The Theory of Large Numbers and R&D

So what if there are a billion people with broadband smartphones in 2011? Well the first effect is to warp the universe of R&D. Huge sums of money are being spent because it can be amortized over billions of devices. Nokia spent nearly $8 billion on R&D for their mobile phone business last year. R&D Number from Motorola, Samsung, Apple, Intel, and Microsoft are all comparable as they focus on a world wide technology upgrade to broadband.

This puts government R&D in command and control at a big disadvantage if does not exploit commercial developments and standards. Military system developers often try to "leap ahead" of existing technology. Instead, they have been falling behind the torrent of change. And strange things begin to happen like soldiers carrying iPhones into battle in Afghanistan.

It also changes business models dramatically as we can imagine ethereal markets for goods and services from anywhere for anyone. Take a visit to the UCF Medical School library. One would expect an entire building filled with volumes of expensive medical books and journals. Its the size of a Starbucks. The students are all given iPad's. Their library is virtual. Saved UCF millions of dollars. And the library moves with the student.

The Kindle and Nook devices are also emptying the book stores. I get nostalgic for paper. I have pangs of concern about how we will archive digital data. Paper seems to be a durable. But it can't keep up. Billions of people now need to read, communicate, and compose with billions of other people that mobile technology can provide. Its not 1848 when the steam-powered printing press was sufficient for informing a generation of small literate class in the industrial era.

And when you can make information devices so cheaply for billions then you can think about other problem they might solve. The Taiwanese semiconductor folks already have a target.
"The semiconductor technology can not only merchandize but also enter human bodies to monitor hart beat, check blood pressure and cure stroke."

Computers in Battle

This is the twentieth anniversary of Desert Storm, the first Iraq War. Desert Storm was a transitional war. It occurred right after the end of the Cold War and at the beginning of the digital age of warfare.

On 25 February 1991 a SCUD missile fired by the Iraqis landed on mess hall in Dahran killing 29 soldiers, the largest loss of US life in a single incident. A Patriot missile fired at the incoming SCUD but literally missed by a mile. An investigation was conducted by the GAO which showed that the clock on the computer had drifted and made the wrong calculation about how fast the SCUD was moving based on radar data. Though a lot of fingers have been pointed to explain this, the reality is that the Patriot was designed for a different war. It was designed to shoot down planes, not ballistic missiles.

Missile defense was an unanticipated by-product of a desperate need to do something against TBMs. The Patriot was also meant to be constantly be mobile during the Cold War to avoid Soviet attacks. Every time it moved the computer was turned off and rebooted at its new location, resetting its clock. It was never meant to stay stationary for two weeks at a time -- a long time not to reset and enabling the clock to drift enough to induce large (but not noticeable to the operators until launched) errors. And because the Patriot had been designed for Cold War requirements, it was never tested without moving every 100 hours so no one knew that this would happen.

The Patriot story is a lesson about how technology and our understanding of its utility are always out of phase. Our ability to predict the future is about the same as the computer on the Patriot with an out-of-sync clock. You don't know what you don't know.

The Next Bruce Springsteen

Is Abigail Washburn. I am listening to her City of Refuge album and it reminds me of early Bruce. It may be strange to say this about a "folk" album but turn it up loud.

Another Ice Age Part Deux

I actually remember reading this story of the coming Ice Age. My parents would get Time magazine and I found out about how crazy the world was. 1972 was a potpourri of discontinuities. Nixon goes to China. US ground troops leave Vietnam. And the HP-35 calculator is introduced for $395. Nixon is gone. Vietnam now wants our troops back. HP sells calculator iPhone apps.

But its still cold!

The Fast Growing Game of All Time

CityVille shows the power of social media well delivered.

Using MRI's for Measuring Cognition

I wonder how this story will turn out? Not the first time MRI's have been used to measure cognition. See this paper from University of London. It will be interesting to see more studies.

Otronicon

Come to Otronicon this weekend. Great for the whole family. Lots of cool tech and cool people.

One Billion

To paraphrase Hegel (and sometimes Napoleon), quantity has a quality of its own. From a report in Techcrunch mobile broadband (read smartphone) subscriptions will be over 1 billion by the end of 2011. Its a number that can change the world.

From the Social Network:

Sean Parker: You know what's cooler than a million dollars?
Eduardo Saverin: You?
Sean Parker: A billion dollars.

Jupiter and Uranus

Great skywatching tonight (Jan 10) so find your binoculars. I was outside in the Florida cold last night to see pairing of Jupiter and Uranus. For more details see Space.com.

Army Secures Itself in the Cloud

The announcement of the Army going to a Microsoft Exchange cloud email service is three months old. However, the process already has started and should be complete by the end of the year. That's pretty amazing since they will have to convert over a million accounts. Army expects to save $100 million a year.
Why so fast? I think the Army is also using this as opportunity to get its security house in order. Its debatable that the cloud creates a new vulnerability (consolidation in the cloud reduces redundancy), but the current system was certainly rife with challenges. According to Nations Journal the fact that Outlook stores messages files that creates a challenge for security managers:
"All any analyst has to do is to download a PST file with the cables, unpack them, SNAP them up or down to a computer that is capable of interacting with a thumb drive or a burnable CD, and then erase the server logs that would have provided investigators with a road map of the analyst's activities."

This Is Innovation

Exploiting Bluetooth in your mobile phone: This is the kind of idea I wish I had.

Record Score for Sandy Bridge

PC Magazine has an interesting and detailed review of Sandy Bridge processor from Intel:

Just to give you an idea of how powerful Sandy Bridge is, no laptop, even the most powerful one, has ever scored over 10,000 points in PCMark Vantage—a benchmark test that stresses all the major components of a laptop (CPU, memory, graphics, etc). Our Sandy Bridge test unit scored 16,680 points, which is roughly 2.5 times better than the Dell XPS 17 (6,367) and Samsung RF710-S02US (6,000). Its score is so one-sided that several of us had to do a double-take, which is saying a lot.

Telematics for Real

Car companies spent alot of money last decade on "telematics". Only one company, GM, has been aggressive at delivering a true business around the technology. Now Onstar is innovates by making an add on kit.

Entertainment Industrial Complex

Wall Street Journal finally recognizes in an OPED there is something interesting in the relationship between entertainment and the military technology. I think the New York Times has them beat. At least JC Herz did.

Finally Intel does 3D for Real

Venture Beat says Intel will announce that 500 PC models will come out on Jan 9 with the Sandy Bridge chip set. This is a big boost for 3D graphics on the desktop. Only 10% of PC's under a thousand dollars can handle 3D graphics. This will change the equation, particularly on laptops.