No More Flooding With Permeable Pavement

Very cool solution to flash flooding called Topmix Permeable by Tarmac (a U.K. sustainable building materials company). 

The concrete literally drinks up hundreds of gallons of water. 

Where the heck does all the water go? 

If you’re walking, no more soggy shoes and pant’s bottoms. 

If your driving, even more important is the potential life-saving element for about 75 people that die in vehicles every year when they try get caught in the vehicles in flash flood conditions. 

Also, many potential accidents, injuries, and deaths could be averted by people whose car’s go hydroplaning on wet road surfaces.

Finally, think how transportation would be faster and more efficient (with less traffic) from better road conditions with innovations like this.

With this new material on our roads and some added heat elements to prevent snow and ice, we got some darn good road-safety going on. 😉

A SCIF Can Be Yours

A SCIF can be yours…if the wallpaper is right.

According to PC Magazine, a SCIF (Sensitive Compartment Information Facility) is a secure area where classified information can be discussed and handled. A SCIF is built to prevent information from leaking, being intercepted and compromised.

Now, your business or home office can have its own SCIF-type protection without the use of more expensive Faraday cage electromagnetic mesh (e.g. chain-link) conductive shielding or Japanese anti-Wi-Fi paint that blocks all frequencies.

BusinessWeek (31 January 2013) reports on a new wallpaper called MetaPaper that blocks Wi-Fi signals and helps “improve data security and network speeds.”
The Wi-Fi shielding wallpaper is developed by the French pulp and paper institute, Center Technique du Papier (CTP).

MetaPaper is a snowflake pattern wallpaper “printed in conductive metallic ink” that “blocks Wi-Fi signals, while still allowing FM radio and emergency frequencies to pass through.”

Its filtering is 99% effective (which may not be good enough for handling state secrets, but could be terrific for safeguarding most information) and sells for $12 per square meter.

Aside from information security, additional benefits of MetaPaper is to protect people’s health in terms of attenuating electromagnetic waves that cause genetic damage and cancer as well as socially to create quiet space, Wi-Fi free zones, such as in hospitals and movie theaters.

Here is a link to a presentation on MetaPaper’s development and benefits. 😉

Hiding Yourself In Plain Sight

I remember hearing that sometimes the best way to hide is in plain sight–just where no one would think to look.

Now there is a new clothing line being introduced by Adam Harvey for Stealth Wear that hides you using your own clothes.

According to Slate (11 January 2013), the clothing line is envisioned to have:

– Anti-drone hoodies and scarfs: These will be made with special metalized material that can shield you from things like drone thermal imaging technology, and I would imagine could also help against facial recognition along the lines of a prior project CVDazzle that uses face-painting and hair styling for concealment.

– XX-shirts: These cover your upper body and can shield you from x-rays. I wonder how this will impact TSA scanning at airports?

– Pocket-blocks: A cell phone pouch made from “signal attenuating material” to prevent tracking and interception.

Don’t confuse this stealth wear clothing line with a Canadian company called StealthWear that makes a different type of protective clothing–padding for jackets, forearms, shoulders, torso, and so on for those working in “aggressive educational environments.”

The new Stealth Wear, however, is a concept for a high-tech fashion line designed to provide counter surveillance and more personal privacy–in this sense, it’s really the anti Big Brother.

With more and more cameras, imaging machines, facial recognition, drones, and other surveillance tools out there–I suppose it is not surprising to see a cultural backlash in terms of everyday surveillance protection clothing coming to the fore. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

The Materiality of Super Strength Graphene

Scientific researchers in Britain, Norway and the U.S. are bringing us a major breakthrough in material science—by developing a “super strength” substance called graphene.

According to the Guardian (26 December 2012), graphene has “unmatched electrical and physical properties.” It’s made of an “atom-thick sheet of carbon molecules, arranged in a honeycomb lattice,” and promises to revolutionize telecommunications, electronics, energy industries, not to mention the untold applications for the military.

– Conductivity:  Transmits electricity a million times better than copper
– Strength: The strongest material known to humankind, 200 times that of steel (Sciencebuzz)
– Transparency & Flexibility:  So thin that light comes through it; more stretchable than any known conductor of electricity

Just a few of the amazing uses graphene will make possible (some of these from MarketOracle):

– Home windows that are also solar panels—clear off that roof and yard
– TV in your windows and mirrors—think you have information overload now?
– Thinner, lighter, and wrappable LED touch screens around your wrists—everyone can have Dick Tracy style
– Medical implants and organ replacements that can “last disease-free for a hundred years”—giving you that much more time to be a helicopter parent
– Vastly more powerful voice, video and data and palm-size computers—giving the average person the “power of 10,000 mainframes”
– Both larger and lighter satellites and space vehicles—imagine a skyscraper-size vehicle weighing less than your “patio barbecue grill”!
– Tougher and faster tanks and armored personnel carriers with the plus of an invisibility cloak—even “Harry Potter” would be jealous

The potential is truly amazing, so whomever thinks that the best technology is behind us, better think again. Better yet, soon they’ll be able to get a graphene brain implant to help them realize what they’ve been missing. 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to University of Maryland)

Technology Forecast 2013

I am an avid follower of everything technology and trends, but am tired of hearing about cloud, mobile, and social computing.

It’s time to get over it with the agenda of the past and get on with it with the future of technology.

In the attached graph is my Technology Forecast 2013, and here is where I see us going forward:

1) Service Provision–Cost-cutting and consolidation into the cloud is a wonderful idea and it has had it’s time, but the future will follow consumer products, where one flavor does not fit all, and we need to have globalization with a local flavor to provide for distinct customer requirements and service differentiators, as well as classified, proprietary and private systems and information.

2) Service Delivery–Mobile is here and the iPhone is supreme, but the future belongs to those that deliver services not only to remote devices, but in wearable, implantable, and even human augmentation.

3) Human Interaction–Social computing epitomized by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more is a cool way in interact with others virtually, but wall posts, email, and chats are getting cliche–next up conjoining with others with capabilities such as telepathic communication, mind melding collaboration, and even virtual sex for the outlandish.

4) Robotics and Artificial Intelligence–With something like 10,000 drones flying the friendly and not-so friendly skies and even drones that autonomously land on aircraft carriers, the next robot is coming to the ground near you–drones will become (an)droids and will eventually have the AI to become part of our everyday society.

5) Service Assurance–Enough playing defense with a sprinkling of offense against our worst enemies–it’s past time to move from trying to stop-gap infiltrators and do damage control once we’ve been robbed blind, and instead move to a hunter-killer mentality and capability–the price of being a bad boy on the Internet goes way up and happens in realtime.

6) Data Analytics–Big data isn’t a solution, it’s the problem. The solution is not snapshot pretty graphics, but realtime augmented reality–where data is ingrained in everything and transparent realtime–and this becomes part of our moment-by-moment decision processes.

7) Biotechnology–Biometrics sounds real cool–and you get a free palm reading at the same time, but the real game changer here is not reading people’s bio signatures, but in creating new ones–with not only medical cures, but also new bio-technological capabilities.

8) Nanotechnology–Still emerging, quantum mechanics is helping us delve into the mysteries of the universe, with applications for new and advanced materials, but the new buzzword will be nano-dust, where atomic and molecular building blocks can be used on-the-fly to build anything, be anywhere, and then recycled into the next use.

Overall, I see us moving from mass produced, point-to-point solutions to more integrated end-to-end solutions that fit individual needs–whether through continued combinations of hardware, software, and services, man-machine interfaces/integration, and building blocks that can be shaped and reused again and again.

From my perspective, there a seeming lull in innovation, but the next big leap is around the corner.

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)

I Hate Paper

Paper has been around for approximately two thousand years, since it’s invention in China, and it has served as the medium of choice for recording and sharing information ever since.

However, enter the age of information technology and we are now able to capture, process, and store far more information, quicker, cheaper, and more efficiently than we ever could with paper.

Combine that with the environmental impact and the need to conserve, and we have numerous federal laws calling for the reduction or elimination of paper, to the extent practical.

1) The Paperwork Reduction Act (1980) calls for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to regulate collection of information and establish information policies to reduce the paper handled by the government.

2) The Government Paperwork Elimination Act (1998) mandates the use of electronic forms, filings, and signatures for official business with the public.

3) E-Government Act (2002) requires use of the Internet to improve citizen access to information and services.

All three are a recognition of the need to move from costly paper-based processes and the management of maintenance of mountains of paper records to instead leverage information technology to re-engineer and improve the way we perform information management.

It’s funny, but for me it’s almost become a personal crusade to make better use of information technology to perform our mission and business of government more effectively, and I personally keep as little paper records, as possible–instead choosing to manage predominantly online–and it’s great.

Aside from having a cleaner office–no paper files, I enjoy all the benefits of electronic filing, search, and the ability to quickly share files with others in the office without having to rummage through a stack of papers 3 feet deep!

Working in some areas that are still paper intensive for case management and so on, I have taken on the mantra, which I frequency cite of “I hate paper!”

No, I don’t really hate it, but in order to change decades old manual and paper intensive processes, we need to exaggerate a little and tell ourselves and other we hate it, so we can help change the inefficient and costly status quo.

You can only imagine how surprised I was to read in The Atlantic (20 April 2012)–that “Paper: [Is] The Material of the Future.”

Essentially, the article touts the new developments with paper using nanotechnology to make it water-proof (although you can still write on it), magnetic, fluorescent, and even anti-bacterial.

Imagine paper that you can stick to your file cabinet, spill coffee on, light up the room with, and even keep you from getting sick–yes, that’s fairly impressive!

However, while these new features are wonderful indeed and will increase the usability of paper as well as improve records management of them, I do not want to see us get complacent with reducing our use of paper and making better use of technology.

Even with these cool nano-tech improvements to paper coming our way, I am still going to say, “I hate paper!”

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Earthworm)

Pouch, Protect, and (Disa)ppear

This video from Monosolis a little hokey on the inspiring and teamwork pieces, but I think they are definitely on to something with their product innovation for soluble, biodegradable, (and even flavorable) packaging films.

Using the best of material science, they are changing the dirty game of use and dispose into use and dissolve and in some cases use and eat!

The film wrap can be used for agricultural and household goods–individually wrapped portions of food, dissolvable laundry bags for infection control, or packaging and protecting any molded products.

According to Just Live Greener, in the U.S. alone, “single-use items consume nearly 100,000 tons of plastic and 800,000 tons of tree pulp, and will still be in our landflill 300 years from now.”

If we can package, protect, and keep sanitized our food, clothes, and “things,” and do it in a way that is safe for the environment, we have a double-win!

Monosol has some cool ideas with packaging food in the soluble films and adding nutrients and flavoring to wrapping, so a wrapper is not just a wrapper, but just another element of the food itself.

According to fast Company, Monolsol’s earning topped $100M last year, and that this could be just the tip of the packaged iceberg.

A disappearing packaging wrapper that is not only soluble, but eatable–I say pass the salt, please. 😉