Laser spirit level with marked line

Another day, another idea. It probably already exists but I couldn’t find one. If it isn’t already patented, feel free to develop it.

A glimmer of hope in a dark world

Looking at the news, it can be easy to see only a world full of death, destruction, poverty, environmental decay, rising terrorism and crime; a world full of greed and corruption, with fanaticism, prejudice and ignorance in place of reason and knowledge; a world with barriers replacing bridges. It is especially hard to see the leaders we so badly need to get us out of the mess. We have a collection of some of the worst western leaders of my lifetime, whose main skill seems to be marketing, avoiding answering legitimate questions put to them by their electorates, and always answering different questions that present their policies in a more favorable light. A reasonable person who just watches news and current affairs programs could get rather pessimistic about our future, heading towards hell in a cart driven by an idiot.

But a reasonable person should not just watch the news and current affairs. They should also watch and read other things. When they do so, they will see cause for hope. I study the future all day, almost every day. I am not pessimistic, nor am I an idealist. I am only interested in what will actually be, not in wearing politically tinted spectacles. I can see lots of things down the road, good and bad, but I see a future that is better than today. Not a utopia, but certainly not a dystopia, and better overall. If asked, I can spin a tale of doom as good as anyone, but only by leaving out half of the facts. I often address future problems in my blogs, but I still sleep well at night, confident that my descendants will have a happy and prosperous future.

Leaders come and go. Obama will not be recorded in history as one of America’s better presidents and he has done little for the credibility of the Nobel Peace Prize. Cameron will be remembered as one of our worst PMs, up there with Brown and (perish the thought) Miliband. Our drunkard EU president Juncker won’t shine either, more likely to increase corruption and waste than to deal with it. But we’ll get better leaders. Recessions also come and go. We may see another financial collapse any time now and maybe another after that, but the long term still looks good. Even during recession, progress continues. Better materials, better science, better medical tools and better drugs, better transport, better communications and computing, better devices, batteries and energy supplies. These all continue to improve, recession or not. So when recession finally subsides, we can buy a better lifestyle with less money. All that background development then feeds into recovered industry to accelerate it well past the point where recession arrived.

It makes sense therefore to treat recessions as temporary blockages on economic development. They are unpleasant but they don’t last. When economies become healthy again, development resumes at an accelerated rate thanks to latent development potential that has accumulated during them.

If we take 2.5% growth as fairly typical during healthy times, that adds up to prosperity very quickly. 2.5% doesn’t sound much, and you barely notice a 2.5% pay rise. But over 45 years it triples the size of an economy. Check it yourself 1.025 ^ 45 = 3.038. National debts might sound big compared to today’s economies but compared to 45 or 50 years time they are much less worrying. That assumes of course that we don’t keep electing parties that want to waste money by throwing it at national treasures rather than forcing them to become more efficient.

So there is economic hope for sure. Our kids will be far wealthier than us. In the UK, they are worried about debts they accumulate at university, but by mid-career, those will be ancient history and they’ll be far better off after that.

It isn’t all about personal wealth or even national wealth. Having more resources at your disposal makes it possible to do other things. Many countries today are worried about mass migrations. Migrations happen because of wars and because of enormous wealth differences. Most of us prefer familiarity, so would only move if we have to to get a better life for ourselves or our kids. If the global economy is three times bigger in 45 years, and 9 times bigger in 90 years, is genuine poverty really something we can’t fix? Of course it isn’t. With better science and technology, a reasonable comfortable lifestyle will be possible for everyone on the planet this century. We talk of citizen wages in developed countries. Switzerland could afford one any time now. The UK could afford a citizen wage equivalent to today’s average wage within 45 years (that means two average wages coming in for a childless couple living together and even more for families), the USA a little earlier. By 2100, everyone in the world could have a citizen wage equivalent in local spending parity terms to UK average wage today. People might still migrate, but it would be for reasons other than economic need.

If people are comfortable financially, wars will reduce too. Tribal and religious conflicts will still occur, but the fights over resources will be much reduced. Commercially motivated crime also reduces when comfort is available for free.

Extremist environmental groups see economic growth as the enemy of the environment. That is because they generally hate science and technology and don’t understand how they develop. In fact, technology generally gets cleaner and less resource hungry as it develops. A 150g (6oz) mobile not only replaces a ton of early 1990s gadgets but even adds lifestyle functionality. It uses less energy and less resource and improves life. Cars are far cleaner and far more efficient and use far less resources than their predecessors. Bridges and buildings too. Future technology will do that all over again. We will grow more and better food on less land, and free up land to return to nature. We’ll help nature recover, restore and nurture ecosystems. We’ll reduce pollution. The 2100 environment will be cleaner and healthier than today’s by far, and yet most people will lead vastly improved lives, with better food, better homes, better gadgets, better transport, better health, more social and business capability, more money to play with. There will still be some bad leaders, terrorist groups, rogue states, bad corporations, criminals, social problems.

It won’t be perfect by any means. Some people will sometimes have bad times, but on balance, it will be better. Utopia is theoretically possible, but people won’t let it happen, but it will be better for most people most of the time. We shouldn’t underestimate people’s capacity to totally screw things up, but those will be short term problems. We might even have wars, but they pass.

The world often looks like a dark place right now and lots of big problems lie ahead. But ignore the doomsayers, look beyond those, and the future actually looks pretty damned good!

 

The future of drones – predators. No, not that one.

It is a sad fact of life that companies keep using the most useful terminology for things that don’t deserve it. The Apple retina display, which makes it more difficult to find a suitable name for direct retinal displays that use the retina directly. Why can’t they be the ones called retina displays? Or the LED TV, where the LEDs are typically just LED back-lighting for an LCD display. That makes it hard to name TVs where each pixel is actually an LED. Or the Predator drone, as definitely  not the topic of this blog, where I will talk about predator drones that attack other ones.

I have written several times now on the dangers of drones. My most recent scare was realizing the potential for small drones carrying high-powered lasers and using cloud based face recognition to identify valuable targets in a crowd and blind them, using something like a Raspberry Pi as the main controller. All of that could be done tomorrow with components easily purchased on the net. A while ago I blogged that the Predators and Reapers are not the ones you need to worry about, so much as the little ones which can attack you in swarms.

This morning I was again considering terrorist uses for the micro-drones we’re now seeing. A 5cm drone with a networked camera and control could carry a needle infected with Ebola or aids or carrying a drop of nerve toxin. A small swarm of tiny drones, each with a gram of explosive that detonates when it collides with a forehead, could kill as many people as a bomb.

We will soon have to defend against terrorist drones and the tiniest drones give the most effective terror per dollar so they are the most likely to be the threat. The solution is quite simple. and nature solved it a long time ago. Mosquitos and flies in my back garden get eaten by a range of predators. Frogs might get them if they come too close to the surface, but in the air, dragonflies are expert at catching them. Bats are good too. So to deal with threats from tiny drones, we could use predator drones to seek and destroy them. For bigger drones, we’d need bigger predators and for very big ones, conventional anti-aircraft weapons become useful. In most cases, catching them in nets would work well. Nets are very effective against rotors. The use of nets doesn’t need such sophisticated control systems and if the net can be held a reasonable distance from the predator, it won’t destroy it if the micro-drone explodes. With a little more precise control, spraying solidifying foam onto the target drone could also immobilize it and some foams could help disperse small explosions or contain their lethal payloads. Spiders also provide inspiration here, as many species wrap their victims in silk to immobilize them. A single predator could catch and immobilize many victims. Such a defense system ought to be feasible.

The main problem remains. What do we call predator drones now that the most useful name has been trademarked for a particular model?

 

Citizen wage and why under 35s don’t need pensions

I recently blogged about the citizen wage and how under 35s in developed countries won’t need pensions. I cut and pasted it below this new pic for convenience. The pic contains the argument so you don’t need to read the text.

Economic growth makes citizen wage feasible and pensions irrelevant

If you do want to read it as text, here is the blog cut and pasted:

I introduced my calculations for a UK citizen wage in https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/culture-tax-and-sustainable-capitalism/, and I wrote about the broader topic of changing capitalism a fair bit in my book Total Sustainability. A recent article http://t.co/lhXWFRPqhn reminded me of my thoughts on the topic and having just spoken at an International Longevity Centre event, ageing and pensions were in my mind so I joined a few dots. We won’t need pensions much longer. They would be redundant if we have a citizen wage/universal wage.

I argued that it isn’t economically feasible yet, and that only a £10k income could work today in the UK, and that isn’t enough to live on comfortably, but I also worked out that with expected economic growth, a citizen wage equal to the UK average income today (£30k) would be feasible in 45 years. That level will sooner be feasible in richer countries such as Switzerland, which has already had a referendum on it, though they decided they aren’t ready for such a change yet. Maybe in a few years they’ll vote again and accept it.

The citizen wage I’m talking about has various names around the world, such as universal income. The idea is that everyone gets it. With no restrictions, there is little running cost, unlike today’s welfare which wastes a third on admin.

Imagine if everyone got £30k each, in today’s money. You, your parents, kids, grandparents, grand-kids… Now ask why you would need to have a pension in such a system. The answer is pretty simple. You won’t.  A retired couple with £60k coming in can live pretty comfortably, with no mortgage left, and no young kids to clothe and feed. Let’s look at dates and simple arithmetic:

45 years from now is 2060, and that is when a £30k per year citizen wage will be feasible in the UK, given expected economic growth averaging around 2.5% per year. There are lots of reasons why we need it and why it is very likely to happen around then, give or take a few years – automation, AI, decline of pure capitalism, need to reduce migration pressures, to name just a few

Those due to retire in 2060 at age 70 would have been born in 1990. If you were born before that, you would either need a small pension to make up to £30k per year or just accept a lower standard of living for a few years. Anyone born in 1990 or later would be able to stop working, with no pension, and receive the citizen wage. So could anyone else stop and also receive it. That won’t cause economic collapse, since most people will welcome work that gives them a higher standard of living, but you could just not work, and just live on what today we think of as the average wage, and by then, you’ll be able to get more with it due to reducing costs via automation.

So, everyone after 2060 can choose to work or not to work, but either way they could live at least comfortably. Anyone less than 25 today does not need to worry about pensions. Anyone less than 35 really doesn’t have to worry much about them, because at worst they’ll only face a small shortfall from that comfort level and only for a few years. I’m 54, I won’t benefit from this until I am 90 or more, but my daughter will.

Summarising:

Are you under 25 and living in any developed country? Then don’t pay into a pension, you won’t need one.

Under 35, consider saving a little over your career, but only enough to last you a few years.

The future of zip codes

Finally. Z. Zero, zoos, zebras, zip codes. Zip codes is the easiest one since I can use someone else’s work and just add a couple of notes.

This piece for the Spectator was already written by Rory Sutherland and fits the bill perfectly so I will just link to it: http://www.spectator.co.uk/life/the-wiki-man/9348462/the-best-navigation-idea-ive-seen-since-the-tube-map/.

It is about http://what3words.com/. Visit the site yourself, find out what words describe precisely where you are.

The idea in a nutshell is that there are so many words that combining three words is enough to give a unique address to every 3×3 metre square on the planet. Zip codes, or post codes to us brits, don’t do that nearly so well, so I really like this idea. I am currently sitting at stem.trees.wage. (I just noticed that the relevant google satellite image is about 2006, why so old?). It would allow a geographic web too, allowing you to send messages to geographic locations easily. I could send an email to orbit.escape.given.coffeemachine to make a cup of coffee. The 4th word is needed because a kettle, microwave and fridge also share that same square. The fatal flaw that ruins so many IoT ideas though is that I still have to go there to put a cup under the nozzle and to collect it once it’s full. Another one is that with that degree of precision, now that I’ve published the info, ISIS now has the coordinates to hit me right on the head (or my coffee machine). I think they probably have higher priorities though.

The future of youth

Been stalling a while wondering which Y to pick (yellow was my previous target) but my mind was made last night when I watched a news interview about young people’s behavior. The article contrasted the increasingly exciting lives of the elderly with the increasingly lonely lives of the young. It made very sad listening. Youth should be a time of joy, exploration and experimentation, reaching out, stretching boundaries, living life to its full. It’s always had plenty of problems to deal with too, but we’re adding to all the natural stresses of growing up.

The main thrust was that young people are lonely, because they don’t have enough cash to socialize properly so make do with staying in their room and using social media. That is a big enough problem, but a different one caught my attention this time.

The bit that worried me was the interview with a couple of people hoping to start off in professional careers. One pointed out that she had once got drunk and pictures had been uploaded onto social media so now she doesn’t dare drink any more because she doesn’t want pictures or anything else on social media damaging her career prospects. She is effectively living a censored life to protect her career, feeling that she is living her life in camera all the time.

Celebrities are well used to that, but celebrities usually have the compensations of a good income and guaranteed social life so they don’t have to worry about buying a home or seeing other people. Young people are now suffering the constant supervision without the benefits. We’ve had ‘friends with benefits’, now we’re seeing ‘celebs without benefits’ as people are thrust for all the wrong reasons into the spotlight and their lives wrecked, or constantly self-censoring to avoid that happening to them.

This trend will worsen a lot as cameras become even more ubiquitously tied in to social media, via Google Glass and other visors, button cams, necklace cams and a wide range of other lifestyle cameras and lifestyle blogging devices as well as all the smartphones and tablets and smart TV cameras. Everyone must then assume that everything they do and say in company (physical or online) may be recorded.

There are two main reactions to total privacy loss, and both make some sense.

A: Nobody is perfect so everyone will have some embarrassing things about them out there somewhere, so it doesn’t matter much if you do too.

B: The capture of embarrassing situations is subject to pretty random forces so is not equally distributed. You may do something you’d really regret but nobody records it, so you get away with it. Or you may do something less embarrassing but it is recorded, uploaded and widely shared and it may be a permanent blemish on your CV.

Both of these approaches make some sense. If you think you will be in an ordinary job you may not feel it matters very much if there is some dirt on you because nobody will bother to look for it and in any case it won’t be much worse than the people sitting beside you so it won’t put you at any significant disadvantage. But the more high profile the career you want, the more prominent the second analysis becomes. People will be more likely to look for dirt as you rise up the ladder and more likely to use it against you. The professional girl being interviewed on the news was in the second category and understood that the only way to be sure you don’t suffer blemishes and damaged career prospects is to abstain from many activities previously seen as fun.

That is a very sad position and was never intended. The web was invented to make our lives better, making it easier to find and share scientific documents or other knowledge. It wasn’t intended to lock people in their rooms or make them avoid having fun. The devices and services we use on the internet and on mobile networks were also invented to make our lives richer and more fulfilled, to put us more in touch with others and to reduce isolation and loneliness. In some cases they are doing the opposite. Unintended consequences, but consequences nonetheless.

I don’t want to overstate this concern. I have managed to live a very happy life without ever having taken drugs, never having been chained naked to a lamppost, never gone to any dubious clubs and only once or twice getting drunk in public. There are some embarrassing things on the web, but not many. I have had many interesting online exchanges with people I have never met, got involved in many projects I’d never have been involved with otherwise, and on balance the web has made my life better, not worse. I’m very introvert and tend to enjoy activities that don’t involve doing wild things with lots of other people pointing cameras at me. I don’t need much external stimulation and I won’t get bored sitting doing nothing but thinking. I can get excited just writing up a new idea or reading about one. I do self-censor my writing and talks though I’d rather not have to, but other than that I don’t feel I need to alter my activity in case someone is watching. There are pluses and minuses, but more pluses for me.

On the other hand, people who are more extrovert may find it a bigger burden having to avoid exciting situations and suffer a bigger drop in quality of life.

Certainly younger people want to try new things, they want to share exciting situations with other people, many want to get drunk occasionally, some might want to experiment with drugs, and some want to take part in political demonstrations.  and would suffer more than older ones who have already done so. It is a sad consequence of new technology if they feel they can’t in case it destroys their career prospects.

The only ways to recover an atmosphere of casual unpunished experimentation would be either to prevent sharing of photos or videos or chat, basically to ban most of what social networks do, and even the people affected probably don’t want to do that, or to make it possible and easy to have any photos or records of your activity removed. That would be better but still leaves problems. There is no obvious easy solution.

If we can’t, and we almost certainly won’t, then many of our brightest young people will feel shackled, oppressed, unable to let their hair down properly, unable to experience the joy of life that all preceding generations took for granted. It’s an aspect of the privacy debate that needs aired much more. Is it a price worth paying to get the cheap short-lived thrill of laughing at someone else’s embarrassment? I’m not sure it is.

Under 35? You probably won’t need a pension.

I introduced my calculations for a UK citizen wage in https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/culture-tax-and-sustainable-capitalism/, and I wrote about the broader topic of changing capitalism a fair bit in my book Total Sustainability. A recent article http://t.co/lhXWFRPqhn reminded me of my thoughts on the topic and having just spoken at an International Longevity Centre event, ageing and pensions were in my mind so I joined a few dots. We won’t need pensions much longer. They would be redundant if we have a citizen wage/universal wage.

I argued that it isn’t economically feasible yet, and that only a £10k income could work today in the UK, and that isn’t enough to live on comfortably, but I also worked out that with expected economic growth, a citizen wage equal to the UK average income today (£30k) would be feasible in 45 years. That level will sooner be feasible in richer countries such as Switzerland, which has already had a referendum on it, though they decided they aren’t ready for such a change yet. Maybe in a few years they’ll vote again and accept it.

The citizen wage I’m talking about has various names around the world, such as universal income. The idea is that everyone gets it. With no restrictions, there is little running cost, unlike today’s welfare which wastes a third on admin.

Imagine if everyone got £30k each, in today’s money. You, your parents, kids, grandparents, grand-kids… Now ask why you would need to have a pension in such a system. The answer is pretty simple. You won’t.  A retired couple with £60k coming in can live pretty comfortably, with no mortgage left, and no young kids to clothe and feed. Let’s look at dates and simple arithmetic:

45 years from now is 2060, and that is when a £30k per year citizen wage will be feasible in the UK, given expected economic growth averaging around 2.5% per year. There are lots of reasons why we need it and why it is very likely to happen around then, give or take a few years – automation, AI, decline of pure capitalism, need to reduce migration pressures, to name just a few

Those due to retire in 2060 at age 70 would have been born in 1990. If you were born before that, you would either need a small pension to make up to £30k per year or just accept a lower standard of living for a few years. Anyone born in 1990 or later would be able to stop working, with no pension, and receive the citizen wage. So could anyone else stop and also receive it. That won’t cause economic collapse, since most people will welcome work that gives them a higher standard of living, but you could just not work, and just live on what today we think of as the average wage, and by then, you’ll be able to get more with it due to reducing costs via automation.

So, everyone after 2060 can choose to work or not to work, but either way they could live at least comfortably. Anyone less than 25 today does not need to worry about pensions. Anyone less than 35 really doesn’t have to worry much about them, because at worst they’ll only face a small shortfall from that comfort level and only for a few years. I’m 54, I won’t benefit from this until I am 90 or more, but my daughter will.

Summarising:

Are you under 25 and living in any developed country? Then don’t pay into a pension, you won’t need one.

Under 35, consider saving a little over your career, but only enough to last you a few years.

Forehead 3D mist projector

Another simple idea. I was watching the 1920s period drama Downton Abbey and Lady Mary was wearing a headband with a large jewel in it. I had an idea based on linking mist projection systems to headbands. I couldn’t find a pic of Lady Mary’s band on Google but many other designs would work just as well and the one from ASOS would be just as feasible. The idea is that a forehead band (I’m sure there is a proper fashion name for them) would have a central ‘jewel’ which is actually just an ornamental IT capsule containing a misting device and a projector as well as the obvious power supply, comms, processing, direction detectors etc. A 3D image would be projected onto water mist emitted from the reservoir in the device. A simple illustration might help:

 

Many fashion items make comebacks and a lot of 1920s things seem to be in fashion again now. This could be a nice electronic update to a very old fashion concept. With a bit more miniaturisation, smart bindis would also be feasible. It could be used with direction sensing to enable augmented reality use, or simply to display the same image regardless of gaze direction. Unlike visor based augmented reality, others would be able to see the same scene visualised for the wearer.

OLED fashion contact lenses

Self explanatory concept, but not connected to my original active contact lens direct retinal projection concept. This one is just fashion stuff and could be done easily tomorrow. I allowed a small blank central area so that you aren’t blinded if you wear them. This version doesn’t project onto the retina, though future versions could also house and power devices to do so.

OK, the illustration is crap, but I’m an engineer, not a fashion designer. Additional functionality could be to display a high res one time code into iris recognition systems for high security access.