’t have to be the same boring sh. A civilisation of humans literally dents lled out a form with 200 ques- person all the time. Motion sensors melding with their technology may seem tions, and Mr Kurzweil’s program tracked his movements and linked them impossible as well. But, he argues, that compared their answers with a database to Ramona, whose image was projected does not mean it will not happen. of 2m facts about 3,000 colleges, all com- on a large screen as Mr Kurzweil put on a All of which leads to the 57-year-old piled by ve Harvard students he had show, complete with a rock band. As I Mr Kurzweil’s most outrageous predic- hired as researchers. After selling the re- moved, Ramona moved in exactly the tion: immortality. In his new book, Fan- sulting company in 1968, Mr Kurzweil same way in real time, and my voice was tastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live went on to found Kurzweil Computer transformed into Ramona’s voice. We got Forever, he and his co-author argue, in Products, where he developed break- a standing ovation, he says. A team from sometimes dense scientic detail, that through optical character-recognition Warner Brothers saw the performance death no longer need be a fact of life. Cur- technology that led to the world’s rst and, says Mr Kurzweil, used it as the in- rent advances in medicine, they say, will reading machine. Mr Kurzweil sold that spiration for S1m0ne, a movie about a lead to major breakthroughs in genetics company to Xerox in 1980. Hollywood director who creates a virtual between 2015 and 2020 that will extend actress who takes on a life of her own. life spans. Then, by the late 2020s, ad- Spot the pattern The way Mr Kurzweil sees it, Ramona vances in nanotechnology will make pos- Then came Kurzweil Music Systems, the is a glimpse into the future. In ten years or sible truly radical life extension and result of a collaboration with Stevie Won- so, he imagines that millions of people rejuvenation. So to achieve immortality, der, a blind musician who was the rst will spend large chunks of their time in- people alive today merely need to sur- private customer to buy one of his read- teracting in virtual worlds with other vive long enough to reach the rst of ing machines. Mr Wonder contacted Mr people masquerading as whoever they these breakthroughs, which will in turn Kurzweil after he heard about the mach- choosea kind of elaborate masked ball enable them to benet from the second. ine in news reports, and asked if there in cyberspace that will eventually evolve Mr Kurzweil has no time for sceptics might be some way to apply the power of into a full-blooded parallel universe. (Al- who argue that human immortality is im- computer technology to music. That led ready, millions of people play online possible, or that mortality is what makes to the creation of electronic keyboards games, which are becoming ever more life precious. That’s nonsense, he says. able to imitate the sound of a grand pi- elaborate.) We will have full-immersion What makes the human species unique ano. Mr Kurzweil sold the company in virtual reality by 2010, Mr Kurzweil pre- is that we insist upon going beyond our 1990 to Young Chang of South Korea, the dicts. The images will be written directly limitations. We are not staying within the world’s largest piano-maker. to your retinas from your eyeglasses or limits of our biology. Life expectancy was The list goes on: Kurzweil CyberArt, contact lenses. By the late 2020s, he ex- 37 in 1800, 45 in 1900 and now it’s over Kurzweil Educational Systems, Kurzweil pects virtual reality will be implemented 80. Ageing is not a graceful process and AI, the Medical Learning Company. All using nanobots injected directly into the death is a great tragedy, a profound loss are run out of an unspectacular four-sto- brain that will bypass the input from the of knowledge, skill, experience and rela- rey building in the picturesque town of outside world and generate the signals tionships. When asked if he expects to Wellesley, Massachusetts, the products needed to create an alternative reality. live forever, Mr Kurzweil answers with- of Mr Kurzweil’s Swift-like curiosity and If all of this seems too outlandish to out hesitation: Yes. I expect I will. After enthusiasm. Mr Kurzweil’s most active be believed, Mr Kurzweil doesn’t care. As all, when you have as many ideas as Tom current venture is FatKat, which uses pat- unnatural as these ideas may seem to Swift, you need all the time you can get. 7