Monthly Archives: February 2009

A star on Earth…

Two Bell Labs associates, Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes are credited with the invention of the laser in the late 1950s, the feasibility of which was proposed by Einstein in 1919. The potential significance of that invention was emphasised in a BBC2 Horizon programme this week which examined the progress and future of nuclear fusion.

It was presented by Professor Brian Cox, a guy who wouldn’t look out of place in a Manchester alternative rock band, and a welcome new face to present complex scientific ideas.

nif-chamber1Amongst 4 significant fusion research projects is that of the National Ignition Facility in California which although 5 years behind schedule and way over budget is due for completion this year. Essentially it is the world’s largest laser, or rather 196 lasers all designed to fire on one spot. That spot is a fuel source which when ignited by the lasers will (it is believed) result in nuclear fusion and produce a mini star that will burn for a fraction of a second but emit energy 10-100 greater than that required to ignite it.
The other featured research projects were the Z Machine in New Mexico, the Kstar project in South Korea and JET project in Oxfordshire UK.

If nothing else, the programme brought home the scale of the challenge facing the world in addressing its exponential energy needs. A plain speaking, no nonsense US scientist explained the calculations behind the power we consume today and what would be required if every person on earth had some equality in the power they used to live their lives comfortably.

The maths showed clearly the efforts required with various energy sources to meet those needs. With wind power, for example, we would have to cover virtually our global landmass in turbines to meet such needs and we would have to start doing it today with no delay. Each second that passes takes us further from achieving the goal.

The upshot of this exercise was to illustrate that none of world’s current energy sources could provide anywhere near the future energy requirements of the world if we are to sustain our way of lives in the western world and enable those in the developing world to enjoy much better standards of living. Even nuclear fission would require us to be building many hundreds more reactors than are planned and again for us to be doing it right now not in 5, 10 or 20 years time.

The programme left its presenter and me in no doubt that fusion is the only conceivable answer right now to the world’s energy and global warming challenges and that with a concerted global effort and more support for the research done to date then it is achievable. It would certainly appear to be a case of ‘when’ not ‘if’.

The programme ended with the various fusion project leaders and observers giving their view on when fusion energy would flow into the world’s power grid. The most optimistic view was 2022 – almost in the timeframe of this blog but a more general consensus pushed it to 2030-35.

A turning point…

Another moment in history I remember well was the US election in which George W Bush became US president. I was visiting some of the main  Lucent offices in New Jersey (there were a lot of them) at the time and was in a hotel bar on the evening of the election result.

Of course you may remember that it turned into a complete non-event as the result was too close to call and resulted in a recount, some dodgy ballot papers in Florida and a legal battle before ‘W’ headed for the White House and Al Gore made an award winning film using a PowerPoint presentation.

Aside from his anger inducing rhetoric and ill-judged warmongering, ‘The Decider’ as Dubya liked to be known ‘Decided’ against some significant areas of scientific and medical research during his 8 years in charge largely it would seem due to a dangerous combination of ignorance and religious belief.

obamaBarack Obama’s arrival in the White House has been met with almost Messianic fervour in some quarters and ironically none more so than the scientific and medical communities who see a new golden age (versus the dark age the W years are already known as) before them as decisions made by the previous administration are reversed.

So – with a combination of political will and research organisations such as Bell Labs to call on I am indeed hopeful that some significant advances can be made in environmentally orientated research and development and hopefully less developments aimed at military purposes.

Moments in history…

911towersThey say that there are events that happen during your lifetime so momentous that you never forget where you were when you heard about them. For me, the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001 is undoubtedly the biggest one. Having visited Manhattan a number of times and those iconic buildings too, it was a staggering event to witness and made all the more poignant because I was working for Lucent at the time – a US organisation that had much of its heritage in New Jersey and many employees in New York state and the surrounding region.

When the news came through, I was with some colleagues at a coffee bar in the Lucent UK HQ getting an early afternoon drink. I remember us rushing back to our desks to access the online news sites which were struggling under the weight of demand but already showing early images of the first plane strike. As the events unfolded it became clear that friends and relatives of the company’s employees were caught up in it directly and that brought the impact and suffering closer to home.

I was reminded of the aftermath of that tragic day when visiting the Bell Labs website today looking for the background on the stories its parent organisation Alcatel-Lucent is making at the GSMA World Congress.

Bell Labs has a section on its site headed ‘Government Research’ which makes specific reference to military communications, homeland security and the intelligence agencies. Although I was only ever on the periphery of this research operation and its developments related to 3G, I have always followed its developments with interests as it has had a profound effect on our world historically (the transistor, lasers, solar cells, DSL, Comms Satellites, cellular networks) and will no doubt do so again.

In the weeks and months following 9/11 it emerged that Lucent engineers had been instrumental in supporting and rebuilding communications networks and rescue efforts around ground zero during and after the events and I was also aware of US Government contracts being awarded to the company for homeland security efforts. I left the company just before the 2nd Gulf War broke out in 2003 and it’s clear that Bell Labs research and development activities have been targeted towards military needs over the last 6 years as the US has waged unconventional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have relied increasingly on advanced technology to confront a persistent and determined enemy.

While my general belief is that the Iraq war, in particular, was ill-judged and generally badly executed there seemed little doubt that we would have to confront the Islamic fundamentalists somewhere, somehow as history shows the danger to society as a whole of ignoring such twisted beliefs. Besides the horrific consequences of war on many levels, a subsequent benefit is the advancement of technology and the positive impact that can have elsewhere in society.

One can only guess at the purpose of the long range, high resolution laser based radar research that it openly publicises on its website that continues a tradition of Bell Labs radar innovations used in warfare as far back as the World War 2. But the fact that the US has been battling an enemy adept at hiding in difficult terrain and disguising itself amongst civilians and has seemingly been increasingly successful at picking out individuals using unmanned drones, possibly illustrates how some of this development is being used.

Green shoots…

A company I very much enjoyed working for was Lucent Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent). I was there when the tech bubble burst back in 2000 and it was both a challenging and exciting time for the company. I was privileged to work in the UK headquartered 3G mobile networks division where much of the research, development and promotion of advanced mobile technology was undertaken.

As I mentioned earlier, I have followed the progress of companies and technology I was involved in avidly since and it is this period in February each year that one of the biggest mobile events in the world takes place – the GSM Association’s World Congress in Barcelona (which was the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes when I attended with Lucent).

Back in the early years of this decade, we were imagining what the latest mobile technology and devices would mean for consumers and one of my projects was to use new media technologies to help bring this to life at events like 3GSM World Congress.

iphone20appleWhen it comes to devices and consumer services this is definitely an example of the ‘overestimate/underestimate’ quote I mentioned in an early post. At the outset of 3rd Generation mobile technologies we were undoubtedly over-estimating what would happen in the short term – hence the immense sums the operators were prepared to pay for 3G licences. But seven years on, devices like the iphone have revolutionised how we are thinking about mobile devices and making the mobile web a much more compelling experience.

As far as announcements from this year’s Congress were concerned however, my eye was drawn not to the myriad of new ‘touchscreen’ devices but to a news release from Alcatel-Lucent about significant reductions in base station power consumption that they are achieving with software upgrades. This means that some half a million base stations worldwide can achieve up to 27% power reduction through software controls that manage the hardware more efficiently.

When I worked for Lucent, it was never one for grandiose statements and I always admired its pragmatic views on how the 3rd generation technology would evolve (ie driven by high speed data needs of businesses over consumers) rather than fueling the hype about consumer related developments that simply wouldn’t deliver a return on investment for operators. It is very, very difficult to predict how and where consumers might use new technology as illustrated by the phenomenal growth of something as simple as SMS (text messaging).

So when organisations like Alcatel-Lucent start publicising their energy saving efforts above all else, that optimistic-pessimism meter starts wavering to the optimistic side.

After all, we can all do our bit to be more conscious about the ways we charge our mobile devices but the really significant savings come from improving those extremely power hungry networks.

The Titanic Principle…

I can’t remember when or where I heard the following, and haven’t managed to find a reference to it even ‘by the power of Google’, but I seem to recall the Titanic Principle being…

‘The scale of the failure is in inverse proportion to the belief that it cannot fail’

Well we are certainly seeing that principle playing out in our financial systems at the moment but are we likely to see it with regard to our world and mankind as a whole?

The points I’ve covered in posts so far bring to mind not just this ‘principle’ but also James Cameron’s film Titanic.

You may remember the leisurely build up and scene setting to the iceberg encounter, then the hitting of the iceberg itself – which apart from some shuddering in the handrails above deck seems pretty non-eventful. You may remember people on deck playing football with chunks of ice and continuing on as normal.

Of course, cut to the lower decks and all hell is breaking loose as compartment after compartment starts to flood and people die.

You get a sense from the film though that things are continuing pretty much as normal for quite some period of time on the upper decks while the ship is slowly sinking and heading for an inevitable demise.

When realisation starts to sink in (excuse the pun) they even try to keep the poorer, lower class people off of the upper decks as they start to fill the lifeboats. But as panic starts to set-in and people are determined to save themselves, they break through the barriers and crowd the upper decks.

titanicIt’s at this point in the film that the desperation becomes really apparent as it’s clear there aren’t enough lifeboats. Some become resigned to their fate and face it with dignity – others will try and do all they can to survive. But the ship doesn’t just disappear gracefully under the calm sea and the remaining passengers slip quietly into the freezing waters – as it goes down by the bow, the passengers move to higher ground which gets ever more precarious. Then the ship breaks in two, with the stern crashing back to a horizontal position before upending to the vertical and finally plunging beneath the surface. All pretty tumultuous to those still on board and, one imagines, those watching from the relative safety of their lifeboats.

The more I read observations and predictions for this century, the more I think of this Titanic analogy. We hit the iceberg a while back, the party feels like it’s over on a number of levels and the freak weather events and loss of life we have seen with increasing regularity in recent years (hurricanes Katrina etc, wildfires, the 2003 heatwave, extreme flooding) are those scenes below decks as individuals get picked off one by one.

So where will be in 2020? I think perhaps the scenes where those on the lower decks are trying to make their way up top (read those whose livelihoods and survival have been impacted by more heatwaves, droughts, fires, famine making their way to the upper latitudes) and us already in those latitudes trying to safeguard our position and considering finding a lifeboat of some sort and jumping ship if necessary.