TQ COVERUS CMYK Cyan Magenta Yellow Black
The return of Sunrise at last for The promise and supersonic flight renewable energy? peril of biobanks page 3 page 18 page 28 TechnologyQuarterly December 1 0th 2 0 0 5
The making of a monster The rise and rise of computer animation
Republication, copying or redistribution by any means is expressly prohibited without the prior written permission of The Economist
C B M R Y G K W C B M R Y G K W The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Monitor 1
Contents
On the cover The introduction of digital technology has transformed the process of making animated lms. Since the release of Toy Story in 1995, the technology has improved enormously, and computer-animated movies are now a thriving, pro table Breaking the sound barrier again genre. Take a look behind the scenes: Pages 24-26
Monitor 3 Supersonic planes, high-speed walkways, therapeutic video games, novel text-entry Transport: A new breed of supersonic business jets, without methods, a new approach to Concorde’s drawbacks, could soon be taking to the skies shipbreaking, prediction markets, security microdots, MAGINE being able to cross the Atlan- camps, taking two very di erent ap- the end of a virtual world, and Itic in less than three and a half hours. proaches. Those in the rst camp, which who won our Innovation Awards You could y from London to New York includes Gulfstream, are aiming to over- for a meeting and still be home in time for come what was arguably Concorde’s big- Rational consumer dinner. It used to be possible, before the gest drawback: the sonic boom it created 16 High-de nition TV demise of Concorde, of course. But while during supersonic ight. The resulting Sharper images, lots of jargon Concorde has passed into history, the noise pollution ultimately led to interna- dream of supersonic travel is alive and tional regulations banning commercial Reports well. Several rms are now racing to de- aircraft from ying supersonic over land. 18 Renewable energy velop a new breed of supersonic passen- This in turn severely restricted the ight Why solar and wind power are ger aircraft. These planes will use new paths Concorde could follow, since it was more competitive than they seem technology to ensure that they are qui- so ine cient at subsonic speeds that 21 Near- eld communication eter, more e cient and capable of turn- routes had to be designed to minimise A new technology that could ing a pro t something Concorde the distance own over land. Gulfstream replace tickets, wallets and keys struggled to do throughout its 27-year plans to tackle this problem head on, by lifespan. The new aircraft will di er in getting rid of the sonic boom. It sounds Case history another way, too. To start with, at least, ambitious, but 40 years of research sug- 24 The making of a monster they will probably not be airliners, but gests that it should in fact be possible. The rise and rise of much smaller business jets. According to a theory developed by computer-animated lms That is because business-jet users are two researchers at Cornell University, most likely to value time over money, Richard Seebass and Albert George, the Reports says Preston Henne of Gulfstream Aero- sonic boom can be minimised by altering 28 Medicine’s new central bankers space, a big business-jet manufacturer the shape of the plane to redistribute the The promise and peril of medical based in Savannah, Georgia. Supersonic shockwaves that cause it. Sonic booms databanks, or biobanks business jets make sense from an engi- actually consist of two parts, each caused 30 Material bene ts neering and nancial point of view, too. by a shockwave one at the front of the Smart fabrics that can sense, Historically, if you go back and look at aircraft and the other at the tail. The heat, control and illuminate how today’s aeroplane systems evolved, shockwaves arise when the plane is trav- it started with smaller aircraft and a u- elling faster than the sound waves it is Brain scan ent customers, says Mr Henne. Con- producing. Unable to dissipate, these 33 A dose of computing corde was an exception to this rule, sound waves build up instead and form a Larry Weed’s quest to get doctors which may explain why it failed. shockwave. Dr Seebass’s theory sug- to use information technology That said, those rushing to build su- gested that shaping the fuselage appro- personic business jets fall into two priately could reduce the boom by 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005
2 causing the sound waves to spread out, or massive improvements in engine and better still by causing them to interfere airframe design since Concorde, says with each other, so that some sound Richard Tracy, the company’s chief tech- waves cancel others out. nology o cer. Its aircraft will be powered Walk this way But it was only in 2003 that these theo- by two Pratt & Whitney engines, nor- ries were nally shown to be correct. The mally found on far larger aircraft, that can complex shapes required to reduce the be recon gured to optimise their perfor- boom proved to be very di cult to de- mance for both subsonic and supersonic sign by hand. Eventually engineers at ight. The aircraft will meet airport noise Transport: New moving walkways America’s space agency, NASA, used a requirements Concorde used to make a have been given a speed boost. But supercomputer to simulate the air ow huge amount of noise on take-o and will pedestrians in airports and around an F-5 ghter jet and determined landing and will also produce a smaller shopping centres be able to cope? how to alter its shape to reduce the sonic sonic boom than would normally be ex- boom. In ight tests, the modi ed F-5 pected for a plane of its size. That is an un- LONG with vast space cruisers and la- often likened to a pregnant pelican expected bene t of putting the engines Aser weapons, they are a science- c- proved that it was indeed possible to close to the fuselage and above the tion staple described by authors reduce the rst part of the sonic boom by wings, explains Mr Tracy, which means including Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asi- 25%. Mr Henne believes that Gulfstream that most of the sonic boom is directed mov: sleek conveyor belts that whisk pas- can reduce the second part of the boom upwards, not down. sengers around futuristic cities at too, and so drastically reduce the sonic So, which camp is right? Perhaps both. breakneck speeds. Yet the moving walk- signature of a supersonic plane passing Mr Henne admits that the rst camp ways that criss-cross many of today’s air- overhead. Supersonic ight over land could lose out to rivals that are not depen- ports and shopping centres travel at a might then become a possibility. dent on changes to the current rules. But sober 3kph, which is slower than most Of course, it is not quite that simple. It he is adamant that deregulating super- people walk. The idea of travelators is will be necessary to persuade regula- sonic ight is the way to go. According to to accelerate foot tra c by boosting your tors the Federal Aviation Administra- a survey carried out by Gulfstream, only walking speed, but many users regard tion and the International Civil Aviation a quarter of all journeys by business jets moving walkways as an excuse to stop Organisation (ICAO) to reconsider the are over water. This, says Mr Henne, se- walking altogether. So why not increase current ban. Furthermore, to make the verely limits Aerion’s market. Aerion the speed of the walkways, as the sci- new aircraft commercially viable, there does not dispute that gure, but argues authors suggest? would also have to be changes in the way that the 25% of ights that are over water Engineering rms have tried for de- that supersonic aircraft are handled are still a signi cant market. Indeed, cades to realise the high-speed dream, when coming in to land at airports. There notes Mr Tracy, the market is big enough but without much success. Recent history is little point in having a supersonic air- that Gulfstream has developed long- is littered with abandoned attempts by craft if it gets put into a holding pattern range subsonic aircraft to service it, so companies such as Fujitec, Boeing and for an hour when it arrives at its destina- there should be room for supersonics too. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Moving tion. These are ambitious goals which Nor is Aerion alone in this belief. Ear- walkways grew out of the mining and might seem foolhardy if Gulfstream were lier this year an agreement was signed be- bulk transport industries, and the rst the only rm pushing for them, but it is tween the Society of Japanese Aerospace high-speed version debuted in 1900 at not alone. Also looking for reform is an Companies (SJAC) and France’s Aero- the Exposition Universelle in Paris. But alliance of ten large aeronautical rms space Industries Association to develop the sloping charms of the equally novel including Lockheed Martin, Boeing Phan- technologies jointly that could be used to escalator proved more attractive to the tom Works, Raytheon and Rolls-Royce produce supersonic airliners. Like Aerion, ourishing department-store business, collectively known as the Supersonic this partnership is concentrating on and the high-speed moving walkway 1 Cruise Industry Alliance (SCIA). This adapting existing technology to produce group is working with NASA to build a a supersonic aircraft that can y subsonic prototype supersonic aircraft. over land, in accordance with existing But with NASA and SCIA having only regulations. The aim is to have an airliner just begun their partnership earlier this capable of carrying 300 passengers year, such an aircraft still seems a long 6,000 nautical miles, equivalent to the way o . Developing the technology will distance from Tokyo to New York. take time, as will lobbying to get the regu- It is still early days for this joint-ven- lations changed. For companies such as ture, but it seems to mean business. In Gulfstream or SAI (which is taking a simi- October, researchers at Japan’s space lar approach, in conjunction with Lock- agency, JAXA, carried out ight tests of a heed Martin), there is a danger that other prototype airframe in Woomera, Austra- rms could take to the skies rst. lia. It achieved speeds in excess of Mach That is because those in the second 2.5, or two and a half times the speed of camp are taking a di erent approach, de- sound. That said, Akira Yanagida, general signing aircraft that y at supersonic manager of engineering at SJAC, says speeds over sea and subsonic speeds that at speeds above Mach 1.6 the eco- over land, but far more e ciently than nomics simply do not work. As a result, Concorde once did. Leading the pack is none of the runners in the new super- Aerion, based in Reno, Nevada. It hopes sonic race aims to y faster than Con- to have its supersonic business jets air- corde, which used to cruise at Mach 2. borne by 2010 or 2011, by which time Whoever wins the race, this much seems SCIA is unlikely even to have made a clear: supersonic aircraft are about to dent in the ICAO regulations. stage some sort of a comeback. And this Aerion’s approach is based on the time they will be here to stay. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Monitor 3
2 went into limbo. The high-speed Loderway system he term prospects. People will gradually So the launch in 2002 of the Trottoir designed in the early 1990s encapsulates adapt to faster walkways, he believes. Roulant Rapide in Paris marked a belated the bumpy history of rapid walkways. It After all, even escalators were initially revival for the technology. Also called the enjoyed successful trials at two Austra- regarded as terrifying: when Harrods, a Gateway, this 185-metre conveyor moves lian airports and a two-year run in London department store, introduced its 110,000 people a day through Montpar- Melbourne’s central railway station, all rst escalator in 1898, smelling salts and nasse station at about 5kph, or twice the without incident. But an unlucky con u- brandy were provided to revive custom- usual speed. Yet it also marks something ence of misfortunes, including the Asian ers overcome by the experience. But now of a retreat. The original speeds of economic crisis, caused investors to nobody thinks twice about stepping on 9-12kph proved too fast, and a series of in- abandon the project. to an escalator. So perhaps it is too soon juries led to the brief closure of the walk- Despite the setbacks, Mr Loder is still to dismiss the dream of rapid walkways way soon after it opened. Three years on, optimistic about the technology’s long- as science ction. 7 orders for more Gateways remain elusive, though CNIM, the French engineering rm behind the project, says it is negotiat- ing with some potential customers. Most recent high-speed systems work on the same basic principle: riders step on to a short section of track that slowly accelerates, and then deposits riders on to the high-speed stretch. (Getting part of the track to accelerate can be done in two ways: either by using a series of belts roll- ing at gradually increasing speeds, or by varying the distance between overlap- ping sections of track, which allows dif- ferent parts of a single walkway to move at di erent speeds.) At the end of the jour- ney, a decelerating section reverses the process. Flashing lights, recorded mes- sages and contrasting colours mark the transition zones. The need for a new kind of high-speed people mover seems obvious enough in theory. As airports and shopping malls grow ever larger, so too does the time taken to walk from one end to the other. Fast walkways are cheaper and smaller than monorails, and anything that shaves even a few minutes o a dreary commute is bound to nd favour with the public. In practice, however, high- speed walkways must grapple with sti- Odd bedfellows, striking results letto heels and litigious pedestrians. An- other problem is cost: Mitsubishi estimated that its Speedwalk system would cost up to 50% more than a con- ventional walkway. Health care: Video games, often denounced for their supposed ill e ects, But still the engineers keep trying. The actually have a surprising range of therapeutic uses latest entry in the eld is the TurboTrack, which runs at 7kph and was recently un- ICHAEL KELLEHER was turning put Mr Kelleher back behind the wheel veiled by ThyssenKrupp, a German in- Mright in his car on a country road not in a real car, but in a video game dustrial conglomerate. Rembert near Rylane, Ireland, ve years ago when called London Racer . He was coached Horstmann, a company spokesman, in- another car rammed him from behind, through a dozen sessions of graduated sists the market is ripe: today’s world- thrusting him forward and pushing his exposure to virtual tra c. It gave me wide total of 260,000 moving walkways foot on to the accelerator pedal. Mr con dence, says Mr Kelleher, who now and escalators is growing by about Kelleher’s car shot across the road and happily drives in motorway fast lanes. 22,000 per year, he says, with 15,000 of crumpled into a wall. His wife, the only Other examples abound of the thera- those in Asia. Walkways and escalators other person in the vehicle, su ered a peutic uses of video games. To regain now transport millions of people every chipped vertebra, which has since movement in partially paralysed limbs, year with very few injuries, he notes. healed. Mr Kelleher’s neck and back pain for example, stroke victims must spend ThyssenKrupp regards the new airports soon disappeared. What didn’t go away long hours making repetitive move- being built across the Middle East as a was his fear of cars, especially those tail- ments. You get bored, says Dr Sung You promising market. ing him. It was almost to the stage of of Hampton University in Virginia. He Besides, the aversion to risk has argu- panic, he says. He took to pulling over bought two immersive video games, ably gone too far. John Loder, an Austra- when cars appeared in his rear-view mir- Snowboarding and Sharkbait , that lian urban-planning expert, reckons that ror. Ridicule from his children didn’t help. use a small camera to incorporate the if conventional escalators were invented But then last year, a trauma psychia- player’s image into the game. During today, regulators would not allow them. trist from St Stephen’s Hospital in Cork physical therapy, stroke victims twist and1 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005
2 turn as they tear up the slopes or avoid of more than 100 video games, has modi- sharks. It’s just fun, says Dr You, who ed a quarter of them for use in health found that the greater motivation and fo- care. (Tweaking games typically entails cus of gamers meant they recovered more deleting some competitive elements and co-ordination than patients in a control adding commands to let patients control group. He reported his results in May in exposure to whatever provokes anxiety.) Stroke, a journal published by the Ameri- Some rms design games and virtual can Heart Association. environments speci cally for health-care Eric Sty e, a 22-year-old carpenter applications. Virtually Better, based in who lives in Thalwil, Switzerland, used Atlanta, Georgia, is arguably the world to su er from severe attention-de cit dis- leader in therapeutic software, with a order (ADD). But then a therapist taught range of virtual environments (viewed him how to play neurofeedback video using head-mounted displays) to treat games designed to sharpen concentra- problems as diverse as crack addiction, tion in ADD patients and autistics. With fear of storms and eating disorders. Poder electrodes xed to his skull, Mr Sty e Volar, a clinic in Buenos Aires, uses a Vir- xed his mind on game characters, such tually Better environment called Virtual as a juggler or a Pac-Man-like blob eeing Airplane to help patients overcome fear ghosts in a maze. When his mind wan- of ying, by letting them gradually get dered, the virtual characters dropped used to the process in the safety of an of- dead. It felt weird, says Mr Sty e. But ce. I was paralysed at the mere thought A sight for sore after just two weeks of daily game ther- of ying, says Maureen Scanlan, the apy, he stopped taking Ritalin, a prescrip- owner of a private school who recently thumbs? tion amphetamine. Mr Sty e, who now completed a course of treatment at Poder plays once a month to avoid relapse, says Volar. Now she ies regularly. the results are amazing . Therapeutic video games developed Communications: Researchers are The American military, which has at public research centres are sometimes dreaming up some surprising new used video games to train soldiers for made available for free downloading. ways to enter text into mobile some time, is now investigating their The psychology department at the Un- devices more quickly therapeutic uses as well. This year the iversité de Québec en Outaouais, for ex- O ce of Naval Research, which co-ordi- ample, o ers free downloads that modify EOPLE who send text messages fall nates scienti c research for both the the popular video games Max Payne , Pinto two camps: the 50% or so who, ac- Navy and the Marine Corps, allocated Unreal Tournament and Half-Life , cording to surveys, like to have the pre- $4m among three groups to study video turning them into treatments for phobias dictive text-entry function on their therapies. One of the groups, the Institute including arachnophobia, claustropho- handset switched on, and the other 50% for Creative Technologies at the Univer- bia and fear of heights. (Clinics must rst who prefer the multi-tap method of sity of Southern California, modi ed the buy the game in question, then modify it tapping out one letter at a time. The pro- game Full Spectrum Warrior to treat by installing the free software.) blem with predictive text is that it often veterans of the Iraq war su ering from Ben Sawyer, organiser of the second guesses the wrong word: invite a friend post-traumatic stress disorder. Patients, annual Games for Health Conference, out for a pint (7468 on most keypads), coached by a therapist, recreate disturb- which took place in Baltimore in Septem- and your phone may suggest shot and ing combat situations but have the power ber, says the sector is growing dramati- riot before guessing the correct word. to change the outcome by, say, making cally, with especially rapid adoption of The problem with multi-tap is all that tire- enemy bombs explode farther away. pain-distraction and anxiety-reduc- some clicking, which is why people often Habituation leads to dissipation, ex- ing games at hospitals. Dr Anuradha Pa- use abbreviations in their txt msgs. Nei- plains Albert Rizzo, the project’s leader. tel, an anaesthesiologist at the New ther method is anywhere near as fast as a Similarly, an Israeli team at the Uni- Jersey Medical School who o ers chil- conventional keyboard; and a mini-key- versity of Haifa recently built a disturb- dren games before surgery, says the play- board squeezed on to a small device ingly realistic virtual world of suicide time is more e ective at calming them (such as the BlackBerry and its imitators) bus-bombings to treat attack survivors. down than reassurances from their par- is too ddly for some users. So the search Patients, who wear a head-mounted dis- ents. Dr Patel says that by diminishing continues for a way to enter text into mo- play, control virtual blasts that incorpo- pre-surgery anxiety, video games lower bile devices with the speed of a full-sized rate amateur video of real explosions. adrenaline levels and blood pressure be- keyboard, but without its bulk. The old therapies don’t work very well, fore anaesthesia, easing the shock of Ken Perlin of New York University’s says Tamar Weiss, the team’s leader. waking and possibly speeding recovery. Centre for Advanced Technology began Phobias may represent the biggest Similarly, video games have been used working on the problem in 1997. The re- market for video-game and virtual-real- since the 1980s to provide cognitive dis- sult was Quikwriting, a stylus-based sys- ity therapy, and clinics are popping up traction for children receiving chemo- tem that allows the user to enter text worldwide. Many are writing their own therapy. In a review article published in without ever lifting the stylus o the software from scratch. For example, the July, the British Medical Journal noted screen. Imagine a drawing of a ower, recently opened Tokyo Cyber Clinic is de- that a series of studies found that dis- with eight petals around a stamen, on a veloping, with help from Waseda Univer- tracted patients su ered less from nausea touch-sensitive screen. Each petal con- sity, a virtual Tokyo subway (over- and required fewer painkillers. tains up to eight letters, numbers and crowded for realism) to treat people who Critics denounce video games for pro- punctuation marks. Picking a character panic when surrounded or touched by moting violence and destruction, despite involves moving the stylus from the sta- others. But most clinics buy games o the the lack of solid evidence to support such men into a petal, and then back to the sta- shelf sometimes from rms whose claims. The evidence for gaming’s cura- men (in some cases via another petal). main business is making entertainment tive and therapeutic bene ts, by contrast, Each word forms a squiggle, and users games. IREX, a Toronto-based developer is rather more convincing. 7 soon learn the shapes of common words, 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Monitor 5
2 as with shorthand. ducing the number of keys in each row to ness alive, despite growing concern. To start with, Quikwriting attracted a six, notes Mr Gutowitz, means you can But now Ecodock, a company based in small but devoted following among us- make the keys bigger, or the device the Netherlands, wants to bring some ers of Palm handheld computers. But it smaller. Unfortunately for Eatoni, Re- ship-breaking back to European shores, has since been licensed by Microsoft, search in Motion (RIM), the rm behind where it was widespread until the 1970s, which is developing it (under the name the BlackBerry, has developed a similar when environmental regulations and ris- XNav) for use in a range of devices, in- scheme, which appears on its 7100 series ing wages sent it abroad. Ecodock’s aim is cluding mobile phones, television re- of smartphones. Eatoni has launched a to build a global network of 30-40 mote controls and its Xbox games patent-infringement lawsuit against RIM green ship-breaking facilities that can consoles. It has done away with the sty- as a result. Evidently the fate of these new safely dispose of the 700-odd large ships lus and built several prototypes based on text-entry methods depends on more decommissioned every year 90% of a ower-shaped array of buttons. By run- than just ease of use. 7 them in South Asia, China and Turkey. ning your thumb over the buttons in se- Using sophisticated cranes, workers quence, you can write text messages or would rst remove the toxic substances e-mails with one hand. and then take the ships apart, all the IBM has also developed a squiggle- while scouring for recyclable parts. Doe- writing interface, called ShapeWriter, for Breaking up is bren Mulder, Ecodock’s founder, says the use on tablet PCs. It relies on a specially rm has secured funding for its rst facil- developed on-screen keyboard, in which ity in Eemshaven, in the Netherlands. The the letters are laid out in a hexagonal grid. hard to do 320-metre dry-dock, big enough to ac- As with Quikwriting, the user drags a sty- commodate the largest vessels and even lus over the keyboard to pick out letters. disused drilling platforms, is due to open Lifting the stylus indicates the end of a Environment: The low-tech in early 2007. Ecodock claims that its word. Each word has a distinctive squig- graveyards where ships are picked high-tech system can break down a ship gle shape (or sokgraph , as Shumin Zhai, apart by hand could give way to a in just over three weeks, as opposed to the developer of the system, calls them), greener, more high-tech alternative three months in China or six to eight which is identi ed by pattern-recognition months in Bangladesh, India or Pakistan. software. As a result, ShapeWriter is very LACES such as Chittagong and Alang The venture has regulatory wind in its tolerant of straying styluses. In tests, us- Phave become synonymous with the sails. The European Commission and In- ers were able to reach speeds of 80 words ship-breaking industry. On beaches in ternational Maritime Organisation have per minute. ShapeWriter can be down- India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, low- ruled that single-hulled tankers must be loaded free from IBM’s website (www. wage workers, often young and equipped taken out of service by 2010 the original alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/sharktext), with little more than crowbars and ash- deadline of 2015 was brought forward and Dr Zhai says he is now working on a lights, dismantle hundreds of ships every after the Prestige oil spill in 2002 which smaller version of the software for use on year. Many die from explosions and falls, means that at least 1,400 tankers will handheld devices. not to mention long-term disease from need to be broken up. The regulations While these approaches move away exposure to toxic substances. The trade also stipulate that the ships must be dis- from the old-fashioned Qwerty key- also does grave environmental damage. mantled in an environmentally responsi- board (which has been around since Hazardous materials such as asbestos, ble way, which bodes well for Ecodock. 1868), Howard Gutowitz of Eatoni Ergo- arsenic, mercury and PCBs end up buried The new approach should also appeal nomics is moving towards it. He says in the sand, burned in the open or to the shipping industry, for a number of there is comfort in the familiar. Quik- dumped at sea. Yet the ships also contain reasons. For a start, it could mean good writing is elegant from a conceptual point tonnes of valuable steel, which is why rather than bad publicity. With today’s of view, but I don’t think it’s mass mar- governments are keen to keep the busi- high fuel costs, sending empty ships 1 ket, he says. If you want something mass market, it’s got to be really simple to use. To this end, Eatoni has created the EQ3 (Eatoni Qwerty 3-column) keypad for mobile phones. While most handsets assign several letters to each number key in an ABC, DEF pattern, EQ3 assigns the letters in a way that looks similar to a Qwerty keyboard, but with a few letters moved around to avoid collisions such as the confusion between pint and riot . Collisions occur, on average, once every 27 words when using T9, the most widely used predictive-text system. Using EQ3, collisions occur, on average, once every 85 words. For BlackBerry-type devices, which have a larger number of keys, Eatoni has developed EQ6 (Eatoni Qwerty 6-col- umn). In this scheme, the Qwerty-like ar- rangement is spread over six columns, so that fewer letters are assigned to each key, further reducing collisions to an average rate of once every 1,800 words. The BlackBerry has ten keys in each row; re- On the graveyard shift 6 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005
2 across the world for dismantling is need- junction with O’Reilly & Associates, a lessly expensive, especially if it can be publisher of technical books and organ- done closer to home. Building the new fa- iser of technology conferences. cilities will create jobs and mollify politi- In March, the two rms launched the cians in the wake of the Prestige and Erika Tech Buzz Game, a fantasy prediction oil-spills, and the debacle of the Tricolor, market for high-tech products, concepts which sank in the North Sea in 2002 with and trends . Users buy shares in technol- 2,862 cars on board, and was subse- ogies they think will do well; the share quently struck by two other vessels. price of a technology depends on the fre- Furthermore, the shippers will be able quency with which Yahoo! users per- to make money from the recycled parts. form web searches for it. Yahoo! hopes to Typically 95% of a ship’s structure is reus- use the answers to predict search trends able, most of it valuable steel. Brass, ca- that will be popular in future, so that it bles, refrigerators and plumbing xtures can sell advertising against them. O’Reilly can also be reused. In contrast to the cur- wants an inside track on hot topics for fu- rent business model, where the ship- ture books and conferences. In the spring, breakers buy the vessels from the owners the market identi ed Ruby on Rails , a outright and then sell the salvaged bits programming environment, and Flickr, a themselves, Ecodock is o ering to split than experimentally. Todd Proebsting of photo-sharing site, as hot picks. But the the proceeds with shipowners. Microsoft says the software giant has run game has not yet been around long Some obstacles remain. The countries a dozen or so such markets, and that they enough to assess its track record for lon- where ship-breaking now takes place quickly and cheaply capture employee ger-term prediction, says David Pennock, sorely need that income and steel it gen- sentiment on project deadlines or soft- a senior researcher at Yahoo! erates, and can largely ignore nettlesome ware quality more accurately than any The most important thing about the safety regulations. And the shipping other measure. Google recently said it is Tech Buzz Game, says Mr Wolfers, may be rms want to keep their eets in service also using internal prediction markets. that people are actually playing it, be- for as long as possible, which could have But such markets are typically used to cause it is so well designed. Encouraging a curious side-e ect: as the decommis- predict internal matters, rather than to di- employees to use prediction markets has sioning deadline approaches, companies vine broader technology trends which always been a challenge. Mr Proebsting will rush to dispose of their tankers at the is, some argue, a missed opportunity. At says he believes it is just a matter of time last moment, overburdening whatever the moment, it’s a fad that companies are before Microsoft starts using predictive green facilities then exist, and leaving no trying out, grumbles Robin Hanson, an markets to predict external as well as in- alternative but to keep sending ships to economist at George Mason University ternal events. Perhaps he could use the the graveyard beaches of Asia. 7 who popularised the concept of cor- technology to estimate when. 7 porate prediction markets and believes they could be a powerful tool. But can prediction markets really spot broader industry trends? There have Market, market, been some attempts to nd out. Perhaps Fingerprints for the oldest technology-oriented public prediction market is the Foresight Ex- on the wall change (www.ideosphere.com), which car parts launched in 1994. Ken Kittlitz, one of its co-founders, says it has an accuracy rate Technology trends: If prediction of about 70% on technology questions. Security: People have ngerprints, markets are so good at making Among its best calls: it said a computer but objects do not unless you spray forecasts, why not use them to would beat Garry Kasparov at chess two them on in the form of thousands of identify emerging technologies? years before it happened. But it was too tiny microdots, that is bullish on demand for videophones. HE technology industry loves a pre- Another prediction market, operated HILE smart dust remains a tech- Tdiction, and keeps legions of forecast- by NewsFutures, ran for a while on the Wnological fantasy, a distant cousin is ers and futurists in business. But many website of Technology Review. Most of its already being used to protect valuable predictions are wrong, technologies often predictions, says Emile Servan-Schreiber, items around the world. The microdots arrive late, and very few live up to the NewsFutures’ boss, concerned nancial produced by DataDot Technology, an hype. Why, then, are technology rms matters. But the market did make a few Australian rm, are tiny polyester parti- not keen users of internal prediction mar- accurate predictions about technology cles, just one millimetre wide, that can be kets? These harness the collective brain- trends: it concluded that products based sprayed on to valuable items such as car power of employees by giving them on ultrawideband technology would not parts. Under ultraviolet light and a mag- virtual trading accounts and virtual be commercially available by July 2004, nifying glass, any one of these thousands money, and letting them buy and sell and correctly forecast the take-up rate for of dots can reveal the host vehicle’s un- shares in such things as project sched- internet telephony. ique identity number. Of course, a car ules or next quarter’s sales. What are, in Even so, says Justin Wolfers, an econo- thief could try to scrape o the micro- e ect, elaborate computer games might mist at the Wharton School at the Univer- dots, but their sheer number makes that help tech rms spot trends and make sity of Pennsylvania, it is still unclear impractical; a single dot is enough to more accurate forecasts. Yet, oddly, whether prediction markets really can identify a stolen component. Warning hardly anyone is using them in this way. spot tech trends. That is why he is among stickers enhance the dots’ deterrent e ect. Hewlett-Packard and Intel pioneered those closely watching the latest experi- And it seems to be working: according the corporate use of prediction markets, ment, being carried out by Yahoo!, a big to a study published by Australia’s Na- but neither seems to be using them other internet portal and search engine, in con- tional Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Monitor 7
2 Council in 2004, thefts of BMWs are genre of games, many of which are set in Worlds , a book about MMORPGs, says down more than 60% since the carmaker Tolkeinesque virtual worlds. Players con- this is not surprising. The only in uence began using microdots in 2001; thefts of trol individual characters which may or players have on the developer is to leave Subaru vehicles fell by more than 90%. may not be human as they ght mon- the game, he says. When thousands of Ford, Porsche, Audi and Lotus are also us- sters, complete quests and acquire new players threaten to leave, developers take ing the technique in Australia. And the equipment, money, skills and special notice. But when the game is shutting idea is spreading. Mitsubishi and Volks- powers. MMORPGs can attract hundreds down anyway, such protests are futile. wagen have been experimenting with of thousands of players the current top What of escaping to another world? the dots in Britain and Taiwan respec- dog, World of Warcraft , has just passed Some inhabitants of Asheron’s Call 2 tively, and Nissan uses them in America 4m subscribers and are particularly plan to do just that. I have met so many on some of its most expensive headlights. popular in Asia. Players pay an upfront people, many of whom will continue as Microdots can also safeguard laptops, fee for the basic game software, which life-long friends, wrote a player called boats, farming equipment almost any- they install on a PC, and then pay a Princess Death Song. She announced a thing, in fact. In 2004, police in Florida monthly access fee, typically $12-15. plan to set up a website where she and caught a corrupt parking-meter o cial Devoted MMORPG fans spend dozens her friends could decide which other using planted microdotted coins. of hours a month building up their char- MMORPG to move to, so that we can Though the idea of microdotting dates acters, and live what is, in e ect, a parallel continue that journey of friendship . But from the 1940s, it became economically life in another world. (One MMORPG is it would not be any MMORPG run by viable only with the advent of laser etch- even called Second Life .) Part of the at- Turbine, she declared. ing in the 1990s. Las Vegas casinos were traction is that such games are inherently The company could have mounted among the rst to use the dots, in an e ort social as well as chatting with in-game the equivalent of an evacuation, by mov- to root out fake gambling chips. Austra- friends, players can team up to accom- ing the population of Asheron’s Call 2 lian investors then bought the rights, mo- plish particular missions or defeat pow- to another world. The original Ashe- tivated in part by Australia’s high rate of erful monsters. The resulting sense of ron’s Call game is still running on its car crime. Even though steering-wheel community and social cohesion means servers, for example. It also has two new locks, satellite tracking and immobilisers that MMORPGs have loyal populations. and potentially lucrative games under de- had helped to reduce car thefts, trade in The original Asheron’s Call is still go- velopment, based on the Dungeons and stolen parts remained a problem. The use ing, as are EverQuest and Ultima On- Dragons and Lord of the Rings fran- of microdots is changing that. line , which launched in 1997. But chises. O ering the citizens of Dereth Creating the dots themselves is fairly Asheron’s Call 2 failed to achieve criti- characters in these new worlds might straightforward. The hard part, says Ian cal mass. Its population, once over have enabled Turbine to retain their Allen, DataDot’s boss, has been convinc- 50,000, has now fallen below 15,000, goodwill. Instead, they may now decide ing carmakers and insurance companies making the game economically unviable. to steer clear of the company and its new to adopt them. After all, the idea of spray- The citizens of Dereth responded to worlds. Whether Turbine’s closure of ing a car with dots sounds strange but it news of their imminent demise in a num- Asheron’s Call 2 will hurt the prospects is not as dotty as it seems. 7 ber of ways. Many simply expressed their for its new games will not become appar- sorrow in postings on the game’s online ent until they are launched next year, but discussion board. How do I tell my nine- it seems unlikely, since both are based on year-old that he won’t be able to run such strong brands. around Dereth anymore? lamented one Another option would have been to The end is parent. Other players posted bilious throw open the world to the open-source attacks on Turbine’s management team. community and let the players run it Last one out, please punch Je Ander- themselves. Mr Castronova, for one, virtually nigh son in the back of the head, wrote one, favoured this approach, but a Turbine referring to Turbine’s chief executive. A spokesman has ruled it out. Instead, big fat middle nger to the execs in charge Dereth will simply vanish without trace. Gaming: How the inhabitants of an of this decision, wrote another. There will not even be a pu of smoke. 7 online game are responding to their Some players took the if we are all go- impending destruction and the end ing to die, we might as well have some of their virtual world fun position, and called upon the game’s omnipotent overlords to grant them extra HE end of the world is a favourite powers and abilities for the remainder of Ttheme of storytellers and prophets, their virtual lives, and lower the prices of and with good reason: accounts of how a upgrade items. Turbine responded by small band of intrepid adventurers tries making it easier to advance to higher lev- to avert destruction, or sets out for a new els. But some players complained that and better world, make for exciting tales. this was unfair on those who had worked But there will be no such stories for the so hard to build up their powers the hard inhabitants of Dereth, whose time will way. The game may be ending but you run out on December 30th. Dereth is the still don’t deserve stu handed to you on virtual world associated with Asheron’s a silver platter, grumbled one. Call 2 , an online game. It has not There have been several cases, in attracted enough players for its publisher, other MMORPGs, where players have Turbine Entertainment, to continue to staged in-game protests to complain support it. And so Dereth and all of its about unfair rules or policies. There have inhabitants will be destroyed. even been in-game riots. But there have Asheron’s Call 2 is an example of a been no such protests in Dereth. Edward massively multiplayer online role- Castronova, a gaming expert at Indiana playing game (MMORPG), a booming University and the author of Synthetic Darkness falls over Dereth 8 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005
rewards are currently listed on the innocentive.com website, which is used by over 80,000 researchers. And the winners are... Consumer product: the iPod team at Apple for the development of the iPod digital-music player. When Apple launched the iPod in October 2001, it was widely derided. Who would buy such an Innovation Awards: Our annual expensive device, and why did Apple prizes recognise successful think it could take on Sony? But Apple innovators in seven categories. had the last laugh. The iPod became an Here are this year’s winners iconic product, and Apple has stayed ahead of its rivals with further innova- HIS newspaper was established in tions such as the iTunes Music Store, the T1843 to take part in a severe contest click wheel and video iPod. between intelligence, which presses for- No boundaries: Fujio Masuoka, profes- ward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance sor, Tohoku University for the invention obstructing our progress . One of the of ash memory. In 1984, Dr Masuoka chief ways in which intelligence presses invented the low-cost, low-power, non- forward is through innovation, which is volatile storage technology that can to- now recognised as one of the most im- day be found inside mobile phones, mu- portant contributors to economic growth. sic players and many other devices. He is Innovation, in turn, depends on the cre- now suing Toshiba, his employer at the ative individuals who dream up new time, for $9m, which he believes is his fair ideas and turn them into reality. share of the $180m the rm has earned The Economist recognises these tal- from his work. ented people through our annual Innova- We extend our congratulations to the tion Awards, presented in seven elds: winners, and our thanks to the judges: bioscience, computing and communica- Simon Best, chairman, Ardana Biosci- tions, energy and the environment, social ence; Denise Caruso, executive director, and economic innovation, business-pro- the Hybrid Vigor Institute; Martin cess innovation, consumer products, and Cooper, chairman and chief executive, a special no boundaries category. The ArrayComm; Larry Downes, professor, awards were presented at a ceremony in School of Information Management and London on November 14th by Bill Systems, University of California, Berke- Emmott, editor-in-chief of The Economist. ley; Shereen El Feki, bioscience corre- And the winners were: A Hale and healthy winner spondent, The Economist; Rodney Bioscience: Herbert Boyer, co-founder Ferguson, managing director, J.P. Morgan and director of Genentech, and Stanley computers and many other devices, and Partners; Daniel Franklin, editorial direc- Cohen, professor of genetics and medi- is just one of the many innovations de- tor, Economist Intelligence Unit; Lisa cine at the Stanford University School of vised by Mr Ovshinsky, a self-taught in- Gansky, director, Dos Margaritas, co- Medicine, for developing recombinant ventor who pioneered the eld of founder, Ofoto; David Goeddel, vice- DNA technology. This is the fundamental amorphous materials in the 1950s. He is president of research, Amgen; François innovation that allows genetic material now focusing on solar panels and hydro- Grey, head of IT communications, CERN; from two sources to be combined, mak- gen-powered cars. Georges Haour, professor of technology ing possible the use of bacteria as drug Social and economic innovation: and innovation management, IMD; Vic factories and the genetic engineering of Victoria Hale, chairman and chief exec- Hayes, former chair, IEEE 802.11 working plants and animals. The two men had the utive, Institute for OneWorld Health, for group; Leroy Hood, director, Institute for idea while eating pastrami and corned- her work promoting the development of Systems Biology; Louis Monier, former beef sandwiches when attending a con- pharmaceuticals for the developing director of advanced technologies, eBay; ference in Hawaii. world. In 2000, Dr Hale founded the Shuji Nakamura, director, Centre for Computing and communications: non-pro t pharmaceutical company to Solid State Lighting and Displays, Univer- Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders develop treatments for orphan dis- sity of California, Santa Barbara; Andrew of Google for the commercialisation of eases neglected by traditional drugmak- Odlyzko, professor of mathematics and search technology. Few companies be- ers. OneWorld develops drugs based on director, Digital Technology Centre, Uni- come so integrated into everyday life that donated or royalty-free intellectual prop- versity of Minnesota; Navi Radjou, vice- their names become verbs, and none has erty, and is in nal-stage testing of a pro- president, enterprise applications, Forres- done so as quickly as Google, which com- mising new therapy to cure visceral ter Research; Rinaldo Rinol , executive bined a superior method of ranking leishmaniasis in India. vice-president, Fiat Research; Paul Romer, search results with an advertising-based Business-process innovation: Alpheus professor of economics, Graduate School business model to pay the bills. The rm Bingham, chairman, InnoCentive, for his of Business, Stanford University; Paul is widely seen as the new Microsoft work developing a web-based problem- Sa o, director, Institute for the Future; which is both an accolade and a warning. solving community. InnoCentive is an Tom Standage, technology editor, The Energy and the environment: Stanford online forum that brings solution seek- Economist; Vijay Vaitheeswaran, energy Ovshinsky, president and chief scientist ers , who post descriptions of technical and environment correspondent, The and technologist, Energy Conversion De- problems they need to solve, together Economist; Carl-Jochen Winter, professor vices, for developing the nickel-metal- with problem solvers who try to solve of energy and engineering, University of hydride battery. This is the battery tech- them in order to win an associated Stuttgart; Muhammad Yunus, managing nology found in hybrid cars, laptop bounty. Around $1.6m in potential director, Grameen Bank. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Rational consumer 9
A matter of de nition
looks grainy in comparison: 576i looks Hunt of IMS. Admittedly, some people better than 480i. are buying HDTVs to use them with pro- Consumer electronics: The HDTV involves increasing the number gressive scan DVD players, which pro- switch to high-de nition (HD) of lines even further; the two main for- duce a 480p signal. This looks much better mats are 1080i and 720p. 1080i is an inter- than a 480i signal, though it is still not television will gather pace in laced format with 1080 lines. 720p technically HD. But watching television in 2006 but beware the jargon increases the number of lines to 720 and HD quality requires access to a source of improves quality further by doing away HDTV broadcasting. The trouble is, not OLOUR television, which rst with interlacing, updating the whole much HDTV programming is available: of C emerged in America in the mid- screen every frame instead a technique the hundreds of channels available to 1950s, was not an overnight success. called progressive scan . This results in most satellite and cable viewers, only a There were ghts over competing stan- much smoother images, particularly of few dozen are available in HD. dards, the rst colour sets cost a fortune, fast-moving subjects. To qualify as an HD The launch during 2006 of two rival and for years there were very few colour set, a television must be capable of dis- HD disc formats, HD-DVD and Blu-ray, broadcasts. Only in 1972 did sales of col- playing both 1080i and 720p signals, as and the ability of new games consoles to our sets outstrip black-and-white. well as existing formats. produce HD signals, could boost adop- Now a similar transition is under way But then things get more confusing. An tion. And the industry hopes that the foot- with the switch to high-de nition tele- HD Ready set, marked with a special ball World Cup, which will be broadcast vision (HDTV) which, as its name sug- logo in Europe, is one capable of display- in HD, will increase awareness of the dis- gests, o ers sharper, more detailed ing HD signals from external sources. In tinction between HD and conventional pictures. It is still early days: while there America, HD capable refers to HDTVs broadcasts, particularly in Europe. The are around 1.5 billion televisions on earth, with built-in tuners that can decode ter- idea is that people will watch a World Cup the number of HDTV households grew restrial HDTV signals; while a digital ca- match in HD at a pub or a friend’s house, from around 8m to around 14m during ble ready HDTV set contains a decoder and then decide to upgrade. 2005, according to IMS Research, a consul- for HDTV signals delivered via cable. Just how quickly HD will take o in Eu- tancy. HDTV broadcasts have been avail- All of this gobbledegook helps to ex- rope is unclear. For one thing, the supe- able for some time in America and Japan, plain HDTV’s dirty little secret: that riority of HD images over European 576i have recently launched in France and around 80% of HDTV sets are not receiv- broadcasts is visible only on 30-inch or Germany, and will reach Britain and the ing HDTV broadcasts. In many cases, this larger screens but Europeans have not Netherlands early in 2006. But unlike the is because consumers are unaware of the embraced big at-panel TVs in the way switch to colour, the process of switching distinction; they buy a big new at-panel Americans have, notes James Healey of to HDTV is rather di cult to explain with- HDTV and plug it into their existing cable Datamonitor, a consultancy. Most Euro- out descending into jargon. or satellite tuner. The picture gets bigger, pean cable networks have not been up- Conventional television is broadcast but does not get any sharper. I have graded to handle HD, and terrestrial in an interlaced format, in which the known people who say ‘Look at my new HDTV broadcasts can begin in earnest screen is divided into several hundred HDTV’, and I have to tell them they are only after 2010 or so, when analogue horizontal lines. Half of these lines (the watching regular broadcasts, says Anna broadcasts end, freeing up the airwaves odd-numbered lines) are redrawn, then for HDTV. In America, cable networks the even-numbered lines, then the odd- have already been upgraded, and only numbered ones again, and so on. The Tuning in 15% of households receive terrestrial sig- American NTSC system, for example, di- Worldwide HDTV households, m nals; most rely on cable or satellite, which vides the screen into 480 lines, half of Americas Asia Europe, Middle are better able to deliver HDTV. which are updated every 60th of a second Pacific East and Africa Declaring 2006 the year of HDTV , (an approach known as 480i). This allows 50 then, as some in the industry have, is over- FORECAST smooth movement to be depicted, while 40 doing it. Several previous years have also using half as much transmission capacity been declared the year of HDTV too, so as updating the whole screen every 30 scepticism is warranted. More consumer frame: 60 half-frames per second looks education and more HDTV content are smoother than 30 full frames per second. 20 needed; prices will have to fall too. The Most European countries use another in- 10 real tipping point, says Mr Healey, could terlaced format, called PAL, which divides be the 2008 Olympics or the 2010 World the screen into 576 lines. The extra lines, 0 Cup. You will hear a lot about HDTV in together with PAL’s more accurate rendi- 2003 04 05 06 07 08 2006, but the transition, as with the tion of colour, explain why American TV Source: IMS Research switch to colour, will take many years. 7 10 Reports The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005
Sunrise for renewable energy?
as venture-capital rms, including many of the biggest losers was Exxon. Its current not previously interested in renewable boss, Lee Raymond, has vowed not to Energy: Renewable energy may energy, throw money at renewables. BP spend another penny of his shareholders’ not appear to be competitive and Royal Dutch/Shell, two oil giants, money on renewables, which he calls a have big renewables divisions. GE has un- complete waste of money . with oil and gas at the moment, veiled Eco-magination , an initiative fo- The chief drawback of renewables is but the gap is closing cused on clean energy. High oil prices, their cost compared with conventional environmental concerns, a desire for energy sources. The cost of generating SPECTACULAR sea snake has been greater energy security and improved electricity from wind turbines is at least 5 Aspotted slithering around Scotland’s technologies are combining to create the cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), for exam- northern waters. Though it is ery red in best investing environment ever for re- ple. Solar or wave power cost at least 18 or colour, and some 100 metres in length, newable power , observed Terry Pratt, a 20 cents per kWh. The cost of electricity the writhing beastie has not sent the lo- credit analyst at Standard & Poor’s, in a re- from conventional sources, in contrast, is cals of Orkney running for the hills. That port published in October. The Interna- typically much lower as little as 3 to 5 is because it is actually an innovative new tional Energy Agency (IEA), a quasi- cents per kWh. Barring some dramatic device designed to produce electricity by governmental agency not known for ex- breakthrough, renewable sources cannot, capturing energy from the ocean’s waves. cessive greenery, forecasts that over $1 on the face of it, possibly compete. Pelamis, manufactured by Ocean Power trillion will be invested in non-hydro re- Delivery, a British rm, is at the vanguard newable technologies worldwide by Changing the rules of the next energy revolution. Or at least 2030. By then, the IEA predicts, such tech- But look beyond the headline gures and that is what proponents of renewable en- nologies will triple their share of the a di erent picture emerges. Renewable ergy would have you believe. Orkney is world’s power generation to 6%. In some energy has regulatory, commercial and home to the European Union’s main ma- regions, such as western Europe and Cali- technological trends on its side, all of rine-energy test centre, and local politi- fornia, the share could top 20%. which are working to close the cost gap cians and academics like to boast that Yet such predictions are met with scep- with conventional sources. Taken to- Scotland, ideally suited to wave and ticism by those who remember what hap- gether, they promise a far more sustain- wind-power projects, will become the pened after the oil shocks of the 1970s. able, market-driven basis for investment Saudi Arabia of renewable energy . Back then, high oil prices and concerns in renewables than yesterday’s faith in If such claims sound a bit over the top, over scarcity led many rms to bet high oil prices and suggest that renew- they are entirely in keeping with the eu- heavily on alternative-energy technol- able energy’s cheerleaders could be on to phoria now sweeping through the renew- ogies. Most of them lost those bets when something after all. able-energy sector. Money is pouring in oil and gas prices fell in the late 1980s. One First, consider regulatory and policy1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Reports 11 Pricing schemes that favour renewable energy are being made possible by ‘smart’ meters.
2 trends. Critics have long complained that stymied renewable-energy projects. Sim- renewables have survived only because ply put, it o ers big retailers (such as of government subsidies. They are right Whole Foods and Staples) long-term, but every form of energy is subsidised. xed-price electricity contracts in return America’s huge Energy Act, signed into for being able to set up solar panels on law by President Bush in August, hands their rooftops. The retailers bene t from most of its $80 billion or so of largesse not stable power prices, but do not have to to wind or solar, but to well-entrenched buy or run the panels themselves; Gold- industries such as oil, coal and nuclear. man Sachs, which nances the panels, Germany and Spain handed out cash to bene ts from the associated tax credits their coal industries even as they subsi- and other o sets; BP sells more solar pan- dised windmills. els; and solar power has a better chance of Yet many governments, striving to re- taking o . Meanwhile, other ventures are duce carbon emissions, are now embrac- looking to wind energy for a hedge. Sev- ing policies that promise more enduring eral rms are putting together hybrid - and politically palatable support for re- nancial products that combine the output newable energy than subsidies: exter- of wind farms in America’s mid-west nalities pricing. In some countries, with that of natural gas- red plants thus Coming soon to a roof near you? especially in Europe, action has come in hedging the volatility of both. the form of direct taxes on carbon emis- Pricing schemes that favour renewable All of this is making renewables more sions which, of course, greatly bene t re- energy are also being made possible by attractive, even without advances in the newable energy. Japan is phasing out its the arrival of new technologies such as generating technologies themselves. But solar subsidies altogether next year. Tax is smart meters, which allow for hour-by- those technologies are not standing still a four-letter word in America, so policy- hour variation in power prices. These either. Wind energy is now a commer- makers there have instead adopted a mix make it possible for utilities to charge cially viable business, without subsidies, of regulations, rather than a carbon tax, to much more for power during the swelter- in a number of places around the world. boost clean energy. These include such ing midday peak than early in the morn- (The crucial factor is the wind potential measures as tax credits and renewable ing or late at night. Since solar panels of the site; even the best sites for wind tur- portfolio standards that require a certain produce their greatest power output in bines produce power only 30-40% of the proportion of energy production within a the middle of the day just when prices time, and the average across all of Ger- particular state to come from renewables. are at their peak under a variable-pricing many’s wind turbines, for example, is just Second, these policy measures are be- regime Tim Woodward of Nth Power, a 11%.) Of course, government helped the ing accompanied by the arrival of innova- venture-capital rm specialising in en- industry get to this point. Denmark, for ex- tive business models built around ergy, thinks smart meters with this type ample, is home to world-class turbine renewables. A good example is Actus of time of use or critical peak pricing manufacturers, such as NEG Micron and Lend Lease, an American rm, which is will make solar power far more attractive. Vestas, thanks to early state aid. And tax developing the world’s largest solar- We see a groundswell toward this, he credits and other subsidies help wind op- powered residential community in Ha- says. Several American states, led by Cali- erators in Germany and elsewhere. waii to provide housing for American sol- fornia, are moving towards variable pric- The key to wind’s success in becoming diers. This is a business decision there is ing, and the Energy Act encourages commercially viable has been technol- no subsidy, says Chris Sherwood of Ac- utilities to adopt it. Enel, Italy’s national ogies that have allowed turbine size to tus. Lenders were worried about the vola- energy company, is rolling out smart me- grow from an average of 10 metres in di- tility of electricity prices, since Hawaii ters to 30m customers across the country, ameter in the mid-1970s to over 80 metres generates most of its electricity by burn- and there are plans to make smart meters today. To build and run such monstrous ing imported oil, and the community’s mandatory across the European Union, turbines, companies have devised new residents will pay a xed rent, including whenever a meter is installed or replaced. composites for the blades, variable-pitch utility bills, that is set by the army and ad- blades that catch the slightest of breezes, justed only once a year. A sudden spike in Boxing clever variable-speed drive motors and other the electricity price might have meant In the mean time, GridPoint, an American advances. A doubling of wind speed that the rm running the project would rm, is selling a black box at retailers means about an eight-fold gain in a wind- have been unable to make its debt repay- such as Home Depot that its boss, Peter mill’s energy output, so making wind- ments. Solar panels, in contrast, produce Corsell, claims will solve the last-mile mills taller makes sense, as winds tend to electricity at a known price for the life- problem of the stupid grid . Usually, solar be stronger and more stable higher o the time of the panels. Reducing the uncer- panels need a complex tangle of wires, in- ground. Of course, there are practical lim- tainty over energy costs, says Mr verters, batteries and other equipment to its: make a turbine too big and you cannot Sherwood, made it possible for the de- be installed to make them work. His rm deliver it to a eld or a windy mountain- velopers to borrow more. replaces that with a plug and play de- top. But o shore, where turbines can be Similarly, Sun Edison, an American vice that also provides backup power. It moved by ship, that is not a constraint. Ex- start-up backed by Goldman Sachs and even uses predictive software and an in- perts expect o shore wind to take o dra- BP, has devised a clever new business ternet connection to juggle weather fore- matically, especially in Europe, which has model that overcomes a number of the casts and utility pricing plans to decide both plenty of wind and lots of protesters real-world obstacles that have hitherto when to sell power back on to the grid. who object to land-based turbines. Robert1 12 Reports The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005
Talisman, an oil company, has decided to put up two windmills on top of one of its gas platforms.
2 Kleiburg of Shell muses that the industry technology; the rm claims that it can al- Solar panels cannot produce power at may need to rethink turbine design for o - ready achieve e ciencies close to those of such low cost, but comparing their cost- shore environments, however. silicon in the laboratory but using just per-kWh with wholesale prices is argu- The prospects are also good for im- one-hundredth the material. Billy Stan- ably not the most relevant comparison. provements in solar power. Ever since bery, HelioVolt’s boss, thinks this technol- That is because in general, solar panels Bell Labs patented its design for a photo- ogy could allow solar panels to be built are used not by electricity producers sell- voltaic cell in 1954, crystalline silicon the into roo ng materials, rather than in- ing power to the grid at wholesale prices, same stu that is used to make computer stalled on top. Shell’s solar division, but by consumers who use solar power to chips has been the dominant technol- which is developing a thin lm similar to supplement or replace power bought ogy for such cells, thanks to its high reli- CIGS, thinks it could reduce the cost of so- from utility companies at retail prices ability and conversion e ciency (at least lar panels by more than 50% by 2012. (typically 8 to 20 cents per kWh). So solar compared with rival technologies). Sili- Another promising, but tricky, ap- power need only match these higher re- con-based systems typically convert proach is organic solar panels. Konarka, tail prices in order for homeowners and about 15% of the sun’s energy into useful whose founder won a Nobel prize for pio- businesses to start to consider it as a via- electricity. That may seem low, but since neering organic solar cells, is leading the ble alternative. And it turns out that the the fuel is free, the e ciency of conver- charge in this area but even one insider most e cient of today’s solar panels do sion matters less than the overall cost per admits that commercialisation of its opti- indeed match the retail price of electricity kilowatt of power delivered. cal organic PV cells is a long way o . in some parts of the world with high retail Alas, silicon photovoltaic cells are now Other researchers are applying nanotech- prices, such as Japan (which is now phas- victims of their own success. The solar in- nology and molecular chemistry to solar ing out its solar subsidies). dustry has sucked up so much crystalline power, with the aim of mimicking photo- Renewables’ growing competitiveness silicon that there is a global shortage, and synthesis. Most pundits think that is a is not, in short, simply the result of sky- prices have shot up. But crisis breeds in- long way o too. But a paper published by high oil prices. And that explains why vention. In the old days, we’d get the gar- a team from the NREL in May raises a tan- Wall Street is at last getting interested. Not bage after the IT industry got the good talising possibility: it found that tiny na- long ago, America’s renewable-energy in- stu , says Rhone Resch of America’s So- nocrystals known as quantum dots dustry held a nance conference in New lar Industries Association. But now half a could, in theory, make possible solar cells York at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Brian dozen silicon-wafer plants are going up with around 70% e ciency. So the future Daly, a nancier with the Trust Company around the world dedicated solely to pro- for solar power could be bright indeed. of the West, stood up to make a presenta- viding silicon for solar energy. This is a tion in the bejewelled grand ballroom. He watershed for the silicon industry, says Follow the money observed: When I made my rst presen- Christopher O’Brien of Sharp Solar. But what is most striking is that gures tations in this industry, there were ten One rm hoping to capitalise on the compiled by Shell Renewables in April guys with ponytails and I had to ip silicon shortage is Evergreen Solar. It uses 2004, when the oil price stood at $40 a charts myself. Now, he observed, the conventional crystalline silicon, but in an barrel it is currently closer to $60 found Waldorf ballroom was packed with be- unusually frugal fashion. From crucibles that wind turbines and solar panels could suited bankers and his slides appeared of molten silicon, ribbons of the stu are close the cost gap with conventional en- on a high-tech screen. continuously pulled out. This string- ergy sources. Provided they are large If you still need persuading that some- pulling uses 30% less silicon than the enough and are sited in suitable locations, thing big and exciting is happening in re- usual sawing-and-etching method does, the most e cient modern wind turbines newable energy, head back to the frothy with further improvements in sight. But can produce electricity at a wholesale waters of the North Sea o Scotland. others are betting on a rival technology: price (the price at which electricity pro- There, you will nd the energy equivalent thin lms. Rather than etch wafers, va- ducers buy and sell power on the grid) of beating swords into ploughshares: the rious rms are creating solar panels on competitive with non-renewable sources. planting of windmills on oil platforms. rolls of stainless steel (ECD Ovonics), Talisman, an independent oil company, plate glass (GE’s Astropower division), has decided to put up two windmills on and other materials amenable to continu- Not so dear top of one of its gas platforms. Building ous manufacturing processes. That Cost competitiveness of selected renewable- stable platforms accounts for around a means costs can be greatly reduced once power technologies, unit cost ranges, cents/kWh third of the cost of o shore wind farms. full-scale plants are built and perfected, Wholesale Retail consumer But the oil and gas industry in the North which would compensate for thin lms’ power price power price Sea, now in decline, has plenty of plat- lower conversion e ciency. 020405010 30 forms sitting around. I’m betting against silicon, says Arno A Talisman o cial explains that, for Penzias, a Nobel-winning scientist who is Small hydro the moment, the energy will be used only NEA Solar now with , a venture-capital rm. In- photovoltaics to power the platform’s operations, but in stead, he favours a avour of thin- lm so- Ocean wave future it may serve as a generating station, lar technology known as CIGS a and send power ashore. This will be the sandwich of thin layers of copper, indium Biomass greenest platform in the world, he says. If and gallium selenide pioneered at Amer- Geothermal even hardened oilmen can look to the ica’s National Renewable Energy Labora- Wind winds for inspiration, perhaps the time tory (NREL). His rm invests in HelioVolt, really has come for renewable energy which is trying to commercialise this Sources: Shell Renewables, April 2004 after all. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Reports 13
In the very near future
Communications: Near- eld communication technology could fuse tickets, key cards and cash with mobile phones EW wireless technologies, from Wi-Fi tributing PayPass contactless credit cards software standards. But most of them op- Nto Bluetooth to 3G, generally promise which can be accepted at 20,000 shops erate in the same frequency range, around to be faster, longer-range and more e - and restaurants. The rm expects to have 13.56 MHz, so it is not too di cult to build cient than their predecessors. So a new issued 3m-5m cards by the year’s end. a device that can talk to all of them. technology, called near- eld communi- These contactless cards do not need And that is exactly what an NFC chip cation (NFC), is somewhat unusual. batteries. Instead, when a card is placed does. It is a device capable of acting as Compared with other, better known close to a reader an electrical current is in- both a contactless card and a reader. It is wireless standards, it operates over very duced which powers up the card and en- compatible with FeliCa, the standard short ranges measured in mere cen- ables it to exchange short bursts of data used in Japan and Hong Kong. It also timetres and it transfers data at a com- with the reader. Such induction happens works with a standard called ISO 14443, paratively sluggish pace, not much faster only over very short distances, which is which forms the basis of the contactless than a dial-up modem. why close proximity between card and payment systems used by MasterCard But that does not mean that NFC is reader is required; some systems advise and Visa, and with Philips’ Mifare tech- lacking in ambition. Quite the contrary. users to touch the card against the reader nology, used in London’s Oyster cards For rather than trying to displace existing to ensure a successful connection, al- and in some 200 other ticketing projects wireless technologies, NFC’s lofty goal is though contact is not actually required. around the world. (NFC itself was nal- to supersede even older, more funda- So far, this is all standard stu . But now ised as an industry standard in 2003.) mental inventions: bank notes, coins, imagine putting a contactless chip and This means that an NFC-capable mo- keys and tickets. It could also spice up ad- reader into a mobile phone. Since a phone bile phone can potentially function as an vertising posters and make it easier to ex- has a screen, a keyboard and a connection Octopus card in Hong Kong, a Suica ticket change data between mobile phones and to the internet, a number of new and use- in Japan, and an Oyster card in London. other devices. How can such an appar- ful things become possible. You could use Not many people would require such ently feeble technology hope to achieve your phone to see when your contactless exibility, admittedly. But a single, over- so much? By bringing order to the grow- train ticket was due to expire, for example, arching global standard should lead to ing eld of contactless cards, and then, its and top it up over the air. Alternatively, huge economies of scale. Nokia, the proponents hope, by marching into other your phone could actually take the place world’s largest handset-maker and an markets in conjunction with that all-con- of your contactless train ticket, and of early backer of NFC along with Sony and quering digital device, the mobile phone. other contactless cards, and act as the Philips, hopes to get the cost of NFC chips To start with, NFC is an attempt to equivalent of a contactless wallet. below $5, at which point they would be unify the various contactless-card tech- The combination of mobile phones cheap enough for inclusion in even the nologies that have been appearing all and contactless cards can already be seen most basic handsets. And that, in turn, over the world. Hundreds of transport working in some countries. In Hong Kong, would make possible many other uses. systems, from Hong Kong to Houston, are 50,000 phones with integral Octopus issuing tickets on contactless cards that cards have been sold, while Japan’s larg- Cash and carry can open turnstiles with the wave of a est mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo, has For a start, NFC-equipped mobile phones hand or the touch of a wallet, speeding ac- sold over 4m wallet phones that con- could double as electronic wallets, by tak- cess for commuters and reducing fraud tain a FeliCa contactless chip made by ing the place of contactless credit cards. and administration costs when compared Sony. From next year, these phones will They could also give a much needed with paper tickets. (Examples include be able to double as Suica cards, since boost to electronic cash, an idea that has Hong Kong’s Octopus cards, London’s Suica cards are also based on FeliCa chips. struggled for years to get o the ground. Oyster cards and Japan’s Suica cards.) In Such compatibility is the exception As Mondex, Visa Cash and a long list of America, contactless payment cards and rather than the rule, however. The con- other failed e-cash schemes have demon- key fobs are used to speed up transactions tactless card systems in use around the strated, getting people to adopt high-tech at fast-food restaurants and petrol sta- world employ several di erent and in- alternatives to cash is extremely hard. tions, and MasterCard recently began dis- compatible wireless technologies and Such schemes present a classic chicken-1 14 Reports The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 NFC could turn your mobile phone into a travel pass, wallet, cinema ticket, or even your door key.
2 and-egg problem: consumers will not to go through a ddly set-up procedure. Visa. Other members who have joined adopt the technology until merchants do, Since NFC works only over distances of a since include American Express, LG, Intel, and vice versa. As a result, e-cash has few centimetres, users could pair NFC de- Siemens and SonyEricsson. taken hold only in situations where adop- vices simply by holding them against However, support from one crucial tion is mandatory, such as in university or each other. Sebastian Nystrom of Nokia quarter is still muted the mobile oper- business canteens. likens the process to initiating a conversa- ators. It is not hard to see why their enthu- The use of pre-paid credit for transport tion by walking up to someone and tap- siasm might be lukewarm. Mobile tickets o ers a way out of this conun- ping them on the shoulder, rather than operators have a long backlog of technol- drum. Once large numbers of people start calling to them across a busy room. ogies to sell, and many, such as picture using contactless cards as tickets, retailers Given its relatively slow transmission messaging and videotelephony, have have an incentive to accept the cards as a speed a maximum of 424 kilobits per been coolly received by customers. And means of paying for small items such as second, with early devices limited to half Simpay, a European mobile-payment newspapers and snacks. This has already that data rate NFC would not be very project set up by Orange, T-Mobile, Tele- happened in Hong Kong, for example, suitable for transferring, say, music les fónica and Vodafone, collapsed in June. where over 12m Octopus cards are in cir- between a mobile phone and a computer. The support of the operators is impor- culation. The same cards are also used for No problem, say NFC advocates: having tant, since they have to decide which around 750,000 non-transport purchases established a secure pairing with NFC, the handsets, and hence which features, to per day, worth an average of HK$17 two devices can switch to a wireless tech- make available to their subscribers. The ($2.20) each. Similarly, the 10m Suica nology with higher bandwidth, such as operators might worry that if NFC makes cards issued by the East Japan Railway Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, which will also allow it easier to connect mobile phones to Company can also be used for small pur- the devices to stay paired once they move other devices over short-range wireless chases, and London’s Oyster cards will out of direct proximity. links, this might discourage subscribers follow suit next year. NFC-equipped mo- It all sounds great in theory. But who from sending data over the cellular net- bile phones could further accelerate the is backing NFC in practice? An impressive works. Conversely, as more functions adoption of e-cash, by making it possible group of companies, as it happens. The converge on the mobile phone, NFC could to top-up funds over the air. NFC Forum, an industry association, was o er operators a way to increase revenue founded by Nokia, Philips and Sony last and boost customer loyalty by o ering Near- eld opportunities year, and was joined in February by Mas- new services. We do see it as a way to As well as turning your mobile phone terCard, Matsushita, Microsoft, Motorola, boost network tra c, says Frank Zandee into a travel pass and a wallet, NFC could NEC, Samsung, Texas Instruments and of KPN, a mobile operator based in the also allow it to function as a ticket to a cin- Netherlands that is testing NFC as a ema showing or sporting event, bought in means of ticketing at a local football club. advance via a mobile internet connec- As mobile phones start to be used for - tion. And with access to o ces, homes nancial transactions and ticket purchases, and schools increasingly controlled using he says, operators stand to bene t. contactless cards, NFC could enable Though it has not joined the NFC Fo- phones to double as pass cards, too. Yet rum, NTT DoCoMo regards the conver- another possible application is in market- gence of mobile phones and contactless ing. Smart posters could include an NFC cards as an opportunity to move into - chip, so that holding a mobile phone nancial services. In April, it paid ¥98 bil- against the poster causes a related web lion ($900m) for a 34% stake in Sumitomo page to pop up on the phone’s browser. Mitsui Card Company, Japan’s second- Ringtones or wallpaper graphics could biggest credit-card issuer. By issuing its even be downloaded straight from the subscribers with credit cards embedded poster. Similar promotional use has al- in their handsets, DoCoMo hopes to ready been made of Bluetooth, but using boost loyalty and create a new source of NFC for the same purpose promises to be revenue. But this idea might not transfer less ddly and more secure, since initiat- to Europe, since it is predicated on the rela- ing an NFC connection requires close tively undeveloped state of Japan’s con- proximity between phone and poster. sumer- nance industry, notes Gerhard Indeed, handset-makers believe NFC Fasol of Eurotechnology Japan, a consul- could also provide a simple way around tancy based in Tokyo. another problem: con guring devices to So if NFC does take o , it will not do so talk to each other over wireless connec- overnight. Coins have been in use since tions. Both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth stan- the seventh century Bc. People are un- dards, which are commonly used for this likely to give them up quickly. It is only purpose, have a range of several metres, now that we are seeing the take-up of e- which means that many possible devices cash, after six years of operations, says could be in range, including those belong- Brian Chambers, international opera- ing to someone in a neighbouring o ce or tions director of Hong Kong’s Octopus apartment. To ensure a secure connection scheme. It takes a certain amount of time between two speci c devices, users have to change people’s attitudes. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Case history 15
From Toy Story to Chicken Little
Computer animation: on its way. That is because The introduction of digital some of the most vivid and certainly the most enter- technology has transformed taining evidence of the plung- animated lms. But will ing cost and growing power of computer-animated humans computers is now to be found on ever look realistic on screen? the silver screen. Computer animation has made OT by chance, the lm that rst intro- enormous progress in a very short time. Nduced audiences to the story-telling As recently as 1986, the year Pixar was exibility and entertainment potential of founded, the use of the technology in computer animation was about toys. lms was in its infancy. Directors began Buzz Lightyear the space-ranger, Woody by experimenting with special-e ects se- the cowboy and the other playthings quences within live-action movies such brought to life in Pixar’s Toy Story as The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2 (1995) were chosen not simply for their (1991). There were some short computer- appeal to children though that did no generated (CG) lms, but full-length ani- harm at the box o ce, of course. Toys mated lms were still mainly hand- were chosen also because they are rela- drawn and two-dimensional, with spar- Fewer than a dozen feature-length CG tively easy to model and animate on a ing use of CG imagery in some lms have come out since Toy Story , computer. They do not have complicated sequences, as in Disney’s Beauty and but several more will be released in 2006 features (such as fur or wavy hair), and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992). alone, including Ice Age 2 from Blue nobody expects them to make uid, life- Since then, CG e ects have became Sky, Cars from Pixar, Over the Hedge like movements. By the time Toy Story cheaper and more realistic, and are now and Flushed Away from DreamWorks, 2 was released in 1999, however, the commonplace in live-action movies, and Barnyard and Charlotte’s Web characters’ motions were smoother, the many of which have come to rely heavily from Paramount. It all underscores the lighting more realistic, and the humans on them (think of the recent Star Wars rapid rise to respectability of this new (including Al, the greedy toy-collecting or Lord of the Rings trilogies). The same medium, an exciting fusion of art and villain) were also more realistically de- technological progress also made full- technology. So how does it work? picted. Further improvements doubtless length lms feasible, and Toy Story and await in Toy Story 3 , which is already its many successors have now become a The making of a monster popular, pro table and innovative genre. Putting a CG feature lm together is very At the forefront of this revolution in di erent from making a live-action movie lmmaking is Pixar, which has been using actors. That typically involves a di- responsible for such hits as Monsters, rector accumulating a dozen hours of Inc , Finding Nemo and The Incred- footage (through multiple takes, shooting ibles . Next week an exhibition of Pixar’s scenes from di erent angles, and so on) artwork, designs and storyboards opens and then editing it down to a reasonable at the Museum of Modern Art in New length. For CG lms, the structure is gen- York. Pixar’s rivals include DreamWorks erally xed from the very beginning. The Animation (makers of Shrek and storyline is worked out, rough character Madagascar , among other lms) sketches are produced and a detailed, and Blue Sky (makers of Ice Age scene-by-scene storyboard is put to- and Robots ). Tellingly, even Dis- gether. Then the characters’ voices are re- ney, which dominated the eld corded by actors, digital models of the of animated movies in the pre- characters are created, and the animators digital era, has now belatedly start to bring the characters to life in ac- embraced the technology. cordance with the dialogue. So you see Having previously acted as the your picture slowly start to move, says distributor for Pixar’s lms, Max Howard, a former Disney animation last month Disney released executive who is now at Exodus Film Chicken Little , its rst all-CG Group, an independent studio. lm developed in-house. Initial pencil-and-paper sketches of 1 16 Case history The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 For a full-length feature lm, rendering can take more than a year of round-the-clock calculation using a vast amount of computing power.
2 the characters are turned into computer software then interpolates between these corresponding to skin, hair, fabric and so models consisting of a wireframe, or positions to determine the position of on. Given a character model and its asso- mesh, of hundreds of thousands of sim- each limb in each frame. The result can be ciated shaders, a speci ed viewpoint, ple elements. To build a monster, for ex- viewed right away, in a simpli ed wire- and the de ned position of one or more ample, you might start o with a cylinder frame view that enables the animators to virtual light sources, it is then possible to for each leg and perhaps a sphere for its check their work as they go along. render a view of the character. The light body, says Jill Ramsay of Alias, a leading This process sounds very mechanical. falling on to each polygon of the charac- maker of animation and modelling soft- The magic comes from the animator’s ter’s surface is calculated, and the appro- ware. Each of these elements is made up skill in bringing the character to life. An priate shader then determines its colour of tiny polygons, and any number of ele- animator and an actor are essentially the and texture. After an enormous amount ments can be moulded together. You can same kind of talent, says Alvy Ray of computational e ort, this produces a de ne any shape you want in 3D, she Smith, a computer-graphics guru and one realistic, textured character. Throw in says, but it is a long, slow process. of the co-founders of Pixar. I call it other characters, objects and background Once the wireframe monster has been magic, because they convince us that a models, all with their associated shaders, created, the next stage is to make it move. stack of polygons has emotions and is and the result is a single movie frame. To do this, the animator identi es the lo- conscious. The computer does the actual For a full-length feature lm, the ren- cation of its joints and facial features and animation, but does so according to the dering process can take more than a year attaches a set of control points to them. operator’s instructions. This is, notes Dr of round-the-clock calculation using a This process, called rigging , is akin to at- Smith, not dissimilar to traditional hand- vast amount of computing power. For taching strings and a control harness to a drawn cartoons, in which animators Madagascar which depicts the adven- wooden puppet, but is far more complex. draw every second or third frame, and tures of a zebra, hippo, lion and gira e DreamWorks spent more than a year set- other artists called in-betweeners ll in transplanted from a zoo into the wild Mr ting up the rigging for Shrek, the green the frames in between. Leonard says that DreamWorks’ com- ogre in the lm of the same name. Such But there is more to animated lms puter centre (or render farm ) ran seven an elaborate character, says Ed Leonard, than walking wireframes, of course. So days a week for a year and a half. At the rm’s chief technology o cer, typi- the next stage is to add colour and texture Pixar, a movie can also take between one cally has hundreds of controls for its rigs, to the character models. In the case of and two years to render, says Dr Smith. to give it the necessary range of expres- Shrek, the character model is based on an sions and movements. Rigs can also be anatomically correct representation (if Special sauce much smarter than the strings used to that is possible for a ctitious monster) of This basic process has not changed much control wooden puppets: they can be bones, muscles and fat layers. Animators since the days of Toy Story , but the con gured so that if an animator moves a move the bones, and the muscles and fat technology, both hardware and software, character’s foot, for example, the knee layers respond in a realistic manner. This has advanced enormously. More power- bends in the appropriate manner. determines the shape of the outer layer ful computers mean more elaborate mod- With the control rigs in place, the ani- of skin and clothes. Colour and texture elling and rendering is possible, mators can start to de ne the character’s are then de ned using pieces of software producing more realistic images. Animals movements. There are 24 frames per sec- called shaders . now have fur and hair; lighting, re and ond in a lm, but the character’s exact po- Each shader is a program that de nes smoke e ects are more subtle and sophis- sition does not have to be speci ed in surface properties such as colour, texture, ticated; and scenery can be more de- each one. Instead, the animator positions transparency, bumpiness, shadow col- tailed. The bigger studios have spent the limbs of the character at particular our, and so on. Di erent shaders can be years developing proprietary software points in time and de nes how they are attached to various parts of a character that creates exactly the e ects they want. to move from one to the next. Animation model to give it speci c characteristics, DreamWorks, for example, has de- 1
The animator positions the character’s limbs; esh and clothes are overlaid on top; nally, lighting and textures are applied The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Case history 17
acters must swim. Another challenge is herds of animals, ocks of birds, or schools of sh. Animat- ing large numbers of creatures is a chal- lenge because you can’t hand-animate Some viewers found the characters in Polar Express creepy every single character, says Mr Leonard. Instead, a small number of characters are 2 veloped its own lighting tool, called computationally intensive. Indeed, the typically created and animated, and are LIGHT, and its own rendering tool, called increasing complexity of the lms would then duplicated many times. The latest D-Render. Blue Sky’s rendering software, appear to be slightly outstripping the approach, says Mr Leonard, is to give called CGI Studio, uses proprietary tech- growing speediness of computers. When groups of characters behavioural charac- niques to render unusually life-like fur Shrek 2 was made, it required 10m ren- teristics, and animate them as a coherent and grass. For Ice Age 2 , which will be der hours, versus 12.5m for Madagas- group, rather than separate individuals. released next March, Blue Sky has de- car , made just a year later. But by far the greatest challenge lies in veloped special software, based on the Even so, technological hurdles re- the more realistic depiction of people. principle of ray tracing , to render water main, and there are still several areas The problem with human beings is the and ice e ects. with considerable room for improve- face, says Mr Ludwig. So familiar are au- Ray tracing, a technique that has been ment. An obvious one is fur. Since most diences with subtle human movements around since the dawn of computer fantasy characters in animated lms are and expressions, he says, that the mi- graphics, is capable of rendering re ec- animals or monsters, depicting realistic nute something is not there, we know it, tive and translucent objects more realisti- fur is a priority for animation studios. But and it feels dead or strange. That is not cally than a shader-based approach, but there are innumerable variations: long, the case for sh or monsters. Polar has the drawback of being far more com- short, thick, thin, wet, dry, matted. Fur Express , which combined computer ani- putationally intensive. Where a shader- must re ect light realistically, and long mation with motion-capture of perfor- based approach calculates how light hair should wave around as the character mances from human actors, was one of from virtual light sources a ects the nal moves. While there has been much pro- the most ambitious attempts to render re- colour of each point in the image, ray- gress in recent years, DreamWorks is pro- alistic humans. But many viewers found tracing works the other way around: vir- mising a completely new generation of the results eerie or sinister. tual rays of light are followed from the fur in next year’s Over the Hedge . Sim- Pixar has always chosen to depict peo- viewer back into the model, and are ilarly, Carl Ludwig, technology chief of ple in a cartoon-like way in its lms, nota- bounced o surfaces until they bounce Blue Sky, is particularly proud of the new bly The Incredibles , rather than striving back into a light source. (The traced rays and improved fur in Ice Age 2 , which for realism. DreamWorks, in contrast, has thus actually travel in the opposite direc- will also come out in 2006. taken a more realistic approach with the tion to real light rays.) Rays that encounter Then there is water, which is still human characters in the Shrek lms. a partially transparent surface are split really hard to model, says Ms Ramsay There has been progress in the modelling into two rays, one of which passes of Alias. It is a substance that re ects light, of the way human skin scatters light, and through the surface, while the other is re- readily changes its degree of translu- hair is becoming more lifelike too. But ected. Taking into account the way in cence, and must ow, splash and ripple such improvements, says Ms Ramsay, are which light bounces o and passes realistically. But that has not stopped stu- still costly computationally. through surfaces in this way entails a lot dios from plunging ahead, so to speak. Besides, ought the industry’s objective of complex calculations, but greatly in- Ice Age depicted life-like footprints and really be making perfectly realistic hu- creases the realism of the resulting image. snow; next year’s sequel will be set in a mans to have, as Mr Howard says, Fred Increasingly, ray-tracing is used in world of melting ice and oods, so char- Astaire dancing again ? Despite Dream- combination with shading, and various Works’ more realistic approach, Mr Leon- clever tricks have been devised to enable ard rejects any suggestion that total animators to make appropriate use of realism is the goal. Instead, he says, com- both approaches without too much of a puter-generated characters, such as Prin- performance penalty. Ray-tracing fea- cess Fiona in the Shrek lms, need only tures have, for example, been incorpo- be real enough to express rated into Pixar’s RenderMan software, a recognisable emotions. If shader-based rendering tool that is used you want to do perfectly internally, but which Pixar also sells to real humans, then I sug- other companies. RenderMan was used gest you get a camera by Disney in the creation of Chicken Lit- and go shoot actors, tle , for example, and is widely used in because it’s a lot special-e ects work. cheaper, he says. Faster computers make new tricks After all, given anima- possible, but animators seem to have an tion technology’s abil- insatiable appetite for more computer ity to depict almost power. Madagascar could not have anything that can be been made three years ago, says Mr Leon- imagined, why should it ard, because modelling the jungle was so Imaginary animal, realistic fur limit itself to mere realism? 7 18 Reports The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005
de cit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, schizophrenia and diabetes. With state-run health-care systems and strong research traditions, both countries are well placed in the eld. Norway is collect- ing blood samples and health data from 200,000 citizens and from 100,000 preg- nant women. Britain’s project, called UK Biobank, will soon be gathering blood and urine samples and con dential life- style data from 500,000 volunteers aged 40-69, in an attempt to untangle the ge- netic and environmental causes of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and can- cer. Participants will provide new sam- ples and data for up to 30 years, allowing the development and course of di erent diseases to be tracked. Similarly, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which already runs one of the world’s oldest university-based bio- banks, plans to follow 500,000 Swedes for 30 years to gain new insights into de- pression, cancer and heart disease. There are numerous other examples such as Bio- bank Japan, the Estonian Genome Pro- ject, Singapore Tissue Network, Mexico’s INMEGEN, and Quebec’s CARTaGENE. Indeed, Sweden, Iceland, Quebec and Ja- Medicine’s new pan have been banking blood and tis- sue samples from their citizens for generations without attracting much at- central bankers tention. And all kinds of government in- stitutes and university medical schools growing consensus that there are eco- around the world have been collecting nomically valuable and scienti cally re- biological samples and clinical data as a Health care: Biobanks, which vealing deposits of biological samples matter of routine. These resources could link tissue samples to patient and clinical data around the world, just now turn out to be extremely valuable. waiting to be tapped. An oft-quoted re- data, are all the rage but have search paper produced by RAND, a think- Unanswered questions drawbacks as well as bene ts tank, in 1999 suggests that some 300m But not everyone likes the idea. Bioethi- samples obtained through routine patient cists are quick to point out that the very HAT do you get when you link a visits to clinics and hospitals are stored in thing that makes biobanks enticing and Wrepository of tissue and DNA sam- America, at hundreds of public and priv- powerful to health-care professionals and ples to a database of personal medical ate labs. The number and variety of sam- drug companies makes them equally so information and test results? A biobank. ples that lie elsewhere in the world is to law enforcement, the insurance indus- The combination is potent, because it can unknown, but must be even larger. try and government o cials with a di er- reveal things that tissue samples or medi- The idea of biobanks is not new. But ent agenda. This fear is not without cal records alone cannot. Drug companies rising health-care costs, drug companies’ foundation. The Swedish government, and medical researchers can, for example, desire to keep their development pipe- which created one of the world’s rst na- pick out samples from people with a par- lines stocked, advances in data-mining tional biobanks in 1975 it now has at ticular disease, and determine its associ- technologies and a growing interest in the least a blood sample from all of its citi- ated genetic variations to aid drug notion of personalised medicine have zens used a loophole to gain access to the discovery. Public-health o cials and epi- spurred a growing realisation, in both the biobank a couple of years ago, in order to demiologists should be able to identify health-care and information-technology track down a killer. disease patterns in subpopulations and sectors, that biobanking could be a very It was not, admittedly, a run-of-the- ethnic groups far more quickly than is cur- good business indeed. The result has been mill murder case. Anna Lindh, Sweden’s rently possible. And advocacy groups a growing level of activity in the eld. popular foreign minister, was murdered hope that disease-speci c biobanks will At a conference held in London in Oc- in September 2003 at a department store. accelerate research into disorders such as tober, Britain and Norway announced a Although Lindh’s murder was captured AIDS and breast cancer. plan to co-operate on biobank-based on closed-circuit television, it was ulti- Nobody knows for sure, but there is a research into the causes of attention- mately a DNA match from the murder1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Reports 19 While bioethical and regulatory worries about biobanks abound, lack of agreement on standards could prove to be a more immediate impediment.
2 weapon, a knife, that provided the basis is unclear. One approach would be to might be treated in very di erent ways. on which the leading suspect, Mijailo Mi- make information freely available to aca- The hope is that personalised medicine jailovic, a 25-year-old Swedish Serb, was demic and government researchers, but could both make treatment more e ective convicted. The DNA sample used to place to charge drug companies and other com- and reduce side-e ects. Data in biobanks Mr Mijailovic at the scene came from the mercial interests which stand to pro t will play a crucial part in realising this vi- country’s national biobank, which un- from their use of the data. That could sion, by revealing insights into disease like many of the research biobanks now make biobanks self-sustaining, or even progression and responses to standard being established is not anonymous. pro table; it has even been suggested that therapies. That, in turn, will reduce the Mr Mijailovic’s conviction was later donors should be given a share of the pro- time needed to develop new personal- overturned on the basis that he su ers ceeds. But purists insist that biobanks ised diagnostic tests and treatments. from a psychiatric disorder, but damage should remain strictly non-commercial According to Mike Svinte, head of to the claim of con dentiality made by entities. The Genome Institute of Singa- IBM’s information-based medicine initia- Sweden’s biobank was done neverthe- pore forbids any commercialisation of its tive, biobanking is becoming an essen- less. This must never happen again, biobank data, for example, though so far it tial part of the transformation to a says Jan-Eric Litton of the Karolinska Insti- is the exception to the rule. personalised model of medicine. IBM tute biobank. This is not and should not Further complicating matters is the certainly hopes so, as a proponent and be the purpose of a biobank the only question of scope. Should biobanks con- backer of biobank initiatives around the purpose, and it is my great hope that all tain samples of blood, urine, tissues or world. Biobanks, with their mountains of nations abide by and clarify this, is to un- stem cells? Should data from clinical trials associated data, require huge amounts of derstand disease and nd ways to address storage and processing power, and repre- it in all of its forms. Biobanks are the fu- sent a daunting, yet potentially lucrative ture they are a unique opportunity if we new market for the computer giant. Other manage them correctly. technology companies such as Oracle, GE But while limiting the use of biobanks Healthcare and McKesson also stand to to medical research sounds like a simple bene t if biobanks start to become solution, grey areas abound. In January, widely adopted. There has already been Swedish lawmakers temporarily changed much discussion about the standards and the law to allow access to the biobank in protocols that will be used to store bio- order to identify bodies of Swedish citi- bank data, but these are still early days. zens killed in the Asian tsunami. That is When the debate begins in a more public arguably a non-medical use, but one that fashion it will surely be heated. is harder to argue against: the samples Indeed, while bioethical and regula- were used to identify children, for whom tory worries about biobanks abound, the dental records did not exist. As a biobank lack of agreement on standards and pro- meeting held in Stockholm last May, and cedures could turn out to be a more imme- a follow-up meeting in Washington, DC, diate impediment to their adoption and last month made clear, there is still no use. Martin Ferguson, senior vice-presi- agreement about how to keep probing of- dent for bioinformatics at Ardais Cor- cials citing national security or other se- be included? And how far back in time poration, a rm that helps researchers rious concerns out of the biobank vaults. should biobank collections go to school, assemble and maintain large repositories Equally di cult to resolve is the matter or even to new-born check-ups? Another of clinical samples, argues that most of of consent. Speaking in Stockholm, Wolf- challenge is that of quality control. It is vi- the technologies and standards that are gang Patsch of Paracelsus Private Medical tal that the millions of samples in a bio- needed already exist. The main hurdle University and Landeskliniken in Salz- bank are collected in a consistent and remains getting enough biobanks to actu- burg, and Chia Lin Wei of the Genome In- uniform way to avoid contamination or ally agree upon and adopt a common set stitute of Singapore, highlighted the mislabelling of samples. As they come of systems for deployment, and thus be- importance of creating a new consent under increasing scrutiny from regula- come a sort of ‘nucleation point’ for a model, engaging the public in dialogue tors, drug companies are already ques- functioning biospecimen collection sys- about the promise and perils of biobanks, tioning the quality of biobank data. tem, he says. and ensuring accountability, transpa- Before basing critical drug-development In other words, if the full potential of rency and con dentiality. Britain’s UK decisions on information from biobanks, biobanks is to be met, there will have to be Biobank, for example, will encrypt the they will need a high degree of con - a standard way for researchers, whether identity of donors, so that only selected dence in its reliability. in the public or private sector, to order and users will be able to link samples and data access samples and data from biobanks to particular individuals. Total anonym- Money in the bank? just as the internet’s common standards ity raises problems of its own: it precludes All of these objections must be weighed facilitated the free ow of information the possibility of informing donors or against biobanks’ great potential to help across digital networks, and made avail- their relatives if donated material reveals in the development of new treatments, able previously untapped data. Only then them to be at risk from a speci c disease. however. It is widely assumed that, in fu- will it be possible to fully exploit the The question of con dentiality is ture, drug treatments will be tailored to mountains of samples, and reams of data, bound up with another conundrum: who each patient’s unique genetic blueprint, that are currently locked up in the world’s is going to pay for biobanks? The answer so that two people with the same disease hospitals, clinics, and laboratories. 7 20 Reports The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005
Threads that think
ary textiles, but can do extraordinary The most basic kind is electrically conduc- things: generate heat, monitor vital signs, tive, such as Textronics’ textro-yarn , a Materials: The incorporation of act as switches or sensors, and even slightly elastic material that resembles or- sensors and controls into change colour. With so much fabric dinary fabric. Because it conducts electric- woven into daily life, proponents of ity, it can be used for heating (by passing a clothing is the rst step towards smart fabrics see them as a natural way to current through the fabric), as a radio an- a new realm of smart fabrics increase the pervasiveness of today’s gad- tenna, for electromagnetic shielding, to gets and add snippets of intelligence to ev- provide power to other devices embed- T COULD give the term power suit a eryday items. Computing power is ded into clothing, and even to make elec- Iwhole new meaning. Getting dressed a already being incorporated into cars, trodes, for example to monitor vital signs. few years from now, you may nd your- household appliances and entertainment The company has just launched a sports self putting on more than mere fabric. systems, notes Stacey Burr, the boss of bra that monitors the wearer’s heart-rate Your clothes may by then sport electronic Textronics, a spin-o from DuPont based and calorie consumption, and displays sensors and tiny computers. As you walk in Wilmington, Delaware, that is develop- them on a wristwatch-sized screen. out of the door, you will be not just fash- ing electronic textiles and clothing. So fab- Another of Textronics’ smart materials ionably attired, but digitally enhanced a ric, she argues, is a natural next step. is textro-polymer . Its bres have the living, breathing node on the internet. About 70% of the materials that people useful property that their resistance This prospect will delight some people come in contact with are fabrics, she changes when they are stretched. This can and horrify others. But it could actually says. We want to create fabrics that be used to detect bending, stretching or happen, if the eld known variously as warm, illuminate, conduct, sense and re- tugging, which can in turn reveal whether smart fabrics, electronic textiles or wash- spond. Smart fabrics will be particularly the wearer of a smart garment is moving able computing can achieve the break- useful in the elds of medicine, sports, or stationary, or whether a particular car through its proponents believe is just communications and personal security, seat or bed is occupied. In September, Tex- around the corner. Ms Burr predicts. tronics announced a deal with Konarka, a As recently as ve years ago the idea of pioneer in exible solar panels, with a clothing, furniture and upholstery that Material bene ts view to making jackets that can recharge combined fabric with electronics was a She is not alone in her enthusiasm. There mobile phones and other devices. fantasy. Yet today the rst examples of the is a really big market, says John Collins of International Fashion Machines (IFM), technology are on sale, with more ad- Eleksen, a British start-up that sells sen- a rm based in Seattle, has just launched a vanced products on the way. Current pro- sors based on smart fabrics that can be in- range of light switches based on conduc- ducts are aimed at early adopters, but corporated into clothing, accessories and tive yarns. Squeezing the fuzzy, pom- both hopeful start-ups and big rms such furniture. Eleksen has so far sold 70,000 pom-shaped blob of material changes the as Nike, DuPont and Philips are searching units, but already has rm orders for amount of current owing through it. for an application that will carry the tech- 600,000 units in 2006, and expects sales This di erence is detected by a control cir- nology into the mainstream. to rise tenfold again in 2007. cuit that then turns lights on or o accord- Smart fabrics look and feel like ordin- Smart fabrics can take many forms. ingly. Maggie Orth, IFM’s founder, hopes1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Reports 21
2 these playful switches will nd use in children’s playrooms and designer hotels. The smart fabric made by Eleksen, called ElekTex, acts as a more elaborate touch sensor. It consists of three layers: a top and bottom layer of conductive mate- rial, and a middle layer that conducts elec- tricity when it is compressed. Voltage gradients are applied across the top and bottom layers, at right angles to each other. When the fabric is pressed, current ows through the middle layer. By mea- suring the change in voltage across the top and bottom layers, it is possible to deter- mine where (and roughly how hard) the fabric is being pressed. This means that sliding and tracing gestures, as well as individual presses, can be detected. Eleksen claims that the fabric can sur- vive being washed, crumpled, punctured Fancy fabrics, clever clothes and even driven over. It has already been used to make roll-up fabric keyboards for of moisture can be determined by mea- at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- handheld computers, to control a heated suring variations in the resistance of this ogy (MIT), says the real breakthrough will jacket made by Innovative Sports, and to layer. This smart fabric can be used for come when the control electronics are not incorporate iPod controls into ski jackets what Eleksen delicately calls inconti- simply housed in clothing, but are woven made by Spyder, Kenpo and Westcomb. nence detection in medicine, and to de- directly into the fabric. Today’s products, The iPod is popped into a special pocket tect moisture in buildings. he points out, are a halfway-house in and plugged into a control wire, and it can As well as acting as sensors and which the textiles and electronics are not then be controlled using fabric sensors in switches that gather information, smart fully integrated. They aren’t ambitious the jacket’s cu or on its sleeve. Buttons fabrics can also function as output de- enough, he says. start and stop playback and select tracks, vices. One approach is that taken by Lumi- Seamlessly weaving cloth, power and and stroking a strip adjusts the volume. nex, the result of a collaboration between data, Dr Post admits, will be easier said In France, a cinema has experimented Caen, an Italian electronics rm, and Sta- than done. Many of the required technol- with using ElekTex to count the number bio, a Swiss textiles company. Luminex is ogies exist already, but overcoming pro- of occupied seats; another proposed use a fabric with bre-optic strands woven blems such as electrical interference, is to incorporate television controls di- into it, which are then illuminated using programming and power supplies will rectly into the fabric of sofas. The real light-emitting diodes powered by a small not be trivial. There are a few funda- value in our stu is being able to keep the battery pack. Luminex has already been mental problems that have to be solved, interface as soft as the thing it’s going incorporated into glowing clothes, safety but they are solvable, he says. into, says Miles Jordan of Eleksen. The garments, handbags and furniture, and Integrating fabrics and electronics company has also devised a second form even a wedding dress. more closely will, Mr Collins predicts, of smart fabric, again made up of several Electric Plaid, devised by IFM, takes a make possible phones, music players and layers, which functions as a moisture sen- di erent approach. Rather than emitting other portable devices that are part elec- sor. The top two layers allow only a small light directly, it contains stainless-steel tronic and part fabric. They will, he says, proportion of incident moisture to reach yarns coated with thermochromic inks be smaller, lighter, less power-hungry the third, bottom layer, which contains a that, as their name suggests, change col- and more durable than today’s devices. matrix of conductive bres. The amount our depending on the temperature. Ap- Smart clothing could not only blur the plying a current causes the yarns to heat lines between materials and electronics up, which changes the ink’s colour. This but, if items of clothing start to absorb pre- makes possible fabrics with slowly viously discrete devices, between people changing patterns (see photo on previous and machines. They will be a kind of sec- page), and even information displays: a ond skin functionality will blend into wallhanging that changes colour depend- the background, says Ms Burr. Perhaps. ing on the weather forecast, for example. But in the short term, at least, it seems As smart as these fabrics are, they still more likely that smart clothing’s appeal rely on separate control circuitry to detect will be limited to particular, well-de ned pressure, motion or moisture, or change situations, such as skiing, policing and their appearance. Smart jackets based on emergency rescue. That said, many peo- ElekTex, for example, contain a small con- ple now refuse to go out without their mo- trol unit to connect the touch sensors on bile phones. The challenge for believers in the sleeve to an iPod. Rehmi Post, a re- smart fabrics is to make people feel simi- A kinder, gentler light switch searcher at the Centre for Bits and Atoms larly naked without them. 7 22 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 The computer will see you now hard Award for outstanding achievement in improving American health care. He Larry Weed has spent his career is one of the giants of the last 500 years in trying to inject a dose of medical thinking, says Don Detmer, a computing into health care in professor at the University of Virginia. the face of erce opposition It’s not hard to understand why Dr Weed thinks doctors need a dose of tech- nology: there is simply too much new in- HEN asked to summarise the sig- formation to absorb and retain. Medline, Wni cance of Larry Weed’s work, a medical database, indexed 3,672 articles Charles Safran, a professor at Harvard about adult coronary heart-disease stud- Medical School, recalls a story from med- ies in 2004, notes Elizabeth McGlynn, of ical history. In the mid-19th century, the RAND Health, part of the RAND think- mortality rate from puerperal (or child- tank. If a physician took 15 minutes to bed ) fever at Vienna General Hospital’s read each article, it would take 115 eight- maternity ward was so high that many hour days to read up on this one clinical women, it is said, preferred to give birth area alone. As Dr McGlynn points out, in the street. Then a doctor called Ignaz most people need a list to remember ve Semmelweis achieved a dramatic reduc- or more items when shopping. How, tion in deaths by insisting that doctors then, can doctors possibly retain informa- wash their hands between autopsies and tion on some 12,000 known diseases in obstetrical examinations. But other doc- their heads? Practising medicine without tors refused to believe that their own computers is like trying to send people hands transferred disease. Besides, they up on the space shuttle with pencil and grumbled, hand-washing was far too paper, says Charles Burger, a doctor time-consuming. Dr Semmelweis was based in Bangor, Maine who has been us- widely ridiculed and eventually red. ing Dr Weed’s software since the 1980s. Today, Dr Weed is meeting similar op- There is no other profession that tries to position to his proposed reforms, which operate in the fashion we do. We go on involve a far greater use of computers by hallucinating about what we can do. doctors. As in 19th-century Vienna, many And it is a dangerous hallucination. doctors today cannot believe that their Preventable medical errors kill between inability to retain today’s vast medical 44,000 and 98,000 people annually in knowledge in their heads is harming pa- America alone, according to a 1999 study tients, as Dr Weed contends. And they from the Institute of Medicine, a non-gov- speculate that his notion of systemati- ernmental organisation in Washington, cally using software to diagnose and care DC. But the problem is not uniquely for patients could be, well, too time-con- American. Dr McGlynn says Canadian, suming. He’s introduced something you British, Israeli and Scandinavian health- have to call disruptive, says Dr Safran, care quality is not much di erent. Perfor- who is also chairman of the American mance is consistently below the stan- Medical Informatics Association. It dards that one might hope for, she says. doesn’t t into the doctor’s work ow. But Dr Weed, who turns 82 this A contagious idea month, is the embodiment of indefatiga- Dr Weed became interested in chemistry bility, devotion and determination. He and biology as a teenager. He spent the has spent more than three decades devis- second world war in the navy, and the GI ing software that matches a patient’s Bill then helped nance his studies at symptoms and health history against an medical school. But he says he cannot re- exhaustive catalogue of computerised member in any precise way when or medical knowledge. And he’s no quack. why I decided to be a doctor. And he is He earned his medical degree in 1947 reticent to discuss any personal details from New York’s Columbia University that do not relate to his core message: that and did his residency at Johns Hopkins only by applying technology to health Hospital in Baltimore. He has taught at a care can rigorous diagnosis and treat- string of renowned medical schools, in- ment be ensured. Dr Weed does remem- cluding that of Yale University in New ber that while teaching and doing Haven, Connecticut. In 1969, he changed microbial-genetics research at Yale in the the basics of health-care delivery with an 1950s, he was struck by the stark contrast innovation called the problem-oriented between his well-ordered one-problem- medical record . And in 1995, he won the at-a-time laboratory and the rapid- re Institute of Medicine’s Gustav O. Lien- time spent in the hospital, dealing with 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 10th 2005 Brain scan 23 As governments push for health-care automation, resistance to the use of IT could nally crumble.
2 patients’ multiple problems. Plus, the les such as during a complex case. But PKC he is brilliant, as scathing as he is skilled. documenting those problems were a takes patients and health-care providers He doesn’t su er fools gladly, notes Dr mess. If you look at the old records, you through a thorough and documented Detmer. He’s a totally consistent per- had stream-of-consciousness notes that question-and-answer routine at each en- sonality this is a delight to those of us almost made it impossible to follow the counter. PKC engages patients, who enter who nd him inspiring, and tedious to patient’s record, says Dr Burger. information about symptoms, family those who wish he would go away. The experience inspired Dr Weed to medical history and so forth. During or Dr Weed says of his critics that when devise a new system the problem-ori- after the medical exam, the health profes- you don’t like the message, it’s very easy ented medical record , or POMR in sional enters physical ndings and test re- to criticise the messenger. No one wants which each problem is itemised and sults. PKC then returns a list of diagnoses you to come to their house and tell them monitored. Dr Weed applied his system- and care options to consider, with links to the oor is dirty and the food is lousy. atic approach rst at East Maine General journal articles on which the recommen- But even if Dr Weed were a atterer with Hospital in Bangor in the late 1950s, and dations are based. a less bitter pill to swallow, there would throughout the 1960s at Case Western Re- Doctors who have used PKC for years still be a host of challenges blocking his serve University School of Medicine in tell endless tales of improved o ce ef- health-care cure. There is huge resistance Cleveland, Ohio and Cleveland Metro- ciencies, better patient involvement and to diagnostic-decision support software politan General Hospital. Following a se- diagnoses that they might otherwise as a category: doctors remain uncon- ries of lectures, articles and a book on the have missed. A study from 2001 validates vinced of its bene ts and believe it en- topic, POMR was adopted in medical in- their experience, indicating that PKC’s croaches on their autonomy. stitutions, universities and doctors’ of- systematic approach can improve out- It is not unusual to hear doctors claim ces in America, Britain and Japan. comes in chronic conditions such as dia- that they are far better diagnosticians Long before it was obvious to anyone betes. America’s Department of Defence than a computer could ever be. But this else, Larry looked at the situation in has been impressed enough to build PKC merely indicates that they do not under- health care and saw a better way, says into its own Composite Health Care Sys- stand that PKC does not purport to make David Brailer, who is America’s rst Na- tem, called CHCS II, so that Dr Weed’s diagnoses (in fact, none of the products in tional Health Information Technology software helps to look after some 9m the category does), but rather guides doc- Co-ordinator. Saying that POMR was people. PKC has a fairly unique capabil- tors through a more exhaustive examina- revolutionary almost understates it, ity to bounce a person’s health record up tion of all the possibilities than even adds Dr Safran. There’s probably no one against medical literature, says Colonel gifted doctors could manage on their who has more fundamentally a ected Bart Harmon, the army’s chief medical own. So for the time being, PKC is pursu- the way we organise our work than Larry information o cer. He adds that PKC’s ing employers, rather than health-care Weed. He fundamentally changed Amer- list of potential diagnoses and care op- providers, as potential customers. A rm ican medicine. tions are the opposite of the so-called can, for example, invite its employees to But as Dr Weed taught and used the cookbook medicine that many doctors access PKC online and then share the re- POMR system, he longed to make it even fear will result from automation. sults with their doctors. more e cient. Why have secretaries type As with POMR, PKC’s software has ap- And after decades of toil, things could in all that health-history information if a peal outside America, too. I would be nally be going Dr Weed’s way. Govern- computer could be made to do the work? very pleased if we could get all the gen- ments and rms are struggling to im- In 1969, Dr Weed who was by now rais- eral practitioners in Britain to use his soft- prove the quality of health care, ing four children with his wife, also a doc- ware, says Brian Jarman, a professor consumers are becoming more demand- tor landed a government grant to build a emeritus at London’s Imperial College ing and costs are rising, making health minicomputer version of POMR known School of Medicine and a former presi- care’s curious technophobia IT spend- as PROMIS, for use on several wards at dent of the British Medical Association. ing per employee is lower than in the re- the Hospital of Vermont in Burlington. As It’s virtually impossible for a doctor tail industry, for example look a professor of medicine at the University these days to remember everything. increasingly unsustainable. As govern- of Vermont, Dr Weed was however un- Computers don’t let you forget things. ments push for health-care automation, able to get the university to adopt the resistance to the use of IT could nally computer system. So he and his team left Medical complications crumble. If you look at medical errors, in 1982 to form the Problem-Knowledge And yet the challenges for Dr Weed’s soft- the cost of care, consumer frustration, Coupler Corporation (PKC) to create a ware are signi cant. For starters, there’s bioterrorism they all mean we need to new, PC-based version of the software. Dr Weed. Many agree that doctors are have our health-information systems to- Today, the company employs a sta of overwhelmed with information, yet far gether, says Dr Brailer. 70 in a former textile mill on the Winoo- fewer agree with Dr Weed’s vision of a It’s impossible to keep up with the av- ski river in Burlington. PKC has built and completely revamped health-care system alanche of knowledge, concludes Neil continually updates software that does a in which medical schools, as we know de Crescenzo, vice-president of global startlingly good job of coupling patients’ them, are dismantled. The diplomas health care at IBM Business Consulting symptoms with the latest relevant medi- they grant and the licensing exams the Services in San Francisco. Therefore, it’s cal information. The PKC software stands states give could not possibly mean and important to use a valid diagnostic-deci- apart within the little-known niche of guarantee what the public thinks they sion aid like Larry’s. In short, it is time for diagnostic decision-support software: mean, says Dr Weed. Genius and dedi- doctors to acknowledge the wisdom of with other diagnostic aids, doctors gener- cation aside, the good doctor can be as washing their hands this time, in a bit of ally use software on an as-needed basis, caustic as he is charming, as bombastic as computing power. 7