In This Issue:
-- Punctuations: Wireless -- The Connection of the Future - by John L. Petersen
-- FUTUREdition Online Dialogue
-- Think Links - The Future in the News...Today

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At The Arlington Institute, we believe that to understand the future, you need to have an open mind and cast a very wide net. To that end, FUTUREdition explores a cross- disciplinary palette of issues, from the frontiers of science and technology to major developments in mass media, geopolitics, the environment, and social perspectives.

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Punctuations: Wireless -- The Connection of the Future - by John L. Petersen (mailto:johnp@arlingtoninstitute.org)

At one time not too long ago, many telecom and Internet authorities thought that coax and fiber optic cable were going to be the key ways in which the second generation of the Internet would be accessed in this country and with which much of the developed world "wired up", but that perspective is changing. It is becoming obvious that much of the communications wiring of the future will be wire-less, using radio waves and other ephemeral linkages to allow devices to always be connected to the global neural system, regardless where they are located. This means that, like your cell-phone now ideally finds a signal wherever you are, your communications device (it won't just be a laptop or cell phone; it will have many functions in one very portable package), will automatically link up with the Net both inside and outside of buildings... and also be talking to appliances, home entertainment systems, store displays, restaurant menus, depending upon what you are close to. Your context will be "alive", reaching out to communicate with you as you walk or drive along.

A good way to think about what this might be like is through the use of scenarios, something that we here at The Arlington Institute particularly like as devices to build mental pictures of potential futures. What might a wireless world be like? Well, Arielle Emmett wrote the scenario below in the first chapter of her new book, Wireless Data for the Enterprise: Making Sense of Wireless Business (McGraw-Hill, 2002).

A Day in the Life of a Mobile She Devil -- Adapted from the book Wireless Data for the Enterprise: Making Sense of Wireless Business (George S. Faigen [george.faigen@broadbeam.com], Boris Fridman, Arielle Emmett [arielleem@snip.net], ed.), McGraw-Hill, © 2002 by Broadbeam/Arielle Emmett.

She wakes at 5 AM in a Tokyo hotel, jarred to alertness by the digital alarm. Without rising from the bed she is already hearing Tom Brokaw and Bill Gates chatting on a streaming video link from MSNBC directly to her palm-size personal digital assistant (PDA), exhorting her that Wall Street is unhappy. The Feds have not lowered rates; the stock market tanks; there is a crisis in the Middle East.

Her PDA is now hot synching its personal information management (PIM) system -- schedules, sales contacts, addresses -- wirelessly with her desktop computer in Los Angeles. Down comes her updated calendar, down comes a ‘skinnied down’ contact list she’ll need today from her customer list in her customer relationship management (CRM) system. More news flashes: WORLD ECONOMY is SHAKEN BY SLOWDOWN IN ASIA PACIFIC plus half a dozen e-mails, a logistics report from a shipper that manages load tracking via the wireless web. LOST PACKAGE: her display reads. DO YOU WANT THE TRACKING NUMBER?

She rises now and drops her robe on the floor, enjoying an off-color note from her boyfriend appended to a Lotus Notes document (he works in the Hong Kong office). She is singing, "Shall We Dance?" showering to the tunes from NAPSTER downloaded to her PDA. Her world phone rings and synchs through a Bluetooth radio connection with her laptop. The laptop is open and "reads" her morning mail. Another CNN news flash: NASDAQ TAKES BEATING; another four voice mails telling her the home office can’t find that Osaka shipment. The hotel breakfast menu flashes on her PDA in English and Japanese, with prices marked clearly in Yen. Down comes the menu; down comes her link to a digital expense report; down comes her recorded preferences; will she stick with the same breakfast? Of course, with one exception (bacon). Continued.

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FUTUREdition Online Dialogue

You are invited to participate in a new online conversation space for FUTUREdition subscribers. Our goals are to:

1 - integrate FUTUREdition ideas, insights and references into our everyday thinking
2 - share thoughts, experiences and learning resources
3 - cultivate new knowledge together
4 - cut through complexity and raise awareness of what matters
5 - seed new ventures and working relationships
6 - monitor the emergence of new ideas and developments
7 - observe and learn from wild card scenarios as they happen

To join the FUTUREdition online dialogue, you need to register (free) with Yahoo Groups http://groups.yahoo.com/ by clicking on the "click here to register" towards the middle-left of the screen. You will need to provide a log-on name and password and you will be asked for your birth date for security reasons. Then you go to the FUTUREdition group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/futuredition and sign up as a member. Your confirmation of request to join is usually sent within 24 hours (maximum is three days).

When active you will receive postings from "futuredition@yahoogroups.com" and you will be able to respond to the same address. The beauty of an emailing list like this is that you will be able to observe all online conversations as well as your own, thus encouraging insights and connections across a diverse areas of interest.

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Think Links
The Future in the News . . . Today

Something New: FUTUREdition features as many news links as it feels have merit. But perhaps the number of links is more than you quite have time for right now. Starting with this issue, we will highlight the handful or so links that we find are most significant by using ALL CAPITAL LETTERS for the titles of those articles.

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
(How the basic human institutions that support modern society are being fundamentally changed by advances in technology)

Studying The Issues Involved In Voting Via Internet - (UniSci - December 19, 2001)
Elections of the future may be more convenient, accurate and faster for both voters and elections officials if researchers can improve the technology for voting via the Internet. Also a factor is whether elections officials can entice voters to use the technology and make it accessible to them. Internet voting will provide some major benefits -- convenience for voters and a more efficient and accurate elections process -- but apparently its widespread use is many years away.

SECRET CODE MACHINE - (EurekAlert - January 2, 2002)
Michael Rabin, a Harvard professor of computer science, is building a secret code machine for the 21st century. This time, there's no hope for anyone who might want to break the code's ciphers, even if they get hold of the key. Rabin's trick is to use an electronic version of vanishing ink. The people at the National Security Agency, the US government's temple of spies, aren't going to like it one bit. For this isn't some quantum code that can only run on a quantum computer-an as yet only dreamed of machine. It is something anyone, anywhere can use. If Rabin's machine works as well as he believes it will, it could undermine the NSA's efforts to track terrorist activities. For people whose concern is to maintain their own privacy, rather than invading someone else's, Rabin's scheme could be the ultimate cloak of secrecy.

NEW REALITIES

Exorcising Einstein's Spooks - (Nature - November 29, 2001)
Albert Einstein never liked some of the counterintuitive predictions of quantum theory, arguing instead that there was a further, hidden layer to reality it failed to describe. Now Karl Hess and Walter Philipp of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provide evidence that Einstein may have been right to be sceptical - there may indeed be another set of rules underlying quantum theory.

Life Hitching a Ride to Earth: Bugs Could Travel to Earth in Comfort - (SpaceRef.com - January 9, 2002)
For the first time, millions of bacterial spores have been purposely exposed to outer space, to see how they are affected by solar radiation. The results support the idea that life could have arrived on Earth in the form of bacteria carried from Mars on meteorites. The idea that life started elsewhere and spread through space is called panspermia and was first proposed in 1903. Recent discoveries of Martian meteorites that have reached Earth raise the possibility that bacterial spores could have hitched a ride on these rocks (New Scientist, 15 January 2000, p 19). Meteorites taking a direct route would make it from Mars to Earth in just a few years -- too short a time to experience much damage from deadly cosmic rays.

New State of Matter Made - (Nature - January 3, 2002)
Physicists in Germany have made a new type of matter by trapping globules of an unusual liquid in a regular array of dimples. They call their creation a patterned fluid. Simply trapping a normal fluid wouldn't transform it - water in the wells of an egg carton is still water. Immanuel Bloch of the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, and coworkers worked with something far more bizarre: a quantum liquid.

Tuning in to Einstein - (USNews - January 14, 2002)
At the Department of Energy's sprawling Hanford site in south-central Washington are two giant, laser-packed tuning forks that, after seven years of construction, are nearly set to monitor the most violent events in the universe: stars colliding, merging, collapsing, and exploding, and even the big bang itself.

GENETIC/HEALTH TECHNOLOGY

Gene Responsible For Fat Cell Development Discovered - (UniSci - January 3, 2002)
Obesity affects approximately 1 in 4 adults and 1 in 5 children in the United States. As the epidemic of obesity continues to grow, so does the research effort aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms of fat development. Now, scientists have made a significant advance towards this goal: independent scientific research groups from Harvard Medical School and from Pfizer have discovered a critical gene responsible for fat cell development.

The Word Made Flesh - (Guardian Unlimited - December 27, 2001)
This has been the year the human genome was announced, all but a few last details. Today we can read human and ape genetic legacies. In 50 years, we could resurrect the past. The chimpanzee genome will be sequenced in a fraction of the time taken for the human genome, which it closely resembles. The distinguished molecular biologist Sydney Brenner has made the startling suggestion that a sophisticated comparison of the two might then enable us to reconstruct the genome of the common ancestor that we share, the so-called missing link, which lived in Africa about six million years ago.

A MAMMOTH UNDERTAKING - (Salon.com - January 3, 2002)
In his new book "Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant," Richard Stone, 35, a London-based editor for Science Magazine, goes mammoth hunting in Siberia with the researchers and dreamers who want not only to raise but to revive the Ice Age beast. Turning a frozen mammoth corpse (which exists) into a mammoth clone hasn't happened yet, and some scientists doubt that it ever will. But Stone argues the mammoth is just the most high-profile of the extinct and endangered creatures that may make a comeback thanks to cloning. This is not just Hollywood talking; these scientists are serious - and sooner than you might think.

Dolly's Arthritis Sparks Cloning Row - (BBC News - January 4, 2002)
Animal rights campaigners are calling for stricter controls on cloning following the news that Dolly the sheep (now five and half years old) has arthritis in her left hind leg. There are fears that the condition may have arisen because of genetic defects caused by the cloning process. Unfortunately the article does not tell us at what age sheep are typically susceptible to arthritis.

'LIVING BANDAGES' FOR WOUNDS - (BBC News - January 10, 2002)
Researchers have developed a "living bandage", coated with a patient's own cells, which could mend wounds which cannot otherwise be treated. Pressure sores, circulation problems and diseases such as diabetes can all lead to wounds which refuse to heal. But researchers from Sheffield, UK, have produced the "biological bandage", inspired by a technique used in the production of drinks cartons.

Biotech Crop Plantings Jump 20 Percent - (Yahoo News - January 10, 2002)
Global plantings of genetically engineered crops jumped nearly 20 percent last year despite resistance of consumers in Europe and elsewhere, according to a group that promotes use of the technology in poor countries. The United States and Argentina, where biotech soybeans are popular with farmers, accounted for 90 percent of the world's biotech acreage last year and most of the growth from 2000. But the report said China's farmers tripled their use of genetically engineered cotton to 3.7 million acres last year, nearly a third of their total crop.

Caltech Team Finds Cheaper Gene-Transplant Method - (Reuters - January 10, 2002)
Nobel Prize-winning biologist David Baltimore and a team of researchers said on Thursday that they have found a new way to introduce foreign DNA into animals, such as mice, by using a crippled offshoot of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS in humans. In an experiment, the researchers were able to use the virus to deposit a jellyfish gene into single-cell mouse embryos. Most of the mice that were born from those embryos carried a special protein derived from jellyfish throughout their bodies that caused them to glow green under a fluorescent light, the scientists said.

FDA Gives OK for Net Monitor Device - (World Scientist - January 3, 2002)
The internet is changing the way doctors are able to monitor their patients with implanted heart defibrillators. The Food and Drug Administration has given Medtronic Inc. approval to market a new Internet-based network that connects patients' implanted defibrillators to their doctor's offices, the company announced. To use the system, a patient holds a "wand" over the device and downloads it over a telephone connection to Medtronic's network on the Internet.

RAPID CLIMATE CHANGE

Fuels Clean Up - (Nature - December 31, 2001)
Two new clean-up techniques may help to reduce the pollution from burning fossil fuels. Chemists in Germany have used a green solvent to remove sulphur from diesel, while biologists in the United States have bred bacteria that gobble up coal contaminants.

El Nino Weather May Be Returning - (Yahoo News - January 10, 2002)
Waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean are warming, a change that could mean a return of the El Nino, a climate phenomenon that can affect weather worldwide. The federal Climate Prediction Center, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said El Nino could occur by early spring, but any impact on the United States would be unlikely before late summer, continuing through fall and into next winter.

GLOBAL HEALTH CRISIS

Natural Viral Enzymes Do Battle Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria - (Scientific American - December 7, 2001)
Increasingly many bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotic treatment, presenting a serious public health threat. But new research reveals that these bacteria are often still vulnerable to natural enemies from within—namely an enzyme manufactured by viruses, or bacteriophages, found inside the organisms. Unlike traditional antibiotics, which attack bacteria that have already infected some cell, the enzymes do battle with bugs on the surface of mucous membranes.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

No Sharp Distinction Between Human and Machine Intellligence - (KurzweilAI.net - January 12, 2002)
"We're going to be placing intelligent machines in our own brains," Kurzweil said. "We're doing that already for Parkinson's patients and hearing disabilities. We're going to be introducing intelligent machines without surgery through the bloodstream that will make their way into the brain and augment human intelligence. So if you encounter somebody in 2030 or 2035, they're really [going to be] a hybrid of biological and non-biological intelligence."

TERRORISM

Using Multiple Mini-Sensors In Surveillance System - (UniSci - December 18, 2001)
Something moves, and what looks like a dime-sized pebble "wakes up" in a vast desert landscape. The pebble sends a signal to another small stone just 20 yards away. It too is awake. The node collects data from hundreds of similarly disguised wireless microelectromechanical (MEMS) sensors and relays it to an unmanned aircraft that pieces together the information to identify a tank. The above scenario could be a reality in as few as five years.

ENERGY REVOLUTION

Automakers Launch Fuel Cell Plan - (Reuters - January 9, 2002)
A new effort between the U.S. government and the Big Three automakers has been launched to make hydrogen-powered vehicles viable. But could take years if not decades to meet its goals, officials said on Wednesday. Environmentalists say the "Freedom CAR" program should not absolve automakers of the responsibility to raise the fuel economy of their current vehicles. The same companies who unveiled Freedom CAR have been fighting increases in federal mileage standards and have continued to shift more of their production into gas-thirsty trucks.

The Electra-Plane - (Aviation Tomorrow - no date)
Commercial and private interests are moving toward the development of a piloted general aviation aircraft powered by an electric motor that derives its electric current from fuel cells. The questions are which will be first and when the first flight will occur. Advanced Technology Products, a Worcester, Massachusetts, firm that makes battery packs used to start aircraft, has received a $100,000 grant from NASA for a study of how to design and mount a fuel cell-powered electric motor onto a small aircraft. At nearly the same time as the NASA grant was received by Advanced Technology Products, Boeing announced that it, too, wants to build and test an electrically powered demonstrator airplane at its new research center in Madrid, Spain.

NEW BATTERY A QUIET AUTO REVOLUTION - (MSNBC - December 18, 2001)
A move is afoot to start outfitting passenger automobiles with beefier 42-volt batteries starting next year. Not only will the big battery meet consumer gadget demands inside the car, it will change almost everything under the hood, too — promising at least a 10-percent fuel economy improvement, and perhaps much more. The 42-volt systems offer an intriguing mixture of increased fuel economy, reduced emissions, and consumer benefits. And unlike the futuristic full-electric car, the switch to 42-volt batteries involves relatively modest redesigns, meaning the cars are expected to hit the road in the U.S. during 2004. Japanese models are supposed to be released next year.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Light Beams Replace Wires To Speed Up Microchip Talk - (UniSci - January 3, 2002)
By using light beams in place of metal wires, engineers at The Johns Hopkins University have devised a cost-effective way to speed up the way microchips "talk" to each other. The method, created by a team in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, takes advantage of unusual characteristics associated with "silicon on sapphire" technology, a new way to manufacture microchips.

Pulsating 'Space Hairs' Could Help Small Satellites Dock With Their Mother Ship - (EurekAlert - December 31, 2001)
Beds of thousands of tiny pulsating artificial "hairs" can provide a precise method for steering small satellites to docking stations on larger vessels, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Washington. The technique is inspired by the small hairs, or cilia, that line the windpipe and keep it clear of mucus. It could come into wide use in future space missions as technicians begin to deploy swarms of “picosatellites” – spacecraft small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand – to do maintenance, repair and observation work for larger satellites or space stations, according to Karl Böhringer.

FCC Set to OK New Wireless System - (Los Angeles Times - January 4, 2002)
Federal regulators are on the verge of approving a breakthrough wireless technology. The technology, known as ultra-wideband, could provide very high-speed wireless Internet access and facilitate other wireless capabilities such as allowing consumers to track intruders with home radar, helping rescuers find earthquake victims and greatly improving collision-avoidance systems. More than a decade in the making, the versatile technology has been bitterly opposed by airlines and cell phone companies, which say it can cause interference with their communications systems.

NON-MILITARY STAELLITE VIEW EARTH - (BBC News - January 11, 2002)
A private satellite has started returning the most detailed freely-available pictures ever taken of our planet. Quickbird is the world's highest resolution commercial imaging satellite and its first images show details never before seen by a non-military satellite. The resolution is so good that you can even see the shadows of flags. Check out the photographs.

Biomimicry: Super Fly - (KurzweilAI.net - January 13, 2002)
Researchers are trying to replicate the incredibly accurate hearing mechanism of a rare fly -- the Ormia ochracea -- and use it to create everything from the world's most sophisticated hearing aid to tiny microphones. The incredibly accurate hearing mechanism of the Ormia ochracea's ears have evolved the ability to pinpoint the location of chirping crickets, thanks to its two eardrums. This technology will overcome the limits of in-ear hearing aids, which don't let you "focus" your listening by providing cues on the direction of sounds. A cluster of them dropped over enemy terrain would be able to detect the origin of sounds through triangulation and then wirelessly transmit the information back to a listening station.

Dial Up a Cheaper Haircut - (BBC News - January 4, 2002)
In the UK, you could be using your mobile phone to get a cheaper haircut. One salon chain is planning to distribute coupons for cut-price hair-cuts to mobile phones. The problem many face is that few people take kindly to being bombarded, or spammed, with adverts or messages they have not chosen to receive. Just how the salon is getting people's cell phone numbers is not addressed, but cell phone spam sounds like a distinct possibility.

NANOTECHNOLOGY

'Peapods' Filling Nanotubes Have Tunable Properties - (UniSci - January 4, 2002)
Scientists recently discovered that these nanoscopic peapods -- the latest class of nanomaterials created by filling the cores of single-wall nanotubes -- have tunable electronic properties. For shrinking circuits, nanotubes are the silicon of nanoelectronics, and the new findings could have far-reaching implications for the fabrication of single-molecule-based devices, such as diodes, transistors and memory elements.

NYU Scientists Advance Toward Nanorobots - (EurekAlert - January 2, 2002)
A team of New York University researchers has taken a major step in building a more robust, controllable machine from DNA, the genetic material of all living organisms. Constructed from synthetic DNA molecules, the device improves upon previously developed nano-scale DNA devices because it allows for better-controlled movement within larger DNA constructs. The researchers say that the new device may help build the foundation for the development of sophisticated machines at a molecular scale, ultimately evolving to the development of nano-robots that might some day build new molecules, computer circuits or fight infectious diseases.

World’s Smallest Microchain Drive Fabricated - (Sandia - January 14, 2002)
A microchain that closely resembles a bicycle chain — except that each link could rest comfortably atop a human hair — has been fabricated at the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories. Because a single microchain could rotate many drive shafts, the device would make it unnecessary to place multiple tiny microelectromechanical (MEMS) motors in close proximity. Usually, a separate driver powers each MEMS device.

Tiny Silicon Grains for Lasers on a Chip - (KurzweilAI.net - January 14, 2002)
Nanoscale silicon grains that emit laser light may in the future serve as the backbone of an optical computer network light years faster than today's Internet. Researchers are developing the ultra-bright 3-nanometer lasers made from silicon itself. So in theory they could easily be incorporated into silicon chips, replacing the less efficient wires used to communicate between components in a circuit. Since the nanoparticles have no known toxic effects in living tissues, the research team is focusing on biological applications for them, such as use as a tag attached to defective cells.

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A special thanks to Bernard Calil, Leo Kaye, KurzweilAI.net, Chris Lotspeich, Diane Petersen, John C. Petersen, and Jin Zhu, our contributors and to Suzanne Elusorr, who assembled the newsletter. If you see something we should know about, do send it along (mailto:johnp@arlingtoninstitute.org).

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