Overlaying data The rise of the 3-D images: not on the real world DNA hackers just for cinemas TechnologyQuarterly September 5th 2009

Main title, choose size weight and colour FollowA factory on subtitle, on your as above desk Printing documents is old hat—now you can produce objects in 3-D, like this

TQCOVERSEPT5.indd 1 24/8/09 17:09:17 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Monitor 1

Contents

On the cover Never mind printing documents‹now you can print objects, too, such as this toy car, the plastic pieces of which were produced by a 3•D printer from Z Corporation. 3•D printers are expensive today, but are falling in price and could be widespread within a few years: page 15 Keeping pirates at bay Monitor 1 Cracking down on piracy, ‡oating wind•turbines, smart bridges, cyber tyres, plastic to mop up radiation, batteries that breathe, sorting cancers, digital mapmakers, washing Policing the internet: The music industry has concluded that lawsuits alone without water, hard softwoods, long•term data storage, and are not the way to discourage online piracy spotting humans online HREE big court cases this year‹one in buy the Pirate Bay’s internet address for TEurope and two in America‹have SKr60m and open a legal music site. Rational consumer pitted music•industry lawyers against The Pirate Bay is the latest in a long list 9 The road ahead people accused of online piracy. The of †le•sharing services, from Napster to What your next satnav will do industry prevailed in each case. But the Grokster to KaZaA, to have come under three trials may mark the end of its e orts assault from the media giants. If it closes, Mobile augmented reality to use the courts to stop piracy, for they some other site will emerge to take its 10 Reality, improved highlighted the limits of this approach. place; the music industry’s victories, in Overlaying data on the real world The European case concerned the short, are never †nal. Cases like this also Pirate Bay, one of the world’s largest and provoke a backlash against the music Unmanned military aircraft most notorious †le•sharing hubs. The industry, though in Sweden it took an 12 Attack of the drones website does not actually store music, unusual form. In the European elections in The rede†nition of air power video and other †les, but acts as a central June, the Pirate Party won 7.1% of the directory that helps users locate particular Swedish vote, making it the †fth•largest Case history †les on BitTorrent, a popular †le•sharing party in the country and earning it a seat network. Swedish police began investigat• in the European Parliament. ŒAll non• 15 A factory on your desk ing the Pirate Bay in 2003, and charges commercial copying and use should be The rise of 3•D printers were †led against four men involved in completely free, says its manifesto. running it in 2008. When the trial began in Biohacking February 2009, they claimed the site was So much for that plan 18 Hacking goes squishy merely a search engine, like Google, which The Recording Industry Association of Tinkering with DNA, not software also returns links to illegal material in America (RIAA) has pursued another legal some cases. One defendant, Peter Sunde, avenue against online piracy, which is to 3•D imaging said a guilty verdict would Œbe a huge pursue individual users of †le•sharing 20 It’s almost there mistake for the future of the internetðit’s hubs. Over the years it has accused 18,000 How 3•D displays are improving quite obvious which side is the good side. American internet users of engaging in The court agreed that it was obvious illegal †le•sharing and demanding settle• Brain scan and found the four men guilty, †ning them ments of $4,000 on average. Facing the 22 Paranoid survivor a combined SKr30m ($3.6m) and sentenc• scary prospect of a federal copyright• A pro†le of Andrew Grove, the ing them each to a year in jail. Despite infringement lawsuit, nearly everyone former boss of Intel tough talk from the defendants, they settled; but two cases have proceeded to appear to have tired of legal entangle• trial. The †rst involved Jammie Thomas• ments: in June another †rm said it would Rasset, a single mother from Minnesota 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009

2 who was accused of sharing 24 songs cheaper than going to court and does not But many existing sources of legal using KaZaA in 2005. After a trial in 2007, a involve absurd awards of damages and music have not o ered what †le•sharers jury ruled against her and awarded the their attendant bad publicity. A British want. ŒIn my view, growing internet pira• record companies almost $10,000 per study found that most †le•sharers will cy is a vote of no con†dence in existing song in statutory damages. stop after receiving a warning‹but only if business models, said Viviane Reding, Critics of the RIAA’s campaign pointed it is backed up by the threat of sanctions. the European commissioner for the infor• out that if Ms Thomas•Rasset had stolen a It sounds promising, from the indus• mation society, in July. handful of CDs from Wal•Mart, she would try’s perspective, but graduated response The industry is desperately searching not have faced such severe penalties. The has drawbacks of its own. In New Zealand for better business models, and is o ering judge threw out the verdict, saying that he the government scrapped the idea before its catalogue at low rates to upstarts that had erred by agreeing to a particular Œjury implementation, and in Britain the idea of could never have acquired such rights a instruction (guidance to the jury on how cutting o access has been ruled out. In decade ago. Services such as Pandora, they should decide a case) that had been France the †rst draft of the law was sav• Spotify and we7 that stream free music, backed by the RIAA. He then went further, aged by the Constitutional Council over supported by advertising, are becoming calling the damages Œwholly dispropor• concerns that internet users would be popular. Most innovative are the plans to tionate and asking Congress to change presumed guilty rather than innocent. o er unlimited downloads for a ‡at fee. the law, on the basis that Ms Thomas• Internet service•providers are opposed to British internet providers are keen to o er Rasset was an individual who had not being forced to act as copyright police. such a service, the cost of which would be sought to pro†t from piracy. Even the European Parliament has rolled into the monthly bill. Similarly, But at a second trial, which concluded weighed in, criticising any sanctions Nokia’s ŒComes With Music scheme in June 2009, Ms Thomas•Rasset was imposed without judicial oversight. But includes a year’s downloads in the price found guilty again. To gasps from the the industry is optimistic that the scheme of a mobile phone. The music industry defendant and from other observers, the will be implemented in some form. It does will not abandon legal measures against jury awarded even higher damages of not need to make piracy impossible‹just piracy altogether. But solving the problem $80,000 per song, or $1.92m in total. One less convenient than the legal alternatives. will require carrots as well as sticks. 7 record label’s lawyer admitted that even he was shocked. In July, in a separate case brought against Joel Tenenbaum, a stu• dent at Boston University, a jury ordered him to pay damages of $675,000 for shar• Tilting in the breeze ing 30 songs. According to Steven Marks, general counsel for the RIAA, the main point of pursuing these sorts of cases is to make Energy: A novel design for a ‡oating wind•turbine, which could reduce the other internet users aware that †le•sharing of copyrighted material is illegal. Mr cost of o shore wind•power, has been connected to the electricity grid Marks admits that the legal campaign has AR out to sea, the wind blows faster ered with cables to the seabed. And that is not done much to reduce †le•sharing, but Fthan it does near the coast. A turbine what StatoilHydro, a Norwegian energy how much worse might things be, he placed there would thus generate more company, and Siemens, a German engi• wonders, if the industry had done noth• power than its inshore or onshore cousins. neering †rm, have done. The †rst of their ing? This year’s cases, and other examples But attempts to build power plants in such ‡oating o shore turbines has just started a (such as the RIAA’s attempt in 2005 to sue places have foundered because the water two•year test period generating about 1 a grandmother, who had just died, for is generally too deep to attach a traditional megawatt of electricity‹enough to supply †le•sharing), certainly generate head• turbine’s tower to the seabed. 1,600 households. lines‹but those headlines can also make One way round this would be to put The Hywind is the †rst large turbine to the industry look bad, even to people who the turbine on a ‡oating platform, teth• be deployed in water more than 30 metres 1 agree that piracy is wrong. That helps explain why, in late 2008, the RIAA abandoned the idea of suing individuals for †le•sharing. Instead it is now backing another approach that seems to be gaining traction around the world, called Œgraduated response. This is an e ort to get internet service•provid• ers to play a greater role in the †ght against piracy. As its name indicates, it involves ratcheting up the pressure on users of †le•sharing software by sending them warnings by e•mail and letter and then restricting their internet access. In its strictest form, proposed in France, those accused three times of piracy would have their internet access cut o and their names placed on a national blacklist to prevent them signing up with another service provider. Other versions of the scheme propose throttling broadband• connection speeds. All this would be much quicker and Floating a new idea The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Monitor 3

2 deep. The depth at the prototype’s loca• cost of all this technology was around tion, 10 kilometres (six miles) south•west $1m, less than 1% of the $234m it cost to of Karmoy, is 220 metres. But the turbine is build the bridge. designed to operate in water up to 700 The new Minneapolis bridge joins a metres deep, meaning it could be put handful of Œsmart bridges that have anywhere in the North Sea. Three cables built•in sensors to monitor their health. running to the seabed prevent it from Another example is the six•lane Charilaos ‡oating away. Trikoupis bridge in Greece, which spans It is an impressive sight. Its three blades the Gulf of Corinth, linking the town of have a total span of 82 metres and, togeth• Rio on the Peloponnese peninsula to er with the tower that supports them, Antirrio on the mainland. This 3km•long weigh 234 tonnes. That makes the Hywind bridge, which was opened in 2004, has about the same size as a large traditional roughly 300 sensors that alert its operators o shore turbine. if an earthquake or high winds warrant it Even though it is tethered, and sits on a being shut to traˆc, as well as monitoring conical steel buoy, the motion of the sea its overall health. These sensors have causes the tower to sway slowly from side already detected some abnormal vibra• to side. This swaying places stress on the tions in the cables holding the bridge, structure, and that has to be compensated which led engineers to install additional for by a computer system that tweaks the weights as dampeners. pitch of the rotor blades to keep them The next generation of sensors to facing in the right direction as the tower monitor bridge health will be even more rocks and rolls to the rhythm of the waves. sophisticated. For one thing, they will be That both improves power production wireless, which will make installing them and minimises the strain on the blades a lot cheaper. and the tower. The software which con• Jerome Lynch of the University of trols this process is able to measure the Michigan, Ann Arbor, is the chief research• success of previous changes to the rotor Span of control er on a project intended to help design the angle and use that information to †ne• next generation of monitoring systems for tune future attempts to dampen wave• bridges. He and his colleagues are looking induced movement. at how to make a cement•based sensing If all works well, the potential is huge. skin that can detect excessive strain in Henrik Stiesdal of Siemens’s windpower Engineering: A new generation of bridges. Individual sensors, says Dr Lynch, business unit reckons the whole of Europe Œsmart bridges use sensors to are not ideal because the initial cracks in a could be powered using o shore wind, detect structural problems and warn bridge may not occur at the point the but that competition for space near the of impending danger sensor is placed. A continuous skin would coast will make this diˆcult to achieve if solve this problem. He is also exploring a only inshore sites are available. Siting HEN an eight•lane steel•truss•arch paint•like substance made of carbon turbines within view of coastlines causes Wbridge across the Mississippi River in nanotubes that can be painted onto con‡icts with shipping, the armed forces, Minneapolis collapsed during the evening bridges to detect corrosion and cracks. †shermen and conservationists. But ‡oat• rush hour on August 1st 2007, 13 people Since carbon nanotubes conduct electric• ing turbines moored far out to sea could were killed and 145 were injured. There ity, sending a current through the paint avoid such problems. That, plus the higher had been no warning. The bridge was 40 would help engineers to detect structural wind speeds which mean that a deep• years old but had a life expectancy of 50 weakness through changes in the paint’s water turbine could generate much more years. The central span suddenly gave way electrical properties. power than a shallow•water one, make after the gusset plates that connected the The researchers are also developing the sort of technology that the Hywind is steel beams buckled and fractured, drop• sensors that could be placed on vehicles pioneering an attractive idea. ping the bridge into the river. that regularly cross a bridge, such as city One obvious drawback is that connect• In the wake of the catastrophe, there buses and police cars. These could mea• ing deep•water turbines to the electrical were calls to harness technology to avoid sure how the bridge responds to the vehi• grid will be expensive. But the biggest similar mishaps. The St Anthony Falls cle moving across it, and report any suspi• expense‹the one that will make or break bridge, which opened on September 18th cious changes. far•o shore wind power‹will probably 2008 and replaces the collapsed structure, Some civil engineers are sceptical be maintenance. In deep seas, it will not should do just that. It has an embedded about whether such instrumentation is be possible to use repair vessels that can early•warning system made of hundreds warranted. Emin Aktan, director of the jack themselves up on the seabed for of sensors. They include wire and †bre• Intelligent Infrastructure and Transport stability, like the machines that repair optic strain and displacement gauges, Safety Institute at Drexel University in shallow•water turbines. Instead mainte• accelerometers, potentiometers and corro• Philadelphia, points out that although the nance will be possible only in good sion sensors that have been built into the sensors generate a huge amount of data, weather. If the Hywind turbine turns out span to monitor it for structural weakness• civil engineers simply do not know what to need frequent repairs, the cost of leav• es, such as corroded concrete and overly happened in the weeks and days before a ing it idle while waiting for fair weather, strained joints. given bridge failed. It will take a couple of and of ferrying the necessary people and On top of this, temperature sensors decades to arrive at a point when bridge equipment to and fro, will outweigh the embedded in the tarmac activate a system operators can use such data intelligently, gains from generating more power. But if that sprays antifreeze on the road when it he predicts. Meanwhile, the Obama ad• all goes according to plan, and the new gets too cold, and a traˆc•monitoring ministration’s stimulus plan has ear• turbine does not need such ministrations, system alerts the Minnesota Department marked $27 billion for building and repair• it would put wind in the sails of far•o • of Transportation to divert traˆc in the ing roads and bridges. Just 1% of that shore power generation. 7 event of an accident or overcrowding. The would pay for a lot of sensors. 7 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009

is 60Co, which is radioactive and has a half•life of more than †ve years. At present, nuclear engineers clean Keeping a grip Trappings of cobalt from the system by trapping it in what are known as ion•exchange resins. waste These swap bits of themselves for ions in the water ‡owing over them. Unfortu• nately, the ion•exchange technique traps Transport: A new type of tyre, Materials science: Plastic beads may many more non•radioactive iron ions than equipped with built•in sensors, can provide a way to mop up radiation in radioactive cobalt ones. help avoid a skid‹and could also nuclear power•stations and reduce To overcome that problem Drs Sell• ergren and Narasimhan have developed a improve fuel•eˆciency the amount of radioactive waste polymer that binds to cobalt while ignor• EW sensations of helplessness match UCLEAR power does not emit green• ing iron. They made the material using a Fthat of driving a car that unexpectedly Nhouse gases, but the technology does technique called molecular imprinting, skids. In a modern, well•equipped (and have another rather nasty by•product: which involves making the polymer in the often expensive) car, electronic systems radioactive waste. One big source of low• presence of cobalt ions, and then extract• such as stability and traction control, level waste is the water used to cool the ing those ions by dissolving them in along with anti•lock braking, will kick in core in the most common form of reactor, hydrochloric acid. The resulting cobalt• to help the driver avoid an accident. Now the pressurised•water reactor. A team of sized holes tend to trap any cobalt ions a new tyre could detect when a car is researchers led by Börje Sellergren of the that blunder into them, with the result about to skid and switch on safety sys• University of Dortmund in Germany, and that a small amount of the polymer can tems in time to prevent it. It could also Sevilimedu Narasimhan of the Bhabha mop up a lot of radioactive cobalt. improve the fuel•eˆciency of cars to Atomic Research Centre in Kalpakkam, The team is now forming the new which it is †tted. India, think they have found a new way to polymer into small beads that can pass The Cyber Tyre, developed by Pirelli, deal with it. Their solution is to mop up through the cooling systems of nuclear an Italian tyremaker, contains a small the radioactivity in the water with plastic. power•stations. Concentrating radioactiv• device called an accelerometer which uses In a pressurised•water reactor, hot ity into such beads for disposal would be tiny sensors to measure the acceleration water circulates at high pressure through cheaper than trying to get rid of large and deceleration along three axes at the steel piping, dissolving metal ions from volumes of low•level radioactive waste, point of contact with the road. A transmit• the walls of the pipes. When the water is according to Dr Sevilimedu. He thinks that ter in the device sends those readings to a pumped through the reactor’s core, these the new polymer could also be used to unit that is linked to the braking and other ions are bombarded by neutrons and decontaminate decommissioned nuclear control systems. some of them become radioactive. The power•stations where residual radioactive The accelerometers in the Cyber Tyre ions then either settle back into the walls cobalt in pipes remains a problem. contain two tiny structures, the distance of the pipes, making the pipes themselves Nuclear power is undergoing a renais• between which changes during accelera• radioactive, or continue to circulate, mak• sance. Some 40 new nuclear power•sta• tion, altering the electrical capacitance of ing the water radioactive. Either way, a tions are being built around the world. the device, which is measured and con• waste•disposal problem is created. The International Atomic Energy Agency verted into a voltage. Powered by energy Because the pipes are steel, most of the estimates that a further 70 will be built scavengers that exploit the vibration of ions are iron. When the commonest iso• over the next 15 years, most of them in the tyre, the device encapsulating the tope of iron (56Fe) absorbs a neutron, the Asia. That is in addition to the 439 reactors accelerometers and the transmitter is result is not radioactive. The steel used in which are already operating. So there will about 2.5 centimetres in diameter and the pipes, however, is usually alloyed with be plenty of work for the plastic beads, if about the thickness of a coin. cobalt to make it stronger. When common Drs Sellergren and Narasimhan can indus• Constantly monitoring the forces that cobalt (59Co) absorbs a neutron the result trialise their process. 7 tyres are subjected to as they grip the road could help reduce fuel consumption by optimising braking and suspension. More• over, it could promote the greater use of tyres with a low rolling•resistance, which are often †tted to hybrid vehicles. These save fuel by reducing the resistance be• tween the tyre and the road but, to do so, they have a reduced grip, especially in the wet. If †tted with sensors, such tyres could be more closely monitored and controlled in slippery conditions. Pirelli believes its new tyre could be †tted to cars in 2012 or 2013, but this will depend on getting carmakers to incorpo• rate the necessary monitoring and control systems into their vehicles. As with most innovations, these are expected to be available in upmarket models †rst, and cheaper cars later. But if the introduction in 1973 of Pirelli’s steel•belted Cinturato radial tyre is any guide, devices that make cars safer will be adopted rapidly. 7 They want us to drop beads into the cooling system? The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Monitor 5

‡uorescence resonance•energy transfer (FRET), which is used to study interactions between individual protein molecules, to Air power see if he could †nd out not only how many receptors there are in a biopsy, but also how active they are. The technique uses two types of anti• body, each attached to a ‡uorescent dye Energy: Batteries that draw oxygen molecule. Each of the two types is selected from the air could provide a cheaper, to fuse with a di erent part of an EGFR lighter and longer•lasting molecule, but one will do so only when the receptor has become active. alternative to existing designs Pointing a laser at the sample causes OBILE phones looked like bricks in the †rst dye to become excited and emit Mthe 1980s. That was largely because energy. With an activated receptor, the the batteries needed to power them were second dye will be attached nearby and so so hefty. When lithium•ion batteries were will absorb some of the energy given o invented, mobile phones became small by the †rst. Measuring how much energy enough to be slipped into a pocket. Now a is transferred between the two dyes in• new design of battery, which uses oxygen dicates the activity of the receptors. from ambient air to power devices, could Dr Parker’s idea was implemented by provide even an smaller and lighter source bined with the oxygen to form lithium his colleague Banafshe Larijani. She and of power. Not only that, such batteries oxide that †lled the pores in the carbon. her colleagues used FRET to measure the would be cheaper and would run for Because the oxygen being used by the activity of receptors in 122 head•and•neck longer between charges. battery comes from the surrounding air, cancers. They found that the higher the Lithium•ion batteries have two elec• the device that Dr Bruce’s team has de• activity of the receptors they examined, trodes immersed in an electrically conduc• signed can be a mere one•eighth to one• the more likely it was the cancers would tive solution, called an electrolyte. One of tenth the size and weight of modern bat• return quickly following treatment. The the electrodes, the cathode, is made of teries, while still carrying the same charge. technique was found to be a better prog• lithium cobalt oxide; the other, the anode, Making such a battery is also expected to nostic tool than conventional visual anal• is composed of carbon. When the battery be cheaper. Lithium cobalt oxide accounts ysis of receptor density. is being charged, positively charged lithi• for 30% of the cost of a lithium•ion battery. To speed things up, engineers in the um ions break away from the cathode and Air, however, is free. 7 same group have now created an instru• travel in the electrolyte to the anode, ment that automates the analysis. Tumour where they meet electrons brought there biopsies are placed on a microscope slide by a charging device. When electricity is and stained with antibodies. The system needed, the anode releases the lithium then points the laser at the samples, re• ions, which rapidly move back to the The taxonomy cords images of the resulting energy trans• cathode. As they do so, the electrons that fer and interprets those images to provide were paired with them in the anode dur• of tumours FRET scores. Results are available in as ing the charging process are released. little as an hour, compared with four or These electrons power an external circuit. †ve days using standard methods. Peter Bruce and his colleagues at the Medicine: A new technique aims to Having established the principle with University of St Andrews in Scotland measure the activity of a tumour, head•and•neck cancer, the team hopes to came up with the idea of replacing the and could also help provide a new extend it. They are beginning a large•scale lithium cobalt oxide electrode with a trial to see whether FRET can accurately cheaper and lighter alternative. They way to classify cancers Œhindcast the clinical outcomes associat• designed an electrode made from porous NCOLOGISTS would like to be able ed with 2,000 breast•cancer biopsies. carbon and lithium oxide. They knew that Oto classify cancers not by where• Moreover, if patterns of receptor•activa• lithium oxide forms naturally from lithi• abouts in the body they occur, but by their tion for other types of cancers can be um ions, electrons and oxygen, but, to molecular origin. They know that certain characterised, the technique could be their surprise, they found that it could also molecules become active in tumours applied to all solid tumours (ie, cancers be made to separate easily when an elec• found in certain parts of the body. Both other than leukaemias and lymphomas). tric current passed through it. They ex• head•and•neck cancers and breast cancers, If they succeed, it will be good news for posed one side of their porous carbon for example, have an abundance of mole• researchers who want to switch from electrode to an electrolyte rich in lithium cules called epidermal growth•factor classifying cancers anatomically to classi• ions and put a mesh window on the other receptors (EGFRs). Now a team from Can• fying them biochemically. Most cancer side of the electrode through which air cer Research UK’s London Research In• specialists think that patients with tu• could be drawn. Oxygen from the air took stitute has taken a step towards this goal. mours in di erent parts of the body that the place of the cobalt oxide. Their technique can already identify how are triggered by the same genetic muta• When they charged their battery, the advanced a person’s cancer is, and thus tions may have more in common than lithium ions migrated to the anode where how likely it is to return after treatment. those whose tumours are in the same they combined with electrons from the At present, pathologists assess how organ, but have been caused by di erent charging device. When they discharged it, advanced a cancer is by taking a sample, mutations. The new approach could help lithium ions and electrons were released known as a biopsy, and examining the make such classi†cation routine. That from the anode. The ions crossed the concentration within it of speci†c recep• could, in turn, create a new generation of electrolyte and the electrons travelled tors, such as EGFRs, that are known to therapies and help doctors decide which round the external circuit. The ions and help cancers spread. Peter Parker had the patients should receive them, and in electrons met at the cathode, and com• idea of employing a technique called which combinations and doses. 7 6 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009

the information that is of most interest to motorists. But lower levels of car own• ership in poor countries makes such infor• The digital mation less relevant. Instead, the prolifer• Washing without ation of mobile phones in countries such geographers as China or India, many of which incorpo• water rate satellite•positioning chips, may make pedestrian navigation more relevant for The internet: Detailed digital maps local customers. Mapmakers are more Environment: A washing machine of the world are in widespread use. likely to spend time hanging around bus uses thousands of nylon beads, and They are compiled using both stations collecting timetables, or †nding just a cup of water, to provide a the quickest route, which is not always the high•tech and low•tech methods most direct one, from a city’s railway greener way to do the laundry T IS a damp, overcast Monday morning station to its main shopping street. All this YNTHETIC †bres tend to make low Iin Watford, an undistinguished town information has to be constantly re• Squality clothing. But one of the proper• north of London that seems to o er little freshed, sometimes several times a year. ties that makes nylon a poor choice of to the casual visitor. But one man is eager• To reduce the cost of sending sta on fabric for a shirt, namely its ability to ly snapping photographs. In fact, he is such reconnaissance trips, mapping com• attract and retain dirt and stains, is being working with six high•resolution cameras, panies are asking their customers to do exploited by a company that has devel• all of which are attached to the roof of the more of the work. Tele Atlas, for example, oped a new laundry system. Its machine car in which he is being driven. He sits in gathers data from users of satellite•naviga• uses no more than a cup of water to wash the passenger seat with a keyboard on his tion systems made by TomTom, a †rm each load of fabrics and uses much less lap, tapping occasionally and muttering based in the Netherlands. Drivers can energy than conventional devices. into a microphone. A computer screen report errors and suggest new features, or The system developed by Xeros, a built into the dashboard shows the car’s can agree to submit data passively: the spin•o from the University of Leeds, in progress as a luminous dot travelling TomTom device automatically logs their England, uses thousands of tiny nylon across a map of the town. The man is a vehicle’s position, leaving a trail where it beads each measuring a few millimetres geographic analyst for NAVTEQ, one of a has travelled. It is then possible to calcu• across. These are placed inside the smaller small group of companies that are creating late the vehicle’s direction and speed, of two concentric drums along with the new, digital maps of the world. which can help identify the class of road dirty laundry, a squirt of detergent and a Each keystroke he makes denotes a on which it is travelling. Altitude measure• little water. As the drums rotate, the water feature in the outside world that is added ments mean the road’s gradient can be wets the clothes and the detergent gets to to the map displayed on the screen. New determined. Other information can also work loosening the dirt. Then the nylon details are also recorded in audio form. be deduced. If a lot of cars all seem to be beads mop it up. Once the journey is †nished, the analyst driving across what was thought to be a The crystalline structure of the beads can also pick out new details while watch• ploughed †eld, for example, then it is endows the surface of each with an elec• ing a video playback. All this information likely that a new road has been built. Such trical charge that attracts dirt. When the is transferred from a server in the car’s detective work keeps the company’s beads are heated in humid conditions to boot to NAVTEQ’s database. mapping database up to date. the temperature at which they switch Companies such as NAVTEQ and its In some parts of the world, however, from a crystalline to an amorphous struc• rivals, which include Tele Atlas and Micro• mapmaking relies heavily on voluntary ture, the dirt is drawn into the core of the soft, always start a new map by going to contributions. Google’s Map Maker ser• bead, where it remains locked in place. trusted sources such as local governments vice, for example, makes up for the lack of The inner drum, containing the clothes or mapping organisations. This infor• map data for much of the world by asking and the beads, has a small slot in it. At the 1 mation can be corroborated using aerial or volunteers to provide it. Among its con• satellite photography. Only when these tributors is Tim Akinbo, a Nigerian soft• sources are exhausted do they switch to ware developer who got involved with the more expensive process of gathering the project last year. He has mapped recog• data themselves. The digital maps they nisable features in Lagos, where he lives, create are used mostly by motorists in rich as well as his home town of Jos. Churches, countries. But the same companies are banks, oˆce buildings and cinemas all now creating maps of the developing feature on his map. world, which is requiring them to do His working method is relatively sim• things in somewhat di erent ways. ple. His mobile phone does not have A geographic analyst in India would satellite positioning, but he can use it to probably have deserted his vehicle, †nd• call up Google Maps, see what is on the ing it impractical to manoeuvre on the map in a particular area and make a note country’s crowded urban streets. Instead, of things to add. He then goes online he would go on foot and use a pen to when he gets home to add new features. annotate a map printed on paper, a tech• Why should people freely give up their nique abandoned by his Western counter• time to improve local maps? Mr Akinbo parts a decade ago. Oˆcial mapmaking in explains that local businesses could use some poor countries is far from compre• Map Maker to alert potential customers to hensive, leaving the likes of NAVTEQ or their existence. ŒThey will be contributing Tele Atlas to generate the most accurate to a tool from which other people can maps available. bene†t, as well as themselves, he ex• The type of data that must be gathered plains. With enough volunteers a useful also varies. Navigation in wealthy West• map can be created without the need for ern markets generally requires gathering fancy camera•toting cars. 7 Water? Who needs it? The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Monitor 7

2 end of the washing cycle, the outer drum wood is dried and heated to 110°C. The is halted and the beads fall through the heat transforms the liquid into a resin, slot; some 99.95% of them are collected. which makes the cell walls of the wood Because so little water is used and the thicker and stronger. Memories are warm beads help dry the laundry, less The approach is similar to that of a †rm tumble drying is needed. An environ• based in the Netherlands called Titan made of this mental consultancy commissioned by Wood. Timber swells when it is damp and Xeros to test its system reckoned that its shrinks when it is dry because it contains carbon footprint was 40% smaller than the groups of atoms called hydroxyl groups, Computing: Memory chips based on most eˆcient existing systems for wash• which absorb and release water. Titan nanotubes and iron particles might ing and drying laundry. Wood has developed a technique for be capable of storing data for a The †rst machines to be built by Xeros converting hydroxyl groups into acetyl will be aimed at commercial cleaners and groups (a di erent combination of atoms) billion years designed to take loads of up to 20 kilo• by †rst drying the wood in a kiln and then EW human records survive for long, the grams. Customers will still be able to use treating it with a chemical called acetic F16,000•year•old Paleolithic cave paint• the same stain treatments, bleaches and anhydride. The result is a wood that re• ings at Lascaux, France, being one excep• fragrances that they use with traditional tains its shape in the presence of water, tion. Now researchers led by Alex Zettl of laundry systems. Nylon may be nasty to and is no longer recognised as wood by the University of California, Berkeley, wear, but it scrubs up well inside a wash• grubs that would otherwise attack it. It is have devised a method that will, they ing machine. 7 thus extremely durable. reckon, let people store information elec• The products made by both companies tronically for a billion years. are completely recyclable, environmental• Dr Zettl and his colleagues constructed ly friendly and create woods that are their memory cell by taking a particle of actually harder than most tropical hard• iron just a few billionths of a metre (nano• Hard act to woods. The strengthened softwoods can metres) across and placing it inside a be used in everything from window hollow carbon nanotube. They attached follow frames to spas to garden furniture. Treated electrodes to either end of the tube. By maple is also being adopted for decking applying a current, they were able to on yachts. The cost is similar to that of shuttle the particle back and forth. This Environment: Making softwoods teak, but the maple is more durable and provides a mechanism to create the Œ1 more durable could reduce the easier to keep clean. and Œ0 required for digital representation: demand for unsustainably logged Obviously treating wood makes it if the particle is at one end it counts as a more expensive. But because it does not Œ1, and at the other end it is a Œ0. tropical hardwoods need to receive further treatments‹a shed The next challenge was to read this NE of the reasons tropical forests are made from treated wood would not need electronic information. The researchers Obeing cut down so rapidly is demand regular applications of creosote, for ex• found that when electrons ‡owed through for the hardwoods, such as teak, that grow ample‹it should prove economical over the tube, they scattered when they came there. Hardwoods, as their name suggests, its lifetime. Kebony reckons that its pine close to the particle. The particle’s position tend to be denser and more durable than cladding, for example, would cost a third thus altered the nanotube’s electrical softwoods. But unsustainable logging of less than conventionally treated pine resistance on a local scale. Although they hardwoods destroys not only forests but cladding over the course of 40 years. were unable to discover exactly how this also local creatures and the future pros• Saving money, then, need not be at the happens, they were able to use the e ect pects of the people who lived there. expense of helping save the planet. 7 to read the stored information. It would be better to use softwood, What makes the technique so durable which grows in cooler climes in sustain• is that the particle’s repeated movement ably managed forests. Softwoods are does not damage the walls of the tube. fast•growing coniferous species that ac• That is not only because the lining of the count for 80% of the world’s timber. But tube is so hard; it is also because friction is the stu is not durable enough to be used almost negligible when working at such outdoors without being treated with toxic small scales. preservatives to protect it against fungi Theoretical studies suggest that the and insect pests. These chemicals eventu• system should retain information for a ally wash out into streams and rivers, and long time. To switch spontaneously from a the wood must be retreated. Moreover, at Œ1 to a Œ0 would entail the particle mov• the end of its life, wood that has been ing some 200 nanometres along the tube treated with preservatives in this way using thermal energy. At room tempera• needs to be disposed of carefully. ture, the odds of that happening are once One way out of this problem would be in a billion years. In tests, the stored digital an environmentally friendly way of mak• information was found to be remarkably ing softwood harder and more durable‹ stable. Yet the distance between the ends something that a Norwegian company of the tube remains small enough to allow called Kebony has now achieved. It for speedy reading and writing of the opened its †rst factory in January. memory cell when it is in use. Kebony stops wood from rotting by The next challenge will be to create an placing it in a vat containing a substance electronic memory that has millions of called furfuryl alcohol, which is made cells instead of just one. But if Dr Zettl from the waste left over when sugarcane is succeeds in commercialising this tech• processed. The vat is then pressurised, nology, digital decay itself could become a forcing the liquid into the wood. Next the Kebony’s product is furfuryl thing of the past. 7 8 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009

Only humans allowed

Computing: Can online puzzles that force internet users to prove that they really are human be kept secure from attackers? N THE internet, goes the old joke, Onobody knows you’re a dog. This is untrue, of course. There are many situa• tions where internet users are required to prove that they are human‹not because they might be dogs, but because they people, yet machines still †nd it diˆcult. the unknown word is also assumed to might be nefarious pieces of software The human ability to recognise text as have been typed in correctly, and access is trying to gain access to things. That is why, it becomes more and more distorted is granted. Each unknown word is presented when you try to post a message on a blog, remarkably resilient, says Gordon Legge at as a CAPTCHA several times, to di erent sign up with a new website or make a the University of Minnesota. He is a re• users, to ensure that it has been read cor• purchase online, you will often be asked searcher in the †eld of psychophysics‹the rectly. As a result, people solving to examine an image of mangled text and study of the perception of stimuli. But CAPTCHA puzzles help with the dig• type the letters into a box. Because hu• there is a limit. Just try reading small text itisation of books and newspapers. mans are much better at pattern recogni• in poor light, or ‡icking through an early Even better, the system has proved to tion than software, these online puzzles‹ issue of Wired. ŒYou hit a point quite close be far better at resisting attacks than other called CAPTCHAs‹can help prevent to your acuity limit and suddenly your types of CAPTCHA. ŒReCAPTCHA is spammers from using software to auto• performance crashes, says Dr Legge. This virtually immune by design, since it se• mate the creation of large numbers of means designers of CAPTCHAs cannot lects words that have resisted the best bogus e•mail accounts, for example. simply increase the amount of distortion text•recognition algorithms available, Unlike a user login, which proves a to foil attackers. Instead they must mangle says John Douceur, a member of a team at speci†c identity, CAPTCHAs merely show text in new ways when attackers †gure out Microsoft that has built a CAPTCHA•like that Œthere’s really a human on the other how to cope with existing distortions. system called Asirra. The ReCAPTCHA end, says Luis von Ahn, a computer Mr Hughes, along with many others in team has a member whose sole job is to scientist at Carnegie Mellon University the †eld, thinks the lifespan of text•based break the system, says Dr von Ahn, and so and one of the people responsible for the CAPTCHAs is limited. Dr von Ahn thinks far he has been unsuccessful. Whenever ubiquity of these puzzles. Together with it will be possible for software to break the in•house attacker appears to be mak• Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper and text CAPTCHAs most of the time within ing progress, the team responds by adding John Langford, Dr von Ahn coined the †ve years. A new way to verify that in• new distortions to the puzzles. term CAPTCHA (which stands for Œcom• ternet users are indeed human will then Even so, researchers are already look• pletely automated public Turing test to tell be needed. But if CAPTCHAs are broken it ing beyond text•based CAPTCHAs. Dr von computers and humans apart) in a paper might not be a bad thing, because it would Ahn’s team has devised two image•based published in 2000. signal a breakthrough in machine vision schemes, called SQUIGL•PIX and ESP•PIX, But how secure are CAPTCHAs? Spam• that would, for example, make automated which rely on the human ability to recog• mers stepped up their e orts to automate book•scanners far more accurate. nise particular elements of images. Micro• the solving of CAPTCHAs last year, and in soft’s Asirra system presents users with recent months a series of cracks have CAPTCHA me if you can images of several dogs and cats and asks prompted both Microsoft and Google to Looking at things the other way around, a them to identify just the dogs or cats. tweak the CAPTCHA systems that protect CAPTCHA system based on words that Google has a scheme in which the user their web•based mail services. ŒWe modi• machines cannot read ought to be un• must rotate an image of an object (a tea• fy our CAPTCHAs when we detect new crackable. And that does indeed seem to pot, say) to make it the right way up. This is abuse trends, says Macdu Hughes, be the case for ReCAPTCHA, a system easy for a human, but not for a computer. engineering director at Google. Je Yan, a launched by Dr von Ahn and his col• The biggest ‡aw with all CAPTCHA computer scientist at Newcastle Universi• leagues two years ago. It derives its source systems is that they are, by de†nition, ty, is one of many researchers interested in materials from the scanning in of old susceptible to attack by humans who are cracking CAPTCHAs. Since the bad guys books and newspapers, many of them paid to solve them. Teams of people based are already doing it, he told a spam•†ght• from the 19th century.The scanners regu• in developing countries can be hired ing conference in Amsterdam in June, the larly encounter diˆcult words (those for online for $3 per 1,000 CAPTCHAs solved. good guys should do it too, in order to which two di erent character•recognition Several forums exist both to o er such develop more secure designs. algorithms produce di erent translitera• services and parcel out jobs. But not all That CAPTCHAs work at all illumi• tions). Such words are used to generate a attackers are willing to pay even this small nates a failing in arti†cial•intelligence CAPTCHA by combining them with a sum; whether it is worth doing so de• research, says Henry Baird, a computer known word, skewing the image and pends on how much revenue their activ• scientist at Lehigh University in Penn• adding extra lines to make the words ities bring in. ŒIf the bene†t a spammer is sylvania and an expert in the design of harder to read. The image is then present• getting from obtaining an e•mail account text•recognition systems. Reading man• ed as a CAPTCHA in the usual way. is less than $3 per 1,000, then CAPTCHA is gled text is an everyday skill for most If the known word is entered correctly, doing a perfect job, says Dr von Ahn. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Rational consumer 9

when you want to know which of several can also double the accuracy of the pre• possible routes you should take. dicted time of arrival, says John Holland, The road The classic motorway dilemma pro• the company’s chief executive. vides an example. An overhead sign gives Satnavs with built•in data connections warning of an accident ahead. You could are also becoming more widespread, mak• ahead turn o now but you might then get stuck ing other new things possible. TomTom, in a busy town because so many other which is based in the Netherlands, lets us• drivers are following the same alternative ers of its systems update maps and add route. Or you could stay on the motorway points of interest. With two•way commu• Consumer electronics: Your next in the hope that the tailback will soon nication, satnavs no longer have to be tak• satellite•navigation device will be clear‹only to †nd that it has got worse. A en out of the car and plugged into a com• less bossy and more understanding satnav that knows the average speeds on puter to update their maps. ŒThe screen of your driving preferences particular roads at di erent times of the becomes a connected computer in the car, day, as many now do, does a good job of says Mark Gretton, TomTom’s chief tech• O YOU get a quiet sense of satisfac• predicting which route is the fastest under nology oˆcer. He expects other compa• Dtion in deviating from the route recom• normal circumstances. But one that can nies to develop software that can be down• mended by your satellite•navigation de• also use real•time data would be able to tell loaded by satnavs, just as small programs, vice and ignoring its bossy voice as it that the traˆc on the alternative route, say, or apps, can be added to mobile phones. demands that you Œmake a U•turn or is moving at a snail’s pace while vehicles Another trend is towards greater inte• Œturn around when possible? A satnav’s near the site of the accident are beginning gration between the satnav and the car’s encyclopedic knowledge of the road net• to pick up speed, suggesting that the emer• other systems. Bosch, a German car•com• work may justify its hectoring tone most of gency services have started clearing the ponent company, is working on a satnav the time, but sometimes you really do road. So it could then that can give warning know better. The motorway might look advise you to stay on of a sharp bend ahead, like the fastest way but it can be a night• the motorway. for example. If the car mare at this time of the day; taking a coun• is being driven too fast, try lane or a nifty shortcut can avoid a nas• Keep on going it can prepare the ty turn into heavy traˆc; or sometimes the Journey planning us• brakes to slow the ve• chosen route is simply too boring. ing a satnav usually al• hicle swiftly when the Fortunately your next satnav will be lows for a limited driver realises‹or pre• more understanding, because it will allow choice: you can pick tension the seat belts if a greater level of personalisation. It may the fastest route, the he does not. well, for example, try to learn your motor• shortest, the one that But such features ing foibles, such as your favourite route avoids motorways or a are only possible with into town. This is just one of the features route that passes built•in satnav sys• being readied for inclusion in the next gen• through or avoids a tems. These can be far eration of devices. If you want them to, particular point. Future more convenient than they will help you drive more economical• devices will learn portable units, but they ly by o ering the route that requires the about a driver’s prefer• also tend to be much least fuel, or provide tips on how to adjust ences and adjust ac• more expensive. Porta• your driving style to be more frugal. Access cordingly. MyDrive, for ble devices cost less to real•time traˆc information will also be• example, is a piece of and are easier to up• come more widespread. software developed by date, but they often get Avoiding hold•ups is the most e ective Journey Dynamics, a stolen from cars. The way a satnav can help a driver save both British company, for distinction may be time and fuel, and devices are getting bet• satnav providers. It an• starting to blur, how• ter at doing this. By taking data from spe• alyses the behaviour ever. Portable satnavs cial FM radio signals or via a built•in cellu• of an individual driver that plug into vehicle• lar•data connection, satnavs can take on di erent types of information systems account of current traˆc conditions into road. Some people al• are starting to appear. route calculations. The actual traˆc data ways prefer motor• And TomTom has done can come from a variety of sources includ• ways and drive quick• a deal that allows its ing traˆc sensors, the anonymous moni• ly, others would much devices to be speci†ed toring of mobile phones moving along rather drive on local as the built•in satnav in stretches of road and information collect• roads and some like to Renault cars. ed (also anonymously) from satnavs in keep moving even if All these innova• other vehicles. Access to real•time data will that means a long de• tions should give driv• generally mean paying for a subscription, tour around a traˆc ers more choice and but it turns a navigation device into a live jam. Understanding a ‡exibility. There is still information system. This makes it useful driver’s foibles can en• plenty of scope, it not just when you do not know where you sure that the right sort seems, for satnavs to are going but also on familiar journeys, of route is chosen, and learn new tricks. 7 10 Mobile augmented reality The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009

Reality, improved

The data can be as simple as the names emergence of mobile phones equipped of the mountains visible from a high peak, with satellite•positioning (GPS) functions, Computing: Thanks to mobile or the names of the buildings visible on a tilt sensors, cameras, fast internet connec• phones, augmented reality could be city skyline. At a historical site, AR could tivity and, crucially, a digital compass. This far more accessible‹and superimpose images showing how build• last item is vital, and until recently it was useful‹than virtual reality ings used to look. On a busy street, AR the one bit of hardware that was missing could help you choose a restaurant: wave from the iPhone, says Philipp Breuss• IRTUAL reality never quite lived up to your phone around and read the reviews Schneeweis of Mobilizy, the Austrian soft• Vthe hype. In the 1990s †lms such as that pop up. In essence, AR provides a way ware house which developed Wikitude. (A ŒLawnmower Man and ŒThe Matrix de• to blend the wealth of data available on• compass is standard on the Android G1 picted computer•generated worlds in line with the physical world‹or, as Dr Hu• handset.) But the launch of the compass• which people could completely immerse opaniemi puts it, to build a bridge between equipped iPhone 3GS handset in June is themselves. In some respects this technol• the real and the virtual. expected to trigger a deluge of AR apps. ogy has become widespread: think of all The combination of GPS, tilt sensors those video•game consoles capable of de• AR, me hearties and a compass enables a handset to deter• picting vivid, photorealistic environments, It all sounds rather distant and futuristic. mine where it is, its orientation relative to for example. What is missing, however, is a The idea of AR has, in fact, been around for the ground, and which direction it is being convincing sense of immersion. Virtual re• a few years without making much pro• pointed in. The camera allows it to see the ality (VR) doesn’t feel like reality. gress. But the †eld has recently been ener• world, and the wireless•internet link al• One way to address this is to use fancy gised by the ability to implement AR using lows it to retrieve information relating to peripherals‹gloves, helmets and so advanced mobile handsets, rather than ex• its surroundings, which is combined with forth‹to make immersion in a virtual pensive, specialist equipment. Several AR the live view from the camera and dis• world seem more realistic. But there is an• applications are already available. Wiki• played on the screen. All this is actually other approach: that taken by VR’s sibling, tude, an AR travel•guide application devel• quite simple, says Mr Breuss•Schneeweis. augmented reality (AR). Rather than trying oped for Google’s Android G1handset, has In the case of Wikitude, the AR software to create an entirely simulated environ• already been downloaded by 125,000 peo• works out the longitudes and latitudes of ment, AR starts with reality itself and then ple. Layar is a general•purpose AR browser objects in the camera’s †eld of view so that augments it. ŒIn augmented reality you are that also runs on Android•powered they can be tagged accordingly, he says. overlaying digital information on top of phones. Nearest Tube, an AR application Precisely which items in the real world the real world, says Jyri Huopaniemi, di• for Apple’s iPhone 3GS handset, can direct are labelled varies from one AR applica• rector of the Nokia Research Centre in you in London to the nearest Underground tion to another. Wikitude, as its name im• Tampere, Finland. Using a display, such as station. Nokia’s Œmobile augmented reali• plies, draws information from Wikipedia, the screen of a mobile phone, you see a ty applications (MARA) software is being the online encyclopedia, by scouring it for live view of the world around you‹but tested by sta at the world’s largest hand• entries that list a longitude and latitude‹ with digital annotations, graphics and oth• set•maker, with a public launch imminent. which includes everything from the Lin• er information superimposed upon it. What has made all this possible is the coln Memorial to the Louvre. Using the ap• 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Mobile augmented reality 11

Information from social networks can be overlaid on the real world.

2 plication a tourist can stroll through the ware recognises the object and automati• tion from social networks, such as Face• streets of a city and view the names of the cally retrieves related information, such as book, can then be overlaid on the real landmarks in the vicinity. The full Wikipe• a video about Leonardo da Vinci. The world. Clearly there are privacy concerns, dia entry on any landmark can then be same approach will also allow advertise• but Latitude, a social•networking feature summoned with a click. There are ments in newspapers and on billboards to of Google Maps, has tested the water by 600,000 Wikipedia entries that include be augmented, too. Point your camera at a letting people share their locations with longitude and latitude co•ordinates, says poster of a car, for example, and you might their friends, on an opt•in basis. The next Mr Breuss•Schneeweis, and the number is see a 3•D rendering of the vehicle ‡oating step is to let people hold up their handsets increasing all the time. in space, which can be viewed from any to see the locations and statuses of their Another way to identify nearby land• angle by moving around. friends, says Dr Huopaniemi, who says marks is to draw upon existing databases, Nokia is working on this very idea. such as those used in satellite navigation Recognise this As well as being able to see what your systems. That is how Nokia’s MARA sys• The simplest way to make all this work, friends are up to now, it can be useful to see tem works. It is doubly clever because har• says Greg Davis of Total Immersion, is to into the past. Nokia has developed an AR vesting local points of interest from the put 2•D bar•codes on posters and adver• system called Image Space which lets users NAVTEQ software built into many Nokia tisements, which are detected and used to record messages, photos and videos and phones means no wireless•internet con• retrieve content which is then superim• tag them with both place and time. When nection is needed to look them up. posed on the device’s screen. But the trend someone else goes to a particular location, However it is done, the result of both is towards Œmarkerless tracking, where they can then scroll back through the mes• approaches is to present detailed informa• image recognition is used to identify tar• sages that people have left in the vicinity. tion about the user’s surroundings. That gets. Putting a 2•D bar•code on the Mona More practically, Wikitude can also link said, the precision of the tagging can vary Lisa, after all, is not an option. virtual messages to real places by overlay• somewhat, because satellite•positioning Nokia’s Point•and•Find software uses ing user•generated reviews of bars, hotels technology is only accurate to within a few the markerless approach. It is a mobile• and restaurants from a website called metres at best. This can cause problems phone application, currently in develop• Qype onto the establishments in question. when standing very close to a landmark. ment, that lets you point your phone at a Other obvious uses for AR are turn•by• ŒThe farther you are away from the build• †lm poster in order to call up local viewing turn navigation, in which the route to a ings the more accurate it seems to be, says times and book tickets. In theory this ap• particular destination is painted onto the Mr Breuss•Schneeweis. proach should also be able to recognise world; house•hunting, using AR to indicate But there is a way to improve the accu• buildings and landmarks, such as the Ei el which houses are for sale in a particular racy of AR tagging at close quarters. Total Tower, although recognising 3•D objects is street; and providing additional informa• Immersion, a †rm based in Paris, is one of much more diˆcult than identifying static tion at sporting events, such as biographies several companies using object recogni• 2•D images, says Mr Davis. The way for• of individual players and on•the•spot in• tion. By looking for a known object in the ward may be to combine image•recogni• stant replays. Some of those attending this camera’s †eld of view, and then analysing tion with satellite•positioning, to narrow year’s Wimbledon tennis tournament got that object’s position and orientation, it down the possibilities when trying to a taste of things to come with a special ver• can seamlessly overlay graphics so that identify a nearby building. The advantage sion of Wikitude, called Seer, developed they appear in the appropriate position rel• of the image•recognition approach, says for the Android G1 handset in conjunction ative to the object in question. Mr Davis, is that graphics can be overlaid with IBM and Ogilvy, an advertising agen• Together with Alcatel•Lucent, a tele• on something no matter where it is, or how cy. It could direct users to courts, restau• coms•equipment †rm, Total Immersion is many times it gets moved. rants and loos, provide live updates from developing a mobile•phone service that al• One category of moving objects that matches, and even show if there was a lows users to point their phone’s camera at should be easy to track is people, or at least queue in the bar or at the taxi rank. an object, such as the Mona Lisa. The soft• those carrying mobile phones. Informa• These sorts of application really are just the beginning, says Dr Huopaniemi. Virtu• al reality never really died, he says‹it just divided itself in two, with AR enhancing the real world by overlaying information from the virtual realm, and VR becoming what he calls Œaugmented virtuality, in which real information is overlaid onto virtual worlds, such as players’ names in video games. AR may be a relatively recent arrival, but its potential is huge, he sug• gests. ŒIt’s a very natural way of exploring what’s around you. But trying to imagine how it will be used is like trying to forecast the future of the web in 1994. The building• blocks of the technology have arrived and are starting to become more widely avail• able. Now it is up to programmers and us• Time for some strawberries, then ers to decide how to use them. 7 12 Unmanned military aircraft The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009

Of course, small and comparatively slow UAVs are no match for †ghter jets when it comes to inspiring awe with roar• ing ‡yovers‹or shooting down enemy warplanes. Some drones, such as Ameri• ca’s Predator and Reaper, carry missiles or bombs, though most do not. (Countries with Œhunter•killer drones include Amer• ica, Britain and Israel.) But drones have other strengths that can be just as valuable. In particular, they are unparalleled spies. Operating discreetly, they can intercept ra• dio and mobile•phone communications, and gather intelligence using video, radar, thermal•imaging and other sensors. The data they gather can then be sent instantly via wireless and satellite links to an opera• tions room halfway around the world‹or to the hand•held devices of soldiers below. In military jargon, troops without UAV support are Œdisadvantaged. The technology has been adopted at ex• traordinary speed. In 2003, the year the American•led coalition defeated Saddam Hussein’s armed forces, America’s mili• tary logged a total of roughly 35,000 UAV ‡ight•hours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year the tally reached 800,000 hours. And even that †gure is an underestimate, be• cause it does not include the ‡ights of small drones, which have proliferated rap• idly in recent years. (America alone is thought to have over 5,000 of them.) These robots, typically launched by foot soldiers with a catapult, slingshot or hand toss, far outnumber their larger kin, which are the size of piloted aeroplanes. Global sales of UAVs this year are ex• Attack of the drones pected to increase by more than 10% over last year to exceed $4.7 billion, according to Visiongain, a market•research †rm based in London. It estimates that America will spend about 60% of the total. For its part, ple. But †ghter jets are a limited and expen• America’s Department of Defence says it sive resource. And in con‡icts like that in will spend more than $22 billion to devel• Military technology: Smaller and Afghanistan, they are no longer the most op, buy and operate drones between 2007 smarter unmanned aircraft are widespread form of air power. The nature and 2013. Following the United States, Isra• transforming spying and rede†ning of air power, and the notion of air supe• el ranks second in the development and the idea of air power riority, have been transformed in the past possession of drones, according to those in few years by the rise of remote•controlled the industry. The European leaders, trailing IVE years ago, in the mountainous Af• drone aircraft, known in military jargon as Israel, are roughly matched: Britain, France, Fghan province of Baghlan, NATO oˆ• Œunmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Germany and Italy. Russia and Spain are cials mounted a show of force for the local Drones are much less expensive to op• not far behind, and nor, say some experts, governor, Faqir Mamozai, to emphasise erate than manned warplanes. The cost is China. (But the head of an American their commitment to the region. As the go• per ‡ight•hour of Israel’s drone ‡eet, for ex• navy research•laboratory in Europe says vernor and his oˆcials looked on, Jan van ample, is less than 5% the cost of its †ghter this is an underestimate cultivated by se• Hoof, a Dutch commander, called in a jets, says Antan Israeli, the commander of cretive Beijing, and that China’s drone ‡eet group of F•16 †ghter jets, which swooped an Israeli drone squadron. In the past two is actually much larger.) over the city of Baghlan, their thunderous years the Israeli Defence Forces’ ‡eet of In total, more than three dozen coun• afterburners engaged. This display of air UAVs has tripled in size. Mr Israeli says tries operate UAVs, including Belarus, Co• power was, says Mr van Hoof, an e ective that Œalmost all IDF ground operations lombia, Sri Lanka and Georgia. Some an• way to garner the respect of the local peo• now have drone support. alysts say Georgian armed forces, 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Unmanned military aircraft 13

In Afghanistan and Iraq, almost all big convoys are preceded by a scout drone.

2 equipped with Israeli drones, ground vehicles by picking up signals pro• on objects reportedly as small as a shoe• outperformed Russia in aerial intelligence duced by engine spark•plugs, alternators, box, through clouds, day or night, for 32 during their brief war in August 2008. and other electronics. A Pakistani UAV hours from 18,000 metres‹almost twice (Russia also buys Israeli drones.) called the Tornado, made in Karachi by a the cruising altitude of passenger jets. Iran builds drones, one of which was company called Integrated Dynamics, After North Korea detonated a test nuclear shot down over Iraq by American forces in emits radar signals that mimic a †ghter jet device in May, America said it would begin February. The model in question can re• to fool enemies. replacing its manned U•2 spy planes in portedly collect ground intelligence from UAVs are hard to shoot down. Today’s South Korea with Global Hawks, which an altitude of 4,000 metres as far as 140km heat•seeking shoulder•launched missiles are roughly the size of a corporate jet. from its base. This year Iranian oˆcials do not work above 3,000 metres or so, Big drones are, however, hugely expen• said they had developed a new drone with though the next generation will be able to sive. With their elaborate sensors, some a range of more than 1,900km. Iran has go higher, says Carlo Siardi of Selex Gali• cost as much as $60m apiece. Fewer than supplied Hizbullah militants in Lebanon leo, a subsidiary of Finmeccanica in Ron• 30 Global Hawks have been bought. And it with a small ‡eet of drones, though their chi dei Legionari, Italy. Moreover, drone en• is not just the hardware that is costly: each usefulness is limited: Hizbullah uses gines are smaller‹and therefore Global Hawk requires a support team of lobbed rather than guided rockets, and it is cooler‹than those powering heavier, 20•30 people. As the biggest UAVs get big• unlikely to muster a ground attack that manned aircraft. In some of them the pro• ger, they are also becoming more expen• would bene†t from drone intelligence. But peller is situated behind the exhaust sive. Future American UAVs may cost a ownership of UAVs enhances Hizbullah’s source to disperse hot air, reducing the heat third as much as the F•35 †ghter jet (each of prestige in the eyes of its supporters, says signature. And soldiers who shoot at air• which costs around $83m, without weap• Amal Ghorayeb, a Beirut academic who is craft risk revealing their position. ons). The Neuron, a jet•engine stealth an expert on the group. But drones do have an Achilles’ heel. If drone developed by France’s Dassault Avi• a UAV loses the data connection to its oper• ation and partners including Italy’s Alenia, Eyes wide open ator‹by ‡ying out of range, for example‹it will be about the size of the French How e ective are UAVs? In Iraq, the signif• may well crash. Engineers have failed to manned Mirage †ghter. icant drop in American casualties over the solve this problem, says Dan Isaac, a drone Small drones, by contrast, cost just tens past year and a half is partly attributable to expert at Spain’s Centre for the Develop• of thousands of dollars. With electric mo• the Œpersistent stare of drone operators ment of Industrial Technology, a govern• tors, they are quiet enough for low•altitude hunting for insurgents’ roadside bombs ment research agency in Madrid. The sol• spying. But batteries and fuel cells have and remotely †red rockets, says Christo• ution, he and others say, is to build systems only recently become light enough to open pher Oliver, a colonel in the American which enable an operator to reconnect up a large market. A fuel cell developed by army who was stationed in Baghdad until with a lost drone by transmitting data via a AMI Adaptive Materials, based in Ann Ar• recently. ŒWe stepped it up, he says, add• Œbridge aircraft nearby. bor, Michigan, exempli†es the progress ing that drone missions will continue to in• In late June America’s Northrop Grum• made. Three years ago AMI sold a 25•watt crease, in part to compensate for the with• man unveiled the †rst of a new generation fuel cell weighing two kilograms. Today its drawal of troops. In Afghanistan and Iraq, of its Global Hawk aircraft, thought to be fuel cell is 25% lighter and provides eight almost all big convoys of Western equip• the world’s fastest drone. It can gather data times as much power. This won AMI a 1 ment or personnel are preceded by a scout drone, according to Mike Kulinski of Ener• dyne Technologies, a developer of mili• tary•communications software based in California. Such drones can stream video back to drivers and transmit electromag• netic jamming signals that disable the elec• tronic triggers of some roadside bombs. In military parlance, drones do work that would be Œdull, dirty and dangerous for soldiers. Some of them can loiter in the air for long periods. The Eagle•1, for exam• ple, developed by Israel Aerospace Indus• tries and EADS, Europe’s aviation giant, can stay aloft for more than 50 hours at a time. (France deployed several of these air• craft this year in Afghanistan.) Such long ‡ights help operators, assisted with object• recognition software, to determine normal (and suspicious) patterns of movement for people and vehicles by tracking suspects for two wake•and•sleep cycles. Drones are acquiring new abilities. New sensors that are now entering service can make out the Œelectrical signature of Eyes in the sky, pilots on the ground 14 Unmanned military aircraft The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009

This is most certainly not a computer game

2 $500,000 prize from the Department of for each mission‹say, locating a well near Defence. Its fuel cells, costing about a hilltop within sniping range of a road. $12,000 each, now propel small drones. Next year Lockheed Martin, an Ameri• Most small drones are launched with• can defence contractor, begins †nal testing out airstrips and are controlled in the †eld of software to make ‡ying drones easier using a small computer. They can be recov• for troops with little training. Called EC• ered with nets, parachutes, vertically CHO, it allows soldiers to control aircraft strung cords that snag a wingtip hook or a and view the resulting intelligence on a simple drop on the ground after a stall a standard hand•held device such as an metre or two in the air. Their airframes iPhone, BlackBerry or Palm Pre. It incorpo• break apart to absorb the impact; users rates Google Earth mapping software, simply snap them back together. largely for the same reason: most recruits With some systems, a ground unit can are already pro†cient users. launch a drone for a quick bird’s•eye look What’s next? A diplomat from Djibouti, around with very little e ort. Working a country in the Horn of Africa, provides a X marks the spot with †nancing from Italy’s defence minis• clue. He says private companies in Europe try, Oto Melara, an Italian †rm, has built are now o ering to operate spy drones for continue to grow. Raytheon, an American prototypes of a short•range drone his government, which has none. (Djibouti company, has launched a drone from a launched from a vehicle•mounted pneu• has declined.) But purchasing UAV ser• submerged submarine. Mini helicopter matic cannon. The aircraft’s wings unfold vices, instead of owning ‡eets, is becom• drones for reconnaissance inside buildings upon leaving the tube. It streams back vid• ing a Œstrong trend, says Kyle Snyder, head are not far o . In China, which is likely to eo while ‡ying any number of preset of surveillance technology at AUVSI. be a big market in the future, senior oˆ• round•trip patterns. Crucially, operators About 20 companies, he estimates, ‡y spy cials have recently talked of reducing troop do not need to worry about †ddling with drones for clients. numbers and spending more money de• controls; the drone ‡ies itself. One of them, a division of Boeing veloping Œinformationised warfare capa• called Insitu, sees a lucrative untapped bilities, including unmanned aircraft. Send in the drones market in Afghanistan, where the intelli• There is a troubling side to all this. Oper• Indeed, as UAVs become more technologi• gence needs of some smaller NATO coun• ators can now safely manipulate battle• cally complex, there is also a clear trend to• tries are not being met by larger allies. †eld weapons from control rooms half a wards making their control systems easier (Armed forces are often reluctant to share world away, as if they are playing a video to use, according to a succession of experts their intelligence for tactical reasons.) Ale• game. Drones also enable a government to speaking at a conference in La Spezia, Italy, jandro Pita, Insitu’s head of sales, declines avoid the political risk of putting combat held in April by the Association for Un• to name customers, but says his †rm’s boots on foreign soil. This makes it easier manned Vehicle Systems International ‡ights cost roughly $2,000 an hour for 300 to start a war, says P.W. Singer, the Ameri• (AUVSI), an industry association. For ex• or so hours a month. The drones•for•hire can author of ŒWired for War, a recent ample, instead of manoeuvring aircraft, market is also expanding into non•military bestseller about robotic warfare. But like operators typically touch (or click on) elec• †elds. Services include inspecting tall them or not, drones are here to stay. Armed tronic maps to specify points along a de• buildings, monitoring traˆc and maintain• forces that master them are not just secur• sired route. Software determines the best ing security at large facilities. ing their hold on air superiority‹they are ‡ight altitudes, speeds and search patterns Drone sales and research budgets will also dramatically increasing its value. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Case history 15

machines the remainder. He expects lower•cost 3•D printers to account for as A factory on your desk much as 90% of the market as prices fall and performance improves. Model•mak• ing and rapid prototyping remain the most popular uses, but all types of ma• chines are increasingly being used for direct manufacturing of parts for †nished Manufacturing: Producing solid objects, even quite complex ones, with 3•D products, rather than just prototypes. printers is gradually becoming easier and cheaper. Might such devices some Although powerful design software day become as widespread as document printers? allows the virtual creation of 3•D objects on a computer screen, many designers UST before going on holiday you decide small, simple object that would †t into the and their clients prefer to examine, touch Jto buy a new pair of trainers. The usual palm of your hand, and up to a day for a and hold a physical object before commit• procedure would be to pop down to the bigger, more sophisticated part. The latest ting to huge investments in manufacturing shops, select a style and try on a pair to machines can produce objects to an accu• or construction. Models help take some of make sure they are comfortable. Instead, racy of slightly less than 0.1mm. the guesswork out of the process. They are imagine doing this: designing shoes exact• Terry Wohlers, a consultant based in traditionally crafted by hand from materi• ly the right size in the style and colour you Colorado who monitors the industry, als such as clay, wood or metal. It is a slow want on a computer, or downloading a reckons the global market for additive and costly business. Even making a non• design from the web and customising it. manufacturing was worth $1.2 billion in working model of what might seem to be Then press print and go o to have lunch 2008 and that it could double in size by a relatively simple thing, like a new sole while a device on your desk manufactures 2015. He estimates that 3•D printers of for a shoe, is in fact a complex process. It them for you. On your return, your train• various sorts account for about 75% of used to take Timberland, an American ers are ready. But they are not quite right. sales, and high•performance industrial †rm, a week to turn the design of a new 1 So after another †ddle on the computer you print a second pair. Perfect. The technology to print a pair of train• ers, or at least to do so in one go rather than in parts that have to be glued togeth• er, is not yet available. But it is getting close. An increasing number of things, from mock•ups of new consumer pro• ducts to jewellery and aerospace components, are being produced by machines that build objects layer by layer, just like printing in three dimensions. The gen• eral term the industry uses for this is Œadditive manufactur• ing, but the most widely used devices are called 3•D printers. Some of these printers are becoming small enough to be desktop devices. They are making their way not just into workshops and factories, but also into the oˆces of designers, architects and researchers, and are being embraced by entrepre• neurs who are using them to invent entirely new businesses. The 3•D printers currently available use a variety of technologies, each of which is suited to di erent applications. They range in price from under $10,000 to more than $1m for a high•end device capable of making sophisticated produc• tion parts. Depending on the size of the object, the material it is made from and the level of detail required, the printing pro• cess takes around an hour for a relatively 16 Case history The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009

The ability of 3•D printers to speed up the design process will have a big impact on industry.

2 sole into a model, at a cost of around When the process is complete and the $1,200. Using a 3•D printer made by Z material is set, the loose powder is blown Corporation, based in Burlington, Mas• away with an air jet to reveal the complet• sachusetts, it has cut the time to 90 min• ed structure. The powder can be one of utes and the cost to $35. several substances including plastic, a The ability of 3•D printers to speed up special material that can be treated to the design process will have a big impact become ‡exible like rubber, and casting on industry. ŒNow engineers can think of materials suitable for making moulds. an idea, print it, hold it in their hand, share Each layer takes 15•30 seconds to output. it with other people, change it and go back Objet’s machines have print heads that and print another one, says David Reis, slide back and forth depositing extremely the chief executive of Objet Geometries, thin layers of two types of liquid photo• an Israeli †rm that makes 3•D printers. polymer. One type is printed where the ŒSuddenly design becomes much more cross•section is required to be solid, and innovative and creative. Objet’s ma• the other where there are cavities, over• chines can produce not only solid things hangs and other features with spaces. out of plastic•type materials, but complex After each layer is printed, an ultraviolet ones with moving parts too, such as a light•source in the print head hardens the working model of a bicycle chain or a polymer in the areas that need to be solid, small gearbox. And they can print objects and causes the second polymer to assume in multiple materials, such as a plastic a gel•like state to provide structural sup• remote•control unit with rubbery buttons. port. The build tray then moves down and the process is repeated for the next layer. Little by little At the end, a jet of water washes away the The †rst step in all 3•D printing processes is gel•like support material. The machine is for software to take cross•sections through capable of making objects out of multiple the part to be created and calculate how kinds of solid photopolymer, each with each layer needs to be constructed. Di er• di erent colours or properties. ent machines then take di erent ap• Another form of 3•D printing is Œfused proaches. Most processes can trace their deposition modelling. Stratasys, based in roots back to the earliest form of 3•D print• Minneapolis, is the market leader in this ing: stereolithography. It was pioneered by †eld. This approach involves unwinding a 3D Systems, based in South Carolina, †lament of thermoplastic material from a which made the †rst commercially avail• spool and feeding it through a moving able stereolithography machine in 1986. extrusion nozzle, heating the material to Such machines build up objects, a layer melt it and deposit it in the desired pattern at a time, by dispensing a thin layer of on the build tray. The material then hard• liquid resin and using an ultraviolet laser, ens to form the solid parts required in each under computer control, to make it harden layer. As subsequent layers are added the in the required pattern of the cross•sec• molten thermoplastic fuses to the layers tion. The build tray then descends, a new below. In areas such as overhangs, physi• liquid surface is applied and the process is cal supports can be added and removed repeated. At the end, the excess soft resin is later, or water•soluble materials can be cleaned away using a chemical bath. A deposited and then washed away. related approach, which also dates back to Fred Fischer of Stratasys sees the mar• the 1980s, is selective laser•sintering, in ket developing in two directions. On one which a high•temperature laser is used to hand there will be more demand for melt and fuse together powdered ceram• cheaper and simpler 3•D printers capable ics, metal or glass, one layer at a time, to of quickly turning out concept models, produce the desired 3•D shape. which are likely to sit on the desks of Both Z Corporation and Objet, by engineers and designers. On the other contrast, use modi†ed forms of inkjet hand there will also be demand for more printing. Z Corporation uses the printing elaborate machines with added features cheap devices for home use to industrial heads in its machine to squirt a liquid and higher performance, the most elab• printing presses capable of producing binder onto a bed of white powder, but orate of which will provide a cost•e ective high•quality glossy magazines. only in the areas where the layer needs to way to manufacture thousands, and per• Today’s largest and most expensive 3•D be solid. Colour is applied at the same haps even tens of thousands, of compo• printing machines, capable of directly time, allowing multicoloured objects to be nents. Today’s rapid prototyping, in other producing complex plastic, and metal and created. The bed is lowered by a fraction words, will shade into tomorrow’s rapid alloy components using selective laser• of a millimetre and a new layer of powder manufacturing. Mr Fischer draws an sintering, are becoming increasingly pop• is spread and rolled. The print head then analogy with the development of docu• ular in the consumer•electronics, aero• repeats the process to create the next layer. ment printers, which range from small, space and carmaking industries. It is not 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Case history 17

3•D printers can already be found in the workshops of artists and enthusiasts.

2 just their ability to make a small number video games, including be used as arti†cial of parts, without having to spread the ŒWorld of Warcraft, implants and in recon• massive tool•up costs of traditional manu• ŒSpore and ŒRock structive surgery. ŒIt is facturing across thousands of items, that Band, produce col• possible to deposit living makes these machines useful. They can ourful, 3•D models of cells through inkjet print• also be used to build things in di erent their in•game characters, ers onto a biodegradable ways, such as producing the aerodynamic for example. ŒWe are at sca old, adds Mr Woh• ducting on a jet•†ghter as a single compo• that point where people lers. ŒThere are a lot of nent, rather than assembling it from doz• are looking at this tech• problems to overcome, ens of di erent components, each of nology and saying ‘We can like the creation of blood which has to be machined and tested. make a business out of that’, says Scott vessels, but eventually I think Some 3•D printers can already be found Harmon, head of business development we will see replacement body parts being in the workshops of artists and enthusi• at Z Corporation. printed too. asts. Jay Leno, an American television Shapeways, a †rm based in the Neth• Meanwhile, what about making those celebrity, bought a Stratasys machine to erlands, lets users upload designs, choose trainers? A 3•D printer cheap enough to do help keep his large collection of old cars a construction material and get a produc• that at home is probably many years away. on the road. He can scan a broken part that tion quote. It then turns the design into an But customising a standardised product by is no longer available into a computer, or object with a 3•D printer and ships it to the changing its outward appearance, like design a missing one from scratch, and customer. 3D Systems recently set up a re•skinning a mobile phone, would be then print out a copy made of plastic. This joint venture called MQast, which is an easier. ŒYou can do that pretty much with can be †tted to a vehicle to check that the online provider of aluminium and stain• existing technology, says Mr Harmon. design is correct. After any adjustments, a less•steel parts produced using its ma• You could also make other simple but †nal plastic copy can either be used by a chines. And iKix, based in Chennai, India, useful things, like a missing piece for a machinist to make an exact copy from has equipped itself with Z Corporation broken toy. And you might even make metal, or the model’s numerical data can machines and set up a chain of online your own 3•D printer. The RepRap project, be fed directly into a computer•controlled service•bureaus to produce architectural an open•source group based at the Univer• milling machine. Mr Leno’s 1907 White models, for delivery anywhere on earth. sity of Bath in England, has produced steam•driven car is now back on the road Mr Wohlers thinks medical applica• designs for a 3•D printer which can be thanks to his 3•D printer. tions of 3•D printing also have a lot of built for around $700, including royalty• potential. It is already possible to print 3•D free designs that can be fed into the mach• Where now? models from the digital slices produced by ine to produce the plastic parts needed to Many in the industry believe that low•cost computed•tomography scans. These can create another RepRap machine. This 3•D printers for the consumer market will be used for training, to explain procedures could be fun for the mechanically minded. eventually appear. 3D Systems launched a to patients and to help surgeons plan Others might want to wait until the local new model costing less than $10,000 in complex operations. Some hospitals have hardware store buys a 3•D printer and May. That may sound a lot, but it is what started using 3•D printing to produce begins to o er one•o manufacturing laser printers cost in the early 1980s, and custom•made metallic and plastic parts to services on demand. 7 they can now be had for less than $100. Desktop Factory, a start•up based in Pasa• dena, California, hopes to launch a 3•D printer for $4,995 that is around the same size as an early laser printer. Objet believes the way to the mass market is via inkjet technology, just as it has been with 2•D printers. The ability to print di erent materials with inkjet heads greatly increases not just model•making abilities but production possibilities, too. The †rm thinks it is getting close to being able to print with engineering•quality plastics through inkjet heads. ŒWhen we reach that point, it would allow us to go to short•term manufacturing, says Amit Shvartz, Objet’s head of marketing. As with 2•D printing, many individuals and small †rms may not need sophisticat• ed machines, especially if they can use 3•D printing bureaus to produce their more demanding digital creations. Some of these make•to•order services are starting to appear. Z Corporation’s machines are being used by companies to let players of One of Z Corporation’s printers (above) and a †nished model of a camcorder (top) 18 Biohacking The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009

Hacking goes squishy

thus collected could be used to make a map showing the Biotechnology: The falling cost of spread of micro•organisms. equipment capable of manipulating Strictly, that is not really bio• DNA is opening up a new †eld of hacking. But attempts to con• Œbiohacking to enthusiasts struct micro•organisms that make biofuels eˆciently cer• ANY of the world’s great innovators tainly are‹though it will be im• Mstarted out as hackers‹people who pressive if a group of amateurs like to tinker with technology‹and some can succeed in cracking a pro• of the largest technology companies start• blem that is confounding many ed in garages. Thomas Edison built Gen• established companies. Ama• eral Electric on the foundation of an im• teur innovation, nevertheless, proved way to transmit messages down is happening. When a science telegraph wires, which he cooked up him• blog called io9 ran a competi• self. Hewlett•Packard was founded in a ga• tion for biohackers, it received rage in California (now a national land• entries for modi†ed micro• mark), as was Google, many years later. organisms that, among other And, in addition to computer hardware things, help rice plants process and software, garage hackers and home• nitrogen fertiliser more eˆ• build enthusiasts are now merrily cooking ciently, measure the alcohol up electric cars, drone aircraft and rockets. content of a person’s breath But what about biology? Might biohack• and respond to commands ing‹tinkering with the DNA of existing or• from a computer. ganisms to create new ones‹lead to inno• The template for biohack• vations of a biological nature? ing’s future may be the Interna• The potential is certainly there. The cost tional Genetically Engineered of sequencing DNA has fallen from about Machine (iGem) competition, $1 per base pair in the mid•1990s to a tenth held annually at the Massachu• of a cent today, and the cost of synthesising setts Institute of Technology. the molecule has also fallen. Rob Carlson, This challenges undergraduates the founder of a †rm called Biodesic, start• to spend a summer building an ed tracking the price of synthesis a decade organism from a Œkit provided by a gene results are often unexpected. A team from ago. He found a remarkably steady decline, bank called the Registry of Standard Bio• National Yang•Ming University in Taiwan from over $10 per base pair to, lately, well logical Parts. Their work is possible be• conceived a bacterium that can do the under $1 (see chart on next page). This de• cause the kit is made up of standardised work of a failed kidney; another, from Im• cline recalls Moore’s law, which, when pro• chunks of DNA called BioBricks. perial College, London, worked on a Œbio• mulgated in 1965, predicted the exponen• As Jason Kelly, the co•founder of a gene• fabricator capable of building other bio• tial rise of computing power. Someday synthesis †rm called Ginkgo BioWorks, ob• logical materials. history may remember drops in the cost of serves, there is no equivalent of an electri• From relatively simple beginnings in DNA synthesis as Carlson’s curve. cal engineer’s diagram to help unravel 2003, iGem has grown to a competition in• what is going on in a cell. As he puts it, volving 84 teams and 1,200 participants, A growing culture Œwhat the professionals can do in terms of most of whom leave with enough knowl• And as the price falls, amateurs are wasting engineering an organism is really rudi• edge to do work at home. They are limited little time getting started. Several groups mentary. It’s really a tinkering art more mainly by the novelty of the pursuit. Al• are already hard at work †nding ways to than a predictable engineering system. though there are no laws banning the sale duplicate at home the techniques used by BioBricks are, nevertheless, an attempt to of DNA, reagents or equipment, such items government laboratories and large corpo• provide the equivalent of electronic com• are usually priced for sale to large institu• rations. One place for them to learn about ponents with known properties to the tions. Indeed, it is this problem of †nding biohacking is DIYbio, a group that holds †eld‹and using them is part of Ginkgo’s ways to manage without expensive equip• meetings in America and Britain and has business plan. Information on BioBricks is ment, rather than a desire to work on Œwet• about 800 people signed up for its newslet• kept public, helping the students under• ware, or living organisms, that motivates ter. DIYbio plans to perform experiments stand which work together best. many biohackers. such as sending out its members in di er• What the students actually create, how• Tito Jankowski, now a member of DIY• ent cities to swab public objects. The DNA ever, is left to their imaginations. And the bio, became interested in toolmaking for 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Biohacking 19

The right way to regulate biohacking may not become apparent for some time.

State University of New York in Bu alo come apparent for some time. But some The Carlson curve who works with biological material, people think that any regulation at all Cost per base of DNA sequencing and synthesis, $ found out. In May 2004 he awoke to †nd could be harmful. Dr Carlson, who has a Log scale that his wife, Hope, was not breathing. The book on biohacking coming out later this 2030 police who accompanied paramedics to year, is a proponent of light regulation at 10798 his home found Petri dishes used in his art most. ŒIf you look at our ability to respond Gene 564 synthesis 23 displays, and noti†ed the Federal Bureau to infectious diseases at this point in time, 10.70.80.9 Short oligo 0.40.50.6 of Investigation (FBI), which brought in the we’re essentially helpless, he says. ŒThe synthesis 0.20.3 0.070.080.090.1 Department of Homeland Security and quandary we face is that we need the ga• 0.040.050.06 Per DNA base sequenced 0.020.03 charged him with bioterrorism. The au• rage hackers, because that’s where innova• 0.0070.0080.0090.01 0.0040.0050.006 thorities claimed the body of his wife, who tion comes from. Freeman Dyson, a ven• 0.0020.003 0.00070.00080.00090.001 had died of congenital heart failure, for ex• erable and polymathic physicist who has 0.00040.00050.0006 0.00020.0003 amination. This took place over the protes• been thinking about the problem, is also a 0.0001 tations of Mr Kurtz, his colleagues and the believer in biological innovation. He has 1990 95 2000 05 08 local commissioner of public health, all of written about a variety of futuristic pos• Source: Rob Carlson whom insisted that nothing in the exhibit sibilities, including modi†ed trees that are could be harmful. better than natural ones at absorbing car• 2 biohackers after taking part in iGem with a The initial reaction of the local police bon dioxide, and termites that can eat old team from Brown University that had set was hardly surprising. The motives of the cars. If regulation of biohacking is too tight, itself the goal of modifying bacteria to de• FBI, which has experts capable of examin• such innovations‹or, at least, things like tect lead in water. After graduating, Mr Jan• ing Mr Kurtz’s art scienti†cally, are harder them‹might never come to pass. 7 kowski was interested in doing more, but to decode. After a grand jury refused found his access to equipment restricted. to indict Mr Kurtz, the bureau then He decided to create a cheaper version of pursued him with a mail•fraud the gel•electrophoresis box, a basic tool charge carrying a sentence of up to used in a wide range of experiments. De• 20 years, which a judge dismissed spite its simple construction, which can be this year. Mr Kurtz, known for his as spare as a few panes of coloured plastic anti•establishment art, may simply over a heating element, a gel box can sell have become the target of harass• for over $1,000. But according to Mr Jan• ment for his views. But the FBI may kowski, Œthis equipment is only expensive genuinely be wary of biohackers; because it has never been used for perso• rumour suggests it has followed up nal stu before. the case by discreetly instructing re• Mr Jankowski likens the current state of agent suppliers not to sell to individ• biohacking to the years in which amateurs uals, despite the lack of any law †rst began working with personal comput• against their doing so. ers, a metaphor that Dr Kelly also uses. So far legislators have shown lit• Computers were once both expensive and tle interest in regulating individuals. arcane. Today, they are built mostly from When they choose to do so, it will o •the•shelf components, and even a rela• not be easy. If groups such as DIYbio tively non•technical person can assemble are successful, the basic tools of bio• one. If hobbyists like Mr Jankowski can hacking will be both cheap to buy help reduce the cost of equipment, say, ten• and easy to construct at home. fold, while BioBricks or something similar Many DNA sequences, including become cheaper and more predictable, those for harmful diseases, are al• then the stage will be set for a bioscience ready widely published, and can version of Apple or Google to be born in a hardly be retracted. The falling cost dormitory room or garage. of DNA synthesis suggests that there will be automated Œprinters for the But what about viruses? molecule before long. There are The computer metaphor, though, is a re• some substances that can be con• minder that there is no shortage of fools trolled, like the reagents used to and criminals ready to construct viruses modify DNA. But a strict govern• and other harmful computer programs. If ment policy regulating the chemical such people got interested in the biological components of biohacking might world, the consequences might be even have much the same e ect as laws more serious‹because in biology, there is banning gun ownership‹ordinary no rebooting the machine. citizens will be discouraged, while More than any other detail of biohack• criminals will still †nd what they ing, this is the one that laymen grasp. And want on black markets. the resulting fear can have unpleasant ef• In all likelihood, the right way to fects, as Steve Kurtz, a professor of art at the regulate biohacking will not be• 20 3•D imaging The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009

3•D: It’s nearly there

Three•dimensional imaging: New technologies that display 3•D visuals are on the verge of spreading from cinemas into the wider world

RIGHT and crisp high•de†nition (HD) B images, a luxury not so long ago, are fast becoming standard in consumer elec• tronics. HD technology is now well en• trenched in the marketplace in the form of televisions, video cameras, Blu•ray play• ers, games consoles and projectors. There seems little scope to improve the display of two•dimensional images, which provide about as much detail as the human eye can appreciate. So attention is shifting to the next frontier in display technology: three• dimensional (3•D) images. In recent years 3•D cinema projection has made a dramatic comeback, shaking o its image as a gimmick and replacing the cheesy old red•and•blue glasses with new technologies that are easier to use and produce more lifelike results. Studios love 3•D because it is immune to piracy. Cine• mas love 3•D because it allows them to of• fer something that even the most elaborate dards, several †rms plan to launch 3•D pro• but most †lms and television programmes home cinema cannot match, and charge ducts and services next year anyway. are not shot in 3•D. Now, however, it is pos• more for it. Now 3•D seems to be on the Beyond that, even more elaborate technol• sible to convert existing video into 3•D verge of moving out of the cinema and ogies are under development that use ho• automatically. DDD Group, based in Santa into a wider range of products. lograms to display 3•D images. Monica, California, makes a conversion Creating images that appear to burst chip, called TriDef, that uses object•recog• Would you look at that forth from a screen and invite you to reach nition software to analyse colours and Better and cheaper 3•D display technol• out and touch them is not easy. One way of shapes and determine distances, inferring ogies for home and oˆce use are Œready for doing so is to use Œstereoscopic optical that, for example, the muzzle of a gun is prime time, says a senior executive at technologies, in which scenes are †lmed closer to the viewer than the shooter’s face. Wistron, a Taiwanese †rm that manufac• from two angles. When displayed, special When the software is unsure it does not tures computers for many leading brands. eyewear then ensures that one perspective add depth, says Chris Yewdall, DDD’s boss. By the end of this year the †rst mass•mar• is beamed exclusively to the right eye and One of DDD’s customers is Samsung, a ket laptops capable of displaying 3•D im• the other to the left eye, fooling the brain South Korean electronics giant, which ages will be on sale, he says, and by the end into thinking that it is looking at a 3•D plans to launch 3•D television sets next of 2010 all of the world’s top ten computer• scene. So•called Œautostereoscopic 3•D year. DDD and its main competitors‹JVC makers will include 3•D displays in their systems do not require glasses. One ap• in Japan and NVIDIA in California‹are product line•ups. At the Consumer Elec• proach uses tiny lenses on the front of the also developing 3•D conversion technol• tronics Show held in Las Vegas in January, display to direct images for the left and ogies for computers. Acer, a Taiwanese prototype 3•D televisions and other pro• right eyes in several di erent directions. manufacturer, is expected to launch a lap• ducts were unveiled by JVC, LG, Pana• Provided your head is in the right place, top equipped with a 3•D conversion chip sonic, Samsung, Sony and others. and you keep it still, a 3•D image appears. made by DDD, in October. (Its display will Such prototypes have been around for But building a 3•D display is only one require users to wear special glasses.) a few years, but they have recently made piece of the puzzle: there must also be 3•D An alternative approach to creating 3•D rapid progress, and the industry is now content to show on it. A games console can images is based on holography. A holo• stumbling towards agreeing on the neces• be programmed to produce separate im• gram is a special interference pattern sary standards. Even without such stan• ages for left and right eyes relatively easily, created in a photosensitive medium (whi• 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 3•D imaging 21

2 ch can be as simple as a traditional photo• power. So far this has kept im• graphic †lm). Light striking this pattern is ages small: they are rarely big• scattered as though it were actually strik• ger than a shoebox. To make ing the object encoded by the interference them larger a company called pattern. The pattern is usually created by SeeReal, based in Luxem• combining two laser beams, one of which bourg, has built systems that has been bounced o the object being dis• use two eye•tracking cameras played. above a large 3•D display to Holograms have many advantages follow the viewer’s eyes. It is over stereoscopic images. Not only is no then necessary to generate special eyewear needed, but also the im• only the parts of the holo• ages do not distort when observers move. gram that are relevant to the viewer’s posi• But producing a †xed hologram of a static tion and direction of gaze, greatly reducing object is tricky enough; making a holo• the amount of processing required. graphic display, or something that func• SeeReal reckons that the information tions like one, is even more diˆcult. One needed to construct small holograms can approach involves †ring carefully orches• be carried over existing telecoms net• serves as a window into the other. It is now trated pulses from an array of lasers at a works. That would allow scientists work• using 3•D displays to allow people to sheet of glass scored with tiny grooves; an• ing in di erent locations to examine the Œshare objects and data between the two other, demonstrated by researchers at the same object, for example. Drugs compa• rooms. The result, says head researcher University of Southern California Graph• nies, which are keen to improve co•opera• Kelly Dempski, is an Œextension of each ics Lab, involves projecting high•speed vid• tion between researchers in di erent lab• room into the other. As hologram and eo onto a rapidly spinning mirror, so that oratories, could represent a lucrative data•transmission technologies improve the appropriate views of an object are re• market for the technology within two over the next decade, the rooms will in• ‡ected in di erent directions. Such tech• years, SeeReal predicts. creasingly meld together, he says. nology is still embryonic, but several in• Another obvious use for 3•D displays is dustries are interested in it. videoconferencing. Accenture, a consul• Room with a view tancy and research †rm, has equipped two Hologra†ka, a company based in Buda• Reach out and touch non•adjacent rooms at its research centre pest, hopes to realise this vision even Kolpi, a French company based in Sophia in Sophia Antipolis, France, with cameras sooner. One of its products, HoloVizio, dis• Antipolis, has devised a 3•D display that so that a wall•mounted screen in each one plays 3•D images that Œpractically sur• will allow oil•exploration companies to di• round users, says Peter Kovacs, the †rm’s rect their remotely operated submarines. software chief. Its customers include car• Video and sonar data from the submarine makers and oil•exploration companies. are displayed as a volleyball•sized holo• Working with 13 companies and research gram. An operator can direct the robot by institutions in America, Europe and Japan, moving a cursor around inside the holo• Hologra†ka is developing a system that gram. The display is expected to cost will use holographic laser arrays, driven $140,000 when it goes on sale next year. by data from about 100 video cameras, to Actuality Medical, based in Bedford, replicate the contents of one room in an• Maryland, hopes to improve radiotherapy other. It is expected to cost about $500,000. with a di erent type of 3•D display. At the Another 3•D extension of videoconfe• moment doctors Œhope the patient doesn’t rencing is the Eyeliner holographic projec• move as they zap cancerous tissue with a tion system devised by Musion, a com• beam of radiation, says Gregg Favalora, the pany based in London. It does not actually †rm’s founder. Working with Philips, a use holograms, but projects high•de†ni• Dutch electronics company, Actuality tion video onto nearly transparent screens Medical has built an early version of a sys• made of very thin foil, in a modern updat• tem that could limit damage to healthy tis• ing of the old ŒPepper’s ghost stage illu• sue. Called Perspecta, it graphically depicts sion. The e ect, for viewers a few metres a simulated beam of radiation shooting away, is a lifelike, full•sized 3•D moving im• through a hologram•like image of body tis• age of a person that appears to ‡oat in sue. This could eventually help doctors re• space, without any visible screen. direct radiation as body parts move slight• Musion’s technology has been used by ly during treatment. The 3•D image is Al Gore, Bill Gates, Prince Charles and created by projecting about 6,000 images a many other celebrities to appear on stage second onto a nearly transparent spinning Almost close enough to touch: 3•D at conferences without being physically disc some 25 centimetres (10 inches) across, displays from Actuality Medical (on present. From televisions and laptop which forms a basketball•sized sphere. previous page), SeeReal (top) and the screens to operating theatres and confer• Creating actual holograms‹or images University of Southern California ence halls, 3•D in all its forms is suddenly that resemble them, as Perspecta does‹re• Graphics Lab (above) being taken much more seriously than it quires enormous amounts of processing was just a few years ago. 7 22 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Paranoid survivor

at Berkeley, and wrote a book on semicon• ductors that remains a standard text. Andrew Grove, the former boss of He joined Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, believes other †elds can learn once a pioneering electronics †rm, where from the chipmaking industry that he caught the eye of Robert Noyce and he helped bring into being Gordon Moore. The former was a co• inventor of the integrated circuit, while ARLIER this year Andrew Grove taught the latter coined Moore’s law (which Ea class at Stanford Business School. As decrees, roughly, that the amount of com• a living legend in Silicon Valley and a puting power available at a given price former boss of Intel, the world’s leading doubles every 18 months). When the two chipmaker, Dr Grove could have simply left Fairchild to found Intel in 1968‹initial• used the opportunity to blow his own ly to make memory chips, not micropro• trumpet. Instead he started by displaying a cessors‹they took the young Dr Grove headline from the Wall Street Journal with them. He eventually ended up in heralding the recent takeover of General charge of the company, becoming chief Motors by the American government as executive in 1987. He continued in that role the start of Œa new era. He gave a potted until 1998, when he became chairman, history of his own industry’s spectacular holding that post until 2004. rise, pointing out that plenty of venerable Though his scienti†c credentials are †rms‹with names like Digital, Wang and solid, he will probably be best remem• IBM‹were nearly or completely wiped bered as a daring and successful busi• out along the way. nessman. Richard Tedlow, a historian at Then, to put a sting in his Schumpeter• Harvard Business School, calls him Œone ian tale, he displayed a fabricated headline of the master managers in the history of from that same newspaper, this one sup• American business. One reason is market posedly drawn from a couple of decades success: under his tenure, Intel came to ago: ŒPresidential Action Saves Computer dominate the microprocessor industry Industry. A fake article beneath it de• and its market capitalisation rocketed scribes government intervention to prop (making it, at one point, the world’s most up the ailing mainframe industry. It valuable company). A bigger reason, sounds ridiculous, of course. Computer though, lies in how exactly he managed to †rms come and go all the time, such is the steer Intel to such spectacular success. pace of innovation in the industry. Yet for some reason this healthy attitude towards Intelligence inside creative destruction is not shared by other Two particularly risky decisions he took industries. This is just one of the ways in are revealing. In ŒOnly the Paranoid Sur• which Dr Grove believes that his business vive, Dr Grove’s bestselling book, he can teach other industries a thing or two. argues that every company will face a He thinks †elds such as energy and health con‡uence of internal and external forces, care could be transformed if they were run often unanticipated, that will conspire to more like the computer industry‹and make an existing business strategy unvia• made greater use of its products. ble. In Intel’s case, such a Œstrategic in• Dr Grove may be 73 and coping with ‡ection point arose because its memory• Parkinson’s disease, but his wit is still chip business came under heavy assault barbed and his desire to provoke remains from new Japanese rivals willing to un• as strong as ever. Rather than slipping o dercut any price Intel o ered. to a gilded retirement of golf or gallivant• What could he do? The †rm’s roots and ing, as many other accomplished men of most of its pro†ts lay in making memory his age do, he is still spoiling for a †ght. chips; Intel’s microprocessor group was His achievements mean that his provo• just a small niche. The †rm’s two founders cations are worth paying attention to. He and much of its engineering sta were too has arguably done as much as anyone to emotionally wedded to its past successes usher in the age of cheap, cheerful and to make a break. But Dr Grove decided to ubiquitous personal computing. In part, bet the future of the company on micro• he did this through technological prowess. processors, a move that saved his com• He graduated at the top of his engineering pany and transformed the industry. class at New York’s City College (one of The second big decision was Dr the few options available to him as a poor Grove’s radical announcement that Intel Jewish refugee from Communist•con• would market its microchips directly to trolled Hungary). He then went on to earn consumers. Previously, chipmakers had a doctorate at the University of California regarded computer•makers such as Dell 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Brain scan 23

Dr Grove thinks pharmaceutical †rms should study chipmakers to accelerate learning and innovation.

2 and Compaq as their customers, and had ment trends such as ‡exi•time and tele• for a divorce. He regards electricity as the not bothered with fancy advertising cam• working. He was known as a blunt and most promising replacement fuel, and paigns to end users. But Dr Grove believed demanding manager, but he also gained a thinks battery technology has the poten• that such a relationship allowed these reputation as a fair•minded boss who tial to produce an Intel•like giant as the assembly and marketing †rms, which did rewarded good ideas, no matter where industry develops. little original research of their own, to they came from. Another business he believes to be ripe capture too much of the value created by Asked today if he regrets imposing his for disruption is health care. He complains his †rm’s innovation. disciplinarian personality on his com• that the industry seems to innovate much So he launched the ŒIntel Inside cam• pany, he makes a confession: ŒYou don’t too slowly. The lack of proper electronic paign, which marketed microprocessor understand‹I was never that disciplined medical records and smart Œclinical deci• chips directly to consumers, starting in myself, and I’m not even a morning per• sion systems bothers him, as does the 1991. This incensed his rivals and his im• son! He was determined to impose dis• slow•moving, bureaucratic nature of mediate customers, the computer•makers, cipline on Intel, he says, for two reasons clinical trials. He thinks pharmaceutical but the strong demand for Intel’s new that ultimately worked to the †rm’s ad• †rms should study the fast Œknowledge Pentium chip showed that the strategy vantage. First, he wanted to avoid the turns achieved by chipmakers, so that the had worked. True, the †rm stumbled outrageous double standards he had cycles of learning and innovation are when a minor ‡aw was discovered in the experienced at Fairchild. The meritocratic accelerated. (A knowledge turn, a term Pentium that a ected some mathematical culture he created at Intel then helped it coined by Dr Grove, is the time it takes for calculations. Rather than rush to correct attract the best talent in the industry. an experiment to proceed from hypothe• the problem, Intel tried to downplay it‹a Second, he knew that strong discipline sis to results, and then to a new hypothe• strategy that quickly turned into a public• would also be necessary to improve his sis‹around 18 months in chipmaking, but relations disaster. The †rm was forced to †rm’s shoddy manufacturing. 10•20 years in medicine.) o er a replacement for all a ected chips, At the time the microchip business was And what of chipmaking‹is it, too, a at a cost of nearly half a billion dollars. producing such unreliable products that sunset industry ripe for disruption? Dr Painful though that was, Dr Grove now customers insisted that companies like Grove still believes in Moore’s law (with thinks this episode actually bene†ted the Intel always license new products to a the caveat that it will get ever pricier for †rm in two ways. First, it proved to in• secondary supplier to ensure reliability of chipmakers to uphold) but he has a grave ternal sceptics that Intel really had be• supply. His e orts to tighten up quality concern. At a recent ceremony honouring come a consumer brand. Second, he reck• control led to a commercial coup. When his achievements, he shocked the gath• ons that it bolstered his e orts to improve his †rm introduced its widely anticipated ered bigwigs by declaring that the in• the shoddy quality of manufacturing, to 386 processor, he stunned the industry by dustry’s approach to hoarding patents was protect the †rm from future †ascos. In declaring that Intel would not license any an abuse of intellectual•property rights hindsight, his risky decision to turn Intel secondary manufacturers. This was a and risked undermining its future. Asked from a component•maker into a consumer huge risk for computer•makers, but such to defend that claim, which upset even his brand was a masterstroke. was their appetite for the new chip that own family members, he does not back• they bought it anyway. Intel’s ability to track. He insists that †rms must use their An American success story deliver good enough chips in large num• patents or lose them: ŒYou can’t just sit on Some observers have suggested that it was bers meant pro†ts no longer had to be your ass and give everyone the †nger. his family’s escape from the Nazis, and his shared with secondary manufacturers. Even though Dr Grove is no longer run• own experience of the abuses of commu• With his reputation for ruthlessness in ning Intel, it seems that his desire to shake nism, that shaped Dr Grove’s strict man• the marketplace and rigorous discipline things up is undimmed. 7 agement style. On this view, his demand• inside his †rm, Dr Grove has much in ing but meritocratic approach, rewarding common with another American busi• ideas and knowledge over power, was a ness leader: Lee Raymond, the formidable O er to readers Reprints of this special report are available at a rejection of the injustices of communism. former chairman of Exxon Mobil. Both price of £3.50 plus postage and packing. Dr Grove, however, insists that it was men were feared by both rivals and many A minimum order of †ve copies is required. his experience at City College, where of their employees. Dr Grove once even talent and hard work were rewarded and spearheaded a sales campaign against a Corporate o er where students challenged their profes• superior chip made by Motorola in an Customisation options on corporate orders of sors without concern for rank, that im• e ort dubbed ŒOperation Crush. When 500 or more are available. Please contact us to discuss your requirements. pressed upon him the value of meritocra• asked about such bully•boy tactics, Dr cy. By contrast, he recalls an elitist, Grove remains unrepentant. He even likes Send all orders to: back•stabbing and lax corporate culture at the comparison with the unloved oilman: The Rights and Syndication department Fairchild. Senior executives would stroll ŒI never knew Lee Raymond, but he did The Economist into the oˆce or into meetings as late as take Exxon to the top of the Fortune 500‹ 26 Red Lion Square they pleased, but blue•collar workers were and that’s OK with me. London WC1R 4HQ penalised or even †red if they committed Personal admiration aside, however, Tel +44 (0)20 7576 8148 similar o ences. Dr Grove is convinced that Exxon and its Fax +44 (0)20 7576 8492 When he took control of Intel Dr Grove Big Oil brethren are in a sunset industry. e•mail: [email protected] imposed a strict arrival time of 8am, with He has written and lectured widely on latecomers forced to sign a sheet. He also energy and environmental topics in recent refused to go along with popular manage• years, arguing that oil and cars are heading