The rise of the Building the The father of the connected car smart energy grid mobile phone TechnologyQuarterly June 6th 2009 Concentrate! The other kind of solar power

TTQCOVERJune09.inddQCOVERJune09.indd 1 226/5/096/5/09 13:27:5113:27:51 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

Contents

On the cover Think of solar power, and the chances are you will think of photovoltaic panels. But there is another way to make electricity from sunlight which may have even brighter prospects. Concentrating solar•thermal technology is growing fast and could Third time lucky re•emerge as the leading form of solar power, page 16

Monitor 2 Biotech’s third wave, a better robot hand, red tape in space, pneumatic•hybrid engines, military blimps, interplanetary Industrial biotech: A Œthird wave of biotechnology is arriving. Will it be able e•mail, a new arti†cial heart, to avoid a poor reception from the general public this time around? zapping mosquitoes with lasers, rewarding pill•poppers, OR a long time the public has perceived imagines a future in which bio•re†neries campaigners embrace maps, Fbiotechnology to mean dangerous are dotted around the countryside produc• and sewing with nanotubes meddling with the genes in food crops. ing fuels and other chemicals from bio• But biotechnology is of course about mass such as agricultural waste. Rational consumer much more than transgenic food: it also One company which has been work• encompasses the use of microbes to make ing in industrial biotechnology for years is 10 With a little helpð pharmaceuticals, for example. The many DSM, based in Heerlen in the Netherlands. Domestic robots’ slow progress bene†ts of the †rst wave of biotech pro• In the 1990s it started making enzymes for ducts, in medicine, have unfortunately cheese and omega•6 fatty acids for infant Energy been overshadowed by the supposed formulas, and went on to develop a bio• 11 Building the smart grid risks of biotech’s second wave, in agricul• logical process to produce cephalosporin, An internet for electricity ture. Might its third wave‹so•called indus• an antibiotic, in a much cleaner way than trial biotech, also known as Œwhite bio• the chemical processes used to make the Automotive technology tech or Œgreen chemistry‹resolve drug. Its most recent e ort has been to †nd 14 The connected car biotech’s image problem? a biological way to produce a chemical Vehicle shall speak unto vehicle As with other forms of biotechnology, called succinic acid (C4H6O4), which is industrial biotech involves engineering used to make a wide range of products Case history biological molecules and microbes with including spandex, biopolymers for agri• 16 Solar•thermal technology desirable new properties. What is di erent culture, de•icing salts, esters, resins and The other kind of solar power is how they are then used: to replace acidity regulators in foods. chemical processes with biological ones. The usual chemical process involves Mobile phones Whether this is to produce chemicals for making succinic acid from crude oil or other processes or to create products such natural gas. DSM’s biological approach is 19 Sensors and sensibility as biopolymers with new properties, based on fermentation using enzymes Mining the data from handsets there is huge scope to harness biology to and genetically engineered microbes. accomplish what previously needed big, After a successful pilot•production phase, Photoacoustic imaging dirty chemical factories, but in cleaner and the next step is a demonstration factory in 21 The sound of light greener ways. Lestrem, France, which will be running by A new scanning technique Sales of industrial•biotechnology the end of the year. If that goes well, a products were about $140 billion in 2007, much bigger commercial operation will Brain scan and 6% of all chemicals sales were gener• follow. The company says that as well as 23 Cellular seer ated with the help of biotechnology, says making succinic acid from biologically A pro†le of Marty Cooper, the Jens Riese of McKinsey, a consulting †rm. derived starch, rather than fossil fuels, its father of the mobile phone Steen Riisgaard, chief executive of Novo• process also uses 40% less energy and zymes, a biotechnology company, says he produces fewer carbon•dioxide emissions. 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Monitor 3

2 Novozymes, as its name suggests, has greener biological alternatives. Surely that space agency. And it has taken an order focused its attention on supplying opti• should make it easier to convince people from Britain’s Ministry of Defence, which mised enzymes‹biological molecules of its bene†ts, and hence to rehabilitate wants to try the hand out on the arm of a that help make reactions happen faster, or the notion of biotechnology more widely? bomb•disposal robot. at lower temperatures. This sounds trivial One problem is that even though the Shadow Robot’s hand is about the but it can make the di erence between a raw materials used in industrial biotech• same size as a man’s. It has four †ngers commercial and a non•commercial pro• nology may not be derived from fossil and a thumb made from various metals cess. The company says it has 47% of the fuels, they are still capable of stirring up and plastics, and even has polycarbonate market for industrial enzymes, which are some diˆcult ethical questions. In partic• †ngernails to help it prise things apart. The used in areas such as detergents, brewing, ular, using food crops like maize as raw joints in its †ngers, thumb and wrist pro• baking or to produce animal feeds. materials to make biofuel is already huge• vide 24 degrees of freedom (a degree of Enzymes are the †rst tool of choice in ly controversial because of its impact on freedom is the ability of one part of a white biotechnology if the chemical food prices. And even growing non•food system to move independently of the conversion process is a fairly simple one. crops for industrial use is problematic, others in a particular way). All this enables But if a more complicated series of re• because it can reduce the land available it to copy the movement of a person’s actions is required, or the enzyme in the for food production. hand very closely. The robot hand mimics process is used up during conversion and The use of agricultural waste is less the movements of a human operator who needs to be regenerated, it is time to reach controversial. Mr Riisgaard reckons that wears a special Œvirtual reality glove for a microbe. Microbes can accomplish converting agricultural waste into other equipped with sensors that can determine hundreds of chemical tasks at the same chemicals (including fuels) using industri• the positions of the †ngers inside it. time and are able to recreate the enzymes al biotechnology could replace 20•25% of And the robot hand mimics not just the they need. Novozymes is working on a global oil consumption. And there is movement, but also the means of achiev• biological process to make acrylic acid plenty of waste about. He also suggests ing it. The hand has a combination of (C3H4O2) from starch or biomass rather that raw materials could be grown on arti†cial muscles and tendons. Each Œair than fossil fuels. One stage uses optimised marginal land which is unsuitable for food muscle in the forearm behind the hand enzymes, and another is carried out by production. That is true, but it could have consists of a rubber tube covered in a rigid engineered microbes. knock•on e ects on biodiversity. Perhaps plastic mesh. In‡ating the tube strains the Creating a suitable microbe involves the most promising approach for ad• mesh, providing a powerful pulling force. starting o with one that does part of the vocates of biotechnology’s third wave is By using two air muscles to pull a joint in job in question, and then convincing the to emphasise the potential for a new, di erent directions, the robot hand is microbe to specialise in that activity. (DSM greener chemicals industry to create jobs capable of strong and precise actions. The found its microbe, a yeast, living in ele• in remote rural areas. 7 40 muscles are attached to †ne cables in phant dung, where it broke down cellu• sheaths, much like the brake cables on a lose in starch; Novozymes started out with bicycle, and these pass through the robotic a bacterium from its large library of mi• wrist to operate the joints. crobes.) The next stage is to eliminate the The tactile sensors which take the place things the microbe does that are not relat• Very handy of nerve endings at the †ngertips are even ed to the task in hand by inactivating more advanced. They are made from a non•essential genes. The modi†ed mi• material that conducts electricity crobes are then produced in large num• only when it is squeezed. The bers and those that are best at the job are sensors rely on quantum tunnell• selected. The result is a bug that is special• Robotics: Mechanical hand ing, in which electrons take ly adapted for a particular task. seeks dangerous, dirty and journeys that would not be Novozymes says it is close to complet• dull jobs. Quali†ed to allowed by the laws of classical ing its acrylic•acid process. Around 40% of physics, as long as the distances acrylic acid produced is used to make handle eggs involved are tiny. super•absorbent material like that found HE arm of a typical Minuscule changes in the in nappies (diapers); most of the rest goes Tindustrial robot is a squeezing of the sensor into paints and coatings. Novozymes says crude•looking but trigger far larger changes its process will be competitive with chem• functional implement in the ‡ow of electrons, ical methods at an oil price of $60 a barrel designed for a single which makes the sensor or higher. Given the large size of the acryl• job, such as placing tiny extremely sensitive. The ic•acid market and its steady growth (4% a components onto a signals this generates can year), Novozymes is con†dent that its circuit board or painting then be fed back as resis• process will grab a decent share. a car. Some robots have tance in the operator’s glove, Proponents of industrial biotechnolo• pincer•like claws to pick and also limit the maximum gy are optimistic that they can avoid the things up. But none comes pressure the robot hand can pitfalls that hindered the adoption of close to the complex abilities exert. The technology re• biotech crops, which have been criticised of the human hand. Or, at quired for this was devel• by their opponents as unnatural ŒFranken• least, none did until the oped by another small foods that extend corporate control of Shadow Robot Company, British †rm, Peratech, agriculture. For one thing, unlike transgen• based in London, began working which is based in Rich• ic tomatoes, say, industrial•biotech pro• on the problem. mond, North Yorkshire. ducts are not sold directly to consumers. Shadow Robot has devel• The latest version of And instead of displacing Œnatural pro• oped a robotic hand that closely the hand can pick up and ducts with bioengineered alternatives, as mimics the human version. It handle delicate objects in agriculture, industrial biotechnology has already sold several of such as fruit and eggs. generally displaces fossil fuels and their them to various universities The company has associated chemical processes with and to NASA, America’s decided against mak• 1 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

2 ing it even stronger, says Rich Walker, therefore subject to controls. ed a forum involving the private space• Shadow Robot’s technical director, be• Yet taking a passenger ‡ight does not ‡ight industry and senior government cause that might be dangerous. Many mean you can then build an aeroplane, oˆcials to discuss the regulations. industrial robots have to be contained observes Mike Gold, head of Bigelow’s During the American presidential behind strong fences because they can oˆce in Washington, DC. His line of argu• campaign, Barack Obama said that, if injure people who get in their way. ment has, it seems, been accepted. Mr elected, he would review ITAR, and in The next stage of development, says Gold says that his company received a particular the provisions relating to space Mr Walker, will be to add some level of legal ruling in February and that it has hardware. George Nield, associate admin• intelligence. The company is involved in a spent the past few months digesting it. He istrator for commercial space transporta• European Union programme to develop says Bigelow has got Œeverything we tion within the Federal Aviation Author• technology, such as machine vision, to could want, though the ruling still pre• ity, says although he has not seen the new make robots cleverer. This would enable cludes passengers from what he describes ruling, it was good news that the govern• the hand, for example, to recognise an as the Œbad•boy list of export control‹ ment Œmay now be willing to revise some object like an egg and know how to pick it nationals from Sudan, Iran, North Korea of its export•control restrictions to enable up without breaking it. Unless, of course, and China will not be allowed to ‡y or American †rms to be more competitive in it was clever enough to know that it was train on suborbital passenger ‡ights, or their e orts to sell aerospace products and making an omelette. 7 visit Bigelow’s space station. services globally. 7 Other private space companies have welcomed the ruling. Marc Holzapfel, legal counsel for Virgin Galactic, describes it as a Œmajor development because it Red tape in orbit frees the industry from having to go Running on air through the Œcomplicated, expensive and dilatory export•approval process. Tim Hughes, chief counsel of SpaceX, another private †rm, says the approval is exciting, Space: A small company has won an because it seems to represent a Œcommon• Transport: Powering hybrid cars with important legal challenge to sense approach and bodes well for simi• compressed air rather than electric America’s space•technology lar requests made by companies, such as motors could be a cheaper way to his own, that hope to start ferrying foreign export•control regime astronauts on missions to the Internation• increase fuel eˆciency OR many years people in America’s al Space Station. EING green can be expensive, as any Fspace industry have complained that The ruling also has implications for the B driver of a Toyota Prius can tell you. the rules governing the export of tech• entire export•control regime, known as The car is a hybrid, combining a petrol nology are too strict. Understandably, the the International Traˆc in Arms Regu• engine with an electric motor that powers government does not want militarily lations (ITAR). Robert Dickman, executive it at low speeds in the city and provides useful stu to fall into the hands of its foes. director of the American Institute of Aero• bursts of acceleration when needed. It is But the result is a system that is too strict in nautics and Astronautics, says the deci• the most fuel•eˆcient car sold in America, its de†nition of Œmilitarily useful and sion appears to convey a new willingness but it costs upwards of $22,000, a price which favours lumbering dinosaurs such to Œmove away from the very restrictive that can wipe out the savings on fuel. One as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which approach that has been in place for almost reason for the high price is that the car survive on big government contracts, a decade. His organisation recently host• contains expensive batteries. Another is rather than small and nimble Œfurry mam• that the transmission system had to be mals that need every customer they can completely redesigned. But there may be a get, domestic or foreign. cheaper and simpler way to make a hy• In December 2007 one of those mam• brid, using air power instead of electricity. mals, a company called Bigelow Aero• Using compressed air to power a car space, †led the †rst legal challenge to has one obvious disadvantage: com• America’s rules for exporting space tech• pressed air has a low energy•density, so nology. It disputed the government’s claim not very much energy can be stored. that foreign passengers travelling on a However, in urban driving this may not spaceship or space station were involved matter. One of the most important roles of in a transfer of technology. The outcome the batteries in a hybrid is to store energy suggests that there may be a chink in the recovered when the car brakes. The idea armour of the export•control regime. with a pneumatic hybrid is to store this Improbable as it sounds, Bigelow energy as compressed air. Such a vehicle Aerospace makes and launches in‡atable would run on petrol but would use its space•station modules (pictured) and reservoir of compressed air to boost the hopes, one day, to build a commercial engine’s power when needed. This would space•station. Under the existing rules, not demand a serious redesign because any non•American passengers on its space every car already has a makeshift air stations would have to comply with oner• compressor in the form of the engine ous export•control rules. These take itself. Building a pneumatic•hybrid car months to satisfy and could plausibly would thus be relatively cheap. even require government monitors to be When the driver of a pneumatic•hy• present whenever the foreigner was near brid car applied the brakes, the fuel supply American space technology. Even training to the engine would be shut o and the on the ground in a mock•up module is pistons that normally propel the vehicle deemed a transfer of technology and Bigelow prepares for lift•o would help slow it, pumping pressurised 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Monitor 5

2 air into a tank as they did so. This com• fuel consumption. more than a week, whereas most drones pressed air could then be used to force Pneumatic•hybrid cars are best suited ‡y for no more than 30 hours at a time. more air into the combustion chamber to city driving, according to John Hey• They are also easy to deploy, because no during acceleration. This allows more fuel wood of the Massachusetts Institute of air†eld is needed. A blimp can be stored in to be burned (since there is more oxygen Technology. The compressed•air tank the back of a jeep, driven to a suitable available to burn it with) and thus pro• needs to be kept topped up by regular location, launched in a couple of hours vides a burst of extra power. According to braking, and drivers brake less often on and winched down again even faster. Lino Guzzella of the Swiss Federal In• motorways. But stopping and starting is Unlike other aircraft, blimps do not stitute of Technology in Zurich, who has not a problem for one type of pneumatic need to form a precise aerodynamic built a prototype pneumatic•hybrid en• hybrid. Hua Zhao of Brunel University in shape. This means they can lift improb• gine, this sort of approach could reduce London has been developing a variation able objects into the sky, such as dangling fuel consumption by 32% compared with of the technology for lorries and buses. radar equipment. At altitudes of just a few a normal engine, and would o er 80% of Some commercial vehicles are already hundred metres, a blimp carrying 20kg of the fuel savings of an electric•hybrid designed to use their engines as compres• remote•sensing electronics (including vehicle at a lower price. sors to slow them down and prevent the radar and thermal•imaging cameras) can It is well known that today’s engines brakes from overheating when going identify, track and provide images of are too large, being sized for acceleration down long hills. And many such vehicles combatants dozens of kilometres away, by rather than everyday driving, says Dr use air•driven starter motors. Dr Zhao day or night. It can also help commanders Guzzella. So the trend is towards smaller reckons he can make a pneumatic•hybrid aim the lasers that guide their missiles. engines augmented with turbochargers. engine using these existing components. Blimps often operate beyond the range (A turbocharger uses exhaust gases to But instead of injecting compressed air of machine•guns and rocket•propelled drive a compressor that forces more air into the combustion chamber, Dr Zhao’s grenades. Even if they are hit, though, they into the engine.) The trouble is that turbo• design would use the compressed•air tank do not explode because the helium gas chargers can take several seconds to pro• to replace the electrically powered com• that keeps them airborne is not ‡am• vide the extra oomph. But a pneumatic• pressors that feed air•driven starter mo• mable. (Engineers abandoned the use of hybrid engine can deliver it immediately, tors. Simulations suggest this would sig• hydrogen in 1937 after the Hindenburg, a thus enabling a smaller engine to deliver ni†cantly reduce fuel consumption, says German airship, was consumed by ‡ames the same kind of driving performance as a Dr Zhao, who is now looking for a com• in less than a minute.) Moreover, they larger engine, but with considerably better mercial partner to build a test vehicle. 7 usually stay aloft even when punctured: the pressure of the helium inside a blimp is about the same as that of the air outside, so the gas does not rush out. Indeed, to• wards the end of 2004, when a blimp broke its tether north of Baghdad and started to drift towards Iran, the American air force had trouble shooting it down. At least 20 countries use blimps‹both global military powers, such as America, Britain and France, and smaller regional ones, including Ireland, Pakistan, Poland and the United Arab Emirates. Many are employed in Iraq. In November 2008 Aerostar International of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, began †lling a $1.8m order for 36 blimps to be deployed by the Ameri• can armed forces in Iraq. But Afghanistan may prove a bigger market. That is be• cause it is diˆcult to pick up satellite sig• nals in the valleys of that mountainous country. As a result blimps, adjusted to hover at appropriate heights, are often Spies in the sky used to relay data to and from satellites. As politicians around the world seek to cut public spending, the attractions of blimps are growing. In January America’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, told the Senate’s armed•services committee that Military technology: Blimps equipped with remote•sensing electronics are the Department of Defence would pursue cheaper than drone aircraft, and have many other advantages greater quantities of Œ75% solutions that could be realised in weeks or months PYING is a sophisticated and expensive and the remote•sensing equipment they instead of Œ99% exquisite systems that Sbusiness‹and gathering military in• carry can more than double the price. take more than a decade to develop. Barry telligence using unmanned aircraft can be Which is why less elegant but far cheaper Watts, an analyst at the Centre for Strategic prohibitively so. Predator and Global balloons are now being used instead. and Budgetary Assessments, a think•tank Hawk, two types of American drone Such blimps can keep surveillance and in Washington, DC, says America’s air frequently ‡own in Afghanistan and Iraq, ordnance•guiding equipment aloft for a force has been criticised for not providing cost around $5,000 and $26,500 an hour few hundred dollars an hour. They cost enough aerial data to Œinsatiable ground respectively to operate. The aircraft them• hundreds of thousands, not millions, of forces. Blimps, Mr Watts reckons, will help selves cost between $4.5m and $35m each, dollars. And they can stay in the air for them sate that appetite. 7 6 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

On the pulse

Medical technology: A new, low•cost design for an arti†cial heart takes its inspiration from an unusual source‹the cockroach VOLUTION has favoured cockroach• and are powered by heavy batteries. Ees above human beings, at least They are used temporarily, usually for a when it comes to the functioning of the few days or weeks, until a real heart is heart. A cockroach’s heart will continue available for transplant. to beat even when one of its chambers Instead of trying to mimic the action has failed; in similar circumstances, a of the left ventricle, Dr Guha’s design man will die. Now a team led by Sujoy uses a multi•step approach borrowed Guha of the Indian Institute of Tech• from the cockroach. His device, made nology, Kharagpur, has created an arti†• from plastic and titanium, is the same cial human heart based on a cock• size as a human heart but with †ve roach’s, which they believe will be chambers arranged like the layers of an unusually robust and a ordable. onion. Each chamber acts in succession A cockroach’s heart is a tube that to increase the pressure of the blood. runs the length of its body. It has 13 The contraction of each chamber is Dot Mars chambers, linked like a string of sau• controlled by a motor driven by bulky sages. As each chamber contracts, the batteries. The arti†cial heart is being blood within is pumped to a higher tested on goats, with human trials pressure. Each successive chamber scheduled for next year. If these are increases the pressure. A human heart, successful, the device could be on the Computing: A modi†ed version of the by contrast, has four chambers. Two of market in three to †ve years. internet’s communications protocol, these pump blood to the lungs, where it The multi•step approach makes this devised for interplanetary use, is picks up oxygen, then the other two arti†cial heart much cheaper to build being tested by spacecraft pump this oxygenated blood through• than those that use compressed air to out the body. One of these four cham• pump the blood. Dr Guha says it would YBERSPACE is noisy, chatty and well• bers‹the left ventricle‹contracts most cost $2,000•2,500. Peter Weissberg, C connected. Space, by contrast, is not. strongly to pressurise the blood. medical director of the British Heart Communication between Earth and The arti†cial hearts developed so far Foundation, says one reason clinical spacecraft is clunky and reminiscent of the have mostly mimicked human ones. trials of arti†cial hearts are so diˆcult to days when switchboard operators had to The †rst devices, developed in the 1950s conduct is that the devices are so expen• plug in telephone lines by hand to connect and 1960s, were large machines placed sive, typically costing over $50,000. Dr the people at either end. But that is now on trolleys next to the patient and at• Guha’s cockroach•inspired arti†cial about to change. America’s space agency, tached by tubes. Modern arti†cial heart promises to provide an a ordable NASA, has been researching what it calls hearts are less cumbersome, but they option for cardiac care in emerging the delay• (or disruption•) tolerant net• are still rather unwieldy because they economies such as India, where heart work protocol, or DTN. The idea is to use compressed air to pump the blood disease is on the rise. introduce to space the automated proto• cols that enable seamless communication on the terrestrial internet. spective rotations. As a result, scientists this one•megabyte software update takes Communicating in space is quite di er• have to plan when to send data. The DTN around an hour, so its speed is comparable ent from the constant ‡ow of information is an attempt to automate that process. to that of a 1990s modem connection. If all on Earth, where a buzz of greetings, ac• ŒThe idea would be that you could send goes well Dr Cerf says that by September knowledgments and farewells ‡its be• data from France to Mars in a seamless there should be three nodes on the inter• tween computers as they locate each way, says Adrian Hooke, a NASA scientist planetary network‹including Earth. other, exchange data and then disconnect. based in Washington, DC, who has been Researchers at Ohio University are Space communication happens in distinct developing the protocol over the past already distributing a version of what is jumps, and requires a Œstore and forward decade with Vint Cerf of Google, a found• known as the DTN protocol stack, so that system that can retain information at each ing father of the internet, and others. computer programmers can write pro• step in the process. For example, if a rover In November 2008 NASA conducted grams that will use this new protocol. It on Mars needs to send data to Earth, it the †rst test of DTN. It installed software will require new e•mail clients, web would †rst need to store the data until it on EPOXI, a NASA probe orbiting the sun browsers and †le•transfer programs that was within range of an orbiting satellite. roughly 32m kilometres (20m miles) from could be used on the International Space After receiving the data, that satellite Earth, and used it to transfer data between Station or other future manned space would hold the information until it could the probe and the planet. NASA is now missions, and which can interact with be sent on the next hop towards Earth. poised to install newer versions of this other nodes on the interplanetary net• Sending data from Earth to Mars and software on the same probe and on the work and the terrestrial internet. It will back can take anywhere between three• International Space Station. The software also require changes to the internet’s and•a•half and 20 minutes, depending on will be sent to the EPOXI computers using domain•naming system, so that scientists the positions of the planets and whether powerful antennas at three bases in Cali• can simply send e•mail messages to they are facing each other in their re• fornia, Canberra and Madrid. Uploading [email protected]. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Monitor 7

is being developed by Szabolcs Marka, an astrophysicist, and his colleagues at Co• lumbia University in New York. Dr Marka Zap! has created a curtain of invisible light that Taken your mosquitoes cannot penetrate. He uses a common diode laser, a simple lens and a medicine? power supply to generate an infra•red barrier that can cover a door or window. Medical technology: Researchers are Mosquitoes are very sensitive to heat and Health care: Mobile phones devising laser•defence systems to light (indeed, their sensitivity to infra•red provide a cheap and simple shoot down mosquitoes and prevent radiation helps them sense the presence way to ensure that patients of food, in the form of people). The idea is the spread of malaria. No, really that when a mosquito encounters the have popped their pills OWARDS the end of the cold war infra•red curtain, its senses are over• AKING your medicine TRonald Reagan announced plans to whelmed and it ‡ies away. Tests have Teven for a week is a drag. use powerful lasers to shoot down any shown that the curtain kills some mosqui• Taking it every day for six incoming intercontinental ballistic mis• toes that ‡y into it. months is a real nuisance. siles that the Soviet Union aimed at Amer• Even if a mosquito somehow managed Yet that is what is asked of ica. The lasers were real but the plan was to penetrate such a barrier, a second light those being treated for tuberculosis (TB). fanciful. Scientists now propose a more curtain set up around a bed, for example, They need to pop their pills for half a year modest system, aimed at insects rather would provide further protection. Dr if they are to eliminate the bacteria that than nuclear warheads. They think lasers Marka envisages two or three light cur• cause the infection and combat the emer• could be used to zap the mosquitoes that tains in a home: one at the door, one gence of antibiotic•resistant strains. But carry malaria, a disease which kills more around a sleeping person and one sur• the actual symptoms of infection tend to than a million people each year, most of rounding the area in which mosquitoes go away after just two months of taking them children, and debilitates hundreds typically hide (under the thatched roof of the medicine, so the incentive to carry on of millions more. a hut, for example). Dr Marka calculates is negligible. Worse, the drugs themselves Researchers at Intellectual Ventures, an that if there is a 6% chance that a mosquito produce unpleasant symptoms, including innovations company established by will penetrate a light curtain, and a hut nausea, diarrhoea, headaches and in• former Microsoft executives in Bellevue, contains four curtains, then only one in somnia. Indeed, one common anti•TB Washington, have developed what they 100,000 mosquitoes will be able to spread drug, rifampicin, also has the unnerving call a photonic mosquito fence. It has a malaria. Dr Marka, whose research is side e ect of turning people’s tears, sweat series of posts, each of which is equipped funded by the Gates Foundation, says that and urine a shade of reddish orange. with a cheap camera and a light bulb a prototype of his machine costs a little Every cloud, however, has a silver (which will be swapped for a light•emit• over $100. 7 lining, for it was this strange (if harmless) ting diode in future versions). The cameras side e ect that gave a team of researchers are connected to a central computer. at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech• When a camera detects movement, nology (MIT) their crucial idea: stamp• the computer analyses it to see wheth• sized patches, much like litmus paper, that er it is consistent with the behaviour change colour when exposed to the urine of a mosquito. If it is, then the comput• of people with traces of medicine in their er trains a laser onto the insect and systems. The crucial trick of XoutTB, as the blasts it into oblivion. system built around these patches is Jordin Kare, an astrophysicist and a known, is that the change in colour reveals former scientist on the missile•defence a code that a patient can send by text• programme, leads the e ort. He says it is message to a number which rewards him possible to detect di erent species of with free airtime minutes on his mobile mosquito because their wings beat with a phone. Patients thus have a daily incentive distinctive frequency. He is aiming for to take their terrible pills. Anopheles gambiae, the species most The XoutTB project began in the spring e ective at spreading plasmodium, the of 2007, with the launch of the Yunus parasite that causes malaria, when it bites Challenge, a now•annual contest at MIT to people to feed on their blood. promote development in poor countries. Dr Kare imagines that the mosquito Muhammad Yunus, after whom the chal• fence will be set up around a hospital or a lenge is named, is a Nobel prize•winning village in a malarial area. His experiments pioneer of micro†nance‹the idea that with prototypes have shown that posts loans too small for traditional banks to spaced 100 metres apart work best. The handle are crucial in enabling businesses lasers would target only mosquitoes, to ‡ourish in the poorer parts of the world. although Dr Kare says some work still The winner of that year’s challenge needs to be done to ensure that the laser is was Jose Gomez•Marquez, a medical safe for people and animals. Although he engineer at MIT. His original idea, inspired will not give an exact †gure, Dr Kare says by Dr Yunus’s work, was to involve local he built his prototype from parts bought at banks (in this case in Nicaragua) in a surplus stores and on eBay, and has calcu• scheme that would give TB patients micro• lated that the cost will be comparable to loans in exchange for evidence that they that of supplying all the inhabitants of a had been taking their medication. That medium•sized village with bed nets. plan fell by the wayside because the banks Another, somewhat simpler, approach did not want to get involved. But phone 1 8 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

basic data on maps by hand in the 1990s. But in 2005 she was able to use maps that displayed 14 indicators of opportunity‹ created for her by a mapping•technology specialist‹to help win a housing•desegre• gation court case. For most people it is merely a handy tool to †nd a nearby pizzeria or get direc• tions to a meeting. But mapping tech• nology has matured into a tool for social justice. Whether it is to promote health, safety, fair politics or a cleaner environ• ment, foundations, non•pro†t groups and individuals around the world are †nding that maps can help them make their case far more intuitively and e ectively than speeches, policy papers or press releases. ŒToday you are allowed to visualise data in ways you couldn’t even under• stand just a few years ago, says Je Vining Keep taking the tablets of Gartner, a consulting †rm. Along with web•based resources, coalescence around 2 companies were willing to give it a try, and ly discovered that one of the neediest more advanced tools has also helped, brought with them the bonus of an estab• groups of people there are 15• to 25•year• such as the emergence of ESRI, based in lished infrastructure for distributing the old women. Unfortunately, they are often Redlands, California, as the market leader rewards. The resulting trial, which in• under the thumbs of their parents or in mapping software. And the rise of volved 30 people with tuberculosis, was a husbands and are not allowed mobile open•source projects such as MapServer, success, and a second is about to be car• phones of their own. Dr Khan is therefore PostGIS and GRASS GIS have made so• ried out in Pakistan, where a batch of 400 considering the idea of a di erent re• phisticated mapping available to non• XoutTB patches is arriving this month. ward‹high•energy food supplements to pro†t groups with limited resources. Conditions in Karachi, the Pakistani combat malnutrition. The system would All this has made it much easier to city in which the trial is being conducted, not supply food directly, but would in• create maps that explain‹at a glance‹ could politely be described as Œchalleng• stead top up credit at the patient’s grocer something that might otherwise require ing. According to Rachel Glennerster, a using an automatic link. pages of tables or verbiage. ŒA percentage member of the XoutTB team who has If XoutTB does work, the team has or a table is still abstract for people, says worked as an economist at the IMF and ambitions to extend it. Other drugs can Dan Newman of MAPLight.org, a group the British Treasury, the local medical also be a nuisance to remember. The based in Berkeley, California that charts clinics are closed about 60% of the time anti•retrovirals used to combat AIDS, for the links between politicians and money. and doctors or nurses are often absent example, have to be taken for the rest of a ŒWith maps, you can show people how an during the 40% when the doors are nomi• patient’s life. And taking medicines for abstract concept connects to where they nally open. Such absences‹and the asso• non•infectious conditions such as diabe• live. Wendy Brawer, founding director of ciated lack of compliance•monitoring‹are tes and high blood pressure is also a chore. GreenMap.org, a mapping site based in some of the problems for which XoutTB is Find the right Œlitmus test, though, and New York used by people in 54 countries, designed to compensate. what is now being done with TB drugs says maps can make a point even if they Pakistan, though, presents a second could succeed with any of these as well. are in a foreign language. ŒMaps are really diˆculty. Aamir Khan, the director of Taking your medicine could, at last, be• helpful for that ‘Aha!’ moment, she says. XoutTB’s operations in the country, quick• come a truly rewarding experience. 7 For example, ŒThe Grim Reaper’s Road Map: An Atlas of Mortality in Britain, published in 2008, reveals that the places with the highest numbers of smokers also have the highest rates of death from lung Mapping a better world cancer. No surprise there. But the col• lection of maps from a British publisher of public•policy books also shows that cervi• cal cancer is more likely to strike those in Software: Interest groups around the world are using mapping tools and the north of England, and brain cancer is more prevalent in the south of Scotland. internet•based information sources to campaign for change Such revelations can lead to investigations ONVINCING people about the evils can show graphically how people are and eventual health improvements. C of housing segregation can be tough, segregated from opportunity, she says. The Kirwan Institute for the Study of says Barbara Samuels, a campaigner for ŒMaps help you take complex information Race and Ethnicity in Columbus, Ohio, fair housing at the American Civil Liber• and portray it in a clear, intuitive manner. which created the maps used in Ms Samu• ties Union (ACLU) of Maryland. ŒPeople You can show segregation in a way that el’s ACLU court case, has made Œopportu• say, ‘What’s so bad about living in an talking about it doesn’t do. nity maps of several American cities. The all•black neighbourhood?’  she explains. And compiling such maps is much aim is to help people †nd neighbourhoods But using a map that displays all the va• easier than it used to be, thanks to new where jobs, health care, safety and public cant houses in a segregated neighbour• mapping tools and sources of information transport are in better supply‹or to spur hood, how few jobs exist there and how on the internet. Ms Samuels remembers, the creation of more such neighbour• little public transport is available, Œyou for example, the tedium of trying to draw hoods. Rob Breymaier of MoveSmart.org, 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Monitor 9

2 a non•pro†t group that encourages people to Œmove to opportunity, recalls using Kirwan’s maps in Chicago in 2006 to help a family of eight. ŒThey ended up †nding a A stitch in time place in the north•west suburbs, which is a huge change from Chicago’s south side, he says. The children ended up in better schools and stayed out of trouble, he says. Nanotechnology: A new way to prevent ‡aws in composite materials Others have used maps to expose violence. Ushahidi.com was launched by ECAUSE they are both strong and carbon nanotubes and polymer glues. four technologists to map citizen reports B lightweight, composite materials They discovered that when the nano• of post•election violence in Kenya last made from carbon †bres are the dar• tubes were just touching the glue, they year using Google Maps. ŒWe’re building a lings of engineers in the aerospace sucked it up by capillary action, the platform that makes it easier to gather industry. Unfortunately, such materials same physical mechanism by which information around a crisis so that gov• deteriorate over time. Wind and rain plants draw water from the soil. Because ernments, or whoever is trying to hide the attack the glue that sticks the layers of the nanotubes drew glue into them• crisis, can’t do it anymore, says Erik Hers• carbon †bres together. As a conse• selves, they could be used as both nee• man, Ushahidi’s operations director. quence, the layers peel away from one dles and threads. Sequences of maps can also be used to another. Many people have tried to The team placed polymer glue be• debunk misconceptions. Many in Los solve this problem, without success. A tween two carbon•†bre layers and Angeles were pleased, for example, to new method aims to do so by stitching heated it. They then placed tens of learn that gun violence had decreased the carbon•†bre layers together. trillions of nanotubes on each of the since the mid•1990s. But by developing a Brian Wardle of the Massachusetts carbon•†bre layers such that the tubes series of maps showing where shootings Institute of Technology and his col• could just touch the glue. When the glue continued to happen, a local non•pro†t leagues noted that past attempts to was hot and runny, the carbon nano• group called Healthy City was able to reinforce composite materials, by sew• tubes sucked it up through the carbon• show that for some Los Angelenos, gun ing the layers together as well as gluing †bre layers. The layers were then violence was as bad as ever. them, often ended up damaging the pressed together and the glue was al• MAPlight used a similar time•lapse †bres because the metal needles and lowed to cool, before the material was approach to show the in‡uence of money threads were so thick. Although the tested for strength and toughness. on congressional votes. Starting in Janu• sewing did help the composite stay Dr Wardle and his colleagues found ary 2007, it tracked which states (those together, its strength was diminished. Dr that the technique would make aero• growing sugar•beets and sugar•cane, it Wardle reasoned that if a needle and space parts ten times stronger than at turned out) were making the most gener• thread could be made thin enough, such present. The nanotubes themselves are ous political donations in the run•up to a damage could be eliminated. cheap and, as a happy coincidence, vote in July 2007 on subsidies for the sugar Carbon nanotubes, which are just having them run perpendicular to the industry. But once the vote was tallied and billionths of a metre across, seemed the carbon•†bre layers makes the composite the subsidy granted, states that had ap• perfect needle. Because these tubes are over a million times more electrically peared bright red with political contribu• a thousandth of the diameter of carbon conductive than it otherwise would be. tions suddenly revert to tan, indicating an †bres, they can slip into the microscopic That means aeroplanes built with such instant drop in donations. ŒWe make spaces between them. materials would be able to disperse visible and real something that is usually Finding a thread for the nanoscopic lightning strikes rapidly, avoiding elec• invisible and abstract, says Mr Newman. needle to pull required more thinking. trical damage during storms as well as Changing the way American politics is Dr Wardle and his colleagues started being better protected against whatever funded is a tall order. But some map•based exploring the interactions between wind and rain can throw at them. campaigns have already produced clear results. For example, the Food Trust, a campaign group based in Philadelphia, Areas with used maps as part of its †ght to reduce fewer parks diet•related disease and malnutrition in (lighter rather urban parts of America. ŒI remember the than darker †rst supermarket•commission meeting, green) have says Jennifer Kozlowski, special assistant higher rates of for the environment to David Paterson, childhood the governor of New York. ŒSome of the obesity (larger maps in the report mapped obesity•relat• red circles) ed deaths and access to produce markets. It was as clear as day that something need• ed to be done. In January Mr Paterson announced the Healthy Food/Healthy Communities Initiative, including $10m in grants and loans for supermarket projects in under•served communities. Such examples underscore why cam• paigners are rushing to make the most of map technology. ŒWe don’t just want to be about mapping, says John Kim of Healthy City. ŒMaps don’t change the world‹but people who use maps do. 7 10 Rational consumer The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

kept tidy. To start with, children will hap• pily put things away in order to watch the With a little helpð robot set o , but unfortunately the nov• elty soon wears o . Similar allowances must be made for other domestic robots. Sweden’s Husqvarna recently ally, conclude that the whole launched a new version of its room is clean. It then trundles Automower lawnmowing robot. Domestic robots: Machines that look back to dock at its recharging Before it can be used, a wire must after your home are getting cleverer, station. On the whole it be stapled around the perimeter but they still need care and attention does a good job. of the lawn to de†ne the area to if they are to perform as intended So the †rst observation be cut. The Automower does of life with a domestic ro• not collect grass, but chops it OSIE, the robotic maid in ŒThe Jetsons, bot is that you will keep up †nely and leaves it behind Rwas quite a character, but she did a rea• watching it before you trust it as a mulch. If toys and other obstacles are sonably good job of cooking and cleaning. completely. Perhaps that is not surprising: not cleared from the lawn before it starts Today’s domestic robots, alas, do not have after all, when automatic washing•ma• work, the robot will steer around them, such dexterity. If you can lay your hands chines †rst appeared people used to draw leaving uncut areas. The latest version can on an experimental Honda ASIMO or up a chair and sit and watch them com• even top up its batteries with solar power, Toyota Partner Robot, then it could greet plete their wash, rinse and spin cycles. or send its owner a text message if it gets guests, serve drinks and even play a musi• Now they just load them, switch them on into trouble trying to climb a mole•hill. cal instrument to entertain them. The and leave them to it. But there is still only a limited range of household robots you can buy are, by con• The second observation is that certain domestic robots. Machines that mop the trast, still made for only one job. But with accommodations must be made to get the ‡oor, clean a swimming pool and clear advances in electronics they are at least best out of a domestic robot, something muck from guttering are made by iRobot. getting better at the things they can do. that seems unlikely to change any time Several surveillance robots are also on of• Floor•cleaning machines capable of re• soon. The Roomba can be set up to clean at fer. The Rovio, made by WowWee of Hong sponding to their environment were particular times, and to clean more than Kong, is a Wi•Fi•enabled webcam, mount• among the †rst commercially available do• one room (small infra•red Œlighthouses ed on an extending arm, which rides along mestic products worthy of being called ro• can be positioned in doorways, creating an on a nimble set of wheels. It can be remote• bots. The best known is the Roomba, made invisible barrier between one room and ly operated over the internet via a laptop by iRobot, an American company which the next that is only removed when the or mobile phone. The idea is that Rovio can has sold more than 3m of the frisbee•sized †rst room has been cleaned). A Œdrop o  patrol the home when its owner is away, vacuuming robots. The latest model, the sensor underneath the robot prevents it either automatically or under manual con• †fth incarnation of the Roomba, has more from falling down stairs. All very clever, trol. Two•way communication allows the sensors and cleverer software than its pre• but what the Roomba will not do is pick up operator to see and talk via the machine. decessors. Press the ŒClean button and toys, shoes and other items left lying So you could, for instance, shout at the dog the robot glides out of its docking station around. Rooms cared for by robots must be if it is sleeping on your best sofa. and sets o across the ‡oor. Some machines are called robots even Domestic robots are supposed to free though they cannot move around. There is up time so that you can do other things, but an ironing robot, for instance, that takes the watching how the Roomba deals with ob• form of an in‡atable dummy: put a damp stacles is strangely compelling. It is capable shirt on it, and it pu s up to remove the of sensing its surroundings, and does not creases. Similarly, there are elaborate simply try to adhere to a pre•planned trouser presses that aspire to be robots. But route, so it is not upset if furniture is do these devices, or pet•care machines that moved, or if it is picked up and taken to release food into a bowl every so often, or clean another room. Its infra•red sensors automatically clean litter trays, really enable it to slow down before nudging up count as robots? If so, then surely dish• to an obstacle‹such as a dozy cat‹chang• washers and washing machines do, too. ing direction and setting o again. Yet whatever shape or size robots come It steadily works its way around the in, many will be adored. Another impor• room, †guring out how to get out from un• tant observation from living with a robot is der the television stand or untangle itself that it tends to become part of the family. from a stray Game Boy recharging lead. People give them names, and if they have Watch it for long enough, and you can to be sent back for repair they carefully sometimes predict its next move. The mark them to ensure they get the same machine has a Œdirt sensor and ‡ashes a machine back, says Nancy Dussault Smith blue light when it †nds things to clean up. of iRobot. Despite Rosie’s peculiar ways, Only when it detects no more dirt does it the Jetsons would not have swapped her stop going over the same area and, eventu• The fantasy (top) and the reality (bottom) for the world. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Smart grids 11

ROUND the world billions of dollars in demand for power. The deregulation of Aare being invested in clean•energy America’s utilities in the 1990s encouraged technologies of one sort or another, from companies to transfer power over long dis• solar arrays and wind turbines to electric tances. At the same time, regulatory uncer• cars. But there is a problem lurking in the tainty and increased competition led to re• power grid that links them together. Green duced investment in new transmission sources of power tend to be distributed lines. As a result, some parts of the system and intermittent, which makes them diˆ• have become increasingly congested. cult to integrate into the existing grid. And Black•outs cost America an estimated $80 when it comes to electric cars, a study by billion a year, according to a study by the America’s Paci†c Northwest National Lab• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. oratory (PNNL) found that there is already enough generating capacity to replace as Plugging in much as 73% of America’s conventional The cure, many believe, is to apply a dose ‡eet with electric vehicles‹but only if the of computer power to the grid. Adding dig• charging of those vehicles is carefully ital sensors and remote controls to the managed. In order to accommodate the transmission and distribution system ‡ow of energy between new sources of would make it smarter, greener and more supply and new forms of demand, the eˆcient. Such a Œsmart grid or Œenergy in• world’s electrical grids are going to have to ternet would be far more responsive, in• become a lot smarter. teractive and transparent than today’s grid. Even though the demands being placed It would be able to cope with new sources on national electricity grids are changing of renewable power, enable the co•ordi• rapidly, the grids themselves have changed nated charging of electric cars, provide in• very little since they were †rst developed formation to consumers about their usage more than a century ago. The †rst grids and allow utilities to monitor and control were built as one•way streets, consisting of their networks more e ectively. And all power stations at one end supplying pow• this would help reduce greenhouse•gas er when needed to customers at the other emissions. ŒWe have a fundamental belief end. That approach worked well for many that a fully e ective smart grid is going to years, and helped drive the growth of in• radically change the way an energy grid dustrial nations by making electricity operates, says Michael Carlson, until re• ubiquitous, but it is now showing its age. cently a senior executive at Xcel Energy, a One problem is a lack of transparency power company that is using the city of on the distribution side of the system, Boulder, Colorado, to test various smart• which is particularly apparent to consum• grid technologies. ers. Most people have little idea how much What exactly would a smart grid look electricity they are using until they are pre• like? Many of the changes would be invisi• sented with a bill. Nor do most people ble. On the transmission and distribution know what proportion of their power was side, sensors and digital relays installed on generated by nuclear, coal, gas or some power lines will enable utilities to operate form of renewable energy, or what emis• systems with greater eˆciency and reli• sions were produced in the process. In the ability. Today’s supervisory control and event of a power cut, it is the customer data acquisition systems, for example, who alerts the utility, which then sends out typically provide data on the state of trans• crews to track down the problem and †x it mission lines every four seconds. Devices manually. ŒI can’t think of another indus• called synchrophasors can sample voltage try that still has that lack of visibility over and current 30 times a second or faster‹ its networks, says Heather Daniell of New giving utilities and system operators a far Energy Finance, a research †rm in London. more accurate view of the health of the According to projections from Ameri• grid. A broad deployment of synchropha• ca’s Energy Information Administration, sors could be used as an early warning sys• electricity generation around the world Building the tem to help halt or prevent power surges will nearly double from about 17.3 trillion before they develop into massive black• kilowatt•hours (kWh) in 2005 to 33.3 tril• outs, says Je Dagle of PNNL. lion kWh in 2030. Poor countries will smart grid Other smart•grid technologies would show the strongest growth in electricity be more visible to consumers. Probably generation, increasing by an average of 4% most important would be the introduction per year from 2005 to 2030, compared Energy: By promoting the adoption of smart meters, which track electricity use with 1.3% per year for their richer counter• of renewable•energy technology, a in real•time and can transmit that informa• parts. In some countries, including Ameri• smart grid would be good for the tion back to the power company. Smart ca, the grid has not kept up with the growth environment‹and for innovation meters have been used by commercial and 1 12 Smart grids The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

Once smart meters are installed, power companies can determine the location of outages more easily.

2 industrial customers for decades, says Eric number is forecast to increase to 155m by let them use cleaner energy sources, such Miller of Trilliant, an American company 2013. So far the pioneer is Italy, where the as solar or wind power. that installs communications networks main utility, Enel, has deployed more than As well as giving utilities more control, and software to implement smart meters. 30m smart meters to its customers since smart meters also give them more ‡exibili• But in recent years they have become 2001. About 12m smart meters will be in• ty. In particular, they can vary the price of cheap enough for wider deployment. stalled in California over the next few electricity throughout the day in response Smart meters establish a two•way data years, and the province of Ontario has told to demand. Telling people that electricity is connection between the customer and the its utilities to install a smart meter for every more expensive when demand is high will power company, by sending information household by 2010. encourage them to do their laundry when over a communications network that may But the smart meter is only the †rst step. demand has fallen and electricity is cheap• include power•line, radio or cellular•net• Eventually smart meters will communi• er, says Rick Stevens of Hydro One, a pow• work connections. Once smart meters are cate with smart thermostats, appliances er company in Ontario that has installed installed, power companies can determine and other devices, giving people a much almost 900,000 smart meters to date and the location of outages more easily, and no clearer view of how much electricity they plans to start sending price signals to its longer need to send sta to read meters, or are consuming. Customers will be able to customers in 2010. to turn the power on or o at a particular access that information via read•outs in This could be done by showing real• property. Smart meters also help to curtail their homes or web•based portals, through time price and usage information on a dis• the theft of electricity. Altogether some which they will be able to set temperature play so that consumers can decide wheth• 76m of them have been installed world• preferences for their thermostats, for ex• er to turn on the washing machine. Studies wide, according to ABI Research, and that ample, or opt in or out of programmes that have found that when people are made aware of how much power they are using, they reduce their use by about 7%. With added incentives, people curtail their elec• tricity use during peaks in demand by 15% or more. But eventually it should be possi• ble to do it automatically, so that the dish• washer waits for the price to fall below a certain level before switching on, for exam• ple, or the air•conditioner turns itself down when the price goes up. This is more complex than today’s pric• ing, of course, but customers will be able to save money if they are prepared to put up with a bit more complexity. ŒIf you don’t want to participate, then you’re going to pay a much higher rate per kilowatt•hour, says Peter Corsell of GridPoint, a company that has developed a web•based portal that lets people respond to price changes from utilities. ŒAnd if you want to opt in, you may save a whole lot of money. Dur• ing a one•year pilot study carried out by PNNL, for example, consumers reduced their electricity bills by an average of 10% compared with the previous year. The advantage from the utility’s point of view is that it becomes easier to balance supply and demand by reducing con• sumption at times of peak demand, such as during very hot or cold spells, when people crank up their air•conditioners or heaters. As well as improving the stability of the system, it could also enable utilities to postpone the construction of new pow• er stations, or even do without them alto• gether, by reducing the peak level of de• mand that they have to meet. Moreover a smart grid will make it easi• er to co•ordinate the intermittent and dis• persed sources of power, from rooftop so• lar panels or backyard wind•turbines, for example. And, of course, a smart grid 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Smart grids 13

A smart grid could promote innovation in energy, just as the internet did in computing.

2 could also help manage the charging of stances the business case is straightfor• that must be sent to and fro to make a electric vehicles. The best time to charge ward. Enel spent around ¤2.1billion ($3 bil• smart grid work, Œmore bandwidth is bet• vehicles is at night, when lots of cheap lion) installing its 30m smart meters in ter, says Mr Gammons. electricity is available. ŒIf we don’t do that, Italy, but now saves around ¤500m a year Although smart grids are often likened then we will add to peak loads and we’ll as a result, so its investment paid for itself to an internet for energy, there is one im• have to build huge amounts of infrastruc• within †ve years. portant di erence. The internet is built on ture to handle our vehicles, says Robert As well as producing savings from im• open technical standards, from internet Pratt of PNNL. The ‡ow of energy between proved operational eˆciency, a smart grid protocol to move packets of data around to the grid and electric cars need not be one• could also save utilities money by reduc• hypertext mark•up language to de†ne the way. With millions of electric cars plugged ing consumption, and with it the need to appearance of web pages. But agreement in at any one time, they could act as an build so many new power stations. Reduc• on standards has yet to be reached for enormous energy•storage system, absorb• ing peak demand in America by a mere 5% smart grids, which can pose a problem ing excess power from wind turbines on would yield savings of about $66 billion when di erent networks and technologies windy nights, for example, but also feed• over 20 years, according to Ahmad Faruqui are expected to work together. ing power back into the grid if necessary of the Brattle Group, a consultancy that has Some standards exist, but others are (an approach called Œvehicle to grid, or worked with utilities on designing and just emerging, says Don Von Dollen of the V2G) if the wind suddenly drops. evaluating smart•meter pilot programmes. Electric Power Research Institute, whose Moreover, studies have shown that the organisation was recently asked by Ameri• Electricity bills best in•home smart•grid technologies can ca’s National Institute of Standards and Implementing all this will not be cheap. A achieve reductions in peak demand of up Technology to develop a Œsmart•grid inte• smart meter costs about $125, and can cost roperability standards road map. Agreed• several hundred dollars more to install, upon standards would allow companies once the necessary communications net• to buy and sell devices, services and soft• work and data•management software at ware in the knowledge that they would the utility are taken into account. (Smart work together. meters can collect customer readings as of• One area where such interoperability ten as every 15 minutes, rather than every will be critical is in the home. Many utili• month, so utilities need new software to ties want people to be able to buy smart cope with all the extra data.) thermostats, smart appliances and other The American government is spending smart•grid technologies in shops, says Sam some $4 billion from its economic•stimu• Lucero of ABI Research, Œand if everything lus package on smart•grid initiatives, but is proprietary that becomes much more providing a smart meter for every Ameri• problematic. Another complication is can home would cost far more: Califor• that there is currently no standard way to nia’s investor•owned utilities alone are access historical billing information or spending about $4.5 billion on deploying real•time metering data, which would be smart meters over the next few years. That extremely helpful to developers of web• implies that a nationwide implementation based billing and energy•analysis services could cost around $50 billion. But PNNL es• for consumers, says Erich Gunther of Ener• timates that $450 billion would have to be Smarter than it looks Nex, a consulting †rm based in Knoxville, poured into conventional grid infrastruc• Tennessee, that is advising California’s en• ture to meet America’s expected growth to 25%, which would result in savings of ergy commission on smart metering and over the next decade anyway. Mr Carlson, more than $325 billion over that period, demand response programmes. who now works for GridPoint, argues that calculates Dr Faruqui. ŒTechnology is ex• Once these issues are ironed out, a bit of thought is called for if the aim is to pensive, he says, Œbut not using it will be though, the smart grid could provide the move to a new energy•management mod• even more expensive. platform for a huge range of innovation el, Œas opposed to building more of what Smart•grid technology o ers a wide and applications in energy, just as the inter• we’ve already got. range of possibilities, so deployments will net did in computing. ŒI think that an open, One problem is that power companies vary depending on each utility’s business standards•based network could give birth are understandably reluctant to invest in needs, existing infrastructure and regula• to a thousand new companies, says Eric technologies that will reduce consump• tory environment. Some utilities may seek Dresselhuys of Silver Spring Networks, a tion of the product they sell, even if there to use the technology to maximise energy †rm based in California that works with are other bene†ts. One way to realign the eˆciency, for example, while others may utilities to implement smart•grid net• public interest with that of the utilities is focus on the integration of renewable ener• works. A smarter grid will not only help through a process called Œdecoupling gy sources. ŒYou’re never going to build the people save energy or use it more eˆcient• which breaks the direct relationship be• same smart grid twice, so you have to look ly, but will also promote the adoption of all tween electricity sales and pro†ts, a mea• for overriding themes, says Brad Gam• kinds of green technologies, including sure that has been successfully employed mons of IBM, a computer giant, which has wind, solar and plug•in vehicles. ŒIt’s the in California. Energy use per person has re• helped dozens of utilities with their smart• platform that allows for the transforma• mained largely ‡at over the past 30 years in grid implementations. Amid all the varia• tion of one of the largest and most impor• California, but it has increased by roughly tions, however, one point of consensus has tant industries in the world to take place, 50% for the rest of America. But in some in• emerged. To handle all of the information says Mr Dresselhuys. 7 14 The connected car The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

The connected car

in accidents. And connectivity can im• gate information from large numbers of prove entertainment and productivity for vehicles, notes Dev Khare of Venrock, a Sil• Automotive technology: Cars are both driver and passengers‹an attractive icon Valley venture•capital †rm that is in• becoming more connected, both to proposition given that Americans, for ex• vesting in connected•car technology. Ex• remote systems for navigation and ample, spend 45 hours a month in their amples of such aggregation include information, and to each other cars on average. There is also scope for new Openstreetmap, a project to create open• business models built around connected source maps by collecting GPS data from N ŒKNIGHT RIDER, a 1980s television cars, from dynamic insurance and road users as they drive about, and Trapster, a Ishow, Michael Knight fought for justice pricing to car pooling and location•based constantly updated database of the loca• with the help of KITT, an arti†cially intelli• advertising. ŒWe can stop looking at a car tions of police speed traps, compiled from gent Pontiac Trans Am. The pair chatted as one system, says Rahul Mangharam, an reports sent in by users of the software. amiably, with KITT sensing and reacting to engineer at the University of Pennsylva• Inrix, a provider of traˆc data based in nearby objects, navigating and looking up nia, Œand look at it as a node in a network. Seattle, has based its business model on information about Mr Knight’s immediate this approach. It combines information surroundings and deadly adversaries. It started with a satnav from static sensors in the road with GPS in• KITT could even drive itself. Thirty years The best known connected•car technology formation collected wirelessly from more on, many of the fantastical Pontiac’s fea• is satellite navigation, which uses the glo• than 1m ‡eet vehicles to provide real•time tures are becoming reality. bal•positioning system (GPS) in conjunc• information about traˆc ‡ows. This infor• A modern car can have as many as 200 tion with a database of roads to provide di• mation is piped in turn to navigation de• on•board sensors, measuring everything rections and †nd points of interest. In vices and smart•phones, in order to adjust from tyre pressure to windscreen tempera• America there were fewer than 3m naviga• a delivery route in response to an accident, ture. A high•end Lexus contains 67 micro• tional devices on the road in 2005, nearly for example. The company can also fore• processors, and even the world’s cheapest half of which were built in to vehicles. But cast traˆc ‡ows on a particular route at a car, the Tata Nano, has a dozen. Voice•dri• built•in systems tend to be expensive, are particular time and date. ven satellite navigation is routinely used not extensible, and may quickly be out of Information speci†c to individual cars by millions of people. Radar•equipped date. So drivers have been taking matters can also present new opportunities. Some cruise control allows vehicles to adjust into their own hands: of the more than insurers, for example, o er dynamic insur• their speed automatically in traˆc. Some 33m units on the road today, nearly 90% are ance schemes that use GPS to determine a cars can even park themselves. portable, sitting on the dashboard or stuck driver’s premiums, based on distance trav• Once a purely mechanical device, the to the windscreen. elled, driving style and where the car is dri• car is going digital. ŒConnected cars, Many consumers are now adding inter• ven and parked. Similarly, the ability to which sport links to navigation satellites net connectivity to their cars in the form of treat a car as a node on a network is shak• and communications networks‹and, be• another portable device: the Œsmart ing up the idea of car ownership itself. Zip• fore long, directly to other vehicles‹could phone. A two•way internet link allows for car, the largest car•sharing scheme, shares transform driving, preventing motorists more elaborate forms of navigation, and 6,000 vehicles between 275,000 drivers in from getting lost, stuck in traˆc or involved also makes it possible to gather and aggre• London and parts of North America‹near• 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 The connected car 15

If the bene†ts are palpable, drivers will be prepared to give up some privacy.

2 ly half of all car•sharers worldwide. Its data‹position, speed, direction and time‹ sensors and a mobile•phone data connec• model depends on an assortment of in•car with other vehicles in the vicinity. As these tion to work out how much to charge each technology. ŒThis is the †rst large•scale in• drivers respond to their enhanced aware• user. Over 900,000 vehicles are now regis• troduction of the connected car, claims ness, they in‡uence the overall ‡ow of traf• tered with the scheme and there are plans Scott Griˆth, the †rm’s chief executive. †c, bene†ting everyone. Dr Mangharam to extend this approach to road•tolling Zipcar’s available vehicles report their reckons this level of adoption is at least a across Europe from 2012. Eventually it may positions to a control centre so that mem• decade away. also be extended to ordinary cars. bers of the scheme can †nd nearby vehi• The prospects for adoption of new V2I cles through a web or phone interface. technology, beyond road tolls, seem to be Communication breakdown Cars are unlocked by holding a card, con• greatest in Japan, where researchers have Will drivers welcome this? Driving already taining a wireless chip, up against the been testing traˆc signals that use video• involves a high degree of trust: people who windscreen. Integrating cars and back•of• cameras and infra•red beacons to commu• do not know one another routinely engage †ce systems via wireless links allows Zip• nicate with approaching cars. Such sys• in life•or•death co•operation. That trust, car to repackage cars as a ‡exible transport tems can guide drivers into particular and the cues that engender it, may not service. Each vehicle operated by Zipcar is lanes as they approach a junction to en• translate into a V2V system, where a mali• equivalent to taking 20 cars o the road, sure a smooth ‡ow of traˆc or allow emer• cious or malfunctioning signal could snarl says Mr Griˆth, and an average Zipcar gency vehicles to pass, greatly improving traˆc or cause a pile•up. Another problem member saves more than $5,000 dollars a safety. The Japanese government plans to is privacy. Cars are closely associated with year compared with owning a car. deploy the system more broadly from the notion of personal freedom, even if the 2010, in co•ordination with local carmak• reality often involves bumper•to•bumper Vehicle shall speak unto vehicle ers, who will provide the necessary in•car agony. The use of GPS and roadside sen• The next step is to enable cars to communi• technology in new models. sors to track vehicles and monitor how fast cate with each other via vehicle•to•vehicle Such co•operation is lacking elsewhere, they are moving is already unpopular and (V2V) networks, and with infrastructure where carmakers are understandably re• controversial in some quarters. such as toll gates and traˆc lights via vehi• Yet if the bene†ts are palpable, drivers cle•to•infrastructure (V2I) links. A new will be prepared to place their trust in con• wireless standard called Dedicated Short nected car networks, and even to give up Range Communication (DSRC)‹a sort of some privacy. Early adopters of dynamic Wi•Fi for cars‹provides high•speed data car•insurance schemes, for example, tend connections over distances of up to 200m, to be safer drivers who pay lower premi• and safety and emergency communica• ums in return for allowing insurers to track tions at lower speeds over distances of up them. Connected•car technology could to a kilometre from one vehicle to another, help drivers †nd parking spaces, avoid traf• and between vehicles and roadside trans• †c and prevent accidents.ŒBy 2045 it will mitters. So far the technology is mainly be impossible for a driver to impact anoth• used in electronic toll booths, but it has er vehicle or drive o the road without the many other potential applications. serious intention of doing so, says Scott DSRC could be used, for example, to McCormick of the Connected Vehicle As• warn nearby cars of sudden braking or an sociation, an industry group established to airbag deployment, thereby alerting cars promote the technology. Violating traˆc out of visual range and preventing or limit• rules could also become impossible‹get• ing accidents. It could be used to set up ad ting away with it certainly will be. hoc networks to pass data between cars in luctant to add new features to cars if the So why drive at all? Researchers at sev• order to, for example, signal icy spots on necessary infrastructure is not being built eral universities have built autonomous the road (many cars can detect ice as part by local transport authorities. ŒIt is a chick• cars to complete an urban•driving chal• of their skid•control systems) or co•ordi• en and egg problem, says Dr Mangharam, lenge set by the American armed forces in nate Œplatoons‹groups of vehicles travel• who estimates it would take $4.5 billion to 2007. Some of the technology is already in ling closely together under automatic con• upgrade every traˆc light and junction in production cars: Toyota’s Lane•Keeping trol. Other proposed uses include America with smart infrastructure. Assist, for example, could easily do much signalling the approach of emergency ve• Commercial vehicles may get the ball of the driving on long stretches of highway, hicles and ensuring that traˆc lights give rolling †rst. Connected•vehicle technol• but the †rm requires drivers keep their priority to buses and emergency vehicles. ogy is being considered for roadside in• hands on the wheel‹for now. A team led V2V features depend on a network ef• spections, freight tracking, road•condition by Alberto Broggi at the University of fect‹the technology is useless to a driver noti†cations, parking management and Parma has built an autonomous car that who is the only one using it‹but a network enforcing rules on drivers’ working hours. will be set loose this summer to navigate could emerge surprisingly quickly. Dr And adoption of the technology could be Italian urban traˆc by itself‹a formidable Mangharam says his simulations and on• mandated by governments, as in the case test. And Sven Beiker, the director of Stan• road tests in Pittsburgh, carried out in con• of Germany’s Toll Collect system, a dy• ford University’s CarLab, says automatic junction with the research arm of General namic road•tolling system for lorries of 12 driving in some situations, such as stop• Motors, have shown that V2V networking tonnes or over that has been operating and•go traˆc or smooth motorway driv• has bene†ts when as few as 3•5% of cars are since late 2004. Toll Collect uses a combi• ing, could be reliable enough for general equipped to exchange just four pieces of nation of satellite positioning, roadside use in a decade. KITT would be proud. 7 16 Case history The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

much larger scale, and historically their costs have been much lower. Compared The other kind of solar power with other renewable sources of energy, they are probably best able to match a utility’s electrical load, says Nathaniel Bullard of New Energy Finance, a research †rm. They work best when it is hottest and Energy: Think of solar power, and you probably think of photovoltaic panels. demand is greatest. And the heat they But there is another way to make electricity from sunlight, which arguably generate can be stored, so the output of a has even brighter prospects solar•thermal plant does not ‡uctuate as wildly as that of a photovoltaic system. N THE past few months BrightSource from sunlight and currently constitute the Moreover, since they use a turbine to IEnergy, based in California, has signed most common form of solar power. In• generate electricity from heat, most solar• the world’s two largest deals to build new stead, the company specialises in Œconcen• thermal plants can be easily and inexpen• solar•power capacity. The company will trating solar•thermal technology in sively supplemented with natural•gas soon begin constructing the †rst in a series which mirrors concentrate sunlight to boilers, enabling them to perform as of 14 solar•power plants that will collec• produce heat. That heat is then used to reliably as a fossil•fuel power plant. tively supply more than 2.6 gigawatts create steam, which in turn drives a tur• Besides these bene†ts, the main drivers (GW) of electricity‹enough to serve bine to generate electricity. for the growth of the solar•thermal in• about 1.8m homes. But to accomplish this Solar•thermal power stations have dustry are moves to limit carbon•dioxide feat BrightSource will not use photovoltaic several advantages over solar•photovolta• emissions and requirements to increase cells, which generate electricity directly ic projects. They are typically built on a the proportion of electricity produced 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Case history 17

war, the same approach is said to have and by 2007 worldwide installed capacity been used to set enemy ships ablaze. By reached 9.2GW. Although it is more ex• the early 20th century several scientists pensive per kilowatt•hour, solar panels had built simple machines that could run can be deployed in small, modular sys• on concentrated heat from the sun. tems, and thus require much less capital A signi†cant milestone was reached in investment. Moreover, they can generate 1913 when Frank Shuman, an American power o the grid, which turned out to be inventor, created the †rst large solar•ther• an important market for solar power in its mal pumping station in Meadi, Egypt. He early days. designed a system based on †ve large Now, as the solar•thermal industry is re‡ectors, each 62 metres long and made experiencing a revival, parabolic•trough of glass mirrors arranged to form a trough projects are garnering much of today’s in the shape of a parabola. Each parabolic investment money because of their pro• trough focused sunlight onto a tube run• ven track record. To improve the econom• ning along its length, heating the water ics still further, SkyFuel, a †rm based in inside it. The resulting steam powered an New Mexico, is replacing curved glass engine connected to a pump capable of mirrors, which are expensive to make, delivering 6,000 gallons of water a minute with a thin, re‡ective low•cost †lm. And from the Nile to nearby †elds. other competing solar•thermal technol• ogies that were developed in parallel with Do try to concentrate trough•based systems, but never commer• The modern history of solar•thermal cialised, are also ready to be deployed. power began after the oil crises of the Among them is an approach that 1970s, which prompted many nations to BrightSource uses, in which a †eld of start to investigate clean and renewable small, ‡at mirrors called Œheliostats energy sources as alternatives to fossil redirect and concentrate sunlight onto a fuels. Over the following decades Ameri• central receiver at the top of a tower. The ca, Spain and a handful of other countries tower contains a ‡uid, typically water, built solar•thermal pilot plants for re• which boils and the resulting steam is search purposes. The †rst company to then transferred to a nearby Œpower implement the technology on a commer• block, where it spins a conventional cial scale was Luz International, an Israeli turbine. The advantage of this Œpower company founded in 1980. tower approach is that it can produce Drawing on prior research, Luz began steam at a temperature of 550°C and can building a series of solar•thermal power thus achieve a higher thermal•to•electric stations in California’s Mojave desert in eˆciency than trough•based systems, says Solar One, a pilot solar•thermal the mid•1980s. Like Mr Shuman before, the John Woolard, the chief executive of project in the Mojave desert company used parabolic troughs to focus BrightSource. In addition, he says, power• sunlight on to liquid•†lled tubes, but tower systems su er from fewer pumping instead of water they used oil as the heat• losses than trough•based designs. The †rst 2 from renewable sources. According to transfer ‡uid. Once it reached a tempera• commercial power•tower began operating New Energy Finance, about 12GW of ture of about 390°C, the hot oil was in Spain in 2007. 1 concentrating solar•thermal power capac• pumped to a so•called Œpower block ity is being planned worldwide‹a vast where it went through a series of heat amount, given that only about 500 mega• exchangers, turning water into steam and watts (MW) of such capacity has been powering a conventional steam•turbine. built to date. To maximise the energy that The turbine then turned a generator to can be collected from the sun, solar•power produce electricity. facilities are being constructed in regions By 1990 Luz had constructed nine that enjoy daily uninterrupted sunshine plants with a total capacity of 354MW. At for much of the year. According to Mark the time, solar•thermal power was pro• Mehos of America’s National Renewable ducing about 90% of all solar electricity in Energy Laboratory, solar•thermal power the world, says Arnold Goldman, the could in theory generate 11,000GW in former chief executive of Luz, who is now America’s south•west. That is about ten chairman of BrightSource. But when the times America’s entire existing power• price of natural gas fell and America’s tax generation capacity. incentives for solar power were not re• Simple techniques for concentrating newed, the industry came to a grinding sunlight to generate heat date back thou• halt. For nearly two decades no new com• sands of years. In China and ancient mercial solar•thermal plants began oper• Greece, people focused the sun’s rays with ating. In the meantime, solar•photovoltaic mirrors or glass to light †res. In times of technology slowly took over the market, A power of tower near Seville 18 Case history The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

Concentrating solar•thermal technology could regain its historical lead over the photovoltaic approach.

2 Another advance that makes solar• and thus typically do not include storage. ogies. Stirling Energy Systems, based in thermal power more economically and A cheaper alternative to storage is Phoenix, Arizona, hopes to prove the technologically viable than in the past is hybridisation. All the original Luz plants doubters wrong. It has signed two large the ability to use a large number of small• also have natural•gas boilers that can power•purchase agreements, for up to er and less expensive mirrors, steered by generate steam when the sun is not shin• 1,750MW, and plans to ful†l them using computer systems, to ensure more accu• ing. Because solar•thermal plants have a dish•engine systems built in conjunction rate and automatic tracking and redirec• power block and turbine already in place, with its sister company, Tessera Solar. Both tion of sunlight than was ever possible the extra cost is marginal. Hybridisation projects are due to start construction as before. Bill Gross, the chief executive of could also be done the other way around, early as 2010. eSolar, a developer of Œpower tower by using steam generated from solar• One obstacle hampering the growth of technology based in Pasadena, California, thermal collectors to help drive the tur• the entire †eld is the diˆculty of obtaining says his †rm is using software to turn bines at existing coal or gas plants. The †nancing for solar•thermal projects in the thousands of ‡at mirrors and shape them Electric Power Research Institute, based in current economic climate, says Thomas into a continuously evolving parabola Palo Alto, is studying the feasibility of this Mancini, programme manager for concen• around the tower. approach as a means of reducing fuel costs trating solar•power at Sandia National and emissions at existing power stations. Laboratories. As a result, some announced Storage and hybrids In addition to parabolic troughs and projects may be delayed or perhaps never Both power•tower and parabolic•trough power•towers there is also a third solar• be built. The situation has prompted some systems can store thermal energy in the thermal technology, which combines companies to change their business mod• form of hot, molten salt. It is then possible curved, dish•shaped mirrors with heat els: Ausra, a solar•thermal company based to generate steam, and thus electricity, engines. In a dish•engine design, the mir• in Mountain View, California, has even when the sun is not shining. Solar• rors concentrate sunlight to generate heat, switched from being an independent thermal plants without storage can oper• which then typically powers a Stirling power•producer to being mostly an equip• ate about 30% of the year; but with storage engine‹a machine that converts heat into ment supplier, for example. that number could climb to 70% or higher. mechanical energy by compressing and Although solar•thermal power pro• Unfortunately storage is expensive, and is expanding a †xed quantity of gas. The duces no carbon•dioxide emissions, it can only economical when regulators provide change in pressure drives the engine’s have some negative environmental im• incentives. In Spain, for example, produc• pistons, which drive a shaft that turns a pacts. Both power•tower and trough• ers of solar•thermal power receive a guar• generator to produce electricity. based systems are typically water•cooled, anteed feed•in tari . That makes it particu• Although they are highly eˆcient, and require millions of gallons of water larly appealing for Spanish plants to have Stirling engines have seen little practical annually. That can cause big problems, storage capabilities, to maximise their use since their invention nearly two centu• especially in desert environments. The ability to sell electricity to utilities. In ries ago, and so far there are no commer• California Energy Commission recently America the main incentives for solar• cial solar•thermal systems that use this urged NextEra Energy Resources, a renew• thermal projects are a 30% investment•tax approach. Critics of the technology say it able•energy company, to consider dry credit or an equivalent cash grant. As a involves too many moving parts, making cooling instead of using water for its pro• result, American plants have to be built it more complex and expensive to operate posed solar•thermal power project in Kern more cheaply in order to make a pro†t, and maintain than competing technol• County, California. (Stirling•engine de• signs do not require water for cooling.) Another potential problem when building power plants in remote locations is a lack of transmission lines, since it is diˆcult and expensive to get new transmission lines approved and built. Despite these problems, many people think a massive scale•up of the industry is imminent. Among them is Mr Woolard, who believes that solar•thermal power could regain its historical lead over the solar•photovoltaic approach. Competition from photovoltaic systems for large•scale power generation should not be underes• timated, however. According to Mr Bul• lard, thin•†lm solar•cell modules are rapidly falling in price, and can generate electricity more cheaply than solar•ther• mal power in some situations. But no matter which approach comes out on top, competition between the two technol• ogies is sure to foster continued innova• tion, and a growing supply of clean elec• Power from a parabola tricity, in the years to come. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Mobile phones as sensors 19

been reduced to days or even hours. Geo• Chat has been oˆcially adopted by the six countries which share a border in the Me• kong Basin, including Myanmar and Yun• nan province in China, establishing a ‡ow of real•time disease data from villages in the region to each country’s health minis• try. Authorities can then choose to share this information with international bodies such as America’s Centres for Disease Con• trol and Prevention (CDC) or the World Health Organisation. The aim is to enable a quick response to any outbreak of avian ‡u, cholera, malaria or dengue fever. In• STEDD is helping aid organisations and government agencies deploy its free tools in other countries, including Bangladesh, Peru and Tanzania. Sensors and sensitivity An alternative approach is to gather in• formation passively from mobile phones, without any user intervention. Alex Pentland, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, dreams of ŒX•raying entire organisations, cities and Data collection: Mobile phones provide new ways to gather countries by collecting data in information, both manually and automatically, over wide areas two ways. First, some hand• sets can capture information F YOUR mobile phone could talk, it could A good example is InSTEDD about individuals, such as Ireveal a great deal. Obviously it would (Innovative Support to Emer• their activity levels or even know many of your innermost secrets, be• gencies, Diseases and Disasters), their gait, using built•in mo• ing privy to your calls and text messages, a non•pro†t group based in Cali• tion sensors. (Modern and possibly your e•mail and diary, too. It fornia, which promotes the use handsets use these sen• also knows where you have been, how of mobile phones to improve de• sors to work out whether you get to work, where you like to go for veloping countries’ ability to re• to display information in lunch, what time you got home, and where spond to disasters. Launched with landscape or portrait for• you like to go at the weekend. Now imag• seed money from Google’s philan• mat.) Second, informa• ine being able to aggregate this sort of in• thropic arm and the Rockefeller Foun• tion from mobile•network formation from large numbers of phones. dation in late 2007, it has just released a operators, which keep track of handsets in It would be possible to determine and ana• suite of open•source software to share, ag• order to pass them smoothly from one net• lyse how people move around cities, how gregate and analyse data from mobile work cell to another, can provide a high• social groups interact, how quickly traˆc phones. Its †rst test•bed is Cambodia, level view of how people move around. Dr is moving and even how diseases might where health•workers can send text mes• Pentland’s algorithms can even cluster in• spread. The world’s 4 billion mobile sages, containing observations and diag• formation from thousands of phones to di• phones could be turned into sensors on a noses, to a central number. vide people into Œtribes of like•minded global data•collection network. The sender’s location is determined for folk. He calls this Œreality mining. They could also be used to gather data each of the messages, which pop up as in more direct ways. Sensors inside conversation threads on an interactive Following the crowd phones, or attached to them, could gather map that can be called up on the web. Sense Networks, a company co•founded information about temperature, humidity, Clicking on this map allows text messages by Dr Pentland, wants to use the predic• noise level and so on. More straightfor• to be sent back to users in the †eld from the tions derived from tracking mobile phones wardly, people can send information from control centre. InSTEDD says this service, not only for commercial purposes‹to pro• their phones, by voice or text message, to a called GeoChat, enables Œgeospatial duce real•time maps showing the most central repository. This can be a useful way ground•truthing, as your mobile team popular nightlife venues in a particular to gather data quickly during a disaster• works to con†rm, refute, or update data. city, for example‹but also for the public relief operation, for example, or when Automating the reporting of titbits from good. The company’s charitable founda• tracking the outbreak of a disease. Engi• remote clinics has already had a profound tion is working with Vodafone, a big mo• neers, biologists, sociologists and aid• impact, says Eric Rasmussen, InSTEDD’s bile operator, the CDC and other collabora• workers are now building systems that use chief executive. Instead of recording infor• tors to build an early•warning system for handsets to sense, monitor and even pred• mation on scraps of paper, which would modelling and predicting the spread of tu• ict population movements, environmental sometimes take days to reach higher•ups berculosis in South Africa. hazards and public•health threats. and trigger an alarm, the cycle•time has As a †rst step, Sense plans to collect po• 1 20 Mobile phones as sensors The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

Mobile phones and sensors could provide a central nervous system for the planet.

2 sitional information from a control group mised and aggregated. And knowing First, the amount of data will increase, al• of infected patients being treated at Helen someone’s position is not enough on its lowing scientists to build more realistic Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg who own to determine whether they carry a models. Alessandro Vespignani of Indiana would have to volunteer to participate in disease or would be interested in going to a University compares the current state of the scheme. Dr Pentland and his col• particular nightclub. So the best approach a airs to weather forecasting a century leagues will then be able to determine may be to combine voluntary (but poten• ago, before satellites had provided meteo• which neighbourhoods these patients fre• tially unreliable) contributions that are rologists with the data to build and opti• quent, and their commuting patterns be• submitted manually with automated data mise mathematical models. When it tween them. They hope this will then en• capture that does not require user inter• comes to problems such as tracking and able them to work out the characteristics vention, but may not capture the whole predicting the spread of diseases and other of typical TB patients, so that they can then picture. A good example is the study of environmental hazards, he argues, scien• spot potentially infected people in the well•water contamination in Bangladesh tists can never get enough data. wider population. How public•health oˆ• conducted by Andrew Gelman, a statisti• cials will use this information has yet to be cian at Columbia University. His project The human touch decided: people who are thought to be in• combined readings from remote water• Second, once people are able to contribute fected could be contacted by text message sensors with queries and data which vil• data to research projects from their mobile and asked to visit a doctor, for example. lagers keyed into their mobile phones. phones, it could provide an ideal way to Path Intelligence, a British †rm, is apply• On a grander scale, InSTEDD’s Dr Ras• broaden public involvement in scienti†c ing a similar approach to answer more mussen is trying to stitch together a global activities. This would be the next logical commercial questions. Its FootPath system network, tentatively dubbed Archangel, to step after the popularity of web•based par• aggregates and analyses signals picked up combine all manner of data sources, from ticipation in scienti†c research, from fold• from mobile phones as people move satellite imagery and seismic sensors to ing proteins to categorising photographs of through a particular area. The results can †eld•workers texting from refugee camps. galaxies. Eric Paulos, a computer scientist be used by planners to optimise the ‡ow A †rst glimpse of what such a network at Carnegie Mellon University in Pitts• of pedestrians through railway stations would look like is pachube.com, an experi• burgh, predicts the rise of Œcitizen scien• and airports or to guide the layout of shop• mental web•service launched in 2007 by tists able to measure and sample their sur• ping centres. It can determine, for example, Usman Haque, an architect based in Lon• roundings wherever they go. When people whether customers who visit a given shop don. He aims to patch together sensors and can report mundane variables such as the also visit a rival shop. The same passive people into a Œconversant ecosystem of level of traˆc noise in their street or the de• method can be used to †gure out where devices, buildings and environments. gree of air pollution at the bus stop, he ar• best to locate emergency exits, and even to Some computer scientists look forward gues, their outlook on science changes. locate clusters of survivors after a disaster. to the day when mobile phones and sen• ŒPeople develop a relationship with and a But some people †nd the idea of having sors can provide a central nervous system sense of ownership over the data, he says. their movements tracked in this way un• for the entire planet. An abundance of sen• He foresees amateur experts being driven settling, even when the data are anony• sors, they believe, will lead to two things. by a new sense of volunteerism, the 21st• century equivalent of cleaning up the neighbourhood park. Nokia has even de• signed a prototype handset with environ• mental sensors (shown on previous page). Dr Paulos has already equipped street sweepers in San Francisco and taxis in Accra, the capital of Ghana, with sensors to measure pollution levels, which he then used to create a map of each city’s environ• mental landscape. He plans to do the same with cyclists in Pittsburgh. Graduate stu• dents in his newly created Living Environ• ments Lab have loaded households with sensors to sample tap water and indoor•air quality. Results are uploaded to a website where participants can compare them with other people’s contributions. The technology is probably the easy part, however. For global networks of mo• bile sensors to provide useful insights, technology †rms, governments, aid orga• nisations and individuals will have to †nd ways to address concerns over privacy, ac• curacy, ownership and sovereignty. Only if they do so will it be possible to tap the gold mine of information inside the world’s bil• Watching while you shop lions of mobile phones. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Photoacoustic imaging 21

The sound of light

of biomedical imaging. waves in the ultrasonic range. An array of A new technique called photoacoustic sensors placed on the skin picks up these Biomedical technology: A novel (or optoacoustic) tomography, which mar• waves, and a computer then uses a process scanning technique that combines ries optics with ultrasonic imaging, should of triangulation to turn the ultrasonic sig• optics with ultrasound could provide in theory be able to provide detailed scans nals into a two• or three•dimensional im• detailed images at greater depths comparable to those produced by magnet• age of what lies beneath. ic•resonance imaging (MRI) or X•ray com• The technique works at far greater F LIGHT passed through objects, rather puterised tomography (CT), but with the depths (up to seven centimetres) than oth• Ithan bouncing o them, people might cost and convenience of a hand•held scan• er optical•imaging techniques such as con• now talk to each other on Œphotophones. ner. Since the technology can operate at focal microscopy or optical•coherence to• Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated depths of several centimetres, its champi• mography, which penetrate to depths of such a device in 1880, transmitting a con• ons hope that within a few years it will be only about a millimetre. And because the versation on a beam of light. Bell’s inven• able to help guide biopsy needles deep degree to which a particular wavelength of tion stemmed from his discovery that ex• within tissue, assist with gastrointestinal light is absorbed depends on the type of posing certain materials to focused, endoscopies and measure oxygen levels in tissue and, in the case of blood, on wheth• ‡ickering beams of light caused them to vascular and lymph nodes, thereby help• er it is oxygenated or deoxygenated, there emit sound‹a phenomenon now known ing to determine whether tumours are ma• is, in e ect, a natural contrast agent. This as the photoacoustic e ect. lignant or not. There is even scope to use makes the technique superior to ultra• It was the world’s †rst wireless audio photoacoustic imaging to monitor brain sound alone when it comes to picking out transmission, and Bell regarded the photo• activity and gene expression within cells. detailed features such as veins. phone as his most important invention. To create a photoacoustic image, pulses MRI and CT scans are also capable of Sadly its use was impractical before the de• of laser light are shone onto the tissue be• delivering this kind of detail. But they usu• velopment of optical †bres, so Bell concen• ing scanned. This heats the tissue by a tiny ally require contrast dyes to be injected trated instead on his more successful idea, amount‹just a few thousandths of a de• into the bloodstream, says Lihong Wang, a the telephone. But more than a century lat• gree‹that is perfectly safe, but is enough to photoacoustic researcher at Washington er the photoacoustic e ect is making a cause the cells to expand and contract in re• University in St Louis, Missouri. CT scans comeback, this time transforming the †eld sponse. As they do so, they emit sound also involve potentially harmful ionising 1 22 Photoacoustic imaging The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

Photoacoustics provides greater access at a much lower cost than other imaging technologies.

2 radiation. And MRI and CT scans are very benign without performing an invasive of blood vessels. Dr Wang reckons that if expensive, using machines that cost mil• and expensive biopsy. ŒAbout eight out of contrast agents that are too small to be lions of dollars and require dedicated sta ten patients who undergo a biopsy come picked up by ordinary ultrasound were in• to operate them. Photoacoustic tomogra• back negative, says Dr Oraevsky, who troduced into a patient’s bloodstream, phy, by contrast, could eventually be per• now works for Fairway Medical Technol• they could be detected using photoacous• formed using portable hand•held devices, ogies, a company based in Houston, Texas. tic imaging. Furthermore, it would be pos• similar to those used for ultrasound scan• Photoacoustic tomography could poten• sible to see where the contrast agents built ning. This would allow doctors to diag• tially be used to diagnose women in the up, and hence determine the extent of a tu• nose and monitor patients in clinics, and doctor’s surgery. mour. And by creating contrast agents that reduce the need to refer them to consul• One approach being explored by Mi• bind to speci†c genetic targets, the same tants. ŒPhotoacoustics provides greater ac• chael Pashley, head of ultrasound imaging technique could be used to monitor gene cess at a much lower cost than these other and therapy at Philips Research in Briarcli expression, he suggests. technologies, claims Michael Thornton of Manor, New York, is to develop a hybrid ul• Endra, a medical•imaging company based trasound scanner that can produce ordin• Room for improvement in Ann Arbor, Michigan. ary ultrasound scans as well as photo• Despite its potential and its many advan• acoustic images. In theory the two images tages over other methods, there are some Shining a light could even be superimposed, he says. At diˆculties with photoacoustic imaging A pioneer of the technique in the late 1980s the moment the work, which is being car• that have not yet been resolved. As light was Alexander Oraevsky, who was based ried out in collaboration with Dr Wang, is penetrates deeper into tissue, the resulting at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Mos• geared towards monitoring the develop• ultrasonic signal diminishes. This is partly cow at the time. He had been evaluating la• ment of breast cancers that have already because some of the light has been ab• sers as a means of removing tissue, but in been diagnosed, says Dr Pashley. But if the sorbed by the preceding tissue, but it is also the course of his experiments he realised technology proves successful, he hopes to because the laser light is dispersed, dif• that his samples were producing ultra• move on to using it for the initial diagnosis. fused and back•scattered. This places lim• sound, and began exploring the potential Although the di erent absorption char• its on just how deeply photoacoustic imag• of this e ect for imaging. Since then the acteristics of oxygenated and deoxygenat• ing can delve. In the future it might be technology has come a long way, not least ed blood provide an extremely good natu• possible to go a little deeper, says Dr Wang, because of the development of nanosec• ral contrast agent, this approach has its but probably not by much. ŒIf light is deliv• ond pulsing lasers. Being able to deliver limits. So some companies are exploring ered from both sides of the tissue, ten•cen• such brief pulses of energy to the sample the use of photoacoustics in conjunction timetre•thick tissue can potentially be being imaged‹a nanosecond is a thou• with arti†cial contrast•agents introduced imaged, he says. sand•millionth of a second‹has helped to the bloodstream. VisualSonics, an ultra• Bone tissue represents another obstacle improve the resolution of the resulting im• sound•imaging company based in To• to the technology, but not for the reason ages. Dr Oraevsky and other researchers ronto, has been evaluating contrast agents you might think. Laser light usually passes have shown that it is possible to image the made up of gold nanorods attached to easily through bone, but sound does not. entire blood•supply system of a mouse, for antibodies that bind to speci†c targets The speed at which sound travels through example, down to a resolution of about found in cancer cells. Ultrasound is already bone is di erent from the speed at which it half a millimetre. used to detect such agents but its resolu• travels through soft tissue, and as the ultra• One of the most promising applica• tion is suˆcient to show only the structure sound passes from one medium to the tions for photoacoustics is in next it is distorted. Air cavities, many of the treatment of cancer. Since which are found inside the human body, blood cells are natural absorb• pose a similar problem, says Dr Wang. ers of light, photoacoustics is Even so, VisualSonics and other com• particularly good at providing panies are keen to explore the use of pho• high•contrast images of the toacoustics for neuroimaging. It is not an formation of blood vessels insurmountable problem, says Dr Wang, (angiogenesis) and detecting who is working on a technique to model increased metabolic activity the skull so that its e ects on the ultrasonic (hypermetabolism), both of waves can be predicted and eliminated in which are hallmarks of can• software, restoring clarity to the signals. If cer, notes Dr Wang. Prelimi• he can get this approach to work, it would nary clinical research is now further extend the revolutionary potential under way to look at how the of photoacoustic imaging in the coming technology can be used to years. Doctors would not merely be able to monitor the development of diagnose cancer in the comfort of their breast cancer and identify own surgeries‹they would be able to per• how far it has progressed. form brain scans, too. A technology that Even with mammography traces its roots to a stillborn 19th•century and ultrasound, the current communications device would have taken gold standards for breast•can• another step towards the futuristic dream cer screening, doctors cannot of the all•purpose hand•held medical tri• tell if a tumour is malignant or Getting the picture corder seen in ŒStar Trek. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Brain scan 23 Father of the cell phone

helped popularise the quartz watch, by †xing a ‡aw in the crystals Motorola made Marty Cooper, the pioneer of mobile for its radios, and then encouraging the telephony, has spent his entire †rm to mass•produce the †rst crystals for career pushing wireless use in watches. ŒMarty can see over the communications to new heights horizon and see how things should be, says Tom Wheeler, a managing director at NLESS you work in the telecoms Core Capital Partners, a venture•capital Uindustry, you are unlikely to have †rm. ŒAnd then he makes them happen. heard of Marty Cooper. He is hardly a The idea for the mobile phone †rst household name. But his in‡uence has occurred to Mr Cooper in the early 1970s, been felt across the world, because he is at a time when cellular phones were the engineer who took the cellular tech• unwieldy devices built into car dash• nology used in the carphones of the 1970s boards and attached to a box of equip• and decided that phones ought to be small ment‹a two•way radio and a power enough to be portable. His determination supply‹in the car’s boot. There were only led to the †rst prototype, in 1973, and then a few radio channels available on which to the †rst commercial mobile phone in to make calls, and users often had to wait a 1983. ŒMarty is the most in‡uential person long time for one to become free. no one has ever heard of, says Robert McDowell, a commissioner with the Carried away Federal Communications Commission, But once Motorola put Mr Cooper in America’s telecoms regulator. charge of its carphone division, he decid• The son of Ukrainian immigrants, Mr ed that such products should not merely Cooper spent much of his youth in De• be able to move around in cars, but should pression•era Chicago. He says he never be small and light enough to be carried went hungry, but his parents made only a around the rest of the time. ŒI became a modest living selling merchandise door• zealot for products being portable, he to•door, on instalment plans. To †nance says. From idea to prototype took 90 days his education at the Illinois Institute of in 1972 as Mr Cooper sponsored a design Technology, Mr Cooper joined the Reserve contest among Motorola engineers‹many Oˆcers’ Training Corps, and ended up on from divisions he did not run. At a dinner a navy destroyer, blowing up railway he held that December, each engineer tracks along the North Korean coast during presented his own prototype. ŒWe ended the Korean war. Mr Cooper later switched up picking the least glamorous phone, to submarines and spent a year and a half says Mr Cooper. ŒIt was the simplest. stationed in Hawaii. There he picked up That device lead to the famous phone scuba diving, one of his many athletic call on April 3rd 1973 after Motorola had pastimes. He enjoyed the navy very hosted a press conference to introduce the much, but he wanted to settle down, so he phone at the Hilton hotel on the Avenue took a job at Teletype, a subsidiary of of the Americas in New York. Although Western Electric. He started working at the device had already been tested and Motorola in 1954 and had earned his mas• made successful calls, Mr Cooper’s deci• ters in electrical engineering at night sion to take it‹and a journalist‹onto the school by 1957, again at the Illinois Institute street to make a demonstration call was a of Technology. stroke of marketing genius. He cannot Mr Cooper credits his family for his remember the journalist’s name, and Joel subsequent success. ŒMy resourcefulness Engel, the rival engineer whom Mr Coo• and persistence come from watching my per called at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories that folks digging in, he says. ŒMy mother was day, says he does not remember taking the a dynamo. She would talk to anyone. She call. But it was the †rst public call on a never walked slowly. And I am always hand•held mobile phone. ŒI was talking leaning forward into the wind. and stepped into the street and almost got It’s an apt image for Mr Cooper’s career, hit by a car, Mr Cooper recalls with an during which he has repeatedly spotted impish grin‹the †rst hint of mobile tele• what lies ahead and led others towards communications’ distracting downside. the creation of new industries. In the The handset, called a DynaTAC, had 35 1960s he was instrumental in the estab• minutes of talk time and weighed one lishment of the high•capacity paging kilogram (2.2 pounds). Four iterations later market, for example, turning paging from Mr Cooper’s team had reduced the Dyna• a technology used in single buildings to TAC’s weight by half, and it was †nally one that could stretch across cities. He also launched in 1983 with a list price of about 1 24 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

Mr Cooper thinks the real impact of mobile communications is yet to come.

2 $4,000. By this time Mr Cooper had fought notes that spectral eˆciency‹the amount tions is yet to come. Things will get really for a decade with Motorola’s bean•coun• of information that can be crammed into a interesting, he thinks, when consumers ters, who kept asking him when he was given slice of radio spectrum‹has dou• Œget away from the concept of the cell going to stop spending so much money on bled every 30 months since Guglielmo phone‹that implies talk and listen and his pet project‹he had become Motorola’s Marconi patented the wireless telegraph new applications, based on sending data head of research and development in in 1897. Modern devices have a spectral to and from mobile devices, take hold. 1976‹and start generating revenue. ŒIt cost eˆciency more than one trillion times There are already glimpses of the poten• so much and took so long, admits Mr greater than Marconi’s original device did tial for mobile data in the success of the Cooper. ŒBut my focus has always been on 112 years ago (it broadcast in Morse code BlackBerry e•mail device and the iPhone, the long•term technology vision. over a very wide frequency range). Smart with its vast selection of downloadable Today over half the world’s population antennas, Mr Cooper believes, will help to software. But Mr Cooper feels strongly has a mobile phone, and it seems obvious ensure that this progress continues, and that such applications will be more likely that the idea would succeed. But many his law continues to hold. to ‡ourish if the world’s mobile networks, people within Motorola in the early 1970s But ArrayComm has had only limited and the applications that run over them, wanted to focus instead on expanding the success. Having developed its own wire• are developed and managed by di erent existing market for business•oriented less•broadband system, it now focuses on companies, in an open model that mimics carphones. ŒBut Marty said ‘We’ll get this providing smart•antenna technology to the internet. This is yet another idea that thing down to the size of the palm of your other equipment•makers, for use in cellu• Mr Cooper has been pushing for years, hand’, says Travis Marshall, a retired lar and WiMAX networks. ŒArrayComm says Eric Zimits of Granite Ventures, a Motorola executive who worked with Mr has the same problem as many tech• venture•capital †rm. ŒHe is way ahead in Cooper. Most people at the time, he says, nology companies, says Arthur Lipper, a this notion of a mobile internet, he says. thought cellular phones would only ever Wall Street veteran who plays tennis with Once mobile operators focus on pro• be business tools, because of their high Mr Cooper. ŒThey are ahead of the market, viding the network‹while leaving appli• cost. ŒMarty kept preaching that the cost and this is an expensive place to be. It is cation development to the open market‹ would come down and that it would Mr Cooper’s strength, but it can also be a competition will ‡ourish, Œso that con• become a consumer product, he recalls. weakness. As Mr Cooper himself puts it, sumers’ lives are improved, says Mr ŒHe hypnotised everyone at Motorola to ŒYou could say I was visionary. Or you Cooper. Open access, he believes, Œis just follow him, says Sean Maloney, a senior could say I was too far ahead. good business. There are certainly signs executive at Intel, the world’s biggest Unusually for a technology visionary, that things are heading this way, despite chipmaker, who has himself spent several however, Mr Cooper manages to keep the the e orts of operators to avoid being years championing WiMAX, an emerging needs of users in mind, rather than be• reduced to mere Œdumb pipes. It may be mobile•broadband technology. coming enamoured with technology for another case where Mr Cooper has cor• But by the time Motorola started selling the sake of it. He recognised early on that rectly identi†ed the outcome, but it takes the world’s †rst hand•held mobile phone mobile phones would o er people greater longer than expected to materialise. to consumers, Mr Cooper had already left freedom and ‡exibility in their working But that seems to be his role. ŒMarty the company to launch a new †rm that and personal lives‹unlike †xed•line created the wireless industry, says Tim provided billing systems for cellular oper• phones, which are tethered to one place, McDonald, a former fund manager at ators. In 1986 he and his partners sold this or carphones, which cannot be taken Merrill Lynch and one•time board mem• company, Cellular Business Systems, to everywhere. A further example is provid• ber at ArrayComm. ŒHis greatest strength Cincinnati Bell for $23m. A few years later ed by the Jitterbug, a handset designed by is his ability to inspire the vision for where Mr Cooper got a call from Richard Roy, a his wife, Arlene Harris, which Mr Cooper the wireless industry can go. 7 researcher at Stanford University who had helped bring to market. This handset, an idea to make mobile telecoms more which is now sold by Samsung, has big eˆcient: smart antennas. buttons and basic features and is designed O er to readers Reprints of this special report are available at a By precisely steering radio waves from for elderly consumers. As handset•makers price of £3.50 plus postage and packing. a base•station towards a mobile device, it crammed more and more features into A minimum order of †ve copies is required. is possible to establish a faster, more reli• their phones, Mr Cooper and his wife able link‹and to support more users at realised that for some people, less is more. Corporate o er once, by sending di erent beams to users Customisation options on corporate orders of in di erent directions using the same Beyond the mobile phone 500 or more are available. Please contact us to discuss your requirements. radio frequencies. Mr Cooper gets a call or Now 80, Mr Cooper’s vigour is un• two every week from someone with a dimmed. Getting time on his schedule Send all orders to: business•development idea, so Mr Roy may require donning skis or tennis shoes. The Rights and Syndication department had to be persistent. He †nally got to ŒMarty scampers around the tennis court The Economist spend some time with Mr Cooper by like a 17•year•old, says Mr Lipper. Despite 26 Red Lion Square jogging with him while the two attended his achievements, he retains an endearing London WC1R 4HQ an industry convention. Inspired by Mr sense of graciousness and humility. He Tel +44 (0)20 7576 8148 Roy’s ideas, Mr Cooper agreed to lead a makes a point of replying to the many Fax +44 (0)20 7576 8492 new company, ArrayComm, set up in 1992. children who contact him for comments e•mail: [email protected] While leading this smart•antenna for use in their school reports. company, where he is now the chairman, Perhaps surprisingly, Mr Cooper thinks Mr Cooper coined Cooper’s law, which the real impact of mobile communica•