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.

Optimistic Pessimism…

In a subsequent interview with James Lovelock I have read recently, he describes himself as an ‘Optimistic Pessimist’ – this is based largely on his observations on how the human population react in times of crisis and his belief that we can actually be happier than when dealing with long periods of peace and prosperity.

I am also reminded of my socio/economic history studies and the predictions of Thomas Malthus about population growth out-stripping food supply, which did not come to fruition in the timescales he was proposing.

World population has soared to numbers Malthus probably could not have conceived of thanks to modern agriculture, with its complex machinery, immense transport infrastructure and fertilizers.

But wait…machinery, transport, fertilizers on the scale we use them today would not be possible without an abundant supply of cheap fossil fuels. And it was this, more than any other factor, that Malthus could not predict in his observations.

So are we heading for a double whammy here? Global temperature rises of at least 2oC during this century that render massive areas of land uninhabitable, combined with an increasing decline in fossil fuel availability that makes modern agriculture too expensive to sustain at its current levels?

Optimistic forecasts on that ‘peak oil’ date (the point at which reserves decline) put it at 2020. This is followed by charts that indicate oil availability falling back within 90 years to levels seen at the beginning of the last century – when cars had barely been invented.

The bigger picture…

Assuming we make it to 2020, what sort of world will it be? Well I’ve made it through 4 decades pretty unscathed so far and while I can still vaguely remember talk of the ‘4 minute warning’, fall-out shelters and nuclear apocalypse as a child, the threat of such an horrific end to mankind certainly seemed to have retreated during the course of my life.

gaiaBut then, last weekend I read a very stark article in the Times by James Lovelock, a respected scientist now approaching his nineties and the man who formulated the Gaia hypothesis, which proposes that the world on which we live can be thought of as a single organism that takes action to protect itself from harm and repair itself where needed.

Maybe at his age, Mr Lovelock is understandably contemplating the end of his own existence and, despite the advances in medical science, is unlikely to see any of his prophecies for this century come to fruition. But reading his words I couldn’t help feel that he will indeed be heading off to a better place than the one he will be leaving behind.

While estimates and projections for the potentially devastating impact of global warming usually stretch out to the end of this century and beyond, James Lovelock’s hypothesis has Mother Earth ridding itself of much of the human population a lot quicker. In essence he is saying that as us, and the animals we breed to support and sustain us, account for the majority of greenhouse gas production in the world then Gaia will act to reduce our numbers to a sustainable level in order to ensure the Earth’s survival. Sustainable in Mr Lovelock’s assessment means losing 90% of the current human population by the end of the century.

So how will this come about? Primarily because the projected rises in global temperatures will mean that very little of our landmass will be habitable and, more importantly, be able to provide the food we need.

He observes that the events we see in terms of freak weather, melting icecaps, rising sea levels and pressures on resources illustrate that the situation is already unstoppable and the majority of ‘green’ initiatives are deeply flawed and possibly counter-productive in the longer term. He is a long-term advocate of nuclear power as the only real sustainable and practical source of energy for a power hungry world.

Judging by James Lovelock’s timeline, we will be seeing serious and undeniable consequences of global warming by 2020, with the UK increasingly becoming a haven from relentlessly rising temperatures and their devastating effects.