Nuclear power’s The rise of the Surgery using next generation agricultural robot sound and light TechnologyQuarterly December 12th 2009

Main title, choose size weight and colour Follow on subtitle, as above Read all about it Building better screens for e-readers

TQCOVERDEC09.indd 1 1/12/09 15:59:34 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Monitor 1

Contents

On the cover Nearly all electronic•book readers (e•readers) use the same screen technology. It consumes very little power but cannot display colour images or video. But new types of screen are emerging that will combine long battery life with support for vibrant colour and the ability to G reenery on the march display video: page 9 Monitor 1 Armies go green, a new glue for broken bones, a battery inspired by electric eels, the technology of ink, paying for your own †bre link, texting in Clean technology: Finding alternative sources of energy is becoming a Asian languages, better ways pressing military necessity for America’s armed forces to collaborate online, and who won our innovation awards HE air around Bagram air†eld, the longer just the colour of army uniforms. Tmain American base in Afghanistan, is What has changed? During the in• Rational consumer thick with the smell of jet fuel, the roar of vasion of Iraq in 2003, America’s marines 8 Powering the drive aircraft taking o on bombing missions often found themselves outrunning their Buyers of electric cars grapple and the constant drone of electricity gen• fuel supplies. ŒUnleash us from the tether with Œrange anxiety erators. Outside the ramparts, a snakelike of fuel, their then commander in Iraq, convoy of brightly coloured lorries waits General James Mattis, later pleaded. As New displays for e•readers to unload fuel hauled from Pakistan and insurgency engulfed the Americans, Central Asia. These are the modern equiv• supply convoys became a favourite target. 9 Read all about it alents of the pack mules that once carried In July 2006 General Richard Zilmer, the Screen technologies that are military supplies‹much of it fodder for marine general then in charge of Ameri• both low•power and full•colour the beasts themselves. The British army can forces in western Iraq, sent out an calculates that it takes seven gallons of urgent request for solar panels, wind Inside story fuel to deliver one gallon to Afghanistan. turbines and other devices to reduce the 11 Nuclear’s next generation Modern warfare would be impossible need for liquid fuels. His troops were Novel reactor designs to meet without vast quantities of fossil fuel. It is being placed Œin harm’s way each time we the needs of the 21st century needed to power everything from tanks to send out a convoy, he said; protecting jets to electricity generators that run the supply convoys was drawing forces away Agricultural robots communications networks on which from other tasks. And in 2008 the spike in 14 Fields of automation Western armies depend. In the punishing oil prices played havoc with military How robotic innovation down on climate of Iraq and Afghanistan, more• budgets: the Pentagon’s fuel bill rose from the farm is bearing fruit over, soldiers’ accommodation must be $13 billion in 2007 to about $20 billion. kept cool in hot weather, and warm in the So it is not a question of preventing Biomedicine cold. American forces consume more than climate change, reducing dependence on 16 Son et lumière in the hospital 1m gallons of fuel a day in Afghanistan, imported oil, or even complying with Non•invasive surgical techniques and a similar quantity in Iraq. President Barack Obama’s green agenda. based on sound and light Until recently military planners had The need for alternative sources of energy assumed that fuel would be plentiful and is a military necessity. Brain scan easily available. A Humvee with added In Iraq and Afghanistan about 40% of armour does just four miles per gallon; an fuel is used to run electricity generators. A 18 Beyond the ether Abrams tank burns four gallons to move a successful quick•†x to reduce energy A pro†le of Bob Metcalfe, the mile, in some conditions. These days, consumption was to coat military tents inventor of Ethernet though, America’s armed forces want to with a thick layer of commercial insulat• reform their gas•guzzling ways; green is no ing foam, of the kind used for cavity walls 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009

2 i n homes, covered with a sealant to pro• In October the USS Makin Island, an time, new technologies, such as Œblended tect it from ultraviolet light. Joseph Sar• amphibious assault ship, was the †rst of 12 wing aircraft and new composite materi• tiano, a Pentagon oˆcial, says this hybrid•powered ships to take to the water. als, may come out of military•funded treatment halves the energy needed for It saved nearly $2m in fuel costs on its laboratories. At the very least, the armed air•conditioning and pays for itself within maiden voyage alone. At slow speeds, it forces could act as crucial early adopters three to six months, depending on how runs only on an electric motor powered for costly new green technologies. the price of fuel is reckoned. by the ship’s auxiliary turbine. At higher They are also promoting one impor• If the various generators on a base are speeds, the main turbine takes over. This is tant conceptual change: the pricing of linked together in a Œsmart grid system, a step on the way to the navy’s ambition fossil fuel. Liquid fuel ordinarily sells for which optimises their operation and to develop all•electric ships. When fully $2•3 a gallon, but by the time it reaches a distributes power to priority areas, such as dedicated to missile defence, some ships war zone the cost is much higher: about communications equipment, a further already devote 40% of their power to $15 for delivery to a big FOB in Afghanistan 20% saving is possible, he adds. Such a grid electrical systems, says Rear•Admiral and as much as $400 to an outpost that, is being tested at the army’s model for• Philip Cullom, in charge of the navy’s ‡eet say, has to be resupplied by helicopter. ward operating base (FOB) in Fort Irwin, readiness. ŒWith an all•electric ship it will This Œfully burdened cost of fuel is seep• California, along with prototypes of a be a bit like ‘Star Trek’, in which the cap• ing into the calculations of military plan• mobile, hybrid power•station that com• tain can order power to be moved to the ners. It tries to capture the cost of military bines solar panels and wind turbines with weapons or to the engines, he says. logistics, rather than environmental im• a conventional generator. America’s ma• For the foreseeable future, clean tech• pact. But if military leaders are ready to rines are creating a smaller model FOB at nology will ‡ow mainly from the com• put a more realistic price on fuel, perhaps their base in Quantico, near Washington, mercial to the military sector. But over other Americans will follow suit. 7 DC, to test systems for deployment in Afghanistan by mid•2010. Another idea, already being tried out at Camp Victory, the main American base in Baghdad, is to convert rubbish into elec• tricity. A battalion of about 500 men typically produces about a tonne of waste every day. A machine called the Tactical Garbage to Energy Re†nery (TGER), heats solid waste to produce syngas (synthetic gas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen), ferments food slops to produce alcohol, and chemically processes the two to make biodiesel that powers a generator. TGER produces as much as 64 kilowatts of power‹enough to run the command post of a battalion. Such measures should reduce the amount of fuel needed to produce elec• tricity. Much of the Pentagon’s fuel goes to the air force, however, and reducing the consumption of jet fuel is much more diˆcult. The air force is working to certify all its aircraft to use synthetic fuels made from gas derived from coal or biomass, using the Fischer•Tropsch method used by Glue bones Germany during the second world war. By 2016 the air force seeks to use a 50:50 blend of synthetic and ordinary jet fuel for half of its aviation requirements within Ameri• ca. But the shift towards synthetic fuel has Biomedicine: An adhesive secreted by a marine worm inspires a promising provoked criticism, because when such new treatment for compound fractures of human bones fuel is made from coal and then burned in an aircraft engine, more greenhouse gases ORN ‡esh is easy to put back together and now Russell Stewart of the University are emitted overall than would be pro• Twith stitches, but when bone breaks, of Utah may have found one in the secre• duced if the aircraft simply burned con• repairs are nowhere near as simple. Bones tions of a marine worm. ventional fuel derived from oil. Nor does it with fractures that run in a straight line The sandcastle worm, as the creature is help reduce demand in war zones. can often be placed back in their proper known, lives in a mineral shell. It does not, The American navy, for its part, is alignment and set in a cast to heal. Com• however, secrete this shell directly in the placing its faith in biofuels. It has tested a pound fractures, however‹those that way that, for example, a mollusc does. biofuel made from the camelina plant in involve bones shattered into fragments‹ Instead it secretes a glue and uses this to its F•18 Hornet jet. Next it will test biofuels pose more of a challenge. Large fragments stick bits of sand together to form its cas• in ship turbines. It is also installing stern can, with the aid of metal screws and pins, ing. The glue does not dissolve in water. ‡aps on its amphibious vehicles that can be reattached and set in place for healing. Indeed, it is able to displace water and reduce fuel use by 2•3%, and developing Small fragments cannot be treated in the thus adhere to surfaces even underwater. better coatings to prevent the growth of same way, as they are often too tiny to be And it solidi†es soon after being secreted. algae and barnacles on hulls that cause connected with metal hardware. Medics It, or something like it, therefore sounds drag and increase fuel consumption. have long sought a glue to do this work, ideal for repairing bones. 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Monitor 3

2 D r Stewart and his team began by change in acidity. The gland in which the proteins, he and his team used two syn• analysing sandcastle•worm glue to see glue is generated is mildly acidic. In these thetic polymers. These, however, had the how it works. What they found was a circumstances the glue remains liquid. same crucial chemical groups as their mixture of proteins, some positively Seawater, however, is alkaline. This alka• natural counterparts, and similar electric charged and some negatively charged, and linity causes the glue to set. It solidi†es charges. The result, as the team reported to a lot of calcium and magnesium ions. The into a foam within 30 seconds and be• a recent meeting of the American Chemi• combination produces a material that can, comes a ‡exible, leathery substance over cal Society, was a substance even better, when circumstances are right, bind the the course of several hours. from a medical point of view, than the protein molecules so tightly together that Having understood how the sand• natural glue. Not only did it solidify in any water molecules between them are castle worm performs its trick, Dr Stewart response to changes in acidity, it also did expelled. The trigger for this to happen is a was in a position to replicate it. Instead of so in response to changes in temperature, being liquid at room temperature and solid at body temperature. The resulting glue not only sticks bits of bone together in watery environments, E lectrical potential but also does so with twice the strength of the glue used by the worm. And, although it is still early days, preliminary tests sug• gest it is both non•toxic and biodegrad• Biomimetics: The electric eel’s respective membranes. They then add• able. If further testing con†rms this, it ability to generate powerful shocks ed a dilute concentration of potassium means that, as the broken bone heals, the has inspired the development of a chloride to one protocell and a more glue will disappear naturally. Compound new type of battery concentrated solution to the other. The fractures will thus heal more easily. 7 di erence in concentrations of potassi• AST year a Japanese aquarium um and chloride ions would normally Lhooked up the lights on a Christmas cause ions to move from the less con• tree to a tank containing an electric eel. centrated protocell to the more concen• Metal plates at the ends of the tank trated one. In this case, however, the Making ink enabled the eel to power the bulbs. It membrane between the protocells was was certainly e ective as a publicity too thick to permit much movement. bulletproof stunt. Now some researchers in Ameri• Next, Dr LaVan and his colleagues ca have developed a battery that pro• installed a protein called alpha•hemoly• duces electricity in a similar way. sin into the protocell membrane. This Ink: Basic ink compositions have Many creatures use di erences in the functioned as a selective bridge, permit• remained unchanged for millennia, concentration of ions (electrically ting the passage of positively charged but some companies think there is charged atoms) within the body to do sodium ions, but not negatively charged work. Human brains, for example, rely chloride ions. As the selected ions still room for improvement on electrical impulses to release calcium moved in one direction, electrons AVING recognised the fallibility of ions that bind to neurotransmitters that, (which are negatively charged) ‡owed Hhuman memory, people have been in turn, communicate with the rest of in the opposite direction. To make use of keeping records written with ink for over the nervous system. The mechanism this electrical current, the team connect• four millennia. Thanks to the durability of that allows Electrophorus electricus to ed tiny electrodes to the protocells. those early inks, the thoughts of our an• produce a shock as strong as a wall They report, in Advanced Materials, cestors have been preserved. Indeed, socket employs di erences in the con• that they were able to sustain a usable civilisation itself could be said to depend centration of sodium ions in some current. Dr LaVan reckons that two of on the persistence of the written word. 6,000 specialised cells called electro• his protocells, measuring several centi• Early inkmakers mixed †ne black soot cytes. These cells are normally electri• metres across, could run a digital music• with resin and water. Water suspended cally isolated from one another. When player for about 10 hours. A novel the soot, keeping the ink runny enough to the eel locates its prey, it opens a series Christmas present, perhaps? write with. Once the water evaporated, of cellular gates through which the ions the resin made the carbon particles stick to ‡ow. This movement of charged ions, paper or papyrus. Today this is called when the eel is in a conductive solution pigment ink, and it remains in use in pens like water, creates an electric current. and inkjet printers. Another ancient way David LaVan of the National In• to make ink is to use dyes, in which the stitute of Standards and Technology in colour is dissolved rather than suspended Maryland and his colleagues wanted to in its solvent. The existence of two such study the operation of living cell mem• venerable yet reliable technologies, how• branes and their proteins. They began ever, has not prevented a number of com• by experimenting on arti†cial Œproto• panies from trying to make better inks. cells. These, like real cells, were sur• When Newell Rubbermaid, an oˆce• rounded by membranes made of fatty and home•supplies company based in molecules. Proteins Œ‡oating in the Atlanta, began marketing one of its Uni• membranes would let only certain ions ball pens with a gel•based pigment ink as pass. The researchers realised that they Œfraud resistant in 2005, it was not expect• might be able to copy the eel’s electric• ing a higher than normal level of demand. ity•generation mechanism. But thanks to the ink’s durability com• The team fused two protocells to• pared with dye•based inks and smooth gether, so that they shared part of their Giving battery technology a jolt writing due to the gel’s low viscosity, sales grew by around 25% a year. Other pen• 1 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009

Who pays for the pipes?

Telecommunications: If broadband providers are reluctant to lay expensive optical †bres, consumers can sometimes pay for it themselves ELEPHONE and cable companies Tmake their money by investing in communications infrastructure and then charging people to use it. Having invested, however, they are often reluctant to up• grade their kit. Replacing copper wires with †bre•optic cables, for example, is hugely expensive, and many †rms in Europe have been dragging their heels. 2 m akers followed suit with similar gel inks. been tinkering with lasers since his high Now an alternative has been proposed: This ink’s durability and fraud resis• school days, thought he could make Noo• why not ask communities and individuals tance arise because the pigment particles dler’s ink disappear without harming the to pay for installation themselves? are so small that they lodge between the paper underneath. He found that many of The idea that homeowners might be †bres near the surface of the paper, mak• Noodler’s inks, as well as other fraud• willing to pay a few thousand dollars for a ing them impossible to remove without resistant inks, could be removed with cable sounds implausible. But it could be a visible damage to the page, says Leighton diligent use of a laser that he built for a worthwhile investment. As well as pro• Davies•Smith, vice•president of research few hundred dollars using parts bought viding a high•speed broadband link, it and development at Newell Rubbermaid. on eBay. Although these inks can resist would increase the home’s value. A sur• Applying solvents like water, acetone or chemical attack, they can be blasted away vey conducted earlier this year by RVA, an bleach will dissolve most dye•based pen by the infra•red output from a laser. Ink American market•research †rm, on behalf inks, but will not remove the pigment removal thus becomes a matter of careful of an American telecoms•industry body, particles. And when it comes to writing aim and delivery of very short, high• found that among respondents who did cheques or doctors’ prescriptions, an ink’s energy bursts. not currently have a †bre connection, 69% ability to resist attack is important. Mr Masluk contacted Mr Tardif with viewed high•speed service as an impor• Durability also turns out to have uses his discovery, and the two went on to test tant factor when buying a new home. in more mundane situations. Nils Miller, a a variety of inks to see how well they Another attraction would be that if senior Œink and media scientist at HP, is could withstand laser attack. The most you paid for your own †bre, you might all too well aware of the irritation caused resistant of Mr Tardif’s inks was a popular then be able to choose between several by the blurring of inkjet ink by highlighter and particularly vivid one called Baystate service providers. This is more likely to pens. Some of the technology giant’s inks Blue. But it was not as chemically resilient attract American technophiles than Euro• have been modi†ed following discussions as others, since many of Mr Tardif’s cus• pean ones, however, because there is with highlighter manufacturers to ensure tomers had expressed a need for this already greater competition between that one †rm’s ink chemistry does not particular ink to be removable with service providers in Europe. disagree with the other’s. bleach in case a fountain pen leaked while The Finnish government plans to o er The company with the reputation for in a shirt pocket. a tax rebate next year to those people who the most Œbulletproof of inks, however, is Noodler’s has since developed a new pay for their own †bre installation. Indi• Noodler’s Ink, a small American †rm. The series of inks resistant to both chemical vidual homeowners will be allowed to permanence of its inks relies in part on and laser attack, the most durable of form co•operatives to take control of their dyes that react with the surface of the which is called, somewhat eccentrically, own lines. Such †nancial inducements paper’s cellulose †bres. Once written, they Bad Belted King†sher. Although it seems could help shift some of the upfront costs resist a variety of solvents known to be unlikely that one of his customers would away from telecoms operators and so lead used by forgers, as well as more mundane become the target of such high•tech forg• to a faster deployment of high•speed solvents like water. The †rm’s founder, ery, Mr Tardif wants to maintain his bullet• networks than has happened so far. Nathan Tardif, recounts stories of new proof reputation and feels compelled to A paper written in 2008 by Tim Wu of customers who had handwritten docu• create new inks that can withstand all the New America Foundation, a think• ments rinsed clean in natural disasters, known attacks. tank, and Derek Slater, a policy analyst at leaving behind sheets of paper covered History holds a lesson for innovators Google, proposed a Œcondominium with illegible, watery ghosts of their origi• of ink. Iron•gall inks displaced carbon inks model for †bre ownership under which nal written contents. He also argues that because they were less prone to smudg• private individuals would own their own most industrially manufactured modern ing, but they turned out to be corrosive †bre links, but the trunk network passing inks are too weak in both their colour over time. Leonardo da Vinci and Johann through their neighbourhood would be saturation and durability. Sebastian Bach used iron•gall inks, and collectively owned. Collective ownership The reputation of Noodler’s inks re• their creations have su ered as a result. is a feature of several user•owned cently caught the eye of Nicholas Masluk, Ink technologists must hope their novel schemes in North America. Scandinavia a graduate student at Yale University’s creations do not inadvertently destroy also has a history of small, co•operatively• physics department. Mr Masluk, who has what they seek to preserve. 7 owned †rms deploying essential services, 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Monitor 5

2 i ncluding telephony, in rural locations. boost connection speeds for all their up by identifying characters or even entire The idea could work for †bre, too. customers more quickly and eˆciently. phrases from the user’s initial input and Many telecoms operators are reluctant Another argument against allowing the context of the subject matter. to extend †bre links all the way into cus• individuals to pay for their own †bre links In Japan several di erent alphabets are tomers’ homes (Œ†bre to the home) and is that it might exacerbate existing inequal• used depending on the context. For send• instead prefer the cheaper option of run• ities of access to high•speed broadband. ing text messages, people use kana, the ning †bre into each neighbourhood (Œ†bre But even if it were embraced by only a Japanese phonetic alphabet, which has to the node) and then using existing minority of users, the idea of paying for just 46 characters that can be mapped copper wires for the †nal connection into your own †bre could give high•speed fairly easily to the 12 keys on a mobile the home. They argue that this lets them deployment a helpful nudge forward. 7 phone handset. Kana is, itself, composed of two alphabets called hiragana and katakana. Then there is kanji, which has some 7,000 characters. If someone wants to send a message in kanji, he works †rst in A question of character hiragana or katakana. Tapping in the kana word produces a list of kanji characters from which the user can then pick the most appropriate. What of other languages that have Mobile phones: Typing text into a mobile phone is †ddly enough in English. more characters than Latin•based ones, How do handsets and their users manage in other languages? but fewer than Chinese or Japanese? Tamil, for example, has more than 200 ENDING a text message is often the popular one for sending text messages in characters, each of which represents a Smost time•consuming and expensive Chinese, but it produces simpli†ed rather syllable. When transliterated into English, way to transfer data. Yet it remains pop• than traditional Chinese characters. many of these syllables look alike. But by ular not only in countries that use Latin• A second shortcut that works for both grouping them by sound rather than based languages, such as America, Britain traditional Chinese characters and their appearance, the number of characters can and most of Europe, but also in China, simpli†ed counterparts reduces the writ• be reduced to about 50 of the most com• Japan and most of Asia, where written ten language to its physical components. mon, enough to write messages when languages often have much larger al• Each Chinese character is composed of a mapped to a small number of keys. phabets. Letting people send messages in number of strokes. The method o ers †ve The advent of mobile phones with these languages involves transliterating types: horizontal, vertical, a stroke down touch•screens opens the way to new, the text or, in some cases, developing new to the left, a bent stroke and a dot or stroke simpler forms of text entry. One approach ways of reading what has been written. down to the right. Each stroke is mapped is to allow users to draw Chinese charac• Historically, the 26 letters of the Latin onto a single key. People can compose ters with a †nger or a stylus. The handset alphabet have been assigned to eight of individual characters relatively easily by then recognises the shape and o ers a list the 12 buttons on a typical mobile•phone building them up a stroke at a time. This of characters to choose from. As wealthier keypad, making it straightforward to method is widely used in mainland Chi• Chinese are discovering, this is much compose text. Multiple letters are assigned na, Hong Kong and Taiwan. As in the West, quicker than multi•tap entry. Because to each key (the Œ2 key is also ŒABC, for predictive software can help speed things touch•screen phones are more expensive example), and tapping repeatedly on a key than ordinary handsets, however, they are switches between its corresponding let• used by only a small proportion of users ters until the desired charac• so far. ŒBut the input method is ter is chosen. Predictive• much more eˆcient with touch• text software can also screen and stylus, says Horace translate strings of Luke of HTC, a Taiwanese numbers into handset manufacturer. common words. The history of the mobile But the written phone shows, however, that languages of many something that is a luxury Asian countries are feature today (a colour screen, composed of so many a camera) is likely to be wide• characters that this multi• spread tomorrow. ŒWith a touch tap approach will not screen, what you write is what you work. Chinese dialects, for see, says Wang Kongqiao, a research example, contain between manager in Beijing for Nokia, the world’s 9,500 and 22,000 characters. largest handset•maker. Like other manu• One shortcut is to use pinyin, a facturers, Nokia makes handsets with phonetic system used to transliter• language•speci†c keypads for many coun• ate Chinese words into the Latin al• tries. Touch•screens may eventually ren• phabet. A person sending a text message der this approach obsolete. But the begins by inputting the pinyin transliter• various cunning tricks devised to enable ation of a Chinese character, based on its text entry in di erent languages will be pronunciation, which typically involves needed for some years yet. 7 entering a few Latin letters using multi• tap. This throws up a list of Chinese char• acters that share the same pinyin translit• eration. The user then chooses the desired character from the list. This method is a 6 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009

transfer e•mail messages are simple and are not owned by anyone. Wave also has an open architecture that allows other Better ways to collaborate companies to incorporate new things into waves, such as voice•over•internet calling, Twitter feeds, photo albums and so forth. Google hopes that this openness will encourage the wide adoption of the Wave S oftware: E•mail has severe limitations as an online collaboration tool, but it protocols, while also ensuring that the Wave platform does not become fossilised has the bene†t of ubiquity. Might it be displaced by something new? and unable to move with the times, as OST people would agree that com• happened to e•mail. Mputer technology can play a valu• Although the ‡edgling platform has able role in helping workers collaborate. some speed and stability problems, and its Yet they would probably also agree that application programming interface (the e•mail, the most widely used example of means by which other bits of software such collaborative technology, is less than plug into it) is not yet complete, collabora• ideally suited to the task. Based on proto• tion experts are excited. Two big software cols that were created long before the companies, SAP and Novell, are already internet took its current form, e•mail con• building add•ons for Wave. SAP’s tool, tinues to thrive for two reasons. It is ubiq• called Gravity, lets users design business uitous: your e•mail address, being unique, processes in Wave, while Novell’s Pulse, a functions as the internet equivalent of stand•alone product that will be released your name, postal address and passport, in 2010, will add security features, an since it is commonly used to sign into improved chat function and live editing of websites. And it is a classic example of a Microsoft Oˆce documents. Œgood enough tool. It allows people to Wave’s creators see e•mail as their send messages to individuals or groups, to main opposition. But might they face a hold online discussions and to exchange challenge from an altogether di erent documents and other †les. quarter? The rise of web•mail, instant But an e•mail discussion between messaging and web•based applications more than a few people can quickly †ll the within companies are all examples of the participants’ in•boxes with a deluge of broader trend of Œconsumerisation of messages, making the argument hard to technology. From mapping sites to social follow. Collaborating on a document via networks, web•based software evolves e•mail can also be problematic, as di er• much faster than desktop software, which ent versions start to circulate which must often looks old•fashioned by comparison. then be reconciled. ŒThe dominant mode ŒKnowledge workers can look outside the these days is still to put attachments on corporate †rewall, and realise that every• e•mails and send them around, and really, thing out there is better, faster and makes nobody is happy with that, says Andrew them happier, says Dr McAfee. McAfee, an expert on collaboration at One consumer website in particular Harvard University’s Berkman Centre for has already cracked the problem of build• Internet & Society and the author of ing easy•to•use collaboration tools with ŒEnterprise 2.0, a book on the subject. mass appeal. Facebook, now the world’s Yet despite recurrent complaints that largest social•networking site, allows over Œe•mail is broken, little seems to change. 300m users to chat, send messages, post Other collaboration tools have popped up comments, share links, photos and videos, in recent years‹including instant messag• play games, and form groups around ing, blogs, wikis (web pages that users can shared interests or projects‹most of the edit), social networks such as Facebook Rasmussen and his brother Jens, two things that collaboration tools are expect• and MySpace, web•based applications engineers at Google, asked themselves in ed to be able to do, in short. Furthermore it and micro•blogging services like Twitter‹ 2004. Their answer, called Google Wave, is free, and simple enough that users need but none has managed to dethrone e•mail. was unveiled in May 2009 and is now no training. Like Wave, Facebook is also Indeed, many of these services rely on being tested by thousands of users world• open to outside developers. e•mail as an underlying signalling mecha• wide. It lets people collaborate in shared Facebook’s original users, college nism. When someone posts a comment discussions, or Œwaves, which can en• students, have graduated but still use the on your blog, sends you a message on compass many forms of interaction: mes• site, drawing in their peers in the process: Facebook or starts following you on Twit• saging, notes, comments, collaboration on the average Facebook user is now over 30 ter, how do hear about it? You get an auto• shared documents and so on. Users can and a member of the workforce. So add• mated e•mail. Accordingly, people com• move a slider to Œreplay a wave, to see ing business•collaboration tools to Face• monly use a combination of various how it reached its current form. book would make sense. (Dustin Mosko• messaging and collaboration tools, each Impressive though this is, can Wave vitz, one of Facebook’s co•founders, has with their own strengths and weaknesses, really hope to challenge the supremacy of just raised funding for a new business• in both their personal and business lives. e•mail? Lars Rasmussen thinks it can, by collaboration start•up called Asana.) Some Awkward though this is, e•mail’s rigid imitating one of e•mail’s strengths and bosses regard social networking as the protocols make it hard to innovate in the avoiding one of its weaknesses. ŒWe think epitome of online time•wasting. But Face• in•box. What if e•mail could be given a e•mail is so successful because it’s open, book, or Wave, or something very like makeover? That was the question Lars he says. The protocols used to encode and them, could be the future of work. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Monitor 7

ented his family †rm from making uni• forms to developing products to address the developing world’s greatest health And the winners wereð problems. They include PermaNet mos• quito nets, ZeroFly insecticide•treated plastic sheeting and the LifeStraw, a por• table water•puri†cation device. ¹ Corporate Use of Innovation: Reckitt Benckiser, in recognition of its innovative Innovation awards: Our annual prizes recognise successful innovators in and entrepreneurial corporate culture. eight categories. Here are this year’s winners Reckitt Benckiser is one of the world’s biggest makers of household cleaning products. It has maintained strong sales and pro†t growth, despite the recession, because of its diverse, dynamic and in• novative culture.

And thank youð We extend our congratulations to the winners, and our thanks to the judges: Robin Bew, editorial director, Economist Intelligence Unit; Matthew Bishop, Ameri• can business editor, The Economist; Sir Andrew Cahn, chief executive, UK Trade & Investment; Marvin Caruthers, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, University of Colorado; Hermes Chan, president and chief executive, MedMira; Martin Cooper, chairman and chief executive, Array• HIS newspaper was established in 1843 and is the man behind the world’s cheap• Comm; George Craford, chief technology Tto take part in Œa severe contest be• est car, the Tata Nano, which costs $2,200. oˆcer, Philips Lumileds; Hernando de tween intelligence, which presses for• ¹ Computing and Telecommunications: Soto, chairman, Institute for Liberty and ward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance Raymond Kurzweil, founder of Kurzweil Democracy; Rodney Ferguson, managing obstructing our progress. One of the Technologies, for his work in arti†cial director, Panorama Capital; Janus Friis, chief ways in which intelligence presses intelligence. Mr Kurzweil led the devel• co•founder, Atomico; Lisa Gansky, co• forward is through innovation, which is opment of the †rst omni•font character• founder, Ofoto; François Grey, visiting now recognised as one of the most impor• recognition system, the †rst text•to•speech professor of physics, Tsinghua University; tant contributors to economic growth. reading machine and the †rst commercial Vic Hayes, former chair, IEEE 802.11work• Innovation, in turn, depends on the cre• speech•recognition system. ing group; Mo Ibrahim, founder, Celtel; ative individuals who dream up new ¹ Consumer Products and Services: Steve Paul Jackson, principal analyst, Forrester ideas and turn them into reality. Sasson of Eastman Kodak for inventing Research; Mike Lazaridis, president and The Economist recognises these talent• the digital camera. Mr Sasson built the co•chief executive, Research in Motion; ed people through its annual Innovation world’s †rst digital camera in 1975. It had a Matti Makkonen, co•developer, short Awards, presented in eight †elds: biosci• resolution of 0.01megapixels and stored message service (SMS); Yoichiro Matsu• ence, computing and telecommunica• images on tape. Digital cameras have since moto, professor and dean of engineering, tions, energy and the environment, social revolutionised photography. University of Tokyo; Edward McBride, and economic innovation, business• ¹ Energy and the Environment: Richard business editor, The Economist; Louis process innovation, consumer products, a Swanson, president and chief technology Monier, founder, AltaVista; Andrew ‡exible Œno boundaries category, and the oˆcer of SunPower, for his contributions Odlyzko, professor of mathematics, Uni• corporate use of innovation. The awards to solar•cell technology. In 1985 Dr Swan• versity of Minnesota; Andrea Pfeifer, chief were presented at a ceremony in London son founded SunPower Corporation to executive, AC Immune; Sam Pitroda, on October 29th. And the winners were: commercialise the solar•cell technology chairman, National Knowledge Commis• ¹ Bioscience: Craig Venter, chief executive he developed while he was a professor of sion, India; C.K. Prahalad, professor of of Synthetic Genomics, for his contribu• electrical engineering at Stanford Univer• corporate strategy, University of Michigan tions to genomics. Dr Venter pioneered sity. His design made solar cells thinner, business school; Navi Radjou, executive the use of expressed sequence tags as a more eˆcient and cheaper. director, Centre for India & Global Busi• new way to identify human genes, and ¹ No Boundaries: Mark Zuckerberg, chief ness, Judge Business School; Rinaldo went on to lead the private initiative to executive of Facebook, for popularising Rinol†, executive vice•president, Fiat sequence the human genome, completed social networking. In 2004 Mark Zucker• Research; Paul Sa o, technology forecast• in 2000. He is now working in the †eld of berg started Facebook, a social•network• er; Jerry Simmons, director, solid•state synthetic biology, developing modi†ed ing site, from his dorm room at Harvard lighting research centre, Sandia National micro•organisms with the scope to pro• University. Initially available only to Laboratories; Tom Standage, business duce clean fuels, among other things. Harvard students, it is now a global phe• a airs editor, The Economist (chairman); ¹ Business Process: Ratan Tata, chairman nomenon with over 300m active users. Vijay Vaitheeswaran, health•care corre• of the Tata Group, for pioneering the ¹ Social and Economic Innovation: spondent, The Economist; Je Weedman, globalisation of corporate India. In 1991 Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, chief vice•president of external business devel• Mr Tata assumed the reins of his family• executive of Vestergaard Frandsen, for opment, Procter & Gamble. The judging run company. He has since been the archi• developing low•cost health devices for process was managed by John Eckhouse tect of a series of bold foreign acquisitions the poor. Mr Vestergaard Frandsen reori• of Modern Media. 7 8 Rational consumer The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009

has a range of around 160km, but its rear seats are taken up with batteries so it is P owering the drive only a two•seater. And Renault, which is making the biggest push into electric vehi• cles, is planning to launch a scooter•type car called the Twizy (in which a single pas• senger sits behind the driver like on a mo• torcycle), a midsized family car called the Fluence, and the sportier Zoe. Having found an electric car with the Motoring: Manufacturers of electric cars, and prospective buyers, will have to appropriate range, performance and num• †nd ways to deal with Œrange anxiety for the next few years ber of seats, buyers must then consider how it will be charged‹something that VER the next three years most of the the car needs to be plugged in for several may only be practical on a private drive• Obig carmakers, along with several hours to get a good top•up. way or in a garage. BMW is restricting the newcomers, are planning to launch dozens Despite range anxiety, electric cars do †eld trial of its MINI E to drivers with o • of all•electric vehicles‹in other words, have a lot to o er. Most are quick o the street parking, and is †tting special high• cars that are entirely battery powered. Un• mark, thanks to the ability of an electric power 240•volt fast•charging stations as like hybrid cars, which are powered by a motor to deliver torque almost instantly. part of the deal. Using a dedicated high• combination of an electric motor and a This means they do not need a gearbox, current electric circuit, like those installed petrol engine, they will not be able to fall making both driving and maintenance for electric ovens, these can recharge the back on fossil fuels when the battery runs simpler. But in most respects, electric cars MINI E in 4.5 hours. (With an ordinary low. Accordingly, potential customers are drive and handle much like ordinary cars. mains socket, by contrast, recharging could expected to su er from what the industry With less machinery to go wrong, they take all day.) For cars with smaller battery has come to call Œrange anxiety. should be cheaper to service. They should packs, like the Smart, overnight recharging This is no idle malady, as test•driving be cheaper to run, too: the cost per mile for from a conventional socket is possible. some of the †rst electric cars and proto• electricity is much lower than for fossil Being able to plug in once you get to types reveals. Motorists have become used fuels. But real cost•of•ownership calcula• work makes things easier, too. Some streets to getting into an ordinary car in con†dent tions will not be possible until more elec• and buildings are being †tted with recharg• expectation of being able to drive hun• tric cars arrive in showrooms displaying ing stations, but such infrastructure will dreds of miles on a full tank‹and, with an their sticker prices. The cost of batteries take time to appear. Renault is particularly occasional glance at the fuel gauge, †nding will make electric cars more expensive keen to promote fast•charging stations, a †lling station when the fuel runs low. By than petrol ones, although the batteries along with exchange centres on motor• contrast, the gauge showing the remaining may be sold or leased separately. ways where depleted batteries can be power left in the battery of an electric car quickly swapped for another one during demands almost constant attention. It’s not your volt long journeys. (This approach is being Small electric cars, designed for use in To cope with range anxiety, prospective championed by Better Place, a start•up cities, can typically travel some 100km (62 buyers need to be sure about two things which has developed robots to handle the miles) on a full charge. But the range of an when selecting a particular model: how it battery•swapping process.) Meanwhile electric car depends on how it is driven, as will be used and how it will be recharged. the tinkerers are already at work: some are well as its battery capacity. If you zoom There will be a wide spectrum of alterna• planning to build small, petrol•powered along fast roads or go up a lot of hills, the tives. A small car, like the forthcoming generators which can be towed behind battery depletes more rapidly. Switching Smart Fortwo Ed, is tiny enough to slip into battery•only cars on long trips. on the lights, the heating and the wipers the smallest parking places, nippy in town More standards would help. At this also takes its toll, as does carrying passen• (it takes 6.5 seconds to reach a speed of stage there is little standardisation be• gers. Drivers are not used to taking account 60kph, or 37mph) and capable of coping tween manufacturers when it comes to of such things before setting out on a jour• with a daily commuter round•trip of 70• battery packs. Sockets also vary, although ney. But with an electric car you need to. If 80km. Alternatively, the Tesla roadster, standards are emerging in America and Eu• there is only, say, a 25% charge left in the with a top speed of 200kph, would leave it rope. In both cases the sockets will allow battery, nipping out with the family to a in the dust and keep going for another fast•charging and will include a communi• cinema about 15km away on a rainy night 300km or so after the Smart’s battery was cations interface so an electric car can, for might leave you stranded. A trudge to a †ll• ‡at. But the Tesla costs about $100,000, instance, identify itself for billing purposes ing station will not help, nor might road• compared with around $20,000 for the when plugged into a public recharging side assistance. When an electric car runs Smart. The Mitsubishi i MiEV is a capable spot. Only when such spots are common• out of juice you need a power socket‹and small car, and it has four seats. The MINI E place will range anxiety †nally subside. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 New displays for e•readers 9

HE sudden surge in the popu• ed to use LCD, and Asus, a maker Tlarity of e•readers‹slate•like of small laptops, has developed an devices, such as Amazon’s Kindle, LCD•based e•reader. The Nook on which electronic books can be cleverly splits the di erence: it has read‹has been one of the big sur• an E Ink screen to display text, and prises of 2009. Recessions are a smaller LCD touch•screen below often a good time to launch new it for navigation, which switches products, as old certainties are o when not in use to save energy. questioned and consumer tastes E Ink and a handful of rivals, in• shift. The iPod made its debut in cluding SiPix and Bridgestone, are 2001in the depths of America’s re• developing colour electrophoretic cession, and e•readers may prove displays. This involves adding a to be a similar success story this layer of coloured †lters above the time. But today’s e•readers, like black•and•white capsules, so that that †rst iPod, are technologically they can change colour. The diˆ• quite simple. Most of them have a culty lies in making the †lters and monochromatic screen to display their control systems small text and black•and•white pictures, enough, and ensuring that the †l• and none can handle video. ters, which cut down on the light Even so, around 5m e•readers re‡ected by the capsules, do not will be sold worldwide in 2009, make the resulting image look too according to iSuppli, a market•re• dull. Sri Peruvemba, vice•presi• search †rm, and a further 12m in dent of E Ink, says the †rm hopes 2010. The Kindle is by far the most to have solved these diˆculties by popular e•reader, but there are the end of 2010. But video remains many others. Sony has o ered a a problem. It currently takes about range of e•readers for years, and half a second to change the page has recently introduced several Read all about it on a Kindle. Getting an E Ink dis• new models. Barnes & Noble, a play to show video is theoretically bookstore chain, unveiled its own possible, says Mr Peruvemba, but reader, the Nook, in October. Plas• would involve changing the chem• tic Logic will unveil its QUE pro• istry of the display. Reader in January at the annual So it will probably be some Consumer Electronics Show in Las years before electrophoretic dis• Vegas, which is likely to be a com• plays are capable of displaying ing•out party of sorts for this new Display technology: Readers of electronic books video. Meanwhile, several emerg• product category. Many other must choose between long battery life or vibrant, ing technologies are waiting in the †rms, including makers of laptops living colour. Could they have both? wings to challenge the dominance and ‡at•panel displays, are also en• of the electrophoretic approach. tering the market. Apple may well upstage when no power is applied, and energy is Qualcomm, a maker of wireless chips all of them by announcing its own tablet• only expended when changing it.) There is used in mobile phones, has developed a like device in January. clearly room for improvement, however. display technology called mirasol that Over 90% of existing e•readers use a dis• E Ink displays are relatively slow to update, could prove to be ideally suited to e•read• play technology called E Ink, made by a which can irritate readers as they turn their ers. A mirasol display re‡ects ambient light †rm of the same name that was spun out digital pages. They cannot display colour like an E Ink display, but instead of being of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol• images or video, unlike the liquid•crystal made of liquid•†lled capsules it consists of ogy in 1997. E Ink is based upon tiny cap• display (LCD) technology used in mobile tiny cavities between two layers of mir• sules †lled with positively charged white phones and laptops. But LCDs are much rors. The top layer of mirrors is designed to particles and negatively charged black more battery•hungry and are not so easy allow a small amount of ambient light to ones, suspended in a clear liquid. Transpar• on the eye when reading for long periods. pass through it. The light then bounces o ent electrodes above and below the layer Another approach, organic light•emitting the bottom mirror, and then bounces again of microcapsules create electric †elds that, diode (OLED) technology, shows promise o the underside of the top mirror. As the depending on their polarity, push either but is expensive and diˆcult to scale up. light bounces back and forth, appropriate the black or the white particles to the sur• The ideal e•reader display, says Mr spacing of the mirrors ampli†es a particu• face in a particular region of the display. Haber, would combine excellent battery lar colour (wavelength) of light, while can• This Œelectrophoretic technology has life, a paper•like reading experience, full celling out others. A tiny electromechani• several advantages, says Steve Haber, pres• colour and a response•time fast enough to cal switch under the bottom mirror can ident of Sony’s digital reading division. It is support video‹while also being a ord• also lift it up, adjusting the spacing and pre• easy on the eye, does not need to be back• able. Alas, such a technology is not yet venting it from re‡ecting any light at all. lit, can be read easily in bright sunlight, and available on the market. Some †rms are re• Cavities with mirrors spaced speci†cal• requires very little battery power. (The im• sponding by launching e•readers based on ly to amplify red, blue and green light are age on the display remains in place, even LCD technology. Apple’s device is expect• grouped in bunches of three, each of 1 10 New displays for e•readers The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009

2 which corresponds to a single the pixel, where it can• dot, or pixel, on the display. By not be seen. adjusting the mirrors under The oil can bead up each cavity, these pixels can be in this way within 3 mil• made to produce di erent col• liseconds, and it takes 9 ours. The mirrors can be milliseconds to spread switched fast enough to pro• out again once the pow• duce a range of colours, and to er is turned o . But that display video. The technology is fast enough for video. is already available in the form A recent demonstration A mirasol display (left); the Nook of small screens for use in mo• of a six•inch display (above); Liquavista (below) bile phones and satellite•navi• shows impressive crisp• gation devices. These displays ness in black•and• p lays more expensive than standard sip power, drawing just one white. A prototype of a LCDs‹hence the FLEPia’s high price (about milliwatt in a static state and colour screen has re• $1,000). Moreover, despite having a colour 30 milliwatts when showing video. A com• spectable, but not spectacular, contrast. display, the FLEPia takes two seconds to parably sized LCD would draw 240•700 Like E Ink and mirasol displays, electro• switch from one image to another, so video milliwatts of power, depending on the im• wetting displays can re‡ect ambient light, is out of the question, and even reading age displayed. Jim Cathey of Qualcomm simply by placing a mirror in the layer be• books can be painfully slow. says e•reader screens based on mirasol will neath the oil. But this layer can also be Pixel Qi, a start•up, believes that there is go into production in 2010. made transparent, so that the display can scope to tweak LCD technology within the Another micro•electro•mechanical dis• also be backlit and used in darkness. And constraints of standard manufacturing play comes from a start•up called Pixtro• by using a special type of re‡ector that lets methods and materials. The †rm’s founder nix. Instead of re‡ecting ambient light, its the backlight through, but also re‡ects am• is Mary Lou Jepsen, the former technology PerfectLight technology uses tiny shutters bient light, an electrowetting display can chief of the One Laptop Per Child project, that open and close quickly to allow have the best of both worlds. and the forthcoming displays bear a strong through light from a backlight composed resemblance to those handed out in low• of red, blue and green light•emitting Looking into the crystal ball cost laptops to hundreds of thousands of diodes. LCD displays also use shutters, in Now for a reality check: in the history of in• children throughout the world. They have e ect, consisting of liquid•crystal elements genious display technologies, only a hand• two modes: one that uses a backlight and is whose polarisation can be changed to ful have ever made it into mass produc• identical to a standard LCD when the light block light or let it pass. The trouble is that tion. So although there are many is low or when high colour contrast is de• liquid•crystal shutters absorb over 90% of promising new technologies for next•gen• sired, and a second, monochromatic mode the light passing through them, even when eration e•readers, the technology arguably in which the backlight is switched o . This they are open. PerfectLight’s technology al• best positioned to take over from E Ink, at second mode is suitable for reading or lows as much as 60% of the light through. least in the near future, is a variant of LCD. watching video in bright light, and can re• And its shutters can switch fast enough (up Engineers have repeatedly shown that duce power consumption by 80%. to 1,000 times per second) for video. they can improve LCD technology when Pixel Qi had to redesign every layer of a While Qualcomm and Pixtronix are the market demands it. Such displays have standard LCD to enable this dual•mode op• busy building tiny pixels that move, Phil• wider viewing angles than they did just a eration. The standard transparent layer be• ips has spun out a company called Liqua• few years ago. Fast motion, like a tennis tween the backlight and the liquid•crystal vista that takes a much simpler approach. serve, is no longer jerky. And large LCD shutters above it was replaced by a special The pixels in Liquavista’s displays consist panels have become much thinner and far aluminium layer that re‡ects ambient light of an insulating layer, an electrode, water more power•eˆcient. from above, while also allowing light from and coloured oil. These layers are sand• There is already one LCD•based e•read• below to pass through tiny pinholes. The wiched between two sheets of glass or er on the market. Fujitsu’s FLEPia uses a so• liquid•crystal layer also had to be rede• plastic. When no voltage is ap• called cholesteric LCD, signed to allow light to pass through it in plied, the oil spreads out to cov• which produces an image both directions. er the pixel, which is 200 mi• from re‡ected light. The This design can be used in low•power crons on a side. This happens crystals are bistable, which monochromatic mode for reading, but can because the insulating layer is means that they can re• also switch to backlit colour mode when hydrophobic, meaning it tends main in either a re‡ective or needed. Pixel Qi expects to go into mass to repel water. With the water non•re‡ective state without production with 10•inch displays by the pushed away, there is room for any power. Cholesteric end of 2009, targeting the netbook and e• the oil to spread out. But when LCDs do not require a back• reader markets. Just as the One Laptop Per a voltage is applied the insu• light and lack many of the Child scheme helped bring into being the lating layer instead attracts layers of a traditional LCD, low•cost laptop, or netbook, so Pixel Qi the water‹a technique called which should make them could prompt the LCD industry to switch electrowetting. This squeezes easier to build. But the manu• its focus to developing new products suit• the coloured oil into a facturing process and ma• able for use in e•readers. One way or an• tiny droplet in terials di er enough to other, inexpensive colour e•readers with the corner of make cholesteric dis• video are on their way. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Inside story 11

Nuclear’s next generation

Inside story: A group of six new blueprints for nuclear power•stations promise advances in safety and eˆciency. How do they di er from existing designs? WIGHT EISENHOWER observed in and split apart. This results in Dhis ŒAtoms for Peace speech in 1953 two lighter atoms, and two or that nuclear technology originally devel• three neutrons are ejected. The oped for military purposes could also be process releases large amounts put to peaceful uses, namely generating of energy, much of it in the form electricity. His speech led to the dissem• of the kinetic energy of the ination of nuclear technology for civilian fast•moving †ssion products. purposes, and the establishment of the This energy is converted to heat †rst nuclear power•stations. Many of as the †ssion products slow these early reactors, built during the cold down. If the ejected neutrons hit war, made a virtue of the Œdual use na• other atoms nearby, those too ture of nuclear technology. Designs were can break apart, releasing fur• favoured that could create weapons•grade ther neutrons in a chain re• material as well as electricity. action. When enough neutrons Today those priorities have been re• produce further †ssions‹rather versed. America and Russia are taking than escaping, bouncing o or steps to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear being absorbed by atoms that weapons, and the international communi• do not split‹the process be• ty is trying to prevent their acquisition by comes self•sustaining. new states. Under America’s ŒMegatons to The technology underpin• Megawatts programme, weapons•grade ning civilian nuclear power•generation body, the spent fuel recovered from a material from retired warheads is being has not progressed much since the 1950s reactor still contains around 96% of the broken down to provide fuel for civilian when a small number of prototype com• original uranium, as well as plutonium nuclear power•stations. With 53 new mercial reactors were †rst brought online. that has been formed in the core. If the reactors under construction around the Based on the military reactors developed nuclear renaissance takes o at the rate world and dozens more planned, the for weapons programmes and naval that many are predicting, this ineˆcient main diˆculties facing nuclear scientists propulsion, these Œgeneration I systems use of the uranium fuel is likely to prove now are to reduce the threat of prolifer• pioneered the pressurised water reactor unsustainable, says Bill Stacey, a professor ation, improve eˆciency and do some• (PWR) design, which is the basis for most of nuclear engineering at the Georgia thing about the growing stock of nuclear of the Œgeneration II nuclear reactors Institute of Technology. waste in inde†nite temporary storage. now in operation. In a PWR ordinary These new priorities favour new sorts water, kept at a high pressure to prevent it The original series of reactor. Taking the lead in the devel• from boiling, is used both to cool the In the near term most new reactors will opment of the next generation of reactors reactor core and to Œmoderate the nuclear continue to be PWRs. A forthcoming crop is an international programme called the reaction by reducing the speed of the of Œgeneration III and Œgeneration III+ Generation IV International Forum (GIF), neutrons in order to maximise their abili• reactors build on the light•water design a collaboration between the governments ty to cause further †ssions. According to with new safety mechanisms. Some can of America, Argentina, Brazil, Britain, the International Atomic Energy Agency also run on mixed oxide (MOx) fuel, Canada, China, France, Japan, Russia, (IAEA), of the 436 nuclear reactors in which is produced by reprocessing spent South Africa, South Korea and Switzer• operation today, 356 are either PWRs or fuel to extract the plutonium and uranium land, plus Euratom, the EU’s nuclear body. boiling•water reactors‹a simpli†ed ver• and combining them to make a new fuel. Established in 2001, the GIF has drawn up sion of the same design. But although MOx is currently used in a shortlist of six of the most promising The vast majority of current reactors around one•third of French reactors, the designs, which range from updated ver• use a Œonce through fuel cycle, in which idea of reprocessing is controversial and sions of existing reactors to radically each batch of fuel spends a single term in has yet to gain widespread international di erent approaches. the reactor core, and the leftovers are then support. Critics say it is uneconomic and All nuclear reactors rely on nuclear removed and placed in storage. This spent increases the risk of proliferation. †ssion, a process discovered in the 1930s. fuel presents a storage problem, but it also The six most promising Œgeneration When certain heavy atoms are struck by a o ers an opportunity. According to the IV designs identi†ed by the GIF from an neutron, they absorb it, become unstable World Nuclear Association, an industry original list of over 100 concepts depart 1 12 Inside story The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009

ŒThe technology behind civilian nuclear power has not progressed much since the 1950s.

2 markedly from the light•water moderated, remain. In particular, says William Cook reactors, which do not include a modera• once•through models that dominate the of the University of New Brunswick in tor to slow down free neutrons during the existing ‡eet. Even those reactors that Canada, Œcurrent reactor materials that do †ssion process. With more free neutrons draw upon aspects of current designs add not crack corrode excessively, while mate• ‡ying about, fast reactors can consume or some new twists. rials that do not corrode excessively Œburn up existing nuclear waste, a charac• Start with the supercritical water• crack. New alloys will be needed that do teristic that endears them to waste•reduc• cooled reactor (SCWR). Although it uses not crack or corrode under stress. tion advocates who see them as a means water as the coolant, like existing designs, The second design with roots in exist• of Œclosing the nuclear fuel cycle. the water is at a much higher temperature ing technology is the Very High Tempera• In keeping with the Janus•faced nature (above 374°C) and pressure. Under these ture Reactor (VHTR). It has a once• of nuclear technology, however, fast re• conditions the water exists in a single, through uranium cycle, but instead of actors can also be used to produce or supercritical phase, rather than as liquid water it uses graphite as the moderator Œbreed new †ssile material‹converting or steam. This eliminates the need to and helium gas as the coolant. (Helium uranium•238 into the notoriously dual• transfer heat from the coolant water to has the advantage that it is chemically purpose plutonium, for example. Oppo• steam (via a secondary heat•exchanger) to inert and has only a limited tendency to nents of fast reactors worry about the drive a steam turbine, as is the case with become radioactive when exposed to costs and proliferation risks. But the pros• current PWRs. Instead, supercritical water neutrons.) As its name suggests, the VHTR pect of being able to extract useful energy from the core drives a turbine directly. is designed to run at very high tempera• from nuclear waste, and also reduce its Doing away with the need for separate tures, heating the coolant to around 950°C, volume and toxicity, give fast reactors pumps, pressurisers and steam generators compared with 315°C for a standard PWR, obvious appeal. The three shortlisted results in higher thermal eˆciency: 45% making it more thermally eˆcient. fast•reactor concepts‹sodium•cooled, rather than the 33% of existing PWRs, Like the SCWR, the VHTR will require gas•cooled, and lead•cooled‹are di er• according to Idaho National Laboratory. the development of new materials. Al• entiated primarily by their use of coolant. The simplicity of the design should also though the helium coolant presents fewer Each has its own pros and cons. make it cheaper. The GIF estimates that an corrosion problems than supercritical The most successful of the three de• SCWR could be built at a cost of $900 per water, creating core materials and fuel signs to date has been the sodium•cooled kilowatt of generating capacity‹about a casings that can withstand the high tem• fast reactor (SFR), which has racked up quarter of the expected cost of current peratures involved is a daunting task. the highest number of reactor•years of generation III+ reactors. Some industry Nevertheless, the VHTR has suˆciently operation in prototype form. One of the observers, however, are sceptical that impressed the Obama administration, merits of the SFR is that Œwe really can these cost savings can be achieved. which in September announced $40m in build one, says Robert Hill of America’s Given that it builds on existing reactor funding for research and development of Argonne National Laboratories. He points designs, and also borrows from supercrit• the Next Generation Nuclear Plant, a to the Russian BN600, a reactor that has ical fossil•fuel boilers, which are also an reactor based on the VHTR design. been running since the 1980s. Sodium is established technology, the SCWR is likely Unlike the SCWR and the VHTR, which favoured as a coolant because of its good to be one of the †rst generation•IV designs build on current reactors, the other four heat•transfer properties, its ability to to be implemented. The GIF is aiming to generation•IV designs take a completely operate at lower pressures than other have a demonstration version ready by di erent approach to the nuclear•fuel coolants, and its relative Œtransparency to 2022. But several technical challenges cycle. Three of them are Œfast neutron fast neutrons, which means it does not 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Inside story 13

2 interfere in the †ssion process, says Dr Hill. According to the IAEA, Russia, South Korea and India are all currently operating ver• sions of the SFR, and China is due to bring a prototype online in mid•2010. The gas•cooled fast reactor (GFR), in contrast, has yet to be demonstrated on a commercial scale. But many see it as a better bet than the SFR due to its technical similarity to generation III gas•cooled designs. Like the VHTR, the GFR uses pressurised helium both to cool the re• actor core and drive a turbine, yielding higher thermal eˆciency than systems with a secondary heat•transfer loop. As with a VHTR, the other advantages of a gas In the belly of the beast coolant, says Tom Wei, a senior engineer at Argonne, include its non•corrosive graphite. The circulation of the fuel in this Harold McFarlane at the Idaho Nation• characteristics and its capacity for use at way eliminates the need for fuel fab• al Laboratory reckons the VHTR and SFR high temperatures (the GFR would oper• rication and allows for continuous online are almost ready to move out of the re• ate at around 850°C). But, like the VHTR, reprocessing. It also makes the design well search phase and into the design stage. the GFR will require new materials to suited to the use of existing †ssile materi• Others share this view: the British govern• enable its cladding and fuel assemblies to al, which can be easily blended into the ment has identi†ed the VHTR, GFR, and withstand such high temperatures. fuel mixture. And like fast reactors, the SFR as high•priority designs, and Japan, The third fast•reactor concept uses MSR can be designed to burn up many of France and America agreed last year to molten lead as the coolant, an approach the longer•lived byproducts of the †ssion work together on SFR prototypes. historically favoured by the Soviet mil• process, resulting in nuclear waste that is Dr Ferguson thinks the prospects of the itary, which used early lead•bismuth much less radioactive than that produced entire generation•IV programme are con• cooled fast reactors to power its subma• by the once•through cycle. tingent on the level of investment allocat• rines. Since the late 1990s there has been One form of MSR, the liquid ‡uoride ed to nearer•term projects. ŒDo we commit renewed interest in the lead•cooled fast thorium reactor (LFTR), has garnered to generation III or do we leapfrog to reactor (LFR), particularly in Europe. A particular enthusiasm among those who generation IV? he asks. Two important distinctive advantage of the LFR concept is regard thorium as an attractive replace• considerations for answering his question its potential to be adapted to smaller ment for uranium and plutonium in the are regulatory compliance and economic Œbattery designs, which can be manufac• fuel cycle. (Thorium is both cheaper and viability. With regard to the former, the tured as self•contained systems with a more abundant than uranium.) According NEA’s Multinational Design Evaluation Œlifetime core. Such reactors could pro• to Kirk Sorensen, an engineer at NASA Programme is considering an internation• vide a way to extend civilian nuclear who also runs a blog on the merits of the al licensing scheme to standardise safety power to new countries without giving thorium cycle, natural thorium provides requirements for the new reactors. As for them access to the sensitive parts of the at least 250 times more energy per unit the latter, the success of generation IV nuclear•fuel cycle. than natural uranium. However, unlike reactors is likely to hinge on large amounts Although a commercial ‡eet of fast †ssile uranium, natural thorium must be of government support. reactors would be attractive from a waste• Œseeded with external neutrons in order In the near term this support should management perspective, it presents its to get it to †ssion. Another obstacle for the take the form of increased research•and• own set of proliferation•related problems. MSR is †nding materials capable of with• development funding, says Dr Stacey of According to Charles Ferguson, a nuclear standing hot, corrosive, radioactive salt. Georgia Tech. In the longer term, govern• expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, ments have an important role to play in a think•tank, the commercial adoption of Flicking the switch the provision of loan guarantees, which fast reactors would require Œnear real•time Which of these designs will prevail in the are vital for overcoming engineering and monitoring capabilities via secure video coming decades? After all, not all the Œ†rst of a kind risks, says Joe Turnage at links to ensure that the reactors were not generation•IV reactor concepts are likely Unistar, a commercial nuclear joint•ven• being used to make weapons. Getting to make it to commercialisation. Ideally, ture between Constellation Energy, an countries to agree to such intrusive mea• the strongest approaches will win out American utility, and EDF, a French one. sures, he says, would be very diˆcult. through Œnatural selection, says Thierry But whatever the next generation of nuc• The sixth shortlisted design, the mol• Dujardin at the OECD’s Nuclear Energy lear power•stations looks like, it is clear ten salt reactor (MSR), works by dis• Agency (NEA) in Paris. But with each of that the research being done around the solving nuclear fuel in a ‡uoride solution, the designs closely connected to di erent world to develop such a variety of new which acts as both the fuel and the coolant national research programmes‹and reactors, rather than new nuclear weap• in the reactor core. The molten salt, which international variations within each of ons, has ful†lled Eisenhower’s wish, back has good heat•transfer properties and can the categories‹governments are unsur• in 1953, that Œthe miraculous inventiveness be heated to temperatures above 1,000°C prisingly reluctant to see their particular of man shall not be dedicated to his death, without boiling, is moderated using projects sidelined. but consecrated to his life. 7 14 Agricultural robots The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009

systems, coupled with the increase in the power of computing, have made robots Fields of automation cleverer, safer and more dexterous. Yet farmers, like factory owners, will want a return on their investment. ŒIt is ac• tually not hard to pick an orange, but it is very hard to pick an orange cost e ective• ly, says Tony Stentz of the Robotics Insti• Robotics: A new generation of agricultural equipment promises to take more tute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pitts• of the toil out of farming by automating the business of growing fruit burgh. Because robots can work all day without a break, they have one advantage Nl THE ear y 1830s, spurred on by his promises to do the same in other areas of over manual labour. But it is their potential Ihatred of sweaty †eld work, Cyrus Mc• horticulture. Because picking apples is for accurate information•gathering that is Cormick took an idea his father had been very di erent to plucking strawberries, the proving to be an equally important talent. working on at the family farm in Virginia machines are taking various forms. Some Crop•tending robots that use vision sys• and produced a mechanical reaper. Others have giant mechanical arms and are towed tems, laser sensors, satellite positioning devised similar machines. Despite initial behind tractors through orchards and and instruments to measure things like hu• scepticism, farmers eventually bought vineyards. Some are fully autonomous midity can build up a database of informa• them in droves. With one person riding the and able to scurry around on their own, tion about each plant. This can be used to horse that pulled the reaper, and another even in paddy †elds, like the robotic rice• detect the onset of disease, says Dr Stentz. raking the cut stalks o the back, the ma• planter developed by Japan’s National Ag• A Œsmart sprayer can then deliver precise chines could harvest as much grain in a ricultural Research Centre. Others trundle amounts of chemical to only those plants day as a dozen men breaking their backs about inside experimental greenhouses. that require attention instead of spraying with reaping hooks. Whatever shape they come in, agribots an entire †eld. By observing the develop• Mechanical reapers became even more share several underlying technological ad• ment of each plan, crop yields can be pre• eˆcient when adapted to bale the stalks vances which have their origins in fac• dicted more accurately. Automated har• into sheaves, too. Development continued: tories. Automating factories is easier than vesters will then use the database to today a driver in the air•conditioned cabin automating farms, which are far less pre• identify and gather individual produce of a combine harvester may be guided by dictable environments: the weather con• whenever it is ready for harvest. satellites as he cuts, threshes and pours stantly changes, the light alters, the ground On a small scale it is already possible to clean grain into a ‡eet of accompanying can turn from grass to mud, and there are see fully automated horticulture in action. trailers. One machine, the New Holland animals and people wandering around. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology CR9090, holds the record after harvesting Moreover, unlike car parts, fruit does not (MIT) has an experimental greenhouse a colossal 551 tonnes of wheat in just eight come in standard sizes. It moves around on growing cherry tomatoes on raised plat• hours from a farm in Britain in 2008. Given branches in the wind, changes shape and forms. It is managed entirely by small ro• that such machines cost around £350,000 colour, and can be hidden by leaves. But bots. Each plant is equipped with sensors ($580,000), agricultural automation must improvements in vision and other sensing which keep track of its condition. If a par• 1 make economic sense‹because farmers don’t spend money on frivolities. But there are farms where people like McCormick still dream of taking hard, manual work out of agriculture. These farms grow crops that mostly have to be tended and picked by hand, such as ap• ples, oranges and strawberries. In rich countries it is becoming increasingly diˆ• cult to †nd people to do this at wages farm• ers say they can a ord. Seasonal demand adds to the problems: in California, where some 450,000 people, mostly immigrants, are employed on fruit farms at the peak of the harvest, growers often leave some pro• duce to rot. Even Japan’s exquisite and ex• pensive strawberries are becoming too costly to pick because of a shortage of workers, in part caused by an ageing popu• lation. Despite worries about food short• ages in the coming years, many farmers are more worried about labour shortages. Just as the mechanical reaper trans• formed the economics of cereal farming, a new wave of agricultural automation Inspecting a tomato plant at MIT The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Agricultural robots 15 ŒGreater mechanisation may prompt farmers to change the varieties they grow.

in part to declining acreage the model to identify exactly where such and increased mechanisa• apples are growing. tion, that has now fallen to The take•up of mechanisation will de• 20,000•30,000. pend on where the produce is going and Mechanisation has come how carefully machines can pick it. Light about in a number of ways, bruising from mechanical harvesting may according to a report by Philip be acceptable for fruit going to the juicer, Martin of the University of but not for fruit displayed on a supermar• California, Davis. Growers, ket aisle. Even though grape harvesters, sometimes using varieties which shake or knock grapes from vines, that reach optimal sugar lev• have been around for about 40 years, els earlier, slice the canes some growers still pick by hand. holding the bunches of To compete with hand•picking, robot grapes so they begin to dry harvesters will need to twist, pluck, cut or while still on the vine. Modi• suck produce from stems and handle it as †ed grape harvesters with ro• gently as possible. Many factory robots are tating †ngers then knock o already capable of doing things like this, the raisins. If completely dry and some already sort soft fruit passing they are gathered immediate• along conveyor belts. But operating out• ly, and if not they are laid onto side on a farm is much harder. For one a continuous paper tray in the thing, lightweight mechanical arms are vineyard to dry. needed to reach high into trees and pick About 35% of Californian with precision, despite wind and uneven raisins were harvested in terrain. Inside a sheltered greenhouse, 2008 using the continuous• however, robots feel more at home. tray system and another 15% dried completely on the vine. Oranges are not the only fruit The university reckons the One of the most diˆcult challenges is to traditional hand•harvesting produce a strawberry•picking robot. method cost $494 an acre in Strawberries are delicate and go through 2006, compared with $282 an di erent shades of red while they ripen on acre in 2008 for the mechan• the vine. Moreover, they ripen at di erent ised continuous•tray method. times. There are strawberry harvesting Newly planted vineyards machines, but they are mostly towed con• could be even more eˆcient traptions on which people lie down in or• by using a higher density of der to pluck berries. But researchers at Mi• Robotic research bears fruit vines trained to grow over yazaki University and Kyoto University in trellises designed to help with Japan are working on robot versions. 2 t icular plant is getting a bit dry, one of the mechanical severing and harvesting. These are designed to operate in green• robots is summoned to water it. When a to• Even pruning can be mechanised. houses adapted to automation. The straw• mato is identi†ed as being ripe, the robot Vision Robotics, a company based in San berry plants grow on raised beds and the uses its vision system to locate the fruit on Diego, has demonstrated a prototype vine• robots travel between them on rails. They the vine and pick it with a mechanical arm. pruning robot. Good pruning requires skill rely on machine vision to determine when Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Distri• to balance the growth of the vine. The individual berries are ripe, cutting them buted Robotics Laboratory, says there are a vines also need to be trimmed at certain lo• from the plant and holding them with a number of ways in which automated sys• cations and at precise angles to grow the gentle suction as they transfer them to a tems could improve crops and Œremove best grapes for winemaking. The robot is a conveyor belt or basket. These robots are some of the hard tedious work from green• bit slower than a good human pruner, but not yet as fast as human strawberry pick• houses. A plant•centred system using sen• it will speed up. It should be able to prune ers, but they can work all day and all night. sors would record not just an individual vines at about half the cost of manual la• This might seem to be an elaborate way plant’s progress but also the condition of bour, says Derek Morikawa, the chief exec• to grow strawberries‹as well as an expen• the soil it is growing in. If nutrients are utive of Vision Robotics. sive one. So it is no surprise that when Jap• needed they can be delivered precisely, The company is also developing apple• anese growers were asked in a survey if which would cut down on inputs. and orange•picking robots with multiple they wanted such a system only a little Greater mechanisation may prompt arms. These too rely on building 3•D mod• more than 6% said they did. However, farmers to change some of their ways and els of trees and the fruit growing on them. more than half thought they might need the varieties they grow. An example is Cali• Mr Morikawa thinks the crop•scouting one in the future. Other farmers around fornian raisins, which are traditionally ability of such automated machines will the world are likely to agree with Japan’s harvested by hand. Workers cut o bunch• prove highly valuable. Supermarkets, for strawberry growers. Agribots will, like Mc• es of grapes and lay them on trays between instance, like uniformity so if they want, Cormick’s mechanical reaper, face a lot of the rows to dry. As many as 50,000 people say, apples of a certain size and in a partic• initial scepticism. But planting and picking used to be required for the harvest. But due ular state of ripeness, a farmer could use they will come. 7 16 Surgery using sound and light The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009

Son et lumière meets surgery

have long been used to peer inside the er, quicker alternatives Mirabilis Medica, a body and produce images of, for example, maker of medical devices based in Seattle, Biomedicine: ŒNon invasive developing embryos. More powerful and has settled on ultrasound to look at the tar• surgical techniques based on sound focused forms of these waves are now be• get as well as to destroy it. An adapted ver• and light could be much easier on the ing adapted for surgical purposes. sion of a fetal scanner is used to locate the body than ordinary surgery Just as light rays focused by a lens can tissue to be cooked. It is then zapped using create searing heat, so too can ultrasound a transducer array similar to InSightec’s. OT SO long ago, newly quali†ed doc• waves that are generated from a specially The di erence in cost is huge: around Ntors in the West would take the Hippo• designed transducer. Concentrated in this $50,000 compared with $1m for the MRI• cratic oath. Along with promises to look way, they cause the tissues at the focus to based system (in addition to the cost of the after the interests of their tutors, to do no vibrate and heat up dramatically. MRI scanner itself). The all•ultrasonic ap• harm to their patients and not to procure proach is also quicker because the image abortions, they also swore not to Œcut for A sound change can be examined directly by the operator stone. It was actually an early form of re• One company developing this technology of the zapper, rather than being laborious• strictive practice. The oath’s wording is InSightec, based in Haifa, Israel. In• ly constructed from multiple slices inside a makes it clear that stone•cutting (removing Sightec’s system, called ExAblate, uses computer. When he sees the target in the kidney stones) was reserved for surgeons, magnetic•resonance imaging (MRI) to image he brings it under a set of metaphor• with their separate guilds and separate guide the operator in focusing the ultra• ical crosshairs and presses a Œ†re button, fees. But the latest technology makes the sound on the tissue (usually a blood clot or rather like playing a video game. The de• distinction irrelevant. These days, kidney tumour) that needs to be destroyed. Be• struction of a tumour in the uterus takes stones and similar calciferous accumula• sides showing the patient’s internal anato• less than 30 minutes using the Mirabilis tions in other parts of the body can be my, MRI is able to map the local tempera• Medica technology, whereas the InSightec dealt with by using a dose of shockwaves ture and thus indicate exactly where the system requires three to four hours. to break up the o ending concretion‹with ultrasound is arriving and how much heat But the image produced by ultrasound no cutting required. is being delivered to the target. is of lower resolution than the MRI picture, Shockwave therapy, as it is known, is The ultrasound itself is produced by an so if pinpoint accuracy is required, MRI is just one of a range of non•invasive tech• array of 211transducer elements that gener• better. When removing a uterine tumour, a niques that reduce the need to slice people ate beams that converge on the target. Ac• bit of collateral damage is not too serious. open in order to treat them. Such tech• cording to Wladyslaw Gedroyc, medical When targeting the brain, though, every niques promise to blur still further the director of magnetic resonance imaging at cubic millimetre destroyed unnecessarily once•sharp distinction between physician St Mary’s Hospital, London, the accuracy risks diminishing the outcome for the pa• and surgeon that the Hippocratic oath of MRI•based systems like InSightec’s tient. Also, MRI imaging casts no shadows, sought to preserve. As with all technologi• makes it possible to attack diˆcult targets whereas there are some places inside the cal destruction of restrictive practices, like brain tumours, in addition to bone body that are hard to see with ultrasound though, this one has one clear bene†ciary: cancers, liver tumours and clots. because, say, a lot of bone is in the way. the customer‹or, as he is generally known The reliance on MRI, however, makes Regardless of the exact method used, in medical circles, the patient. this approach expensive and long•winded. though, ultrasonic excision of this sort is Shockwaves are a particular sort of Lots of scans have to be taken from di er• expected to revolutionise treatment of sound wave. More gentle sound waves (or, ent angles to assemble the image. The re• both benign and malignant tumours, since strictly, ultrasound waves, since their pitch sult is precision, but the patient may have many of them develop in places that con• is too high to be heard by the human ear), to sit still for hours. In the search for cheap• ventional surgery cannot reach without 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Surgery using sound and light 17 ŒNon•invasive techniques reduce the need to slice people open in order to treat them.

2 r isking substantial injury to the patient. Nor are sound waves the only way to ‡esh. It therefore requires a small hole to ŒFocused ultrasound appears to be the real replace electrodes. Karl Deisseroth, a psy• be drilled in the skull, so that a †bre•optic deal, says Christopher Rose, technology chiatrist and bio•engineer at Stanford Uni• cable can be used to shine light inside. To chief at Vantage Oncology, a radiation• versity, is looking at ways of making nerve make the process completely non•inva• therapy provider based in Los Angeles. cells react to light. Dr Deisseroth’s work sive, Dr Deisseroth is trying to tweak the hi• Once America’s Food and Drug Adminis• makes use of light•sensitive proteins found jacked proteins so they respond to di er• tration approves the technology for wide• in single•celled algae and in archaebacte• ent frequencies of infra•red light which, spread use (the InSightec device is cur• ria, an obscure group of micro•organisms. unlike the visible colours of blue and yel• rently approved for some treatments) it His chosen alga is unusual because when it low, passes through the body easily. could prove competitive with the radia• is exposed to blue light, certain proteins The fact that infra•red light passes tion treatment that is currently used to de• within the algal cell respond by allowing harmlessly through the body is also being stroy tumours, he says. sodium ions into the cell. This ionic move• put to use by researchers who are trying to Destroying diseased tissue is a tradi• ment causes a ‡agellum (a small propeller) employ it to control blood ‡ow. Weihong tional role of surgery. Stimulating it so that on the outside of the alga to begin rotating, Tan at the University of Florida and his col• it works properly is a rather newer idea. It, which propels the cell towards the light, al• leagues have created a molecular Œclasp too, though, is becoming common. The tis• lowing it to photosynthesise better. In the designed to open or close, depending on sue in question is usually in the brain. archaebacterium, yellow light causes pro• the frequency of light it is exposed to. Deep•brain stimulation, in which a pa• teins to start pumping chloride ions into The clasp consists of two parts: a mole• tient’s skull is cut open, electrodes are in• the cell, as part of its energy•generation cule that responds to light, and a short, sin• serted, and nerve cells are stimulated, is al• mechanism. gle strand of DNA. In its natural state, the ready used to treat Parkinson’s disease, DNA binds with an enzyme called throm• and the same approach is also being tested Seeing the light bin, which regulates blood clotting. When for the treatment of comas, epilepsy, de• The reason these mechanisms are of inter• in contact with thrombin, the DNA deacti• pression and even Alzheimer’s disease. It est to neurologists is that bringing sodium vates the enzyme, and this allows blood to is, however, tricky and dangerous. For this ions into nerve cells initiates electrical ac• ‡ow freely. However, when the clasp is ex• reason, some researchers have started tivity, while bringing in chloride ions shuts posed to a speci†c frequency of light, the looking into the idea of using ultrasound activity down. Dr Deisseroth and his col• DNA folds itself into a curved, closed to tinker with brain activity instead. leagues are therefore incorporating the shape that stops it binding to the thrombin. Nerves propagate information electri• genes which encode the relevant proteins This activates the enzyme, triggering clot• cally‹hence the use of electrodes for deep• into viruses that have been engineered to ting. Exposure to a di erent frequency of brain stimulation. The actual electric cur• †nd and infect speci†c types of nerve cell light causes the DNA to relax into its natu• rent in a nerve cell, though, is caused by a in the brain. Once in those nerve cells, the ral shape again, deactivating the thrombin. ‡ow of ions (electrically charged atoms) virus•transported genes permit the manu• The technology is still in its early days, rather than electrons, which carry current facture of proteins that will either ‡ood the but the goal is to inject patients with the in a wire. These ions pass in and out of the cell with sodium ions when it is exposed to microscopic clasps and use di erent fre• cell in waves, and the waves are propagat• blue light or with chloride ions when ex• quencies of infra•red light to activate and ed along protrusions from the cell. These posed to yellow light. deactivate the clotting clasps in speci†c lo• electrical waves are stimulated originally The advantage of Dr Deisseroth’s tech• cations. That will allow clots to be manu• by the arrival at a cell of a chemical called a nique is that it is selective. Only cells sus• factured deliberately‹for example, to cut neurotransmitter. When the electrical ceptible to the virus are a ected‹and the o the blood supply to a tumour. wave arrives in a region where one nerve virus can be Œtuned to those involved in The upshot will, if all goes well, be yet cell abuts another, it likewise stimulates the type of disease to be treated. The draw• another way to avoid the surgeon’s knife: neurotransmitter production and thus al• back is that the technique works only with an internal ligature that can be switched lows the signal to jump across the gap from visible light, and this does not penetrate on or o using light‹and thus another di• one cell to the next. minution of the surgeon’s trade. In truth, The idea behind ultrasonic stimulation of course, the distinction between surgery of the brain is to shake open the pores that and other branches of medicine has been let ions in and out of nerve cells, and thus blurred for years, despite the British a ec• enhance the production of neurotransmit• tation of newly quali†ed surgeons drop• ters. And that is what SynSonix, a †rm ping the hard•won appellation ŒDr in fa• based in Tempe, Arizona, is attempting to vour of ŒMr, ŒMrs, ŒMiss or ŒMs. do. The ultrasound in question, produced Traditional surgery is unlikely to disappear by a machine developed by William Tyler completely, of course, but Dr Gedroyc is at Arizona State University, is of much low• optimistic that the sort of non•invasive er intensity than that used to zap tumours techniques that he and his colleagues are and blood clots, but it seems, in prelimi• working on will soon see surgeons relegat• nary experiments, to do the job. And as ed to dealing with problems like organ tor• well as saving patients the grief of open sion and twisted bones, which have to be brain surgery, SynSonix’s treatment is ex• dealt with physically. Sawbones they pected to be much less expensive, costing were, and sawbones they will become $20,000 instead of the $60,000 typically once again. Hippocrates would no doubt needed for electrode surgery. have approved. 7 18 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Beyond the ether

called the Alto, the machine that later provided the inspiration for the Apple Bob Metcalfe has grabbed Macintosh. While at PARC he also taught opportunity at every turn in his at Stanford and, after his fateful encounter multiple careers‹ever since he with ALOHAnet, †nished his PhD by invented Ethernet at the age of 27 adding more Œtheory‹a chapter on ALO• HAnet‹to his dissertation. He then ap• UFFERING from jet lag and insomnia plied some of the principles from that Swhile staying at a friend’s house in network, which linked computers at the Washington, DC, in 1972, Bob Metcalfe University of Hawaii, to his work at PARC. came across the proceedings of a confer• ALOHAnet’s nodes all transmitted data ence held by the American Federation of to a central hub on the same radio fre• Information Processing Societies. It cer• quency, and received data on a second tainly looked sleep•inducing, even for a frequency. So if two nodes tried to send young computer scientist. So Mr Metcalfe packets of data to the hub at the same settled down and started reading. But time, the resulting Œcollision would gar• rather than falling asleep, he became ble both their transmissions. ALOHAnet intrigued by an account of a wireless solved this problem by having the hub network in Hawaii, called ALOHAnet. acknowledge every packet it received. If a This nocturnal encounter was the node failed to receive an acknowledg• spark that prompted Mr Metcalfe to create ment, it would wait a while and then try a new networking technology, now again. This was a cheap and simple way to known as Ethernet, that would help him allow many devices to communicate †nish his PhD at Harvard, become a multi• using a common transmission medium. millionaire and revolutionise computing. Dr Metcalfe, as he now was, adopted And it highlights an ability to observe, this approach for the system he was build• synthesise and improve things that would ing to enable Alto computers to talk to serve him time and again as he progressed each other, and to printers, on a network. through his multiple careers of academic, He improved the rules that determined entrepreneur, pundit and venture capi• how nodes should handle the retransmis• talist. ŒSome call it luck, says Vint Cerf, a sion of failed packets (they were to contin• founding father of the internet. ŒBut Bob ue to transmit for a while in the event of a has an ability to detect and take opportu• collision, to ensure that all nodes realised nities. And he is willing to take risk. that a collision had taken place, and were Born in Brooklyn in 1946, Mr Metcalfe then to retransmit after a random inter• grew up on Long Island. He did well at val). David Boggs, a Stanford graduate high school, graduating second in his year, student who was working at PARC, and went on to the Massachusetts In• helped Dr Metcalfe adapt his ideas to stitute of Technology. His parents paid for wired networks based on coaxial cables. his †rst year of studies, but thereafter the Several names were suggested for this young Mr Metcalfe paid for his own tu• new local•area network technology, such ition by working the night shift program• as Bulletin Board, Parliamentary Proce• ming computers at Raytheon and other dure and Lazy Susan. But the name that companies. He was also captain of the stuck was Ethernet. varsity tennis team and graduated in 1969 with two degrees, in electrical engineering Nativity story and industrial management. ŒI don’t Years later, as a marketing ploy, Dr Met• remember when I slept, he says. He went calfe thought it wise to pinpoint the birth on to Harvard, initially to study for a doc• of Ethernet. So he †xed on May 22nd 1973, torate in business administration, and the day he circulated a memo about his switched to applied mathematics instead, ideas to PARC colleagues. Now, over 36 earning a master’s degree. But in 1972 his years later, Ethernet is widely deployed in dissertation for a PhD in computer science networks around the world. It has been was rejected. ŒIt wasn’t theoretical improved in many ways, but the way in enough, he explains, still rankling over which the protocol breaks information his antagonistic relationship with Har• into packets and then checks for errors in vard. ŒIt was too much engineering. their transmission is still recognisable. This did not stop him from getting nine Dr Metcalfe did not make money from job o ers, however. Mr Metcalfe ended up the actual invention of Ethernet. As he working at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research frequently points out to starry•eyed engi• Centre (PARC) in California, writing the neers dreaming of fame and fortune, it networking software for a new computer was the standardisation and commercial• 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Brain scan 19 ŒDr Metcalfe predicted the internet would collapse under the weight of traˆc in 1996. It did not.

2 ais tion of Ethernet that lead to its runaway Ether. Soon he was widely known for his executive of SiCortex, one of the †rms in success and his own personal fortune. hyperbolic, often caustic critiques (he Dr Metcalfe’s portfolio. ŒBut Bob is always ŒNothing happens until something gets once called the FBI to report death threats there to tell you the truth. He is extremely sold, he says. Dr Metcalfe persuaded provoked by his column)‹and for his and brutally honest. So much so, in fact, Digital Equipment, Intel and Xerox (the incorrect predictions. that SiCortex was one of two companies so•called DIX consortium) to make Ether• Dr Metcalfe says he learned from Stew• Dr Metcalfe dropped from his portfolio net an open standard, available to other art Alsop, InfoWorld’s editor, that it was earlier this year. companies for a modest, one•time licens• more important to be interesting than to In whatever profession he has taken ing fee of $1,000. Perhaps even more be right. ŒI wasn’t as wrong as people like up, there is nothing Dr Metcalfe enjoys as important, notes his friend and former to claim, he says. ŒBut on several occa• much as a good argument. But his vigor• PARC cohort David Liddle, Dr Metcalfe sions I was famously wrong. But he even ous defence of his views, whatever they also got Microsoft and Sun on board. managed to turn those mistakes to his may be, does not stop him from seeing the As he built market momentum behind advantage, using them to raise his own other point of view. During heated board the technology, Dr Metcalfe recognised the pro†le. Most famously, he was challenged meetings at GreenFuel, the other portfolio business opportunity presented by the at an industry conference over a column, company that Dr Metcalfe dropped this emerging market for Ethernet•compatible published in December 1995, in which Dr year, Œhe could very clearly synthesise products. So he left Xerox and started a Metcalfe predicted that the internet would everyone’s perspective in a brief state• consulting company, 3Com, in June 1979. It collapse under the weight of traˆc in 1996. ment, including the views with which he soon moved into hardware: in September Would he eat his own words, Dr Metcalfe strongly disagreed, says Simon Up†ll• 1982 it started shipping ŒEtherLink adap• was asked, if he turned out to be wrong? Brown, the energy start•up’s former boss. tor cards for IBM’s new personal comput• Dr Metcalfe said he would. Dr Metcalfe delights in the paper, pub• er. 3Com’s sales skyrocketed along with He was wrong. The internet did not lished in 2005 by two academics, Andrew those of the IBM PC, and in March 1984 collapse. Two years later, he made good on Odlyzko and Benjamin Tilly, that presents 3Com went public and raised $10m. his promise to eat his words‹but not a detailed refutation of his law. The au• When Dr Metcalfe started promoting without great fanfare involving blenders, thors argue that if the law were true, net• Ethernet, one big problem was to convince investigation into the ingredients of news• work operators would be merging left and people to adopt a networking technology paper ink, cakes meant to look like news• right to achieve rapid growth in value. But that almost nobody else was using yet. Dr papers and lots of audience•baiting. ŒHe such mergers do not in fact seem to create Metcalfe pointed out that each new user has a ‡air for the dramatic, says Dr Cerf, as much value as the law suggests. would increase the size of the market for who was in the audience that day. ŒThe law is not any amazing math, Dr Ethernet products, and that as more peo• ŒThat was my greatest publicity stunt Metcalfe responds. ŒIt’s a vision thing. It’s ple adopted the standard, it would make of all time, beams Dr Metcalfe, whose vague. I said the value is approximately the more sense to be in the club‹what is intermittent vainglory obscures an un• square of the number of users. And with today called a Œnetwork e ect. On a slide, derlying charm. ŒI am probably more Metcalfe’s law, as with so much else, the he quanti†ed a network’s value as roughly famous for the collapse prediction, and technology community is willing to cut proportional to the square of its number the eating of that column, than I am for him a bit of slack. ŒOnly geeks care about of users. But it wasn’t until a dozen years inventing Ethernet, he says. But he is now this stu , says Dr Cerf. The basic idea was later that George Gilder, a technology reluctant to be drawn into predictions right: bigger networks are more valuable. pundit, called this Metcalfe’s law. about the internet’s future. When asked As Mr Alsop puts it, neatly characterising This argument helped boost sales, but about the Œexa‡ood‹the latest incarna• Dr Metcalfe’s career, ŒBob’s so smart and there were missed opportunities, too. Bill tion of the idea that the internet is in dan• so con†dent that he gets away with it. 7 Krause, a former HP executive who ger of being overloaded with data‹he worked at 3Com in its early days refers to a concedes that he has not been following O er to readers Œ$100 billion mistake that he and Dr the debate closely. ŒI don’t really know the R eprints of this special report are available at a Metcalfe made in overlooking the gold facts, he says. Likewise for network neu• price of £3.50 plus postage and packing. mine of linking entire networks together, trality: ŒI think I’m supposed to be in A minimum order of †ve copies is required. rather than just computers. ŒA little com• favour of neutrality, he says, Œbut I refuse pany called Cisco saw that bit of the to take that position because I just haven’t C orporate o er future and became the main supplier for been focused on the issue. tCus omisation options on corporate orders of Œnetworks of networks, Mr Krause ob• 500 or more are available. Please contact us to discuss your requirements. serves ruefully. Indeed, by 1996, Cisco was A communications specialist selling more Ethernet equipment than Instead, he has moved onto his latest Send all orders to: 3Com, says Eve Griliches, an analyst at career: since 2001he has been a venture The Rights and Syndication department IDC, a market•research company. (In capitalist at Polaris Ventures in Waltham, The Economist November 2009 HP said it planned to Massachusetts, where he is trying to apply 26 Red Lion Square acquire 3Com for $2.7 billion.) lessons from the computer industry to London WC1R 4HQ Dr Metcalfe left 3Com in 1990, and his clean•energy start•ups. This has required Tel +44 (0)20 7576 8148 communications prowess then found a him to deploy his communications skills Fax +44 (0)20 7576 8492 new outlet: he became the publisher at in a new way. ŒMost of these VCs don’t e•mail: [email protected] InfoWorld, a weekly computer magazine really give you advice or get back to you based in San Mateo, California, and start• right away or introduce you to important ed writing a column called ŒFrom the people, says Chris Stone, the former chief