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CHRIS DE BODE/PANOS PICTURES for TIME
LIGHT FINGERED:
Canesta's sensors can read input from a virtual keyboard |
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| Taming The Machine |
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Too many technologies waste our time rather than improve it. But next year will see technology get closer to serving man — by anticipating what we need
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By JENNIFER L. SCHENKER |
Posted Sunday, Dec. 8, 2002; 2.02 p.m. GMT
Computers, personal digital assistants, and mobile phones are everywhere. Yet instead of them serving us, we serve them. We wait for them to boot up, struggle to sync them up with each other, and pull out our hair when they crash.
So argued Michael Dertouzos, the late director of the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). His vision of a world where computing was as easy as breathing helped inspire M.I.T. to launch a $50-million project called Oxygen.
The revolution may seem to be as frozen as a dead laptop — most of Oxygen's work remains in the lab — but progress is being made. In 2003 technology will work for us in exciting new ways, making driving safer and factories more efficient, and combating everything from bioterrorism to cancer.
Computers are becoming "able to figure out what you are doing and provide you with some kind of service without any cognitive load on you," says Rodney Brooks, director of M.I.T.'s Artificial Intelligence Lab. An example: an Australian company called Seeing Machines has found a way to let machines automatically detect and track human faces and even determine a person's direction of gaze. Car manufacturers such as Volvo (an investor in the company) are considering using this technology to alert drivers when they stop watching the road or start nodding off.
Perceptive technology is also being developed by Canesta, a Silicon Valley start-up, to enable electronic devices to perceive nearby people and objects and their movements in three dimensions. Canesta's technology is based on a small, moving-image sensor and software that "sees" the environment in 3-D contours. One of Canesta's first commercial applications is a projection keyboard that works with wireless devices and projects the image of a full-sized keyboard onto a convenient flat surface. When the user types on this image, Canesta transmits the user's finger movements to the mobile device. Pretty cool.
Netherlands-based Philips plans to transform mirrors in dressing rooms of stores into personal shoppers. When a shopper holds up a sweater she likes, the company's "near field radio communication" technology will allow images of all the clothes in the store that match the sweater to appear on the mirror's surface.
Philips also plans to market a home defibrillator that literally talks you through how to use it. "We expect this to become a standard feature in homes, like a fire extinguisher," says John McClure, a Philips senior vice president. To monitor your health on the run, try on the LifeShirt, made by California-based VivoMetrics, which checks pulse and even emotional condition and can connect to a doctor via the Internet if there is a medical problem.
Next year will also see the arrival of technology that lets businesses communicate with the goods they produce. Alien Technology of Morgan Hill, California, is placing chips into tags so that consumer goods can radio each other and the businesses that make them. Radio frequency ID tags can give manufacturers and retailers accurate, instant product-tracking information that could cut inventory costs dramatically. By 2004 Alien thinks it will be able to assemble tens of millions of tags for only cents apiece.
In an economic downturn, technologies that promise to radically cut production costs are always in demand. Ron Kok, ceo of OTB Engineering in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, has changed the economics of producing everything from dvds to disposable contact lenses and solar-energy cells for clients like Warner, Johnson & Johnson and Shell, simply by doing away with the need for squeaky-clean production rooms. In many instances, 80% of a factory's costs went to building clean rooms and handling systems and only 20% on manufacturing equipment. "My philosophy is spend 30% on equipment and forget the other 70%," says Kok, a high-school dropout turned millionaire inventor. Using thin film, Kok builds machines that integrate clean-room functions while handling all the states of production in one compact, enclosed location.
Nanotechnology, the science of the super-small, is also expected to help streamline production, improving the economics of everything from refining petrochemicals to manufacturing sources of alternative energy, says Tim Harper, founder of Madrid-based CMP Cientifica. And nanotechnology is fighting bioterrorism. Dendrimers — tree-shaped synthetic molecules — have the ability to capture smaller molecules in their cavities, making them perfect to deal with biological and chemical contaminants. The U.S. Army hopes to use them to clean up after bioterror attacks. James Baker, head of the University of Michigan School of Medicine's Center for Biologic Nanotechnology, wants to use dendrimers to do everything from zap cancer cells to protect astronauts from radiation. Baker believes dendrimers can detect cancer cells, then destroy them by delivering a specific drug or gene therapy. He also aims to use a nanodevice to penetrate the white blood cells of astronauts in space to detect early signs of radiation damage, as part of a nasa-funded project launched earlier this year. The plan is to attach fluorescent tags to dendrimers, which glow in the presence of proteins associated with cell death. A hand-held retinal scanner would detect the glow and alert the astronaut. If it works, a variation might be used on land-based patients as a generalized diagnostic tool. As Dertouzos was fond of reminding us, bringing technology back to earth is what it is all about.
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S O C I E T Y
Islam In Europe
An inside look at how Europe's Muslims adapt to secular society — and vice-versa
T H E A T E R
Boney's Part
A stage extravaganza, a TV mini-series and a clutch of films put Napoleon in the spotlight again
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E U R O P E
Outta Here
A faltering economy and Schröder's policies have companies fleeing Germany
P O L I T I C S
Wages Of Spin Cherie Blair didn't know she was doing business with a con man, but it's Tony and New Labour who may pay the price |
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