The growing pains How winemaking The internet’s of Bitcoin went high-tech fi fth man TechnologyQuarterly November 30th 2013 Kill switch Can technology make guns safer?

TQCOVNOV.indd 1 18/11/2013 17:53 The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 Monitor 1

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On the cover Technological tricks can make possible weapons that stop working after a certain period of time, or can be used only by speci†c people or in particular places. Proponents of Œsmart weapons hope they can succeed where political and legislative attempts at arms Magnetic tape to the rescue control have failed, page 14

Monitor 1 Tape storage rescues big data, the fatal distraction of phones in cars, attending a conference remotely via robot, China’s Information storage: A 60•year•old technology o ers a solution to a modern maker movement, a new problem‹how to store all those bits and bytes cheaply and reliably approach to de•icing aircraft, detecting blood clots using HEN physicists switch on the Large hundred megabytes‹a bagatelle in infor• nanotechnology, cleaning up WHadron Collider (LHC), between mation•technology circles. When a tera• after fracking, making three and six gigabytes of data spew out of byte hard disk fails, by contrast, all the data intelligent assistants even it every second. That is, admittedly, an on it may be lost. The consequence at smarter and who won our extreme example. But the ‡ow of data CERN, speci†cally, is that a few hundred Innovation Awards from smaller sources than CERN, the megabytes of its 100•petabyte tape reposi• European particle•research organisation tory are, on average, lost every year. Of the Di erence engine outside Geneva that runs the LHC, is also 50 petabytes of data held on hard disk, 8 Thief in your pocket? growing inexorably. At the moment it is however, it loses a few hundred terabytes Mobile malware is not the threat doubling every two years. These data in the same period. it is sometimes made out to be need to be stored. The need for mass The third bene†t of tapes is that they storage is reviving a technology which, do not need power to preserve data held Arms control only a few years ago, seemed destined for on them. Stopping a disk rotating by tem• the scrapheap: magnetic tape. porarily turning o the juice‹a process 9 Kill switch Tape is the oldest computer storage called power cycling‹increases the likeli• How feasible are technological medium still in use. It was †rst put to work hood that it will fail. The fourth bene†t is approaches to arms control? on a UNIVAC computer in 1951. But al• security. If a hacker with a grudge man• though tape sales have been falling since aged to break into CERN’s data centre, he Inside story 2008 and dropped by 14% in 2012, accord• could delete all 50 petabytes of the disk• 12 Bacchus to the future ing to the Santa Clara Consulting Group, based data in minutes. To delete the same How winemakers are using new tape’s decline has now gone into reverse: amount from the organisation’s tapes technology, from vine to glass sales grew by 1% in the last quarter of 2012 would take years. and a 3% rise is expected this year. Tape has two other bene†ts, as Evange• Alberto Pace, head of data and storage los Eleftheriou, manager of storage tech• Digital money at CERN, says that tape has four advan• nologies at IBM’s research laboratory in 15 Bitcoin’s growing pains tages over hard disks for the long•term Zurich, points out. It is cheaper than disks The popularity of the virtual preservation of data. The †rst is speed. (a gigabyte of disk storage costs 10 cents, currency is causing problems Although it takes about 40 seconds for an versus 4 cents for tape), and it lasts longer. archive robot to select the right tape and Tapes can still be read reliably after three put it in a reader, once it has loaded, ex• decades, against †ve years for disks. Brain scan tracting data from that tape is about four Tape will never be the whole answer to 17 The internet’s †fth man times as fast as reading from a hard disk. storing data, according to Dr Eleftheriou. A pro†le of Louis Pouzin, a The second advantage is reliability. But it forms a crucial part of a Œstorage French pioneer of networking When a tape snaps, it can be spliced back hierarchy. At the top of this are so•called together. The loss is rarely more than a few hot data, those that need to be available 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013

2 for immediate access. These are best held in ‡ash memory. Lukewarm data‹those that people need to access frequently, but not instantaneously‹are best stored on disks. Cold data, the stu in long•term storage, can be recorded on tape. This cold store is by far the biggest repository. A report published in 2008 by Andrew Leung of the University of California, Santa Cruz, found that in general, 90% of an organisation’s data becomes cold after a couple of months. But even today’s tape cartridges, which can hold up to six terabytes of compressed data, are not up to the job of dealing with the data deluge that is around the corner. Much higher densities than that are need• ed. In 2010 Dr Eleftheriou and his team, in collaboration with Fuji†lm, set a new record. They demonstrated a tape that can store 29.5 gigabits per square inch‹which, for a standard 1km tape, translates as 35 terabytes of data on a single cartridge. But summon help quickly. At any given day• chin Lawande, a technologist at Harman, even that is not enough for Dr Eleftheriou. light moment in America today, roughly an American company which makes He has now set himself the challenge of 170,000 drivers are reckoned to be texting audio equipment for homes and cars. developing a tape with a density of 100 and 660,000 are holding a phone to an Such displays can also respond to ges• gigabits per square inch, and creating the ear. Of America’s more than 35,000 annu• tures, like a wave of the hand, to silence a equipment necessary to read it. If he is al road deaths, a quarter are now linked to call instead of looking down for a button. successful, a single cartridge will be able to phone use, according to the National Some worry, though, that the tempta• store more than 100 terabytes. Safety Council, an NGO. tion to put more information into head•up The biggest challenge he and his col• It is a similar story around the world. displays could lead to drivers reading leagues face is not squeezing more bari• The slaughter on the roads is often more e•mails, scanning calendar appointments um•ferrite magnetic particles on to a tape terrible in developing countries where and so forth. Better, some say, to stick to in order to record more stu ; it is, rather, people may be getting their †rst phone voice commands. These can be used to positioning the read/write head to within and their †rst car, says Etienne Krug, head operate a phone no matter where it is in 10 nanometres in order to read what has of injury•prevention for the World Health the car, says Peter Mahoney of Nuance been recorded back correctly when a tape Organisation (WHO). In India the dead• Communications, an American †rm is travelling under it at a speed of †ve liness of drivers using phones surpassed which makes voice•recognition software. metres a second. Even so, Dr Eleftheriou that of drunk•driving three years ago, says However, in April a study funded by hopes to have a prototype ready in 2014. 7 Harman Sidhu, head of ArriveSAFE, an America’s Department of Transportation Indian pressure group. Mobile•phone found that speaking text messages could distraction, he reckons, accounts for nearly be as dangerous as typing them. (Nuance’s a †fth of the more than 230,000 annual software was not used in these tests.) fatalities which the WHO estimates now A number of companies think the best Fatal distraction take place on India’s roads. tactic is simply to disable drivers’ phones. More than 140 countries prohibit driv• DriveScribe, an app for Android smart• ers from holding a handset to their ear. phones that is made by a company called Some 30 or so also forbid the use of Drive Power, sends out auto•replies that hands•free headsets. Most modern cars the driver is unavailable while a vehicle is Mobile phones: People who use their come equipped with hands•free systems in motion, and unblocks communications phones while driving are causing to make and receive calls. Yet many stud• only when the vehicle stops. Mike Moen, carnage on the roads. Can technology ies show a deeper problem is the extra the †rm’s boss, concedes that many driv• cognitive workload a driver takes on ers will not willingly give up access to reduce phone•related accidents? when talking to another person on the their devices, but says some parents re• OR motorists, mobile phones have telephone. Texting is even worse and is quire their teenage children to install the Fbeen both a blessing and a curse. In widely banned at the wheel; texters are app if they wish to drive. Cheaper car 1995, when 34.5m Americans carried even more likely to kill someone or die in insurance might persuade more drivers to them, fatalities from road•traˆc accidents an accident. How can technology help accept phone•disabling features. began to fall‹in part because accident keep drivers focused on the road? Another app, TextLimit, disables the victims and witnesses could immediately Caller information is already displayed touchscreen on iPhone, Android and phone for help, says Peter Loeb, an econo• on a dashboard screen by the hands•free BlackBerry devices when the GPS in the mist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. systems in some cars. It can also be shown device determines that it is moving at a Sadly, the trend reversed four years later. in the Œhead•up display of vehicles preselected speed, says David Meers of By 1999 there were 97.8m Americans which project information, such as the Mobile Life Solutions, the app’s developer, touting phones, and in some cases calling car’s speed, so that it appears to ‡oat based in Atlanta. Aegis Mobility, a Canadi• and even texting while behind the wheel. beyond the windscreen. This can be less an †rm, is pursuing an alternative ap• The fatalities from accidents caused by distracting because the driver does not proach that would operate both within drivers using phones began to outweigh need to adjust visual focus when looking the phone and within the network: tele• the number of lives saved by the ability to between the road and a screen, says Sa• coms operators would not route calls or 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 Monitor 3

2 data to devices on the move. Two wide•angle video cameras (with But what happens if you are the pas• zoom and pan controls) provide a 105• senger in a car, or on a train, and you want degree †eld of view. A downward•point• to talk and text? Phones in moving vehi• ing camera shows the area around the Made in China cles could be unlocked if users pass a short base to help you avoid obstacles. You pilot test, suggests Andrea Henry of Iowa’s the device using the arrow keys on a com• Department of Transportation, which is puter keyboard. It all feels like guiding a planning to supply teenage drivers with character in a slow•scrolling computer Aegis Mobility’s apps. Alternatively, sig• game, except that the character and the Technology and society: China has its nals around the driver’s seat could be game world are not virtual, but real. Beam own distinctive version of the maker scrambled by a dashboard•based jammer and its ilk are limited for now: they cannot movement, which spans electronics such as the SkyBloc, made by Trinity• manipulate objects at the other end except Noble, an American †rm. It works well but than by knocking into them (few sport hobbyists and high•tech startups may also block passengers’ phones, says grippers), they are con†ned to relatively T IS a drizzly October day in Shanghai, Eyal Adi, head of the †rm’s oˆce in smooth ‡oor surfaces and they require a Iand beneath a few dozen bright orange Ra’anana, Israel. Non•government use of high•speed internet link. But that still tents, set up in the plaza of a shiny new such kit is also illegal in many jurisdic• allows them to work in plenty of situa• innovation park, hundreds of electronics tions (though a Panamanian shipping †rm tions. Attending RoboBusiness by Beam, it hobbyists and entrepreneurs are attend• bought about 100 units). It seems there is was possible to visit booths, chat with ing China’s second Maker Carnival. The no simple technological †x‹unless, that people and attend meetings. The audio Œmaker movement, an o shoot of do•it• is, self•driving cars become widespread, and video were clear regardless of the yourself culture whose adherents design freeing drivers to use devices unhindered, hubbub on the conference ‡oor‹and and build their own technology products, and improving road safety all round. 7 when talking to people using other Beams. is more established in America: the most Taking notes involved the use of old• recent Maker Faire New York, for example, fashioned pen and paper, because the held in September, boasted some 75,000 Beam lacks a built•in recording capability. participants and over 650 stalls. But size Scott Hassan, Suitable Technologies’ boss, isn’t everything, even in China. Roboconf says the company decided against it, lest Under those orange tents some surpris• the robot be perceived as a surveillance ingly innovative companies that supply device. But there is nothing to stop Beam hobbyists and startups were strutting their users using separate devices or software to stu . There were robot•construction sets, record audio. Accordingly, some people build•it•yourself electronics kits and 3D Telepresence: What is it like to attend might prefer not to talk to what looks like a printers galore. None of the companies a conference remotely, via a robot roving closed•circuit television camera. that make them is a familiar name yet. But proxy that provides video• Attendees at RoboBusiness some of them could one day challenge the conferencing on wheels? reacted positively to the device, likes of MakerBot, an American manufac• though a warm welcome was turer of 3D printers, or Arduino, an open• CI•FI writers have long only to be expected from the source microcontroller platform invented Simagined technologies that sort of people that you †nd at a in Italy, as the darlings of the worldwide would allow you to manip• conference about robots. Con• maker movement. ulate and control a perfect versations began and ended What gives these young Chinese †rms replica of yourself in a distant naturally, as they would in a potential edge is their close connections location. Today’s remote•pres• person, helped by the fact that with the so•called shanzhai production ence robots are crude by com• you can point your Beam to• networks centred on Shenzhen, China’s parison, amounting to little more wards your remote interlocutor high•tech manufacturing hub. The term than videoconferencing on while talking, and turn away shanzhai is often used pejoratively to refer wheels. But they can still be sur• when you are †nished. The only to Chinese copycat producers of mobile prisingly nifty, as this correspon• thing missing from the conference phones and other electronic devices, dent discovered while pottering experience was the ability to based on copied designs and knock•o around RoboBusiness 2013, a sample free drinks. brand names. But its literal meaning is robotics conference recently held Suitable Technologies de• Œmountain village, and it refers to bandits in California, from the comfort of ployed 50 Beams in this experi• who opposed corrupt rulers and hid in the a desk 1,500 miles (2,500km) away, ment. In 2015 it wants to have countryside‹much like Robin Hood in in Austin, Texas. 10,000 of them roaming round the English folklore. David Li, co•founder of This was made possible using a Consumer Electronics Show, a big XinCheJian, Shanghai’s †rst Œmaker Beam (pictured), developed by trade event held each year in Las space (essentially, an open•access work• Suitable Technologies. It is a Vegas that is attended by 150,000 shop), says the Robin Hood spirit is in• wheeled robot equipped with a people. Beams currently sell for spiring legitimate and often quite in• camera, microphone and loud• $16,000 a pop, but the company novative products, as the socially speaker, and a screen displaying a wants to o er conference organis• progressive maker movement teams up live feed of its driver’s face. Instead ers the option of renting the de• with hard•nosed manufacturers. of appearing to Œlocals (as people vices to attendees at a price that Seeed Studio, a startup based in Shenz• at the remote location are known) would be competitive with the hen, is a good example. The company as an image on a static desktop cost (‡ights, hotels, and so forth) specialises in open•source hardware, monitor, you are thus embodied of attending an event in person. which means the design of the hardware in a physical object 1.57 metres That said, if Mr Hassan and and the software code that goes with it are tall, weighing just under 50kg robots have their way, the both freely shared. As the success of Ar• and with a top speed of 1.5 whole notion of Œin person duino has demonstrated, open•source metres per second. may be need rede†ning. 7 hardware is ideal for quick prototyping 1 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013

2 and small•scale production runs of digital devices. But Seeed goes one step further, supporting a whole ecosystem of open• source production. People pitch ideas on its website, and if they garner enough community support, Seeed will manufac• ture them. More than 70,000 people are participating on its site, and over 130 pro• jects were crowdsourced this way in 2012. Those numbers are expected to more than double in 2013. Eric Pan, the founder of Seeed Studio, exempli†es a new breed of Chinese en• trepreneur. He quit his tech•industry job in 2008 to start making hardware with a friend, based in his apartment (the urban Chinese equivalent of a garage). Now his company employs more than 100 people, and the unassuming Mr Pan is a rock•star among young Chinese geeks. Even so, he is quick to admit that not all Seeed Studio products are hits, and humble about the challenge of surviving as a business in an open•source world, where copying good ideas is not merely allowed but encour• Sooty skies aged. Yet he is also bullish about the fu• ture: his †rm is expanding its range of kit to include wearable electronics and new kinds of sensors. Proximity to shanzhai manufacturers Aviation: A novel coating made of nanotubes o ers a faster and more could make it easier for Chinese makers to turn prototypes into mass•produced convenient alternative to chemicals for de•icing planes products. At the same time, the maker E•ICING an aeroplane is tedious. Just metre across. Individual nanotubes are, community could boost innovation Dask any passenger stuck in one while famously, better conductors of electricity among shanzhai †rms, which are in fact ground sta spray it with gallons of anti• than even copper. In Mr Janas’s aerogel, more inventive than is often assumed. freeze. It is also important. Layers of ice however, they are no longer than 1mm Silvia Lindtner, an ethnographer at Uni• can interfere with a wing’s aerodynamics, each, with air in between them. That versity of California, Irvine and Shang• increasing drag and reducing lift, with means the †lm, far from being a good hai’s Fudan University, notes that shanzhai potentially catastrophic consequences‹ conductor, exhibits high electrical resis• producers have long adapted mobile hence the chemicals’ garish colours, tance. Passing a current through it causes a phones to the needs of people in the meant to ensure that no nook or cranny is near instantaneous rise in temperature. developing world. For example, unlike missed. De•icing can take as long as 40 Indeed, when Mr Janas compared his mainstream manufacturers, they champi• minutes, and costs around $2,000 a pop. material with nichrome, the heating ele• oned mobile phones with dual SIM slots, And sometimes, as Dawid Janas of ment of choice for applications from ideal for Africa and India where users Cambridge University found on a ‡ight kettles to aeroplane wings (where it is often switch networks to reduce costs. from his native Poland, it needs to be used mainly for in•‡ight de•icing), he For their part, Chinese government performed several times, because in harsh found that it heats up twice as fast using oˆcials are taking an interest in the maker conditions the antifreeze itself can freeze if half as much energy as the metal alloy. It is movement because of its economic and left to chill for long enough‹as when also one ten•thousandth of the weight. educational potential. Shanghai’s munici• awaiting the go•ahead for take•o . Now, The amount of †lm needed to cover the pal government has backed a plan to build though, Mr Janas, a materials scientist and wings of a jumbo jet weighs just 80 grams. 100 maker spaces throughout the city. Four aviation bu , thinks he has found a way to Finally, whereas an A4 sheet of ni• of these new spaces are already up and make life easier for passengers and air• chrome costs around $12,000, its carbon• running, with several more to be complet• lines. It involves covering aircraft wings †lm equivalent could be had for a hun• ed by the end of the year. Each will have a with a form of soot. dredth of the price; probably less when 3D printer, and will also teach traditional Not any old soot, mind you. Mr Janas the process is commercialised, as Mr Janas crafts such as woodworking. creates his by pumping methane into a hopes it will be. Once installed, the heat• One of the attractions of maker spaces furnace heated to around 1,200°C. There, ers would be so cheap to run that they like XinCheJian, however, is that they in the presence of an iron catalyst, the gas could be left on continuously at low pow• operate independently of the state, sup• coalesces into a sticky substance akin to er, to stop ice forming in the †rst place. ported by users’ monthly membership candy‡oss, called an aerogel. When an And they last. A piece tested by Mr Janas fees. Although expats played a big role in iron poker is inserted into the furnace, the retained its properties after being folded initiating XinCheJian, more recent maker aerogel sticks to it. As the rod is retracted, it and unfolded 100,000 times. spaces such as Beijing’s Maxpace and pulls out a thin †lament, which is spun to Already a number of industries, Shenzhen’s Chaihuo were entirely home• create a †lm. Ten minutes later you get a though not yet aircraft•makers, have ex• grown. China’s distinctive take on the sooty equivalent of an A4 piece of paper. pressed an interest in the material. But if maker movement‹makers with Chinese The †lm, about 10 microns thick, is aviation does take to the stu , the upshot characteristics, to paraphrase Deng Xiao• composed of a mesh of carbon nano• will be more soot in the air‹but of an ping‹is worth keeping an eye on. 7 tubes, themselves just a few billionths of a entirely welcome variety. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 Monitor 5

with small fragments of protein, called peptides, specially chosen because they react with thrombin. That, however, is not Particle enough‹because there is no way to tell Clean that up from the outside whether such a reaction physiology has taken place. To manage this Dr Bhatia attached reporter chemicals to the free ends of the peptides. When a peptide Medical technology: Nanotechnology binds to a thrombin molecule the reporter Environmental technology: A provides a way to detect potentially is released. And the reporter, unlike the combination of two desalination dangerous blood clots, without the iron•oxide particle, is small enough to pass techniques provides a new way to into the urine, where it can be detected by need for tiny submarines a simple test. purify the water used in fracking NE of the dreams of nanotechnol• When tried out in mice, this idea ATER injected at high pressure into Oogists‹those who try to engineer worked perfectly. The urine of animals Wrock deep underground during the machines mere billionths of a metre with clots in their lungs turned orange process of hydraulic fracturing, or Œfrack• across‹is to build medical devices that when tested, as it was supposed to do. ing, often returns to the surface as brine, can circulate in the bloodstream. This That of clot•free animals remained un• having picked up a lot of salt on its jour• aspiration often prompts ridicule, fre• changed. As for the iron oxide particles, ney. It is also contaminated with chemi• quently accompanied by a still from ŒFan• these slowly dissolve in the bloodstream cals from the fracking process itself. So a tastic Voyage, a †lm made in the 1960s in a way that should cause no damage. cheap and e ective way of separating the about a team of doctors in a submarine No trials have yet been carried out on salt and other chemicals from the water that had been miniaturised with them people. But if such tests work and the would be welcome. General Electric (GE), inside it, so they could destroy a blood clot procedure proves safe, then it might be an American engineering conglomerate, is which threatened to kill a scientist who used to give early warning, in those now putting one through its paces. had been working behind the iron curtain. thought at risk of developing internal The system in question, developed by Well, titter ye not. For although San• clots, that such clots have indeed devel• a †rm called Memsys Clearwater, which is geeta Bhatia’s nanoscale devices are not oped. They can then be attacked with based in Germany and Singapore, is called really submarines, are certainly not clot•busting drugs before they can break vacuum multi•e ect membrane distilla• crewed by Raquel Welch and do not actu• away and do serious harm. 7 tion. It combines the two established ways ally destroy blood clots, they do go of desalinating water: distillation and around the bloodstream †nding membrane separation. Already used to such clots‹and report back what produce drinking water from seawater, it they have found, so that destruc• has not previously been applied to clean• tion can take place if necessary. ing up water used in fracking. But recent Dr Bhatia is a bioengineer and trials of the system at a gas•fracking plant physician at the Massachusetts in Texas have been encouraging. Institute of Technology. She was The usual way of dealing with exhaust impressed by the extraordinary sensi• water from fracking is to transport it by tivity of modern urine testing, which can road to a processing facility where it is put detect conditions ranging from diabe• into giant steel evaporators. The water is tes and pregnancy to breast and brain boiled and clean water is condensed from cancer. But she noticed that one the vapour; the residual brine is then thing it cannot detect is clots at• reduced to salt by passive evaporation. But tached to the walls of blood ves• all that boiling requires a lot of energy. sels. Nor is there an e ective blood Membrane•based systems, which work by test for such clots. forcing water through what is, in e ect, a That matters, because if a clot molecular sieve, are less greedy. The holes breaks free from its site of formation in the sieve will allow water molecules to and lodges somewhere critical, it can pass, but not sodium and chloride ions kill. A clot in the coronary artery induces a (the components of salt), because these heart attack. In a pulmonary artery, a clot electrically charged species are sur• causes a pulmonary embolism; in an rounded by retinues of water molecules artery in the brain, it causes a stroke. that make them too big. If suˆcient pres• Dr Bhatia thought she might be able sure is applied, in a process called reverse to design something that detects osmosis, clean water emerges on the other and reports the presence of clots side of the membrane. and, as she recently outlined in the But reverse osmosis, though less ener• journal ACS Nano, she has succeed• gy•intensive than thermal evaporation, ed. still requires a lot of energy, and can deal What Dr Bhatia’s clot•detector is actu• only with relatively low salinities, like that ally detecting are not the clots themselves, of seawater, which has a salt content of but an enzyme called thrombin, which around 3.5%. Higher concentrations re• induces clotting and is thus an in• quire more pressure, and the exhaust from dicator of the presence of clots. Her fracking often has a salinity of 8•12%‹too Œsubmarines are tiny particles of much for reverse osmosis to cope with. iron oxide (though not so tiny that Vacuum multi•e ect membrane dis• they pass through the kidney’s †lters into tillation tries to have the best of both the urine, and are lost). They are coated worlds, by making the process of evap• 1 6 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013

2 oration take place through a membrane. It continues into the second cell, where it is less interaction and more automation. also, as the name suggests, operates in a warmed by the heat gathered by the con• Google, for its part, considers predic• partial vacuum. This reduces the boiling densing foil on its face. As before, some of tive intelligence to be the future of search. point of water to 50•80°C which means this brine evaporates through the rear Its Google Now service is arguably the less energy is needed. membrane of the second cell and into the most advanced incarnation of predictive The apparatus itself consists of a series next chamber where it condenses on intelligence; installed in many millions of of plastic cells, each of which has a con• meeting the foil on the third cell. Android devices, it is certainly the most densing foil at the front and a membrane The process is repeated, cell after cell. widespread. In recent years Google has at the rear. Incoming liquid is heated and Eventually, only highly concentrated brine improved its search engine through se• injected into the †rst cell. Some of it evap• remains, which is cooled and taken away mantic analysis and, more recently, perso• orates through the membrane at the rear for disposal. The clean water drained from nalisation. Anticipating your need to and into a chamber, where it meets the the chambers between the cells, mean• search is a logical next step. It draws upon condensing foil on the face of the second while, is pure enough to be used for irriga• search history, stored personal data and cell. This causes the water vapour to turn tion, or even as drinking water, according past behaviour to provide Œthe right infor• back into liquid, which is drained out and to Florian Bollen, one of Memsys’s direc• mation at just the right time in the form collected. The remaining brine in the †rst tors. Alternatively, it can be reinjected into of cards that appear on a smartphone’s cell, now cooler and more concentrated, the ground during the next frack. 7 screen. Google Now’s algorithms can also take advantage of partnerships with third parties‹including airlines and event organisers to access ticketing information. A new feature even allows Google Now• Move over, Siri enabled devices to listen to the sound of your television, identify what you’re watching and provide programme infor• mation in real time. There are many other contenders. The Predictive intelligence: A new breed of personal•assistant software tries to Android and Apple app stores are †lled with personal assistants of various kinds. anticipate what smartphone users want, before they ask for it Some draw primarily on calendar data HE idea of arti†cially intelligent perso• (Donna, Sunrise, Tempo) and others on Tnal assistants‹digital secretaries, made e•mail or location (Osito, reQall). Apple, of software, that take dictation, manage which looked somewhat behind the curve contacts, book lunches and arrange tran• on predictive intelligence, bought Cue, a sport‹has been around for many years. personalised•agenda app, in October. It But truly successful examples have proved included some predictive features in the as elusive as ‡ying cars. Perhaps the best latest update to its mobile•device operat• known example is Siri, the personal assis• ing system, iOS 7, such as estimated jour• tant built into Apple’s iPhones and iPads, ney times to frequently visited locations. which can understand complex spoken As ever more personal information sentences such as ŒPlease reschedule becomes centralised in smartphones and tomorrow afternoon’s meeting from 4pm the accuracy of positioning technology to 3pm. As clever as this is, however, Siri increases, these assistants will be able to still feels more like a technology demo learn new tricks. But innovators must than a really useful assistant. tread carefully. For one thing, predictive The next generation of assistant soft• intelligence can be creepy. Some people ware aims to go one step further by pursu• may not like the idea that their phone is ing an approach known Œpredictive in• tracking what they are doing so closely. It’s telligence. It exploits the fact that also hard to get right: assistants will inev• smartphones now have access to fast itably make mistaken predictions, leading internet links and location data, and can to unwanted noti†cations. Many smart• draw upon personal information, address phone users are already struggling with books, e•mail and calendars. The aim of Œnoti†cation fatigue as apps and online these new assistants is to anticipate what services compete for their attention. information users need, based on context ŒThere’s a balance between coverage and past behaviour, and to provide it and precision, says Baris Gultekin, one of before they have even asked for it. Such an the architects of Google Now. Predictive assistant might, for example, spontane• process? asks Bill Ferrell, the founder of technologies rely on a technique called ously suggest that you leave early for a Osito, a predictive•intelligence application Bayesian inference to combine multiple meeting, because it has spotted heavy for the iPhone. Instead, software should signals and estimate the accuracy of a traˆc en route; present directions to your reduce the friction involved in performing given prediction. Mr Gultekin says Google hotel when you arrive in a foreign coun• tasks on mobile devices and reduce the Now’s noti†cations have to pass a Œhigh try; o er to book a taxi or hotel based on need for manual input. Today’s cum• bar of both likelihood and usefulness in analysis of an incoming e•mail or text bersome interactions are, Mr Ferrell ar• order to be displayed. It is tempting to message; or o er personalised suggestions gues, an awkward transitionary stage in push information to users based on a for dinner in the evening. the evolution of mobile devices that pre• clever deduction, says Mr Ferrell, but it’s ŒThe phone has all of these data dictive intelligence will see o . With the better to be silent than wrong. Yet some sources, and we are still the ones who pull advent of wearable devices that support users even complained that the †rst ver• out our phones and take the †rst step. fewer input methods, like smart watches sion of Osito did not pop up often enough. Why does a human need to initiate this and Google Glass, there will be a need for Who would have predicted that? 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 Innovation awards 7

pioneering and popularising 3D print• ing. Mr Hull, who invented a process called stereolithography in the 1980s, is considered the father of 3D printing; Mr Pettis, founder of MakerBot, turned it into an accessible and a ordable product, in the form of a desktop 3D printer. ¹ No boundaries: Colin Angle, founder of iRobot, for developing practical robots for domestic, defence, security, medical and business use, from the ‡oor•cleaning Roomba to the bomb•defusing PackBot. ¹ Corporate use of innovation: Genentech. A pioneer of the biotechnolo• gy industry, the †rm has made several breakthrough innovations, including the †rst recombinant DNA medicine ever marketed, and therapies for cancer and age•related vision loss. We extend our congratulations to our winners, and our thanks to the judges: Siavash Alamouti, group R&D director, Vodafone; Robin Bew, managing director, Economist Intelligence Unit; Hermes Chan, chief executive, MedMira; Jan Chipchase, executive creative director of global insights, Frog Design; Martin Cooper, chairman and chief executive, And the winners areð ArrayComm; George Craford, chief technology oˆcer, Philips Lumileds; Hernando de Soto, chairman, Institute for Liberty and Democracy; Rodney Fergu• son, managing director, Panorama Capital; Innovation awards: Our annual prizes recognise successful innovators in Napoleone Ferrara, senior deputy director eight categories. Here are this year’s winners for basic science, University of California, San Diego; Janus Friis, co•founder, Atom• HIS newspaper was established in 1843 Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson, former• ico; François Grey, visiting professor of Tto take part in Œa severe contest be• ly of Acorn Computers, co•creators of the physics, Tsinghua University; Robert tween intelligence, which presses for• power•eˆcient ARM processor that Guest, business editor, The Economist; Vic ward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance powers most of the world’s mobile Hayes, senior research fellow, Delft Uni• obstructing our progress. One of the phones. Its Œreduced instruction set com• versity of Technology; Mo Ibrahim, foun• chief ways in which intelligence presses puting design was intended to boost der, Mo Ibrahim Foundation; Salim Ismail, forward is through innovation, which is performance, but unexpectedly proved to global ambassador, Singularity Universi• now recognised as one of the most impor• be amazingly energy•eˆcient too. ty; Susie Lonie, co•creator, M•PESA; tant contributors to economic growth. ¹ Energy and the environment: Tim Bauer, Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, president, Innovation, in turn, depends on the cre• Nathan Lorenz and Bryan Willson, Global Research Alliance, India; Yoichiro ative individuals who dream up new co•founders of Enviro†t, for developing a Matsumoto, professor and dean of engi• ideas and turn them into reality. compact stove that reduces indoor neering, University of Tokyo; Oliver The Economist recognises these talent• pollution by cutting smoke, toxic emis• Morton, senior brie†ngs editor, The ed people through its annual Innovation sions, biomass consumption and cooking Economist; Andrew Odlyzko, professor of awards, which are presented in eight time compared with traditional designs. mathematics, University of Minnesota; †elds: bioscience, computing and telecom• Enviro†t has sold more than 650,000 Andrea Pfeifer, chief executive, AC munications, energy and the environ• stoves in more than 40 countries. Immune; Lesa Roe, director, Langley ment, social and economic innovation, ¹ Social and economic innovation: Jane Research Center, NASA; Youssef Salah, process and service innovation, consumer Chen, Rahul Panicker, Naganand Murty deputy head, ICT sector, Bibliotheca products, a ‡exible Œno boundaries cate• and Linus Liang of Embrace, for devel• Alexandrian; Syl Saller, global innovation gory, and the corporate use of innovation. oping a low•cost incubator to reduce director, Diageo; Jerry Simmons, deputy The awards will be presented at a cere• neonatal deaths in the developing world. director for semiconductor and optical mony at BAFTA in London on December More than 20,000 babies in a dozen coun• sciences, Sandia National Laboratories; 3rd. And the winners are: tries have bene†ted from its design, simi• Tom Standage, digital editor, The ¹ Bioscience: James Allison, professor and lar to a sleeping bag (see photo). Economist (chairman); Tuula Teeri, chair of immunology at the M.D. An• ¹ Process and service innovation: Salman president, Aalto University; Vijay derson Cancer Centre at the University of Khan, founder of Khan Academy, for Vaitheeswaran, China business editor, The Texas, for the development of an creating a free online•education plat• Economist; Je rey Weedman, vice•presi• Œimmune checkpoint blockade cancer form that now serves more than 10m dent of global business development, therapy which reactivates the body’s students each month and has delivered Procter & Gamble; Huanming Yuang, defences in order to respond to a tumour more than 300m lessons. director, Beijing Genomics Institute. The that has evaded the immune system. ¹ Consumer products: Chuck Hull of 3D judging process was run by John Eckhouse ¹ Computing and telecommunications: Systems and Bre Pettis of MakerBot for of Modern Media. 7 8 Di erence engine The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 Thief in your pocket?

Mobile security: When it comes to mobile devices, viruses are not the problem they are made out to be‹at least, not yet. Instead, the biggest risk for organisations comes from absent•minded or nefarious employees

IVEN all the talk about mobile mal• devices and Apple’s App Store for iPhones Gware‹Trojans, viruses, keyloggers, and iPads. Both are reasonably well po• phishing expeditions and other scams in• liced. Despite its laissez•faire reputation, fecting the phones in people’s pockets‹ Google’s marketplace for apps is curated you might be forgiven for thinking cyber• far better than most third•party sites, crooks are cleaning up at their expense. though not as rigorously as Apple’s. The truth is that surprisingly little malware With 1m apps available for both the An• has found its way into handsets. Smart• droid operating system and Apple’s iOS, phones have turned out to be much users have little reason to venture outside tougher to infect than laptops and desktop these walled gardens. Those who do PCs. But that may change. should be aware that many third•party The makers of security software, of app stores, especially for Android devices, course, do not mind at all if mobile•phone can be dens of iniquity, o ering free down• users are led to believe their devices are loads of pornography or pirated tunes, vulnerable to attack. Certainly, the BYOD videos and games as honeypots for the (bring your own device) trend that is being gullible. Downloads from such sites may adopted by many companies has created well have malware embedded in them. headaches for network managers trying to Such tainted downloads may contain keep up with di erent hardware and soft• nothing more than Œnuisanceware‹soft• ware. It is one thing for an individual to †nd a malicious app they ware that causes adverts to pop up, unnecessary toolbars added have downloaded has racked up a large phone bill by spewing out to browsers, and home•pages diverted to inappropriate sites. Or it text messages to pricey pay•to•use services, but quite another for a could be Œscareware‹software that o ers to scan the device for manager to learn that company secrets‹contact lists, passwords, viruses and the like, and then demands payment to †x the pro• authentication keys, business plans and the like‹have been leak• blems it †nds, which probably do not exist. ing via employees’ phones to competitors or criminals. Though rare, more toxic mobile malware can collect personal Even so, Adrian Ludwig, a senior security engineer at Google, data and contact lists, monitor keystrokes, track a phone’s location reckons only one in 100,000 apps downloaded by Android users or even take photographs or video of users and their surround• from all sources, legitimate or otherwise, poses any threat. Re• ings. It can then transmit this booty back to servers run by organ• searchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology working with ised crime for extortion, identity theft, scams or phishing trips. Damballa, a security †rm based in Atlanta, agree. After surveying Even more worryingly, thanks to improvements in Œnear•†eld two networks with some 380m users between them, the research• communication, phones are beginning to morph into wallets‹ ers found evidence of malware infection on fewer than 3,500 with all the necessary links to bank accounts and credit cards‹so phones‹ie, one in 108,000. Given that there are around 1.5 billion users can make incidental payments at stations, convenience smartphones and tablets in the world, that means probably fewer stores and elsewhere merely by waving their phone near a termi• than 15,000 of them are harbouring mischievous software. nal. Cybercrooks must be rubbing their hands in glee. Why so few? Firstly, mobile•phone users are rarely Œadminis• trators by default‹unlike, say, users of Windows XP computers, The weakest link where everyone has administrative privileges unless they have Yet for personal phones and tablets used at work, the biggest haz• taken the trouble to set up individual user accounts with separate ard for organisations is not mobile malware, but data leakage passwords. The danger, of course, is that administrators (or super• caused by employees losing their devices, or selling sensitive cor• users in Linux•speak) can tinker with the settings of a device’s op• porate information collected on their mobiles. Gartner, an infor• erating system. That leaves a door ajar for hackers to sneak in, sni mation•technology consultancy based in Stamford, Connecticut, around and steal secrets. advises clients not to worry too much about malware penetrating It is possible to grant administrator rights to phone users by their networks through the devices employees bring to work. It is overriding the manufacturer’s security safeguards, a practice the users themselves who are the problem. How, for instance, do known as Œjailbreaking or Œrooting that is done to allow new companies prevent employees from innocently responding to functions to be added to a mobile device. Doing so, however, not Œspear•phishing attacks in the form of individually targeted, and only voids the maker’s warranty, but can easily Œbrick the device, very oˆcial•looking, e•mail or text messages, apparently from turning it into an expensive paperweight, and also risks opening trusted colleagues, that request sensitive information? Security up vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malware. Fortunately, measures need to focus more on educating users, says Gartner, because people who jailbreak or root their phones constitute such rather than on the relatively minor problem of mobile malware. a small minority, cyber•criminals tend not to waste too much time At the very least, everyone should use an app that enables attacking them. Mainstream computer users still provide easier their devices to be tracked or wiped clean if lost or stolen. They and more lucrative targets. can also install a mobile•security suite to block all known mali• Another reason why mobile phones have so far remained cious software. That will not, of course, protect the device from largely free of malware is that they lead relatively sheltered lives. unknown threats (Œzero•day attacks), but it will cut out most of Most users download any apps they want (the average is around the nuisance. And steer clear of third•party download sites mak• 40) from one of two oˆcial sites: Google’s Play Store for Android ing o ers that seem too good to be true. Invariably, they are. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 Smart weapons 9

Kill switches and safety catches

mines deployed around the world. In a similar vein, one proposal is that launchers Arms control: New technologies make it easier to track small arms and stop for shoulder•†red missiles should only them working under certain circumstances. To what extent can they prevent work with a uniquely con†gured, non•re• the unintended or undesirable use of weapons? chargeable battery manufactured in a sin• gle, tightly controlled plant. This would, in O HELP push Soviet forces out of sported and operated by one or two peo• theory, limit the lifespan of the weapons TAfghanistan in the 1980s, America’s ple, respectively) are cheap and easy to for anyone without access to new batter• Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gave conceal. Russia’s foreign ministry esti• ies. But there would be workarounds. This Afghan †ghters shoulder•launched Stinger mates the black•market cost of some year rebels in Syria posted video online of anti•aircraft missiles (pictured). Accurate shoulder•launched missiles at less than a portable missile•launcher rigged to an ex• and easy•to•use, the Stingers caused griev• $3,000. Handguns are available in Ameri• ternal power supply for target acquisition. ous losses. But after the Soviet withdrawal can shops for a few hundred dollars. In Af• It †red a missile that shot down a helicop• in 1989, the CIA wanted to discourage the rica, rocket•propelled grenades (RPGs) and ter near the Abu ad•Duhur military air• use of the leftover missiles. It got hold of other light weapons are commonly smug• base, south of Aleppo. Similarly rigged some of those circulating on the black mar• gled great distances in co ee sacks, notes missiles have been †red by Hamas mili• ket and booby•trapped them, so that any• Marco Kalbusch, head of the United Na• tants at Israeli aircraft. one who tried to †re one would have his tions Oˆce for Disarmament A airs in head blown o . The aim, according to a for• Lomé, Togo. But technological tweaks may Perishable weapons mer CIA oˆcial, was to deter both the sale be able to help limit the spread and use of Shoulder•†red missiles, RPGs, mortars, and use of the remaining missiles. small arms, making possible weapons that and guided anti•tank missiles could also Taking this sort of unconventional ap• stop working after a certain period of time, be made to stop working after a while by proach to arms control is dangerous and or can only be used by speci†c people or in engineering their chemical propellants to expensive, and can never be entirely e ec• particular places. Proponents of such tech• become inert after a predetermined per• tive. Recovering every weapon is rarely nologies believe they have the potential to iod, says Patrick McCarthy, head of a UN feasible. Some of the Stinger missiles from succeed where political and legislative at• project called the International Small Afghanistan Œpercolated to the separatist tempts at arms control have failed. Arms Control Standards. It is hardly likely Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, who used them Perhaps the simplest approach is the that governments would buy perishable to shoot down government aircraft, says use of technological tricks that shorten weapons of the sort for their own use, but Jayantha Dhanapala, a former adviser to weapons’ lifespans. ŒSelf•deactivating rebel groups might accept them from a two Sri Lankan presidents. landmines, for example, will not detonate sympathetic country, at least if nothing Compared with †ghter jets, tanks or after their battery runs down. They have better were on o er. This might also allay warships, small arms and light weapons been adopted by America and some of its fears in the donor country that the weap• (de†ned as those that can be easily tran• allies, but constitute only a tiny fraction of ons might end up in undesirable hands 1 10 Smart weapons The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013

Sri Lanka’s 27•year countermanding missile launches against con‡ict with the certain countries’ aircraft. Now similar Tamil Tigers, accord• Œoverride systems are being applied to ing to a UN estimate. Sri small arms, too. Lanka’s navy bene†ted from TriggerSmart, a company based in Lim• intelligence collected by India, erick, Ireland, has developed a motorised an ally, to identify and intercept mechanism that can block or unblock the or destroy boats smuggling light trigger of an assault ri‡e. It is controlled not weapons to the Tigers’ bastion in the by a switch on the weapon itself, but rather country’s north•east. But more weap• by a command sent from an aircraft, satel• 2 many years later. ons would have been stopped had a satel• lite, mobile•network tower or radio sta• A second approach to arms lite•tracking system been in place, says Mr tion. Weighing less than 30 grams (includ• control is to track weapons elec• Dhanapala, who also served as the Sri Lan• ing a standard AAA battery), the tronically. Almost all illicit small kan government’s peace•process co•ordi• mechanism allows an Œo ending weap• arms were legally manufactured or im• nator in 2004 and 2005. As head of disar• on to be remotely disabled, says Patrick ported and were later diverted, often with mament a airs at the UN from 1998 to O’Shaughnessy, TriggerSmart’s head of re• help from corrupt oˆcials and forged doc• 2003, he proposed that such a system be search and development. It costs about uments. Discreet monitoring and tracking established. $150 to retro†t an existing ri‡e or build the of shipping containers carrying weapons Tracking weapons can be done without technology into a new one. makes it harder to steal or reroute them. satellites, however. Some armies have The biggest buyers, Mr O’Shaughnessy Jim Giermanski, a former US Air Force col• started using tiny radio•frequency identi†• reckons, will be armies that work with for• onel, says America’s Defence Department cation (RFID) chips, like those found in eign security forces. American oˆcials recently began shipping to Afghanistan, on contactless credit cards and public•tran• have expressed interest. One in six of the commercial vessels, containers capable of sport tickets, which do not require batter• Western troops killed last year in Afghani• reporting an opened door, vibrations from ies to operate. Instead, when they are stan was slain in an Œinsider attack by a a break•in attempt and their location, de• passed close to a reader (when passing partner in the country’s security forces. rived from global positioning system (GPS) through a door, for example), the chips ab• TriggerSmart’s technology could allow satellites. A container can, in essence, Œre• sorb enough radio energy to power up and any member of a unit to block the use of port its own hijacking, says Dr Gierman• transmit a short burst of identi†cation †rearms by partner forces. But being ex• ski, now boss of Powers International, a data. Weapons passing in and out of an ar• pected to use weapons that can be remote• company based in North Carolina that moury can thus be tracked. SkyRFID, a ly disabled hardly seems likely to engen• helps shippers adopt the tracking technol• company based in Ontario, notes that its der trust. And it would be impractical to ogy. It is just now becoming practical and weaponry tags are not damaged by vibra• introduce light•weaponry override sys• inexpensive enough for wide use, he says. tion, grime or cleaning solvents. Replacing tems in their current form for large num• In some cases it is even possible to track manual logging makes it harder for ar• bers of soldiers or police, says Richard individual weapons by building in a trans• moury sta to pretend munitions sold on Rowe, a retired US Army major•general mitter that regularly signals their precise the sly are still in stock. (A UN report on im• who oversaw the instruction and equip• co•ordinates. This is already done for larger proving marking and tracing technologies ping of 550,000 Iraqi security recruits. weapons deemed Œexpensive enough and is due to be published in April 2014.) Even with further technological ad• consequential enough, says Lincoln vances, few armies will be eager to adopt Bloom†eld, a former State Department of• Service unavailable such kit, Mr Kalbusch says. Governments †cial for military and political a airs who Another alternative to GPS transmitters would worry that their arsenals could be served as a special envoy under George would be to track weapons by out†tting neutered by an adversary, or, more Bush junior. Doing the same for small arms them with the inexpensive SIM cards that straightforwardly, by the country that sup• would be expensive, but the transmitter allow mobile•phone networks to identify plied the arms. Attempts to mandate use of could be cleverly attached so that remov• subscribers. A weapon would communi• the technology seem unlikely to succeed, ing it disables the weapon. cate with nearby mobile•network towers because small arms are made in many In RPGs, a GPS transmitter could be to indicate its position within a rough area, countries. And sometimes foreign powers concealed in a grip assembly, says Jean• says Mr Kalbusch. And a system of this sort want rebels to steal a government’s weap• Marc Anzian Kouadja, executive secretary could, in theory, form the basis of a Œre• ons and use them against it, as Western• of the National Commission of Small mote control feature, allowing weapons supported opponents of Libya’s Qadda† Arms and Light Weapons at Côte d’Ivoire’s to be disabled from a distance. regime did in 2011. interior ministry. Wrench it out, he says, ŒKill switches or Œbackdoors, as these Away from the battle†eld, other arms• and you break the trigger mechanism. features are sometimes known, have so far control technologies are being developed Governments might be willing to foot the been associated with expensive weapon to prevent the unintended or unautho• bill to secure their stockpiles from insur• systems that must send and receive data to rised use of weapons belonging to civil• gent raids or managers who might other• operate. David Kay, America’s most senior ians or police oˆcers. In the decade to wise cut deals with gunrunners. But a pro• arms inspector in post•Saddam Iraq, has 2010, 1,217 American minors were killed in blem, he notes, is that cyber•savvy rebels noted that one of the reasons why Russia’s accidental shootings, according to the might work out how to use the technology best air•defence systems have not been in• most recent data from the Centres for Dis• to track government troops. stalled in Iran is probably because the Ira• ease Control. And it is not uncommon for a More than 80,000 people were killed in nians fear that Russia might be capable of police oˆcer to be shot with a service 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 Smart weapons 11 ŒPersonalised †rearms will †re only when held by the owner or another authorised person.

2 weapon that has been wrested away. same hand size will be able to †re a gun Gun enthusiasts have raised similar objec• Accordingly, new Œpersonalised †re• personalised for a particular user. But a tions: personalised smart guns are simply arms are being developed which †re only gun set up for an adult cannot be †red by a less e ective for self•defence, they argue, when held by the owner or another autho• child. The US Army is testing the system at because of the risk that the safety technol• rised person, with the speci†c aim of pre• an armaments laboratory in Picatinny, ogy will fail to work properly. Triggers venting a gun owner (and his family or co• New Jersey. could be unlocked by voice, but this risks workers) from being killed with his own Firearms that are unlocked with a †n• betraying the position of someone hiding. weapon. Because the veri†cation takes gerprint reader have been developed by Echoing an attitude shared by many place within the weapon itself, its backers Kodiak Industries, based in Utah, and Safe gun enthusiasts, David Codrea, an editor at note, the technology is more likely to be ac• Gun Technology, based in Georgia. Biomac Guns magazine, cautions that Œstupid elec• cepted than remote•override features on Systems, a †rm based in Los Angeles, Cali• tronic doodads could render a †rearm military weapons. fornia and Ferlach, Austria, is designing a useless, would be ignored by criminals Such Œsmart guns were discussed by biometric kit to retro†t pistols. Barack and would raise the price of †rearms for diplomats, gunmakers and other experts Obama has encouraged the development everyone else. Lawrence Keane of the Na• at SmartCon, an arms•control conference of such technologies and has directed tional Shooting Sports Foundation in Con• held in Berlin in June, organised by the America’s attorney general to review necticut notes that owners of Œauthorised• German foreign oˆce and the Bonn Inter• them. Smart•gun technology also received user•only †rearms might be lulled into let• national Centre for Conversion, a non•pro• a boost last year when it won the †ctional ting others handle them carelessly. He †t group that promotes demilitarisation endorsement of James Bond in ŒSkyfall. rejects the term Œsmart guns because Œit’s and development. One example is a .22• Issued a gun coded to his palmprint that people who are dumb or smart. Some gun calibre pistol called iP1 (pictured on previ• only he can †re, Bond is told that it is Œless owners are also predictably suspicious of ous page), made by Armatix, a German of a random killing machine, more of a technologies like TriggerSmart’s Œwide• †rm. It only †res if the shooter is wearing a personal statement. area control system that could use an en• special wristwatch containing an RFID crypted wireless signal to disable smart chip, which is detected by the gun. If the Technology for tyrants? guns in schools, airports and other areas. gun is more than 40 centimetres from the And yet demand looks weak, especially in An editorial on BearingArms.com, a pro• RFID chip, its trigger locks. Attempting to America, by far the biggest market for civil• gun website, in August called smart guns disable the trigger lock destroys the iP1 Œir• ian †rearms: the iGun M•2000 failed to sell Œa dumb idea and said the ability to dis• revocably, according to Maximilian Hef• at all. Maxim Popenker, an author of †re• able them was a Œtechnology for tyrants ner, the †rm’s boss. The list price is $1,699. arm reference books based in St Peters• that would give governments a monopoly A similar system for shotguns, called burg, Russia, observes that sooner or later on the use of force. M•2000, has been developed by iGun a bad guy will shoot a good guy because Such concerns present a big obstacle to Technology Corporation, based in Florida. the latter’s personalised gun refuses to †re the adoption of smart †rearms. Indeed, When an RFID chip embedded in a ring is due to Œgloves, dirt, sweat, blood or stress. Œimmense pressure and boycotts from brought near the shotgun, a solenoid pro•gun groups persuaded many †rms to switch instantly unlocks the trigger. (Alter• abandon development of smart weapons, natively, the chip could be surgically im• says Wolfgang Bindseil, an arms•control planted in the owner’s hand.) The system oˆcial at the German foreign oˆce. Gun• is seamless, according to Jonathan Mossb• makers that gave up include Metal Storm erg, the †rm’s founder. ŒYou pick up the in Australia, FN Herstal in Belgium, and gun, pull the trigger, it goes boom‹no Colt, Smith & Wesson and Taurus Interna• thought involved, he says. The battery in• tional Manufacturing in America. side the gun that powers the RFID reader Mr Mossberg of iGun wonders wheth• lasts for more than eight years, and it er attitudes will change as †ngerprint read• sounds a warning alarm after six years. It ers in smartphones (including the latest costs about $200 to add to a †rearm. iPhone) and wireless key fobs for cars be• A wristwatch or a ring could be stolen, come more widespread and are shown to however, so other smart guns rely instead be reliable. Whether that is just wishful on biometric characteristics of their own• thinking may soon become apparent. De• er’s body, such as a †ngerprint. The New spite protests from gun•rights groups, New Jersey Institute of Technology has devised Jersey passed a law in 2002 that requires a personalised Beretta pistol. When its all non•antique guns sold in the state to be magnetic trigger is pulled past a sensor in smart, starting about three years after the the trigger guard, a chip is switched on to attorney•general determines that the tech• crunch data from pressure•sensing piezo• nology is up to snu and for sale. That electric sensors in the handgrip. Only if countdown could begin soon: smart pis• they match the owner’s bone geometry tols made by Armatix arrived in American and Œgrip dynamics does the trigger un• gun shops in November 2013. Arms•con• lock. All this happens within the tenth of a trol technologies face formidable opposi• second it takes to pull the trigger all the tion to adoption on the battle†eld, but will way back. The system is not foolproof: on now have a chance to prove themselves in average, around 1% of people with the 007 makes a personal statement the marketplace. 7 12 Wine technology The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013

in Napa. ŒThere’s no longer an excuse for making a defective wine. Bacchus to the future Now, however, the stigma of automa• tion is declining, and more prestigious pro• ducers have become open to the use of technology in winemaking. That has prompted inventors to devise new ma• chines to meet their exacting needs. Be• High•tech winemaking: Technology has already made poor plonk a thing of cause consumers remain seduced by the the past. What can it do to improve the world’s †nest wines? notion that wine should be made by hum• ble farmers with as little intervention as T IS †ve o’clock in the morning at the cab perfectly level as they line up on either possible, †ne•wine labels still try to keep Iheight of California’s harvest season, side of the vines. The driver launches the their experiments under wraps. But they and the full moon hanging low over the tractor straight along the top of the row. are quietly deploying technology in a new Carneros hills bathes the chardonnay The engine whirrs, branches crackle and way: not just to make bad wine decent, or vineyards in cheese•yellow light. A crew of leaves ‡y into the air as he zips along. to make good wine more cheaply, but to 30 Mexican grape•pickers, wearing head• Underneath, ten pairs of ‡exible †bre• make already•great wines greater still. lamps and orange safety vests, races down glass rods are swinging back and forth, the rows in silence, deftly severing the their amplitude, frequency and spacing A picky bunch bunches with crescent•shaped knives and speci†ed by the driver. The vibration sepa• Few industries are more suspicious of dropping them into plastic bins. They have rates the grapes from the plant, and a con• change than winemaking. Archaeological to work fast in the cool night air, taking a veyor belt brings them to the top of the ve• evidence suggests that humans have been few seconds to strip each plant, because hicle. There, they pass over a series of drinking fermented grape juice since at within an hour it will be too warm to har• rollers whose spacing lets the berries least 7000BC. Presses and fermentation vest the fragile grapes. ŒThey are skilled, through while trapping stray stems and vats were in use by 4000BC. Even the sites more than they’re given credit for, says leaves. The vines look undisturbed save of the best vineyards have been known for Towle Merritt, a general manager at Walsh for their lack of fruit, their naked stems centuries: in 1663 the English diarist Samu• Vineyards Management, the viticulture eerily exposed. The machine, made by el Pepys wrote of Œa sort of French wine, †rm that employs them. Pellenc, a French †rm, will harvest 20 called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most Harvest night has also arrived at a ca• tonnes of grapes tonight: enough to make particular taste. The 2010 vintage of Haut bernet sauvignon vineyard 36km (23 18,000 bottles of wine, and a harvest that Brion starts at $800 a bottle. miles) to the north, in the heart of the Napa would otherwise require 40 workers. Most of this accumulated know•how valley. But here there are no arti†cial lights, Mechanical harvesting is not new: involves creating the best conditions for portable toilets or on•site sorting teams. In• makers of bulk wine dispensed with winemaking to take its natural course. The stead, a single driver pilots a 3.65•metre (12 hand•picking in the 1970s. But using ma• beverage occurs in the wild: if grapes are feet) high arch•shaped tractor towards the chines was long associated with low•end left to rot, their juice can ferment using na• end of a row. The earth below is highly un• wineries that could not a ord traditional tive yeast. But there are an in†nite number even, but the vehicle’s massive wheels, artisanal methods. ŒTechnology has vastly of pitfalls along the path from vine to each with its own gyroscope and hydraulic improved the low end, says Tim Keller, a wine: weather, pests, problems with fer• controls, extend, twist and tilt to keep the former winemaker at Steltzner Vineyards mentation, oxidation and so on. Through 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 Wine technology 13 ŒSome winemakers try the same wine at a host of di erent alcohol levels to see which tastes best.

2 centuries of trial and error, vintners have gen should enter the bottle over time, the wine’s alcohol level. Slightly more po• discovered techniques to minimise these while eliminating the risk of TCA. rous membranes can also be used to re• risks. Of recent advances in this †eld, the Another longtime headache for vint• move other unpleasant chemicals like ace• most technically impressive is probably ners is premature oxidation (Œpremox), a tic acid (vinegar) and ethyl acetate (a optical sorting. Food companies have long condition that makes white wines taste chemical used as nail•polish remover). used cameras and image•processing soft• like a browned apple or toasted bread. RO has its share of critics. Purists con• ware to separate and discard low•quality Vivelys, a French †rm, has found that add• tend that it is Œcheating and takes wine products. But the †rst sorter designed espe• ing controlled amounts of oxygen before too far away from its natural roots; sceptics cially for wine was not released until 2007. fermentation makes wine more resistant argue that the process strips crucial aromas Made by Pellenc, it looks like an over• to premox later on, as well as giving it a as well as alcohol. But demand for the size pinball machine. After destemming, creamier mouthfeel. Its new Cilyo mach• practice far exceeds the number of produc• the grapes fall onto a vibrating metal plate ine injects small quantities of the gas into a ers that will admit to it. WineSecrets, a †rm that separates them, and proceed to a con• sample, determines how fast the Œmust in California, even lets clients try the same veyor belt made of 99 thin rubber cords consumes it and calculates the optimal wine at a host of di erent alcohol levels to moving at 22kph (14mph). They then pass amount. At Domaine Chandon in Napa, see which one tastes best. ŒWinemakers under a brilliant halogen light, where a dig• owned by the French luxury conglomerate can’t be honest about what they do, be• ital camera takes a snapshot. In 30 milli• LVMH, the device is used to determine a cause they’ll be accused of manipulation, seconds, the device compares each berry’s separate dosage for each tank. says Clark Smith, an American consultant shape, size, and colour with the wine• credited with popularising RO. ŒWhen maker’s guidelines, and Œshoots down winemakers hear ‘manipulation’, they the rejects with a quick pu of air, making think, ‘What, you don’t want me to pick the a sound like a typewriter. ŒIt looks like a fruit or crush the grapes?’ They’re forced to blueberry tart, says Bruno•Eugene Borie, dissemble or they get demonised. the owner of the Ducru•Beaucaillou win• The need for technology does not end ery in Bordeaux, while admiring his mach• once the bottles leave the winery. The big• ine’s output. ŒAll the berries are perfect. gest problem is probably forgery. In 2008 Pellenc has already sold more than Laurent Ponsot, the head of Domaine Pon• 1,000 of the units, which can cost up to sot in Burgundy, ‡ew to New York to inter• $250,000. Its success has attracted compet• rupt an auction in which a series of wines itors, such as Bucher Vaslin, another with his labels were on sale‹in vintages French †rm. France is the undisputed glo• when they were never produced. Their bal leader in wine technology. As Mr Mer• consignor has been arrested for fraud, but ritt notes, the country has a greater de• Mr Ponsot is now set on ensuring that con• mand for mechanisation than America sumers get what they pay for. To combat because its agricultural wages are higher. fakes, he applies a Œbubble seal to every And France’s reputation means that its bottle. Made by Prooftag, another French elite winemakers, unlike those in other †rm, it contains both a serial number and a countries, do not have to worry about criti• unique pattern of bubbles embedded in cism from elite French winemakers. plastic, and is destroyed when the wine is opened. Anyone can check the pattern for Seeking closure each bottle number on Prooftag’s website. One of the few areas where a non•French The Coravin lets you †nish it next week Another grave risk is poor storage. Ex• company has taken the lead is in clo• cessive heat and inappropriate humidity sures‹a logical consequence of the re• A more controversial wine•adjusting can ruin a wine without leaving a trace on quirement under French law that wine technology is reverse osmosis (RO). In the the bottle. Ponsot has aˆxed a thermal dot must be bottled using natural cork. The tra• 1990s, partly driven by the preferences of to his label that changes colour irreversibly ditional seal has long frustrated producers Robert Parker, an in‡uential American crit• when exposed to dangerous temperatures. with the inconsistent amount of air it lets ic, many producers began delaying their He also asked eProvenance, a †rm based in through and its tendency to become taint• harvests in order to make fuller, fruitier Boston, to install sensors that track the ed with TCA, a compound that makes reds that could be drunk without lengthy temperature and humidity inside every wine smell like wet cardboard. However, cellaring. More ripening time meant more case‹all the way from the winery to the the primary alternative‹a fully airtight sugar, which fermentation turned into al• retailer’s shelf. The company says that 16% screw cap‹is shunned by oenologists who cohol. Wines that once carried 12•13% alco• of the cases it has tracked so far surpass the believe that ageworthy wines require a bit hol began reaching 15•16% or more. danger threshold of 28°C, and hopes to of oxygen to mature. After leaving To avoid this side•e ect, producers create a new market for Œaroma insurance Steltzner, Mr Keller co•founded a startup, turned to RO, a technique that is also used on heat•damaged shipments. VinPerfect, that he says should end the to desalinate water. The smallest mole• Technology can even help after a bottle Œclosure wars once and for all. It makes a cules in wine are water and alcohol. By has been opened, by preserving the wine screw cap containing an aluminium•coat• passing wine at high pressure over a mem• if it is not all going to be consumed imme• ed plastic liner, similar to the †nishes on brane with tiny pores, those compounds diately. Greg Lambrecht, an American with mirrored sunglasses. This allows the wine• can be separated from the rest of the liquid. a background in medical devices, believes maker to choose precisely how much oxy• Only the water is added back in, reducing he has solved this conundrum with a pric•1 14 Wine technology The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013

2 ey contraption called the Coravin. It looks relied on rules of thumb to decide where to vest. They record grape colours and calcu• like a small bicycle pump, and attaches to plant, looking for clay and limestone soils late the concentration of anthocyanins, a the neck of a bottle. At its heart is a steel with good drainage and not too much valuable antioxidant. This determines needle with holes on the sides, originally wind. They can now be far more precise. which parcels are picked †rst. ŒWithin †ve devised for medical use, to access a vascu• Lynch Bages, an august Bordeaux pro• to ten years, we’ll be able to do a full analy• lar port implanted under a patient’s skin. ducer, trained a satellite on its vineyards sis of each berry’s ripeness and skin thick• The Coravin’s low•friction, Te‡on•coated and assessed how each subplot re‡ected ness, says Mr Borie, the estate’s owner. version of this needle glides through a cork visible, infra•red and ultraviolet light, a ŒWe want the purest Ducru possible, and e ortlessly, allowing the user to pour out a measure of the intensity of vegetation. you can only do that with technology. stream of wine. A lever on the top opens a (Counterintuitively, deep•green areas Another avenue of research involves valve that shoots inert argon gas into the yield poor wine: since they are so fertile, analysing the thousands of di erent bottle at high pressure, †lling the space va• the vine produces weak grapes in high vol• chemical compounds found in red wine, cated by the liquid. Once the user has umes rather than smaller quantities of to determine how its composition a ects served a glass and removed the Coravin, concentrated fruit.) Then it measured the the way humans perceive it. These com• the cork automatically reseals. ŒCork was soil’s electrical conductivity, which corre• pounds can be separated and analysed us• the key invention, says Mr Lambrecht. sponds to its ability to transmit nutrients to ing a technique called gas chromatogra• ŒIt’s so elastic, you can compress it to 10% roots. In a third study, the estate dug 200 phy•mass spectrometry. Many of the of its size, and it will pop back to 98%. I’ve holes to determine mineral concentrations compounds in wine have never been cata• never found anything like it. and soil acidity. After combining the re• logued, and even among those that have, The jury is still out as to the longevity of sults, Lynch Bages carved 50 new plots out subtle di erences in structure can lead to the wine remaining in the bottle after it has of larger, heterogeneous parcels, and is re• big di erences in humans’ sensory reac• †rst been Œaccessed, in Mr Lambrecht’s planting many of them with grape vari• tions. Characterising them fully requires terminology. But he says he has conducted etals that are better matched to the soil. nuclear•magnetic resonance spectroscopy, a series of blind tests with expert tasters, a technique in which the isolated sub• who cannot tell an untouched bottle from Bearing fruit stances are placed in a magnetic †eld, and one that was half•drunk through a Cora• A vine’s water•use can be measured just as their absorption of radiation is measured vin months before. ŒNow I have zero hesi• accurately. Fruition Sciences, a company at di erent points. ŒIt’s like a puzzle, says tation between me and a great glass, he founded by two French graduate students, Axel Marchal of the Institute of Vine and says. ŒI have a magnum of 1988 Bordeaux applies heat sensors to vine branches to Wine Sciences (ISVV) in Bordeaux. I’ve been drinking for ten years. Since its measure how fast sap ‡ows through them, The ISVV’s spectrometers are custom• debut in July 2013, nearly 10,000 of the de• and thus how much water is transpiring built, with slots carved out for researchers’ vices have been sold, at a price of $270. through the plant. The sensors wirelessly noses so they can smell each compound Technology is already transforming wi• transmit the data every 15 minutes, and separately. This technique has led to suc• nemaking, from harvest to consumption. send an alert if irrigation is needed. cesses in the past: it was used to identify But there is plenty of scope for further in• Catena Zapata, an Argentine winery, is thiols as the source of the signature pas• novation. The next frontier is greater use of putting thermometers on roots to study sion fruit aroma in sauvignon blanc, and technology in the vineyard itself. What are the e ect of their temperature on grape de• methoxypyrazines as the cause of bell• the elements of great terroir, as the French velopment. At Ducru•Beaucaillou in Bor• pepper smells in cabernet sauvignon. Fur• call the intersection of soil and climate in a deaux, the winemaker sends tractors ther research showed that pruning leaves given plot? And how can producers get the armed with cameras and GPS locators to at the bottom of the vine sharply reduces best out of their land? In the past vintners every plot ten days before the planned har• methoxypyrazine concentration, one rea• son why Bordeaux reds taste far less Œgreen than they once did. Unfortunately, most aromas are not that simple. They are often produced not by individual com• pounds but by combinations of chemicals, including some that are odourless but modify the e ect of others on nerve recep• tors. ŒThe human nose is a very powerful detector, says Mr Marchal. ŒIt’s much more powerful than mass spectrometry. The grape genome was sequenced in 2007, and scientists are optimistic that they will begin to unmask the relationships be• tween terroir, vine, wine and perception in the coming years. But for now, the ‡uid re• mains as magical and befuddling as ever. ŒThe more we know, the less we know, says David Stevens, an American wine consultant. Even after 9,000 years, there is still plenty of scope for technological inno• Fruition Sciences’ sensors let thirsty vines call for water vation in winemaking. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 Bitcoin 15

three weaknesses in particular. It is not as secure and anonymous as it seems; the Œmining system that both increases the Bitcoin supply and ensures the integrity of the currency has led to an unsustainable computational arms•race; and the distri• buted•ledger system is becoming un• wieldy. Will Bitcoin’s self•correcting mech• anisms, and the enlightened self•interest of its users, be able to address these weak• nesses and keep Bitcoin on the rails? Bitcoin uses a technique called public• key cryptography, which relies on creating an interlocking pair of encryption keys: a public key that can be freely distributed, and a private one that must be kept secret at all costs. The public key is treated as an address to which value may be sent, akin to an account number. Each transaction in• volves the paying party signing over a por• tion or all of the value in one of these ad• dresses by using his private key to perform an operation, called Œsigning, on the con• tents of the transfer, which includes the re• Bitcoin under pressure cipient’s address. Anyone can use the sender’s public key to verify that the send• er’s private key signed the transaction. All transactions are appended to a public led• ger, called the block chain. Public keys are ostensibly anonymous, because they are created randomly by soft• Virtual currency: It is mathematically elegant, increasingly popular and ware under the control of each user, with• highly controversial. Bitcoin’s success is putting it under growing strain out central co•ordination. But it turns out that the ‡ow of money from speci†c ad• LL currencies involve some measure of The technical design outlined in the paper dresses can be tracked quite easily. In a pa• Aconsensual hallucination, but Bitcoin, was implemented in open•source soft• per presented in October, academics from a virtual monetary system, involves more ware the following year. It came to wide• the University of California, San Diego, than most. It is a peer•to•peer currency spread prominence in 2012 and has been in and George Mason University engaged in with no central bank, based on digital to• the headlines ever since. a series of ordinary transactions to collect kens with no intrinsic value. Rather than Investors are backing Bitcoin•related commonly used addresses for Bitcoin wal• relying on con†dence in a central author• startups, the German †nance ministry has let services, gambling sites, currency ex• ity, it depends instead on a distributed sys• recognised it as a Œunit of account and se• changes and other parties. tem of trust, based on a transaction ledger nior oˆcials told an American Senate which is cryptographically veri†ed and committee on November 18th that virtual Follow the money jointly maintained by the currency’s users. currencies had legitimate uses. But there The researchers exploited a current weak• Transactions can occur directly be• have also been many cases of Bitcoin theft. ness in most Bitcoin personal and server tween the system’s participants at almost Exchanges that convert Bitcoin to other software, which generates single•use ad• zero cost, without the need for a trusted currencies have collapsed or closed. Silk dresses to store change from transactions. third party or any other intermediary, and Road, an online forum where illicit goods This allowed them to follow the move• are irreversible once committed to a per• and services are traded for Bitcoin, was ment of Bitcoins across hundreds of tran• manent and fully public record. Bitcoin’s shut down by America’s Federal Bureau of sactions from large sums accumulated at mathematically elegant design ensures Investigation in October but has since re• single addresses, including ones suspected that the money supply can increase only at opened. The Bitcoin price has ‡uctuated of being controlled by Silk Road and stolen a †xed rate that slows over time and then wildly, hitting $230 in April 2013, falling be• funds from exchanges. One of the authors, stops altogether. Anonymity, while not as• low $70 in July, and then exceeding $600 in Sarah Meiklejohn, says that the same tech• sured, is possible with the right precau• November, prompting talk of a bubble. nique could easily be used to provide the tions and tools. No wonder Bitcoin is so ap• The system is now straining at the basis of warrants to serve against ex• pealing to geeks, libertarians, drug dealers, seams. Its computational underpinnings changes or other parties. Law•enforce• speculators and gold bugs. have collectively reached 100 times the ment agencies would regard this as a good Bitcoin began in 2008, at the height of performance of the world’s top 500 super• thing, but to advocates of a completely se• the †nancial crisis, with a paper published computers combined: more than 50,000 cure and anonymous online currency, it under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. peta‡ops. Bitcoin’s success has revealed represents a worrying ‡aw. Ms Meiklejohn 1 16 Bitcoin The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 ŒThe volunteer programmers who work on Bitcoin’s software have no special authority in the system.

2 says most current implementations of the gear arrived, and mid•November, the com• in return for veri†cation. ŒNodes in the Bitcoin protocol fall short of the level of an• putational capacity of the Bitcoin network peer•to•peer network will try to estimate onymity that is theoretically possible, and increased 25•fold, from 200 trillion to 5 the minimum fee needed to get the tran• that her group’s e orts represent just the quadrillion hashes per second. This was saction con†rmed, says Mr Hearn. tip of the iceberg of what could be deduced due in part to the arrival in September of a Bitcoin’s growing popularity is having from analysis of the public block chain. newer generation of more eˆcient ASICs. other ripple e ects. Every participant in The Bitcoin system o ers a reward to Hashing capacity has increased so rapidly the system must keep a copy of the block volunteer users, known as Œminers, who in 2013 that the practice of hijacking thou• chain, which now exceeds 11 gigabytes in bundle up new transactions into blocks sands of PCs and using them for mining is size and continues to grow steadily. This and add them on to the end of the chain. no longer worth the e ort. The average alone deters casual use. Bitcoin’s designer The reward is currently 25 Bitcoins (about time between blocks has fallen to between proposed a method of pruning the chain to $15,000 at this writing). Miners pull active †ve and eight minutes. include only unspent amounts, but it has transactions waiting to be recorded from The general consensus, says Mike not been implemented. the peer•to•peer network and perform the Hearn, one of the volunteers who main• As the rate of transactions increases, complex calculations to create the new tain the Bitcoin software, is that with this squeezing all †nancial activity into the pre• block, building on the cryptographic foun• new generation of ASICs, mining will set size limit for each block has started to dation of the previous block. Comparison have approached a point where only those become problematic. The protocol may of the results produced by di erent miners need to be tweaked to allow more transac• provides independent veri†cation. About tions per block, among other changes. A every 10 minutes, one lucky miner who further problem relates to the volunteer has generated the next block is granted the machines, or nodes, that allow Bitcoin to 25•Bitcoin reward, and the new block is ap• function. These nodes relay transactions pended to the chain. The process then and transmit updates to the block chain. starts again. But, says Matthew Green, a security re• searcher at Johns Hopkins University, the Mine craft ecosystem provides no compensation for The Bitcoin system is designed to cope maintaining these nodes‹only for mining. with the fact that improvements in com• The rising cost of operating nodes could puter hardware make it cheaper and faster jeopardise Bitcoin’s ability to scale. to perform the mathematical operations, The original paper that sparked the cre• known as hashes, involved in mining. Ev• ation of Bitcoin has since been supple• ery 2,016 blocks, or roughly every two mented by layers of agreed•upon protocol, weeks, the system calculates how long it updated regularly by the system’s partici• would take for blocks to be created at pre• pants. The protocol, like the currency, is a cisely 10•minute intervals, and resets a dif• †ction they accept as real, because rejec• †culty factor in the calculation accordingly. tion by a large proportion of users‹be they As equipment gets faster, in short, mining banks, exchanges, speculators or miners‹ gets harder. But faster equipment is con• could cause the whole system to collapse. stantly coming online, reducing the poten• Mr Hearn notes that he and other program• tial rewards for other miners unless they, mers who work on Bitcoin’s software have too, buy more kit. Miners have formed no special authority in the system. Instead, groups that pool processing power and proposals are ‡oated, implemented in soft• parcel out the ensuing rewards. Once done with access to free or cheap electricity will ware, and must then be taken up by 80% of with ordinary computers, mining shifted continue operations, and even they will nodes before becoming permanent‹at to graphics•processing units, which can produce a relatively marginal return on in• which point blocks from other nodes are perform some calculations more eˆcient• vestment, rather than the huge multiples rejected. ŒThe rules of the system are not ly. Miners then moved on to ‡exible chips (when exchanged into traditional curren• set in stone, he says. The adoption of im• that can be con†gured for particular tasks, cy) possible even earlier this year. Mining provements is up to the community. Bit• called †eld•programmable gate arrays. In has become increasingly commercial and coin is thus both ‡exible and fragile. the past year, bespoke chips called ASICs professional, he says. Server farms with So far, it has kept going. But can it with• (application•speci†c integrated circuits) endless racks of ASIC cards have already stand the pressure as it becomes more pop• have appeared on the scene. sprung up. But as part of Bitcoin’s design, ular? ŒIt’s got this kind of watch•like feel to Your correspondent visited a miner the reward for mining a block halves every it, says Mr Hearn. It keeps on ticking, but who operates a rack of mining hardware in 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four Œa mechanical watch is fragile and can be his modest apartment. He had purchased years. Sometime in 2017, at the current rate, smashed. Perhaps Bitcoin, like the inter• his ASIC•based hardware a few months it will drop to 12.5 Bitcoins. If the returns net, will smoothly evolve from a quirky ex• earlier, and it had arrived weeks late, caus• from mining decline, who will verify the periment to a trusted utility. But it could ing him to miss out on a bonanza, because integrity of the block chain? also go the way of Napster, the trailblazing after arrival, the kit generated Bitcoins so To head o this problem, a market• music•sharing system that pioneered a quickly that it paid for itself within three based mechanism is in the works which new category, but was superseded by su• days. But the edge that ASICs provide is will raise the current voluntary fees paid perior implementations that overcame its quickly eroding. Between July, when the by users (around †ve cents per transaction) technical and commercial ‡aws. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013 Brain scan 17 The internet’s †fth man

job‹and Bull’s partnership with RCA, an American company‹exposed the limits Louis Pouzin helped create the of his skills. ŒI realised if I didn’t learn to internet. Now he is campaigning to program or speak English I couldn’t have a ensure that its design continues to career in computing, he recalls. evolve and improve in future A two•year sabbatical at the Mas• sachusetts Institute of Technology gave T A glitzy ceremony at Buckingham him the chance to do both. In the early APalace this summer, Queen Elizabeth 1960s Mr Pouzin moved his young family II honoured †ve pioneers of computer to America, where he joined a pioneering networking. Four of the men who shared team working on time•sharing systems, the new £1m ($1.6m) Queen Elizabeth Prize which aimed to make better use of expen• for Engineering are famous: Vint Cerf and sive mainframe computers by enabling Bob Kahn, authors of the protocols that several users to run programs on them at underpin the internet; Tim Berners•Lee, once. Mr Pouzin created a program called inventor of the world wide web; and Marc RUNCOM that helped users automate Andreessen, creator of the †rst successful tedious and repetitive commands. That web browser. But the †fth man is less well program, which he described as a Œshell known. He is Louis Pouzin, a garrulous around the computer’s whirring innards, Frenchman whose contribution to the gave inspiration‹and a name‹to an entire †eld is every bit as seminal. class of software tools, called command• In the early 1970s Mr Pouzin created an line shells, that still lurk below the surface innovative data network that linked loca• of modern operating systems. tions in France, Italy and Britain. Its sim• plicity and eˆciency pointed the way to a The French exception network that could connect not just doz• In the late 1960s France’s politicians ens of machines, but millions of them. It launched an ambitious plan to bolster the captured the imagination of Dr Cerf and country’s computing industry. In 1971they Dr Kahn, who included aspects of its challenged IRIA, a state•funded computer• design in the protocols that now power science institute, to begin research into a the internet. Yet in the late 1970s France’s national computer network. Mr Pouzin government withdrew its funding for Mr was asked to lead the project, which be• Pouzin’s project. He watched as the in• came known as CYCLADES. ternet swept across the world, ultimately Mr Pouzin visited American universi• vindicating him and his work. ŒRecogni• ties to learn more about ARPANET, a tion has come very, very late for Louis, network funded by the military that had says Dr Cerf. ŒUnfairly so. been switched on two years before, and Born in 1931, Mr Pouzin grew up in his which relied on a promising new tech• father’s sawmill in a village in central nique called Œpacket switching to deliver France. Drawn to the dangerous machines data from one machine to another. Chop• he was barred from touching‹not just the ping up all communications into data saws, but the steam engine that powered packets of †xed size, and allowing ma• them‹he tinkered instead with a Meccano chines to relay packets to each other, construction kit. His parents encouraged meant that there was no need for a direct him to apply to the École Polytechnique, link between every pair of machines on France’s most prestigious technical univer• the network. Instead, they could be wired sity. After graduating, Mr Pouzin designed together with relatively few connections, machine tools for the state•run post, tele• reducing the cost and increasing the resil• graph and telecoms provider (PTT). ience of the network. If a network link But then, in the 1950s, he read an article failed, packets could take a di erent path. in Le Monde, reporting from an annual But to Mr Pouzin, ARPANET seemed exhibition of oˆce suppliers at which over•designed and ineˆcient. Every com• IBM, an American technology †rm, prom• puter required a complex piece of hard• ised that its computers would soon handle ware to link it to the network, because all sorts of bureaucratic drudgery. En• ARPANET’s design included a connection chanted by the potential of computer• set•up phase, in which a path across the isation, Mr Pouzin moved to Bull, IBM’s network was established for communica• French competitor. There he managed a tion between two machines. Packets were dozen engineers crafting applications for then delivered in order along this path. the Gamma 60, a temperamental machine Mr Pouzin’s team came up with a Œwhich †lled two large rooms across two leaner, more eˆcient way to do things. di erent ‡oors. But the rigours of the Instead of deciding in advance which path1 18 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly November 30th 2013

ŒThe internet itself has not changed in 30 years. A century from now it must not be the same.

2 a series of packets should travel along, der, says Mr Pouzin, Œa dead end. It did ration for Assigned Names and Num• they proposed that each packet should be not seem so at †rst‹TRANSPAC under• bers‹is a particular bugbear of Mr Pou• labelled and delivered as an individual pinned Minitel, a wildly successful con• zin’s. Based in California and very loosely message, called a datagram. On ARPANET, sumer•information service which France’s accountable to America’s Department of strings of packets travelled like carriages phone company launched in 1982. Minitel Commerce, the organisation has in recent of a train, travelling in strict order from o ered French citizens online banking, years worked hard to become more repre• one station to another. On CYCLADES, travel reservations and pornographic chat sentative of the international community packets were individual cars, each of rooms a decade before the world wide it serves. But some governments would which could travel independently to its web. By the late 1990s it had 25m users. But like ICANN’s governance responsibil• destination. The receiving computer, not it proved unable to compete with the ities‹and those of the Internet Engineer• the network, would then juggle the pack• internet and was eventually shut down. ing Task Force, a loose aˆliation of net• ets back into order, and request retrans• Twenty years after the government working experts‹transferred to a mission of any packets lost in transit. junked CYCLADES, Maurice Allègre, Mr traditional international organisation Such Œconnectionless packet•switch• Pouzin’s former boss and ally, was still such as the International Telecommunica• ing reduced the need for sophisticated and mourning the decision. ŒWe could have tion Union (ITU), a dusty UN agency that costly equipment within the network to been pioneers of the internet, he wrote in has long regulated telephony. Handing establish predetermined routes for pack• 1999. ŒNow we are only its users, far from things over to the bureaucracy of the ITU, ets. The system’s simplicity also made it those who decide its future. Mr Pouzin however, might slow the development easier to link up di erent networks. The moved on to other projects and eventually and adoption of new standards. As a †rst CYCLADES connection, between went into academia. ŒWe wasted a lot of a result, many countries have concluded Paris and Grenoble, debuted in 1973‹ great man, argues Mr Day. ŒThe French that the American•led status quo is the closely watched by Dr Cerf and Dr Kahn, were slow to take to the internet, partly least bad option. Mr Pouzin wonders if two American scientists who were by this because of this history. But now that the forming a new organisation by splitting time mulling how best to overhaul ARPA• network is a fait accompli, Louis has be• and combining existing international NET. They built on Mr Pouzin’s connec• come their hero. bodies would be a better approach. tionless, datagram•based approach, so In 2003 the government named Mr Instinctively an engineer rather than a that concepts from CYCLADES found their Pouzin Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, campaigner, however, his main concern is way into the TCP/IP suite of protocols on one of France’s highest awards. Mr Pouzin that the underpinnings of the internet which the modern internet now runs. is now 82, and nominally retired. But like should not become fossilised, but should many other networking pioneers he is continue to evolve and improve. ŒThe Connection lost using his fame to campaign for greater internet was created as an experimental Yet the innovations that made CYCLADES openness and transparency on the in• network, he says. ŒIt still is one. He so compelling to Dr Cerf and Dr Kahn ternet, as its elegant design comes under supports researchers in America, Ireland, stirred hostility within France’s PTT and growing commercial and political pres• Spain and elsewhere who are devising other state•run telecoms providers across sure. He is a vocal critic of its haphazard ways to make it more eˆcient and more Europe. Their engineers considered the governance, in which key decisions are secure. ŒThe internet itself has not design untrustworthy and disliked the made by a hotchpotch of companies, changed in 30 years, he says. ŒA century way CYCLADES removed intelligence charities and well•connected geeks, many from now it must not be the same. Mr from the network. Mr Pouzin did little to of them based in America and largely Pouzin may have helped make the in• calm fears that his network threatened the unaccountable to users elsewhere in the ternet what it is today, but that does not PTTs’ traditional way of doing things. John world. He worries in particular about the mean he wants it to stay that way. 7 Day, an American computer scientist, growing clout of the †ve or six biggest web recalls one particularly †ery presentation †rms, which encourage users to stay with• O er to readers in 1976. ŒLouis showed a picture of a castle, in Œwalled gardens of related sites and Reprints of Technology Quarterly are available marked ‘PTT’, he says. ŒA user hung by a apps. To Mr Pouzin, this violates the in• from the Rights and Syndication Department. noose from its rampart; others were ternet’s tradition of openness. ŒThey’ve A minimum order of †ve copies is required. storming the walls. recreated Minitel, in a way, he says. During the 1970s Europe’s state•run Around 80% of the new technical Corporate o er telecoms operators were building their standards adopted in recent years were Customisation options on corporate orders of own data networks, based on the circuit• devised by American engineers and com• 100 or more are available. Please contact us to discuss your requirements. switching technology used to carry phone panies, he notes. He has lobbied for For more information on how to order special calls. ŒIt was complicated and expensive, changes that would make the internet reports, reprints or any queries you may have says Mr Pouzin, Œand that’s why they liked more accessible to non•English•speaking please contact: it. Georges Pompidou, France’s president, users. That campaign won an important had supported IRIA, but after his death in victory in 2009 when ICANN, the un• The Rights and Syndication Department 1974 the government turned against it. In conventional charity which manages the The Economist 1978 the budget for CYCLADES was internet’s address system, approved a plan 20 Cabot Square London E144QW slashed. ŒThey said, ‘You’ve done a good to start issuing domain names (including Tel +44 (0)20 7576 8148 job. Now go ‡y a kite’, says Mr Pouzin. web addresses) written in Chinese, Arabic Fax +44 (0)20 7576 8492 That same year the PTT switched on and other non•Western scripts. e•mail: [email protected] TRANSPAC, a connection•oriented data Despite this decision, ICANN‹more www.economist.com.rights network of its own design. ŒIt was a blun• formally known as the Internet Corpo•