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The near future of flight: From small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to single-pilot commercial planes
Does this plane have a pilot? What, you can't tell?! ...That's the whole point.
The NYTimes has a piece today on Chris Anderson, who is Wired magazine’s editor-in-chief and is a known unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) enthusiast. Here’s an excerpt:
“This is the future of aviation,” Mr. Anderson, 49, said. “Our children will not believe that people used to drive cars and drive airplanes. We are the weak link in the chain.”…
…He is not alone in his thinking; many companies and research institutions are working to design drones for commercial and other uses. The Federal Aviation Administration estimates that around 50 companies, universities and government organizations are at work on at least 155 drone designs in the United States alone.
Chris Anderson tends to be ahead of the curve on most things (see: his oft-cited work on the economic possibilities of “The Long Tail,” [here's the book] which has become common parlance in the Internet/ecommerce space). In most cases, I disagree strongly with the use of UAVs for military purposes, but it’s hard to ignore the innovations to the a whole host of industries, not least general aviation and transportation, that developments in robotics and UAV technology imply.
In aviation and transportation, for example, the controversial, but highly successful, CEO of Ryanair Michael O’ Leary has proposed changing European law to allow for single-pilot flights. This article at WSJ argues why that isn’t possible now given current regulations and technical specifications for current planes, but there is apparently little reason why such an innovation couldn’t be possible in the not-so-distant future.
I’ve noted elsewhere on this blog that the aviation industry will likely follow the development path of the computer industry. First, the major innovations will be built, owned and manufactured by a specific set of companies (i.e. Boeing is for aviation what IBM is for computers), but eventually the internal software will drive the machine, and hobbyists will eventually build their own small planes that will soon after provide commercial services for all individuals.
The skies are a common/public good and so are technological innovations in aerospace in a society that allows us to have them. DIY Drones (the social-network and store), Chis Anderson’s website dedicated to UAV hobbyists, is but one example of space created for the purpose of enabling individuals to innovate in the aerospace industry.
Now, what happens when UAVs and jetpacks for the average consumer become fully commercialized? When in conflict, who’s rights will be more important then? The on-the-ground hobbyist’s interest in flying a robotic plane or the jetpack owner’s interest in flying themselves? Should be an interesting debate—expect it in about 5-10 years.
(Thanks to Steve Conry for the image.)
The next major technology war: Apps vs. Browsers
I hope the "war" is EXACTLY like this. 
Bloomberg recently reported that Apple leads an App industry likely to bring in $3.8bn in revenue in 2011; however, a TechCrunch article I read this morning reports that “58% of mobile web users get their content fix through browsers.”
Apps help to amplify the processing power of a smartphone, which is still limited compared to a full-fledged laptop or desktop computer, and consequently are able to do things that an otherwise simplified and crudely adapted webpage delivered via browser can’t do as well (i.e. for smartphone use, the NYTimes App is better than its standard webpage).
It will be interesting then to see how this prediction about browser-based “web-centricity” by McKinsey & Co. plays out:
The next generation of HTML, known as HTML5…[is]the most significant evolution yet in Web standards, is designed to allow programs to run through a Web browser, complete with video and other multimedia content that today require plug-in software and other work-arounds. In theory, this will make the browser a universal computing platform: without leaving it, users could do everything from editing documents to accessing social networks, watching movies, playing games, or listening to music. Not only would any device with a Web browser have these capabilities, but consumers would also have access to all content stored remotely “in the cloud,” independent of locations and devices.
HTML5 has the potential to improve the mobile experience—its specifications enable browsers to locally store 1,000 times more data than they currently do, so users can work when offline—writing e-mails, for example—and their devices will automatically update when a network becomes available.
I wonder whether Apple’s recent decision to forcefully integrate all Apps into its own ecosystem is partially in response to an anticipated 2.0 version of Browser Wars. Instead of Microsoft and Netscape competing for user attention via web-browsers in the late 1990s, we’ll see Apple’s ecosystem and development platforms competing with all browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Windows Explorer, etc.); or, alternatively, since this is a competition of ecosystems, perhaps we’ll see a whole new battle that exists analogously at the level of the operating system, essentially a 2.0 version of the market battles once waged between Microsoft’s Windows and Linux.
Personally, I think my bet is on browsers providing the richer and more inhabited ecosystem, in which case Apple will take some serious hits in the coming years as content providers favor the mostly non-Apple browser technologies (does Safari stand a chance?) that allows them to keep their data and not be forced to pay a long-term 30 percent cut per user acquired.
(Thanks to Dakiny for the incredible image.)
LAUGH, Epic rap battle: Albert Einstein v. Stephen Hawking
Loving this–Albert Einstein v. Stephen Hawking
Darth Vader v. Hitler goes hard:
Sarah Palin v. Lady Gaga goes accurate (lmao):
Study shows that Facebook and then Yahoo! sites are best at dumping junk into your skull
Image from A Clockwork Orange, and the inspiration for display advertising (just kidding?).
Display advertising is an insane market right now, and according to comScore, here’s who’s dominating:
| Top 10 U.S. Online Display Ad* PublishersQ1 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Ad Metrix |
|||
| Total Display Ad Impressions (MM) | Share of Display Ad Impressions | ||
| Total Internet : Total Audience | 1,110,448 | 100.0% | |
| Facebook.com | 346,455 | 31.2% | |
| Yahoo! Sites | 112,511 | 10.1% | |
| Microsoft Sites | 53,592 | 4.8% | |
| AOL, Inc. | 33,454 | 3.0% | |
| Google Sites | 27,993 | 2.5% | |
| Turner Digital | 18,050 | 1.6% | |
| Fox Interactive Media | 11,697 | 1.1% | |
| Glam Media | 10,207 | 0.9% | |
| CBS Interactive | 9,208 | 0.8% | |
| Viacom Digital | 9,051 | 0.8% | |
And these are the companies receiving the most impressions through display advertising:
| Top 10 U.S. Online Display AdvertisersQ1 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Ad Metrix |
|||
| Total Display Ad Impressions (MM) | Share of Display Ad Impressions | ||
| Total Internet | 1,110,448,112 | 100.0% | |
| AT&T Inc. | 19,467,236 | 1.8% | |
| Experian Interactive | 16,635,360 | 1.5% | |
| Scottrade, Inc. | 11,225,895 | 1.0% | |
| Intuit Inc. | 10,980,711 | 1.0% | |
| Verizon Communications Inc. | 9,687,999 | 0.9% | |
| Netflix, Inc. | 8,787,348 | 0.8% | |
| Groupon | 7,681,414 | 0.7% | |
| Toyota Motor Corporation | 7,043,887 | 0.6% | |
| Progressive Corporation | 6,773,297 | 0.6% | |
| Weight Watchers International, Inc. | 6,425,473 | 0.6% | |
Just to be clear, this post isn’t meant as a bash on advertising–after all, there’s nothing wrong with receiving information about stuff you want (unless you believe it’s controlling your brain and working against you [a la Noam Chomsky]); however, I’m an occasionally apathetic libertarian, and this is one of those instances. Just thought you should know who’s playing around in your head. Viva la advert-interne-televi-cion!
Side-note: Here’s my take regarding the coming data revolution (aka “Big Data”).
Digital insecurity–Sony’s and Epsilon’s 100,000,000+ million data breaches
On top of the 77,000,000 accounts hacked at Sony recently, Sony just announced that an additional 12,700 accounts, belonging to mostly non-US users, were hacked. This is insane. Here’s the status message from the original security breach that continues to blow my mind:
Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.
WHAT?! And all this on top of the Epsilon breach, which housed at the names and emails owned by 2,500 major companies.
What’s the major takeaway here? Do individuals literally have no recourse? Most user agreements that I’ve seen provide no method for real user recourse. Perhaps we need a law demanding corporate culpability for lost data? In other words, maybe user agreement contracts in relation to internet privacy need a minimum standard that disallow companies from fully abdicating the risks that come with holding personal data? Sounds reasonable to me–straight credit card fraud and phishing scams are worth defending against with the full force of the law.
Also, my favorite line is the “abundance of caution” near the end of the paragraph–uh, clearly not. If Sony really cared about its users, it would publicly demonstrate culpability, like Tylenol did in 1982 (as opposed to 2010).
A flying robotic “Quadrocopter” playing tennis
"Quadrocopter"
The tennis bots are based on German aerial engineering firm Ascending Technologies’ Hummingbird quadrocopter, but have been fitted with mesh “tennis racquets.”
The bots are directed by a central computer fitted with an overhead camera that tracks the moving ball and quickly crunches the data through a physics algorithm before feeding aerial maneuvers.
The result is a flying robot that can speedily react to changes in the physical world, thus sustaining a volley with a human or robot counterpart, or even “juggle” a ball with its racquet—an accomplishment many humans have trouble doing for a prolonged period.
Here’s one in action:
Here’s more information (below). The video shows the copters with so many parts that are widely available and the hobbyists in the video describe how that was done purposefully. I’m sure someone somewhere is making these at home right now. Fascinating how modernizing technology all seems to become cheaper and then more accessible for individual entrepreneurs. First computers were the size of huge rooms, then they became an extension of nerds (hobbyists), and now anyone can write a program or create a “startup” it seems.
Is that the future of aviation, as well? First enormous planes were made, then hobbyists deciphered the physics and technologies behind aviation in full, and soon entrepreneurs will be creating whole new businesses out of them? It makes sense–remember Martin Jetpack?
(Thanks to sjardine for the image.)
$1.9 million donated to Wikileaks in 2010: Western nations provide at least 87.6% of all funding
The Wau Holland Foundation, which has been facilitating donation transfers to Wikileaks, published a report on their website that noted a grand total of $1.9 million in 2010 donations. That’s not very substantial, at least in comparison to the money backing other pro-freedom and transparency organizations like billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, US AID, or the World Bank.
Nonetheless, Wikileaks blows them all away in freedom (or at least transparency) gains per dollar, a sign that the Wikileaks’s mission has more traction, clarity, and natural effectiveness than those owned by any of the aforementioned groups. (It also speaks to the importance of data, a topic I’ve covered elsewhere.)
I especially appreciated this note by Wired, which also covered the story:
Of all the money raised, the largest amount, 35 percent, came from the United States, while 14 percent came from Germany and 12 percent from Britain. About 6 percent came from Australia and Canada, followed by smaller amounts from other countries.
Two takeaways:
1) US citizens find distasteful the massive security state that we could do without.
2) The Western world, at least its citizens, are in agreement that the world deserves more freedom.
Agreed.
P.S. My 87.6% figure is calculated from the chart published here.
(Thanks to R_SH for the image.)
A World Decoded: Observations on the Coming Data Revolution
From the NYTimes:
Mr. Brynjolfsson and his colleagues, Lorin Hitt, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Heekyung Kim, a graduate student at M.I.T., studied 179 large companies. Those that adopted “data-driven decision making” achieved productivity that was 5 to 6 percent higher than could be explained by other factors, including how much the companies invested in technology, the researchers said.
In the study, based on a survey and follow-up interviews, data-driven decision making was defined not only by collecting data, but also by how it is used — or not — in making crucial decisions, like whether to create a new product or service. The central distinction, according to Mr. Brynjolfsson, is between decisions based mainly on “data and analysis” and on the traditional management arts of “experience and intuition.”
A 5 percent increase in output and productivity, he says, is significant enough to separate winners from losers in most industries.
The companies that are guided by data analysis, Mr. Brynjolfsson says, are “harbingers of a trend in how managers make decisions.”
“And it has huge implications for competitiveness and growth,” he adds.
Data analysis is without a doubt the next wave, and it’s influence on productivity will be enormous. Google’s Chieff Economist Val Harian has been saying this for years:
I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s? The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades, not only at the professional level but even at the educational level for elementary school kids, for high school kids, for college kids. Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data. So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it.
I think statisticians are part of it, but it’s just a part. You also want to be able to visualize the data, communicate the data, and utilize it effectively. But I do think those skills—of being able to access, understand, and communicate the insights you get from data analysis—are going to be extremely important. Managers need to be able to access and understand the data themselves.
I completely agree, and I wish wholeheartedly that my data analysis skills were better. Statistics as a field initially frustrated me, because the notion of confounding variables seemed to preclude the sure-fire validity of any conclusion that I could discover or read about. Once more, I couldn’t get past the randomness of chance; that is, whose to say that just because a coin flip is 50/50 that it will flip heads 50% of the time. It’s just not possible to know for sure (and this is partially why I’ve always had fears of lightning).
My own suspicions notwithstanding, the data revolution will affect us in even more profound ways than productivity increases. Healthcare will soon face a revolution as new statistical tools are able to boost the power of computers servers and assist scientists in analyzing the millions upon millions of biological and genomic tests. We will glean real cures to horrible diseases and, perhaps more importantly, move pre-vaccination to the direct manipulation of DNA to move the probability of contracting specific diseases to almost worry-free levels.
This article on the upcoming bubble in social-media hints at the new trend I fully expect. After noting how the biggest jobs in Silicon Valley are going to mathematicians and statisticians able to effectively manipulate data for advertising, journalist Ashlee Vance explains how Jeff Hammerbacher, a former Facebook employee, moved from advertising to a startup focused on data analysis tools for scientific research. This is Mr. Hammerbacher’s startup, Cloudera:
Cloudera is essentially trying to build a type of operating system, à la Windows, for examining huge stockpiles of information. Where Windows manages the basic functions of a PC and its software, Cloudera’s technology helps companies break data into digestible chunks that can be spread across relatively cheap computers. Customers can then pose rapid-fire questions and receive answers. But instead of asking what a group of friends “like” the most on Facebook, the customers ask questions such as, “What gene do all these cancer patients share?”
Eric Schadt, the chief scientific officer at Pacific Biosciences, a maker of genome sequencing machines, says new-drug discovery and cancer cures depend on analytical tools. Companies using Pacific Bio’s machines will produce mountains of information every day as they sequence more and more people. Their goal: to map the complex interactions among genes, organs, and other body systems and raise questions about how the interactions result in certain illnesses—and cures. The scientists have struggled to build the analytical tools needed to perform this work and are looking to Silicon Valley for help. “It won’t be old school biologists that drive the next leaps in pharma,” says Schadt. “It will be guys like Jeff who understand what to do with big data.”
When the tech bubble pops in advertising, most talented folks will be moving into new data analysis applications for healthcare, the science, general business, and perhaps even consumer electronics (e.g. imagine walking into a room and knowing the probability that you’ll make a friend–it’s not that far off if you imagine the data of Facebook mashing with the in-the-works technology of Color).
It’s notable that Google’s first issue of Think Quarterly, it’s first official foray into unique digital media and content creation, is focused on the coming data revolution.
If you’re unsure about the power of data to communicate extraordinary qualitative messages, then just watch these two presentations by the phenomenally charismatic and insightful statistician Hans Rosling at TED.
Hans Rosling on the rise of Asia:
A second presentation on why the washing machine is the greatest invention of all time:
(Thanks to smemon87 for the image.)
