Nothing stands in the way of progress. The celebrated decisions of a couple decades ago are today’s eyesore, an obstacle to a bright and shiny future. Around this reality has grown the fascinating industry of building demolition. There are a number of ways to remove a building structure from the landscape. Some involve timed explosions, others are a matter of removing structure a piece at a time and carting it away, like large-scale surgery. It is impressive to watch buildings that in many cases took years to complete be edited out of modernity in a fraction of that time. Demolition is a very powerful tool for urban planning, and it allows the erasure of ideas that, with their brick and concrete, were probably thought to be permanent. I came across the video below of a Japanese demolition crew demolishing a building floor by floor, like the Japanese toy Daruma-otoshi. This video has been posted on quite a few sites, but it is what got me thinking about this post:
A few more videos of building demolition, but by precision implosion. The second video below should be noted for its smart, incisive commentary:
Came across this video yesterday and was mesmerized by it. I grew up skateboarding but was not particularly good at it. So, cool on one level by the moves these guys are pulling off, things I could never have dreamed of attempting without suffering a massive concussion (which I did, several times) or a broken wrist.
Cool on another level is the quality of the video. This short was shot with an HD Red One digital video camera, which is considered to be the current pinnacle, of sorts, of accessible high definition technology. The video above is incredible in detail, quality, and richness. It is not so much that it is film-like, but that it is something beyond film.
One company’s vision of the automobiles of the future. Volkswagen recently launched Volkswagen 2028, a website that explores VW’s perspective on a number of issues and how those issues might manifest themselves through design twenty years from now, a perspective rooted deeply in Volkswagen’s longer term brand strategy (read that as marketing). This is not so much about showing us futuristic concepts as much as demonstrating the response to different needs, constraints, and technologies. Responses that are increasingly important to people. Specifically, Volkswagen provides us with some detail in how, in the near future, they might respond to issues of sustainability, networked mobility, customization and personalization, and accident prevention. All of the concepts offer hypothetical technologies that either replace the traditional human-car interaction, or enhance it by steamlining and focusing the action of driving. It’s a good exercise, and I have no doubt that the issues and ideas addressed by VW here are the beginnings of some pretty sophisticated changes that we will see in automobiles. While I imagine that all automobile manufacturers are digging into these concepts, at least to some degree, it is interesting to see Volkswagen put it out there in such a cohesive and comprehensive way, though this is clearly as much about marketing as it is about showcasing advanced engineering thinking.
I don’t think this is an issue for most of the rest of the world, but for the United States this is a serious design challenge. This is mostly due to our long established culture of valuing big and fast when it comes to our personal transportation. In the U.S., we’re just catching wind of small and efficient, and this is being driven by our pocketbooks at the moment, and not necessarily by doing what is right. Whatever works to achieve change…
Being an absolute gearhead has presented some interesting dilemmas for me, personally, as I reconcile this fact with my work in sustainable design. I love cars, but I do not love the current range of high-mileage fuel efficient vehicles currently on offer. Yes, the Tesla is sexy and it is indeed fast. It is also around $100k and only six or so have been made and delivered (far below the pace for the 650 promised this year). More options are going to be available in the near future from a range of manufacturers, and these options will begin to push into performance territory while also delivering on great design.
The VW One-Liter concept pictured above appears to be one of these options, at least from the perspective of design. A concept car from a couple years ago, and not tentatively scheduled for production until 2012, the One-Liter seems to be getting more attention from VW. There are plans to produce limited numbers of this 282 mpg, two seat microcar (around 1000 vehicles) over the next year or so with planning being done around it being a mainstream production model by 2012. I like this car. I like the influences of mid-century automobile and aircraft design that doesn’t feel too retro. I like that you access it via a pop-up cockpit canopy, and that the passenger sits behind the driver. I especially like the interior, which looks purposeful and performance focused:
Engineers at VW made good use of materials like magnesium, titanium and aluminum to greatly reduce the weight of the One-Liter, down to a third the weight of a Toyota Echo. Carbon fiber also figures prominently in the design of the vehicle, and is actually a big reason VW is considering production much sooner for this car. The cost of carbon fiber has dropped dramatically much faster than VW had expected, making the production of the One-Liter much more viable. I want to drive one very badly.
CrunchGear’s Peter Ha spent some quality time with James Dyson at his company laboratories. Dyson talks about design and engineering principles, and the value in personally working his products over. The limitations of the blip.tv player prevented me from embedding my favorite video in the series above, but you can view it here. The video is of Dyson giving an impromptu product test, with mixed results. It is great to see such a design legend come across as totally human, and a little bit fumbly.
“Anyone developing new products and new technology needs one characteristic above all else: hope.”
James Dyson
More video from Ha’s visit here. I will say that the blip.tv video player is a TOTAL pain in the ass.
How many lost opportunities have there been from research projects that seem to have gone wrong, and were subsequently thrown out? Countless. Not so for Swedish chemist Saeid Esmaeilzadeh, who came to Sweden over twenty years ago as an eight year old with his family fleeing from Iran. Esmaeilzadeh’s work is focused on developing new types of glass and ceramics. During this work he accidentally discovered a new kind of ceramic, one that has strength superior to steel, when he inadvertently cooled ceramics he was working with too quickly. It would normally be thought that this compromised the ceramics, and they would be discarded. But Esmaeilzadeh decided to look more closely at his mistake, and in the process he discovered he had created a “Super Glass”. He has started a company to work with Super Glass, called Diamorph, and they are hard at work looking at various commercial applications for this material.
More support for the value in failing forward, taking risks, and looking at accidents. That is where innovation happens. Clearly, you can miss these opportunities if you’re not curious enough to look more closely.
There is a very good chance that drilling will begin in the coastal waters of the United States, and perhaps also places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This brings the possibility of environmental disasters due to accidents and spills much closer to home. There are arguments for and against doing this, and one of the more interesting arguments for allowing the drilling is that the United States has been outsourcing its environmental disasters for too long, and that the drilling off our coasts is inevitable. We have the technology and care for the environment to drill in a way that will minimize environmental impact and address accidents in a fast and efficient manner. I do not really agree with this logic, but knowing that the drilling is going to happen it is good to have technology on our side.
Enter the OSP robot, a concept by product designer Ji-hoon Kim, which is a modular, easily transportable, solar powered, oil spill containment solution. Once deployed the robots autonomously contain the spill with an inflatable barrier quickly minimizing the impact of the oil spill and supporting the successful cleanup and management of the accident by the cleanup teams. Response to a spill with these robots is swift, as they can be quickly deployed from special dispensers on board helicopters or boats:
This is one of many oil spill containment tools that should be investigated, and it would be good to not wait until we are drilling off the coast of the United States to do so. An environmental disaster in Africa or Asia from an oil spill has reverberations throughout the global environment, and establishing and mandating a response protocol would be a very, very good thing.
The Cassini robot explorer, written about here before, will hit the four year mark on June 30th in the relentless pursuit of its prime mission to explore Saturn and its many moons. After June 30th Cassini is operating in bonus territory, as it was not expected that the probe would last this long or work this well. They call this additional time the “extended mission”. Obviously, everyone is ecstatic as the Cassini mission has been profoundly successful in sending us back invaluable information and images of Saturn (like the one above of Saturn’s rings), as well as the moons Titan, Enceladus, Dione, Tethys, Phoebe and Iapetus. In many ways the discoveries regarding Saturn’s moons has largely overshadowed the many, many findings with regards to Saturn itself.
Following the work of Cassini has been like following your favorite band on tour. Nearly every month the mission team has reported more incredible findings or provided another series of stunning images. This page from the mission website catalogs dozens of events and accomplishments. This year alone Cassini has scheduled over a dozen different flybys to allow the use of the craft’s Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UIS), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS), and Radio Science Subsystem. Cassini is packed with gear, and it is not only amazing that it all is still working as planned, but that it made it there in the first place. Congratulations to the Cassini-Huygens mission team on the four year anniversary.
I came across this video this morning and it got my attention. Video is coming on strong as an interaction media, and we are only at the very, very beginning of how we will be able to interact with video. The direct manipulation of video as a way to navigate opens up a whole host of possibilities.
NASA engineers have been busy testing robotic mobility prototypes for potential use on future missions to the moon and Mars. The engineers, in full astronaut gear, have been putting the machines through their paces on terrain at Moses Lake, Washington that approximates the mobility challenges of navigating the surface regolith of the moon.
The robotic prototypes tested include the twelve wheeled robotic transport pictured above, as well as a six-legged all-terrain vehicle that can carry large payloads, an autonomous drilling rover and a mapping robot. There is an incredibly large and well-shot image gallery of the testing, and the various robotic vehicles, here that is worth viewing. The public was invited to observe, which is further proof of the efforts that NASA is undertaking to engage the public and enlist their enthusiasm. NASA’s relatively recent adoption of social media as a way to create dialog with the public is an additional indicator of a changed view of the role of the public in space exploration.
Chris Bangle is the sometimes controversial head of the global BMW Design Group, and he has worked tirelessly to move automobile design at BMW to a place where it can respond to both the demand for innovation and the needs of the user. He has put together a dream team of designers, engineers, and thinkers who challenge every convention of what an automobile is and how we use it. The most recent work from this team is the GINA Light Visionary Model pictured above. At the most base level, this dramatically effects the look of automobile design. At it’s most complex, it completely changes our relationship to this mode of transportation and brings out a level of emotion that I, personally, have not experienced in a very, very long time. I encourage you to watch this video presentation of the concept if you have any interest in the future of automobile design:
As far as I am concerned, GINA nails it by creating a seamless connection between form and function, by challenging every convention of automobile design, and by FINALLY bringing materials innovation to a point of influence that is beyond the shallowness of style. It is:
“Context over dogma.”
Chris Bangle - Head of BMW Design Group
Much more on this at Winding Road, perhaps the best automotive blog I have yet experienced.
Click on the image above to enlarge the graph to make it more readable. It paints a picture that is probably not that surprising, but definitely attention grabbing. The United States faces a very different reality in the world today than it did toward the end of the 1990’s. Today we face a diverse spectrum of new players who are incredibly competitive, players who are in some cases much more disciplined, ambitious, and intensely focused on innovation. The elephant in the room is China which, again, is no surprise. China has been nothing but resurgent over the last decade and nothing tells that story as well as the graph above. China’s rise over the other 33 nations in the survey demonstrates a much changed world economic landscape in technology. Note also the ascendancy of Mexico, South Korea, India, Singapore, and Taiwan. We all owe Thomas L. Friedman of the NYT’s a small bit of deference on this matter.
The graph is the result of a study conducted bi-annually by the Georgia Institute of Technology that measures the technology standing of 33 countries based upon four key technology focused factors:
National orientation toward technological competitiveness
Socioeconomic infrastructure
Technological infrastructure
Productive capacity
From the intro to the Georgia Tech report on the study findings:
“…China may soon rival the United States as the principal driver of the world’s economy – a position the U.S. has held since the end of World War II. If that happens, it will mark the first time in nearly a century that two nations have competed for leadership as equals”
Pretty incredible video of work in robotic prosthetics being done by Dean Kamen and his team. Knowing that prosthetic limbs have not really progressed much, technologically, in the last fifty years it is stunning to see the leaps that Kamen’s team has made. The initial prototype of the robotic arm was completed in one year at the behest of the Department of Defense searching for a solution to soldiers who had suffered the loss of their arms.
The Phoenix robotic explorer has been on Mars now for about 27 hours after an incredibly successful entry, descent and landing. It has been very busy. Incredible images are already streaming to Earth, and those of us geeked out by things of this nature are absolutely riveted. I was excited to discover how many people I know were following @MarsPhoenix on Twitter.
Many images are coming back, and most right now are of the explorer itself and the immediate vicinity as the mission managers check systems and get their bearings. The above image of one of the craft’s landing pads is one of my favorites because that image is of the pad of a man-made robotic explorer sitting on the surface of Mars millions of miles away from Earth, and it was taken in the last 24 hours. Astounding. Even more astounding is this video composite of the Martian surface, terrain and horizon taken by Phoenix today.
We are at just under four hours before Phoenix lands on the surface of Mars. I am checking periodically at the Phoenix mission control website in anticipation of this event. Martian weather is clear and the landing later today is green for go. I suspect there are a lot of very excited and anxious people at JPL right now.
The above animation is of weather on Mars around its north pole from 5/16 through 5/22. The small cigar shaped outline in the upper left quadrant is the planned landing zone.
It’s not just a big day for race fans, its a big day for science and space enthusiasts. In August of last year the Mars Phoenix Explorer left Earth to start its journey to Mars. Its mission is to arrive safely, land on the Martian North Pole, and dig into the soil there begin looking for the building blocks of life. It arrives today at around 4:45PM PDT. Arriving is the hardest part, as now the explorer has to successfully enter the Martian atmosphere (at 12,000mph) using parachutes to slow the rapid descent from 900mph to 250mph, and then fire landing rockets to prevent it from slamming into the Martian surface (see the video above). Its a complex landing, and the mission control team probably hasn’t been sleeping much these last few days, as the last five years of their work culminates today in about seven minutes of anxiety. That’s okay, though, as they have a number of ways they can distract themselves while keeping us updated on the the mission’s progress. For instance, you can follow the Phoenix mission on Twitter and get frequent updates and mission facts. The mission team also has a blog that is full of information and that will be used to post what the mission team is thinking and what Phoenix sees and discovers, as well as an information rich mission website.
So, the entire Phoenix mission is going to be captured for us via an array of online tools. This is incredibly exciting, and it serves to connect us to the exploration and science that NASA leads in a way that is not only meaningful, but also basically real time.
If you use Twitter, how many times have people asked you about it and what it does… and you totally butchered the answer? Probably at least a few. Struggle no more, as the video above is one of many from the cool cats at Common Craft. I have used their descriptive presentations more than a few times lately, and quite effectively. That’s because they are masters at taking something like RSS, and explaining it in simple, straight forward, and understandable terms. They are excellent story tellers and utilize paper models in a very simple and unobtrusive manner to support the information they are communicating. It works really, really well. Earlier today I used their RSS in Plain English to help a person who is internet challenged understand the benefits of that technology, and how it can impact their business. They got it.
Recently I had the opportunity to enjoy another MX Conference put on by the team at Adaptive Path in San Francisco. It rocked and was absolutely full of great information, stories, and people all focused on the developing practice of effectively managing experience design teams. I’d say the rapidly developing practice. We are under a lot of pressure to perform and to deliver value, and often success is largely determined by the effectiveness of how creative teams are led. MX is a window into the practices that have led to success.
At the conference I was asked to extend a pretty generous offer to the readers of schneiderism for the upcoming UX Intensive that Adaptive Path is hosting in Minneapolis, Minnesota from June 16-19. If you work in interaction/experience design in any capacity, really, I highly encourage you to check this workshop out. You can choose specific sessions or pony up for the full week. Adaptive Path knows what they are doing, and they are intensely focused on providing value to the people that attend their events. I speak from experience on that one.
Here’s the offer. If you register by May 31st and use the promotional code UXIM, you will receive a 15% discount on top of the early bird registration 10% discount. That is compelling. Here is a choice quote from the UX registration page:
“Three things I loved about UX Intensive: 1. presenters who totally know their craft and aren’t shy about saying it’s at least as much art as science, but that you can develop the art by first learning the science; 2. a room filled with smart, motivated participants who are expert in many things, some included in the conference topics and some not, working very hard with great joy, to everyone’s benefit; 3. the whole is totally greater than the sum of the parts.”
About a year ago I began investigating the possibilities of making my own wine. I have been a wine lover for a very, very long time and the next logical step for me was to learn how to make it myself, just the way I like it. This was when I discovered Crushpad, and got pretty excited. I came across Crushpad via one of the many wine blogs I was following at the time, and began to seriously consider how to make that happen. Crushpad offered something that seemed to be just short of owning your own vineyard and being formally trained as a winemaker. It also, at it’s core, leverages the internet and takes advantage of several web based technologies to tie you to the making, the process, and the waiting as your wine ferments.
First, though, just a bit of background. With the advent of the internet and all things social media, the wine world has gone through a massive transformation. People who are passionate about wine have an abundance of resources to explore to pursue that passion as completely, and obscurely, as they desire. They also can easily find thousands of others who share their passion and interest, and swap reviews and recommendations. Wine blogging has exploded in the last few years, as has blogging about everything else, but wine blogging has an incredibly focused audience. Two favorites that I subscribe to are Vinography and Winecast, which also offers some excellent podcasts. If you enjoy wine, check these two out. They are both massively networked to hundreds and hundreds of other wine blogs, but these two are my consistent favorites for the quality of the writing, the reviews, and the creative sentiment brought to wine. Another HUGE influence in the world of wine online is Gary Vaynerchuk’s wine library tv, Gary’s daily video blog of wine reviews and information with attitude, humor, passion and intelligence. It is also incredibly entertaining. Gary seems ubiquitous these days, and has brought an energy to wine online that is probably setting the bar very, very high. In fact, with regards to online marketing in general, Gary is very much an innovator, early adopter, and social media guru. More than most, Gary Vaynerchuk has quickly turned tools like Twitter into incredibly powerful connections to his audience. Rock on.
So, back to Crushpad, which I found via this exploding online community around wine. What I found so compelling about what the folks at Crushpad are doing is how easily they can connect you to the most important aspects of making wine… choosing the grapes and detailing the style of wine you want to create, along with keeping you apprised as your wine develops over time. They do this by forging very strong relationships with the grape growers and partnering with excellent winemakers. You can be involved at whatever level you would like, from incredibly hands-on and present at every step, or simply by checking in via web cam. You can monitor the progress of your wine via a dashboard and feel connected to the maturation process, etc. All very cool. Now, I have yet to actually DO this, but am again thinking about how to make it happen. It is just a bit cost prohibitive for me, but my idea last year, and the idea I am about to revive, is to get together a small group of similarly passionate wine lovers and have everybody “buy in” to the wine that I plan to make. Crushpad offers a number of different approaches to getting in, but my thinking is to put a group together and buy an entire barrel, which equates to roughly 25 cases, or 300 bottles of wine. I’m thinking 10 investors, which would give each investor 30 bottles of wine when completed. Taking this full circle, we would have a label designed for the bottles that tells this story, and acknowledges each individual investor, thus also personalizing the experience for them. They can monitor our progress online, and I will blog about the entire experience here. I’ve only just revived my motivation for doing this, and this could be considered the first VC round for my first experiment in making wine. I’m a Wine 2.0 startup. If this is something enjoyable, and if the wine is really good, I want to make this an annual experience and expand the number of people and the types of wine we make. My sense is that this would be really, really fun.
Coming dangerously close to green washing, Bentley has put together a site to promote their team for the UK’s Greenpower-Electric Car Races For Schools, admittedly a very, very cool initiative. The first thing that got my attention was the minimalist soap-box-derby aesthetic of the Bentley team’s car design. The second thing that got my attention was that there IS actually a program in the UK to create electric racing car teams for schools to focus learning on engineering and technology as careers, the intersection of so many things that I love.
The Greenpower program actually has several categories for students, including both secondary and primary schools, as well as a corporate program. Honestly, this should be an international program and evolve into an entirely new category of motorsports.
That is essentially the view that I’m looking at right now. The MX Conference that I am attending here in San Francisco just wrapped and I am now sitting at the top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel Intercontinental enjoying an incredible glass of wine and an incredibly full brain. Truly amazing conference, and my compliments to Adaptive Path for putting it all together. This is my second year attending MX. I’m back again for a reason. I really enjoyed the conference last year, which was the first MX put on by Adaptive Path, and found the spectrum of speakers and the topics discussed immensely compelling. I met a lot of great people that I still maintain contact with, several of whom have become valuable resources for me, and a few of whom even read schneiderism. This year’s MX pretty much kicked serious ass, and was a dramatic add to last year’s event. The speakers were all excellent and the subject matter presented was of a nature to keep me actively engaging it for a very, very long time. That’s value.
I cannot help but be riveted by the concept of network science, actually an emerging scientific discipline that combines interacting physical, informational, biological, cognitive, and social networks… and in a way that scares me a little bit. It seems that the Department of Defense shares my fascination, but not my hesitations. The Pentagon is devoting resources (now up to $7.5 million in research grants) to what it deems a priority area of investigation and research in the effort to understand complex and variable networks. This is directly related to how the Pentagon and related constituents can then work on an understanding of the structure of the diffuse networks employed by our nation’s enemies. An underlying goal of this research is the ability to anticipate who might join such a network, which takes threat assessment to an entirely different level. So, network science would seem to be a holy grail, of sorts, for the abstract goal of developing predictive modeling. Again, very interesting and very scary, and surprising that it only garners $7.5 million currently. I suspect that will be increasing once efficacy is established. How does the military view network science:
“Initiation of a field of network science would be appropriate to provide a body of rigorous results that would improve the predictability of the engineering design of complex networks and also speed up basic research in a variety of applications areas.”
That’s from a 2005 report by the United States Army, which I have excerpted from a post at DangerRoom, Wired’s national security blog that pretty much gets my attention every day, and where I first came across this story.
This is unbelievable given the incredibly short time, only 51 years, that humans have had access to orbit around Earth. Via the European Space Agency (ESA) come high resolution images of all of the human-made objects that litter our previously pristine orbit. The image above only depicts those objects in low Earth orbit (LEO). Here are some staggering space garbage facts:
We have put upwards of 6000 satellites into orbit from 4600 orbital launches
400 of these are beyond geostationary orbit or are on interplanetary trajectories
Only 800 satellites of the 6000 are considered operational
Most of the debris has come from explosion events (200) or collision events (10)
As we contemplate commercial orbital access, and look to things like space tourism to make the experience of space travel viable for many more people, this is a difficult reality to process. First, the amount of space debris is only going to increase, and most probably exponentially as the number of active space programs, both private and government, continues to rapidly increase. Second, there is real concern around protecting space vehicles, space stations, and future satellites from imminent collisions with this debris. That adds tremendous cost, complexity and weight to programs that are already stretched for budget and capacity. This is not impossible to overcome, and engineers have been thinking about this issue for awhile given some of the close calls with the Space Shuttle and the ISS. Still, another complexity added to an already very complex process.
You might remember the original Shift Happens video that made the rounds just over a year ago. It put forth some pretty startling information about the modern realities we face with regards to globalism, the internet, and the exponential rate of change in technology. I was recently sent this “updated” version that builds on some of the information put forth in the original. It’s well done, very interesting, and a little bit awe inspiring. We live in interesting times. The updated version above is from around June of 2007, meaning that much of the information is already outdated.
April 4th marked the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 6, the last of the unmanned Apollo missions and the second time that a Saturn V rocket was launched. This was also the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, and as such Apollo 6 was minimally covered in the news. The Saturn V would play a significant role in getting astronauts to the moon and this launch, forty years ago, was to be the final test of the Saturn V before qualifying and readying it for the planned manned missions. For the Moon program, this was an incredibly important mission and would complete an important phase of systems testing. Apollo 6 did have serious problems which prevented the mission from reaching the designated orbit. These problems were quickly identified and addressed in the next mission, Apollo 7, and in the end, it was the only Saturn V launch that experienced operational challenges. It was the Apollo 6 mission that proved the integrity of the Saturn V launch vehicle. Since Apollo 6 was a test flight, NASA positioned cameras in places that would not be possible on a Moon mission. One of these took the famous set of images of the Saturn V first stage separation and the jettisoning of the interstage ring, pictured above.
After Apollo 6, all future Apollo missions were manned. After Apollo 17 the Apollo program was terminated for lack of funding, indicative of a tumultuous time in American history and a changing domestic agenda. At program termination there were three Saturn V rockets that had been completed in preparation of future Moon missions. Of these, one was ultimately used to launch Skylab, America’s first space station, into orbit on May 14, 1973. The remaining two are on display at various places around the country, including the complete Saturn V at the Johnson Space Center in Houston which is composed entirely of never used flight hardware.
As we near the end of the Space Shuttle’s operational life, and work continues on the replacement Orion/Constellation program, it is interesting that NASA has in some ways gone back to the future and put in place a program that is a direct descendant of the successes of the Apollo and Saturn programs, in some cases using identical systems technologies.
You’ve no doubt already heard of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) due to the recent resurgence in mainstream media. This is partly because it is a really big deal, connecting us to the earliest moments of the formation of the universe, and partly because some people are worried that when scientists, physicists, and researchers fire it up that it will end reality… and as a result these people are pretty active. That’s not going to happen, the world will not be consumed by tiny black holes. Rest easy.
So, what is the LHC for? It has been constructed to recreate the conditions that occurred just after the Big Bang. In recreating these early moments of the universe we may be able to understand how the first particles were conceived, and thus help us better understand how the universe actually works. The LHC will do this in a very controlled environment, and be heavily measured, recorded and monitored. It will allow us to repeat this experiment with frequency, greatly increasing our ability to study and understand. In short, this is an enormous step towards enlightenment, understanding the nature of reality, and will fill in many of the theoretical blanks that physicists and cosmologists have struggled with for a long, long time. In the name of epistemology, this is a very, very good thing.
LHC Facts:
It is made up of 2000 super conducting magnets
It will utilize the most complex cameras ever made
These cameras will be able to capture impossibly small time horizons
The LHC is the culmination of over two decades of work
Construction involved 7,000 physicists from 80 nations
It is located 175 meters underground and is 27+ kilometers in diameter
Once operational, protons will be accelerated close to the speed of light
Every second there will be 800 million proton collisions
Only a fraction of these matter, and will captured by cameras mentioned above
Particles created will exist for a thousandth, of a thousandth, of a billionth of a second
These collisions will generate heat 1 million times hotter than the core of the sun
To achieve this, the LHC team has had to build an incredibly complex machine of enormous scale. Just one of the superconducting solenoids contains more iron than the Eiffel Tower. There are many of these making up the LHC particle accelerator. The receptors and detectors are housed in giant rooms that are as big as cathedrals. The cost of this project was of such a magnitude (estimates range in the $6 billion and up range) that the United States halted its own Superconducting Super Collider back in 1993.
Excellent video of the LHC and the planned experiments (part 1 of 3):
Earlier this month the European Space Agency posted some high resolution images taken by the ESA Mars Express Orbiter of the ice covered oddity that is Promethei Planum. The images are striking and gorgeous, and depict the seasonal ice coverage of this cratered area that measures as deep as 3,500 meters in places. In the image below on the right is an impact crater, partially covered in ice, that measures roughly 100 km wide and 800 meters deep.
It has been a while since I have posted about robots, so via DangerRoom comes news that we are that much closer to bigger, better, and more stealthy flying robots of death. At least the United States Navy is. We’ve had operational drones and remotely piloted craft that could fire on targets, but within the next year the Northrop Grumman X-47B will take flight, and begin aircraft carrier landing testing a year after that. This is a mean machine, and brings an array of capabilities to bear all from a compact, efficient, and radar resistant form factor. It’s not a small craft, but it is much smaller than all other carrier based aircraft. It’s mission profile reads like a Tom Clancy novel:
Ballistic missle defense
Irregular force attack
“Manhunting”
Strike-coordinated armed reconnaissance
Combat air support
Special operations force support
Air interdiction
Electronic surveillance
SEAD/EW (I have no idea what this means…)
The impetus behind creating this robotic aircraft is to provide the Navy and Marines with a platform that can stay in flight for 50-100 hours, carry 4,500 pounds of ordinance, and perform the toughest missions under the most dangerous of circumstances. Clearly criteria that make a pilotless option priority. Additionally, there are plans to make the airframe compatible with carrying directed energy weapons. That would be lasers.
I don’t care what business or what industry you are talking about, innovation matters big time. I get this, and my investigations into how you cultivate a culture of innovation is an ongoing theme on schneiderism. I find it really interesting that companies like Toyota (as well as BMW, Porsche, Audi, Tata, Nissan, VW, Mazda…) continue to receive coverage with regards to the success of the innovative internal cultures they have supported, and the measurable benefits of those cultures in terms of market success, while essentially the entire American automotive industry struggles to find itself, let alone perpetuate a culture of innovation, let alone even THINK about market success. Many, including myself, have looked closely at how Toyota’s long history of creating and supporting innovation wherever it sets up shop. In many ways, innovation defines Toyota. Recently, Fortune took a similar look at Honda and revealed another deeply innovative company culture. It also revealed the demonstrable benefits of that culture.
For Honda, innovation is equivalent to excellence, and excellence clearly pays. The article states that since 2002 Honda’s revenues have grown close to 40%, approaching $94.8 billion. Most interesting to me is that Honda’s U.S. market share has risen from 6.7% in 2000 to 9.6% in 2007. That is partly because of American manufacturers LOSING market share, but is also because Honda continues to provide smart, affordable and innovative products that people WANT. Badly. Honda, along with Toyota and BMW, are the only automobile companies to make it into Fortune’s list of the top 20 of the World’s Most Admired Companies. Apple is number one, by the way.
So, how does Honda make this happen? They let people experiment and explore. The culture encourages this. Leadership wants it. More specifically, they encourage their engineers, especially those who drive R&D, to be entrepreneurial in their pursuits. The kicker is that at Honda not only are employees typically paid less than at the competition, but their opportunities to move up in the organization are pretty limited. That’s because Honda is very, very flat as an organization… and it is this flatness that empowers people to experiment and to be entrepreneurial. To innovate. Employees tend to be incredibly loyal to Honda, as an added bonus, and this also is directly related to the flatness of the organization. That, and they magnify their passion by being around others who are so invested in experimenting, improving, and creating. Others that are passionate about innovating. There is even a surprisingly cool section on Honda’s corporate website dedicated to their focus on innovation, and the important results of that focus. Masaaki Kato, president and CEO of Honda R&D, offers his perspective on Honda’s innovation success:
“We want to look down the road. We do not want to be influenced by the business.”
Masaaki Kato, president and CEO of Honda Research and Development
Catching up on my feeds just now I was saddened to see that Arthur C. Clarke, physicist, author, innovator, futurist, and ardent believer in the potential of humanity, has died. He was 90, so the man had a very decent run. Perhaps his most recognized work was 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie for which just celebrated its 40th anniversary. He leaves behind an enormous legacy of invention, creativity, art, and inspiration having written over 100 books. Enormous. Few have been so profoundly influential to so many, and managed to do it with such consistent style, usually sporting a satin Nehru jacket and tanned from the beaches of his home in Sri Lanka. For me, Arthur C. Clarke is the Yin to Philip K. Dick’s Yang. A couple great quotes from Clarke in honor of his passing…
Reflecting on his life:
“Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered. I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer.”
A terrific quote on the value of the space program, from 1970:
“The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars… A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.”
That’s a line from a really excellent slide presentation by David Armano and via FutureLab that succinctly summarizes some of the best opportunities for companies today as they contemplate their interactive marketing strategy, and how best to connect with their audience(s).
Three of his points here that are especially meaningful to me:
Leverage the WordPress Content Management System - Huge value here, especially when combined with a thoughtful content strategy, analytics, and the focus to continuously improve and help audiences get the information that they seek. You’re only as good as your content is fresh. I am an enormous proponent of Wordpress as not only is schneiderism built with it, but two sites I am currently involved with are also taking advantage of what Wordpress offers. It has become a powerful technology for efficiently building effective websites and is very customizable from an interface design standpoint.
Combine technologies for a stronger strategy - Like using Twitter to promote new content or priority links to people that choose to follow you. Effectively combining micro-marketing technologies can create an incredibly macro effect by making it incredibly easy for people to find you, your company, or your perspective and to help you communicate to a much broader audience very quickly, efficiently and cost effectively.
Orchestrate infinite touchpoints - This is perhaps the most powerful slide in Armano’s presentation, and it relates very directly to the effective combination of technologies. Your messages can and should manifest themselves in a number of ways, and in a number of places. Starting with an effective website, also think about a mobile strategy, how you should use online social networks, and sites like Slideshare, YouTube, and Twitter. Effectively combining these into a range of audience touchpoints is powerful, and ultimately worth spreading your investment. In terms of platforms, it would seem shortsighted to invest in only one (like a website) when a little additional effort can position you with a range of effective communications technologies, and the technologies that your audiences are using to get information. This would be the embodiment of the whole “meet them on their turf” strategy.
Another great line from the presentation is “make the participant the star.” Armano presents a total of ten points related to investigating your interactive marketing strategy, and they are all pretty tight so I suggest taking a moment to view the entire presentation.
Absolutely stunning imagery of the recent fly-by of Saturn’s moon Enceladus by Cassini presented in a photo animation. You will find little mention of this in the news, and that is mostly because the news does not care. Lost opportunity for the news. We’ve investigated the robotic Cassini probe here before, and it continues to be very, very busy. On March 12th Cassini flew within 30 miles of Enceladus, approaching from above Enceladus’ north pole and thus seeing the moon as a crescent. Some facts on this beautiful moon:
Enceladus is very bright, reflecting nearly 100% of the light that strikes it
This is because we believe it is almost entirely covered in water ice
It’s surface is considered to be geologically young at less than 100 million years old
There is evidence indicating that the interior of the moon may still be liquid
It is about 500 km wide, or roughly the width of the state of Arizona
Enceladus is known as the “geyser moon” because of enormous eruptions
These are created by the release of energy caused by frictional geothermal heating
More on Enceladus and Cassini’s observations here, here, and here.
From MIT’s Technology Review (an excellent online tech resource) comes this interesting list of technologies to watch for over the coming months… the “emerging technologies” of this year. You’ve no doubt heard of some of these, and others can’t be too surprising, but taken together this list should give at least a little techno-infused optimism for the balance of 2008 (I’m feeling better already):
The practical neatnik in me is perhaps the most enthused about the potentiality of my environment without the tangle of power cords everywhere. The futurist in me is getting pretty excited about the potential of graphene transistors. There is concern in Silicon Valley about the probable termination of Moore’s Law as we approach the performance envelop of silicon based chips. Having something that is so theoretically expansive in contrast, and from PENCIL LEAD, is quite comforting.
From the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre and the Nokia Research Center comes this exploration of the future application of nanoscale electonics technology. Very cool, and probably not that far from reality, given the momentum in nanotech. This longish video takes you through several of the nanoscale innovations:
This motivates me to complete a series of posts I have been working on related to nanotechnology. They are taking me awhile because I continue to find more to read. We live in very interesting times.
