Throughout his entire campaign, new President-elect Donald Trump talked repeatedly about the need to defend America's infrastructure against cyber warfare. He insisted that America was being hacked constantly, that we were weak and being exploited by foreign governments, and he would =spend a lot of money to reduce the risk of that continuing to happen.
But what is the real risk of cyber warfare? The truth is that the fear of cyber threats isn't nearly as large for the government and their secured compounds and infrastructure as it should be for normal, everyday Americans.
2016 saw the number of connected devices increase to 6.8 billion, a 30% increase over 2016. This is a massive, exponentially growing number of ways to make our private information and subsequently our entire lives vulnerable. Millions of cyber attacks are launched daily by criminals and hackers attempting to get into your Facebook account, your bank account, or, even worse, your phone.
What's truly terrifying about the everyday risk of these attacks is that they're so preventable, yet so many do nothing to fight against them. Not to victim blame, but a little bit of security against a common criminal and you're a lot better off to not get hugely inconvenienced.
First, make sure you have two-factor authentication running on every website that allows you to have it. This means that when you try to log onto a site with your username and password, it will also do something like shoot you a text with a code to enter. This means that even the craftiest of hackers cannot get into your account, because they'd have to get access to your phone first.
Second, ensure that you aren't using the same password on different websites. Many websites are compromised by criminals that sell the username and password combinations on the black market to the highest bidder. You want to make sure that you're changing your passwords somewhat regularly, but also that they are unique to that particular site.
These tips should help you guard against the real threats that are out there on the internet. We should be focused less on terrorists hitting our power plants and more on giving ourselves a little personal peace of mind.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Monday, November 21, 2016
Virtual Reality and the Chase
2016 has been the year of virtual reality, and as the holiday season approaches and we begin to look back and reflect on the year, it's a good time to evaluate the promise of VR and whether we've anywhere near approached it.
The year saw the release of three major headsets in the VR market: the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive and the brand new PlayStation VR.
While the first two are headsets specifically made for beefy, gamer-ready desktop PCs, the PlayStation VR is a headset made exclusively to connect to Sony's PlayStation 4. This means it specifically is skewed towards gamers and games, and less towards the social experiments, video watching experiences and early access playgrounds of the more expensive headsets.
This is a double-edged sword, as while games are great, focusing towards them exclusively keeps you limited in scope. Every game developer seems to be making a VR demo for the PS VR, but not too many are actually making full game experiences. Many people seem excited to play a Final Fantasy XV demo on the PlayStation, but how many are going to play a brand new, original title made for such a headset?
While the PS VR specializes, the Rift and the Vive are, even months after their release, blank slates. Tiltbrush VR allows creative and non-creative users alike to paint the skies around them with color and grace. Rec Room allows VR owners to come together and play games in a social environment like darts and ping pong. Adrift is a beautiful, incredible space adventure about the fearfulness of actually floating along in zero gravity amidst a station that is collapsing quickly.
At the end of the day, all these headsets are chasing something. They're looking for new kinds of experiences that people haven't had yet, that will make people crave more. The sort of blockbuster hit like Super Mario Bros. or Microsoft Word that opens eyes to the prospect of the platform and creates a need that sells more headsets and inspires more of those same experiences.
Whether this will happen remains to be seen. But in the meantime, the chase is fun to follow.
The year saw the release of three major headsets in the VR market: the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive and the brand new PlayStation VR.
While the first two are headsets specifically made for beefy, gamer-ready desktop PCs, the PlayStation VR is a headset made exclusively to connect to Sony's PlayStation 4. This means it specifically is skewed towards gamers and games, and less towards the social experiments, video watching experiences and early access playgrounds of the more expensive headsets.
This is a double-edged sword, as while games are great, focusing towards them exclusively keeps you limited in scope. Every game developer seems to be making a VR demo for the PS VR, but not too many are actually making full game experiences. Many people seem excited to play a Final Fantasy XV demo on the PlayStation, but how many are going to play a brand new, original title made for such a headset?
While the PS VR specializes, the Rift and the Vive are, even months after their release, blank slates. Tiltbrush VR allows creative and non-creative users alike to paint the skies around them with color and grace. Rec Room allows VR owners to come together and play games in a social environment like darts and ping pong. Adrift is a beautiful, incredible space adventure about the fearfulness of actually floating along in zero gravity amidst a station that is collapsing quickly.
At the end of the day, all these headsets are chasing something. They're looking for new kinds of experiences that people haven't had yet, that will make people crave more. The sort of blockbuster hit like Super Mario Bros. or Microsoft Word that opens eyes to the prospect of the platform and creates a need that sells more headsets and inspires more of those same experiences.
Whether this will happen remains to be seen. But in the meantime, the chase is fun to follow.
The Microsoft Surface Studio
At the October 26th Surface event, Microsoft announced quite a few new products and accessories from their first-party line of elite computing devices. While Microsoft has always been in the software market with Windows, it wasn't until the past few years that they've become a behemoth in the hardware market as well.
One of the biggest announcements at this particular press conference, though, was the Microsoft Surface Studio PC, an all-in-one computer, the first one ever released by the company.
The heart of the Surface Studio is a vision: get a beautiful, colorful 28" display in front of you and make the rest of it as minimal as possible. Two simple metal spokes that allow you to pivot the screen at any angle and a stylus pen to draw on it like a canvas. A wireless keyboard and mouse with the same color scheme as the computer itself. A powerful computer that you won't want to walk away from.
The Surface Studio is yet another example of the flexibility of the PC market. A machine made for creative professionals, it really shows you the extreme ideal of what a computer could be for an architect or an artist.
Microsoft is showing up to do what Apple won't. The most beautiful screen on the market. A gigantic touchscreen with a bundled pen. A device to compete with an illustrator's Wacom Cintiq in the exact same price range. In terms of progress, I'd say Microsoft is showing quite a bit of competence.
One of the biggest announcements at this particular press conference, though, was the Microsoft Surface Studio PC, an all-in-one computer, the first one ever released by the company.
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| The Surface Studio / Courtesy of Microsoft |
The Surface Studio is yet another example of the flexibility of the PC market. A machine made for creative professionals, it really shows you the extreme ideal of what a computer could be for an architect or an artist.
Microsoft is showing up to do what Apple won't. The most beautiful screen on the market. A gigantic touchscreen with a bundled pen. A device to compete with an illustrator's Wacom Cintiq in the exact same price range. In terms of progress, I'd say Microsoft is showing quite a bit of competence.
What is Space-Based Solar Power?
Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP) is one of the most exciting promises of our near-future. It directly and supremely harnesses the eternal power of the sun by launching satellites with large panels out beyond the Earth's atmosphere and then beaming the full energy of sun rays down to the surface.
It sounds insane, I know. Absolutely crazy. But it's actually a lot closer than most think!
The basic premise of the SBSP concept is that the sun shines brighter and with more energy outside Earth's geosynchronous orbit than anywhere within or under the Earth's atmosphere.
The only reason that we have a breathable planet at all is because of immense gases that cling to the surface of the Earth. These gases also dilute the sun's energy in order to prevent active radiation damage like most plant and animal life would encounter in the vast emptiness of space.
When you put solar panels in space, whether on a satellite or on a cosmic body with no atmosphere then you can capture a much stronger and concentrated form of energy at a much higher rate than you can with even the best panels here on Earth.
As we reach towards the future, what is now currently a pipe-dream being researched by national space programs will eventually turn into a massively lucrative investment for the private sector. Coal, oil and natural gas will be forgotten about entirely as we look to the stars to solve many of humanity's biggest problems.
It sounds insane, I know. Absolutely crazy. But it's actually a lot closer than most think!
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| Concept Illustration of Suntower / Public Domain by NASA |
The basic premise of the SBSP concept is that the sun shines brighter and with more energy outside Earth's geosynchronous orbit than anywhere within or under the Earth's atmosphere.
The only reason that we have a breathable planet at all is because of immense gases that cling to the surface of the Earth. These gases also dilute the sun's energy in order to prevent active radiation damage like most plant and animal life would encounter in the vast emptiness of space.
When you put solar panels in space, whether on a satellite or on a cosmic body with no atmosphere then you can capture a much stronger and concentrated form of energy at a much higher rate than you can with even the best panels here on Earth.
As we reach towards the future, what is now currently a pipe-dream being researched by national space programs will eventually turn into a massively lucrative investment for the private sector. Coal, oil and natural gas will be forgotten about entirely as we look to the stars to solve many of humanity's biggest problems.
Donald Trump on Encryption
Many have forgotten the topic since it was in the news many months ago in early 2016, but encryption was at one point a controversial topic in the American news cycle.
Back in February, the FBI asked Apple, Inc to create a version of its iPhone operating system that would allow the investigators to hack their way into the iPhone 5C of the San Bernardino shooter. Apple refused, saying that the privacy of all of their customers is of paramount interest to them, and they were not going to aid the FBI in creating a precedent where they help law enforcement with anyone they want to get into the phone of.
This turned into a national conversation and debate over encryption, which reached critical mass in the following months. Encryption can be loosely defined in the context of consumer electronics as the process of encoding messages or information in such a way that only authorized parties can read it. In this sense, it means that it's almost impossible to get into someone's locked iPhone unless you have the encryption key (which only Apple has) or you know the password to get into it. Even law enforcement is helpless to get into a well-secured locked iPhone.
Later that February, this same debate became a political issue in the presidential primary. The new President-elect Donald Trump, then just contending for the Republican nomination, made a big splash when he came out against Apple and said he would boycott Apple devices if they didn't give the 'info' to the FBI.
Just like other parts of the campaign, he made a lot of headlines and received a lot of positive press for this stance, despite how popular of a brand Apple is.
What is worrying about this, though, is that encryption is actually a really important technology that is incredibly helpful for the tech community overall. Encryption is the only way we can keep classified information out of foreign hands as a nation. It's the only way we can have secure digital communications, ensuring the same privacy we have when we talk in person with one another.
The fact that our new President-elect was willing to roll over on privacy so easily just a matter of months ago as part of a publicity stunt is very concerning and we need to remain vigilant to show our public officials, especially our soon-to-be commander-in-chief, that privacy is not something to be violated at the first sign of inconvenience for the government.
Back in February, the FBI asked Apple, Inc to create a version of its iPhone operating system that would allow the investigators to hack their way into the iPhone 5C of the San Bernardino shooter. Apple refused, saying that the privacy of all of their customers is of paramount interest to them, and they were not going to aid the FBI in creating a precedent where they help law enforcement with anyone they want to get into the phone of.
This turned into a national conversation and debate over encryption, which reached critical mass in the following months. Encryption can be loosely defined in the context of consumer electronics as the process of encoding messages or information in such a way that only authorized parties can read it. In this sense, it means that it's almost impossible to get into someone's locked iPhone unless you have the encryption key (which only Apple has) or you know the password to get into it. Even law enforcement is helpless to get into a well-secured locked iPhone.
Later that February, this same debate became a political issue in the presidential primary. The new President-elect Donald Trump, then just contending for the Republican nomination, made a big splash when he came out against Apple and said he would boycott Apple devices if they didn't give the 'info' to the FBI.
I use both iPhone & Samsung. If Apple doesn't give info to authorities on the terrorists I'll only be using Samsung until they give info.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2016
Just like other parts of the campaign, he made a lot of headlines and received a lot of positive press for this stance, despite how popular of a brand Apple is.
What is worrying about this, though, is that encryption is actually a really important technology that is incredibly helpful for the tech community overall. Encryption is the only way we can keep classified information out of foreign hands as a nation. It's the only way we can have secure digital communications, ensuring the same privacy we have when we talk in person with one another.
The fact that our new President-elect was willing to roll over on privacy so easily just a matter of months ago as part of a publicity stunt is very concerning and we need to remain vigilant to show our public officials, especially our soon-to-be commander-in-chief, that privacy is not something to be violated at the first sign of inconvenience for the government.
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Donald Trump and Net Neutrality
When it comes to digital issues and policy, tech enthusiasts' worst fears have come true. The people of the United States have elected Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump, our newly minted President-elect, is a very controversial figure in the tech community. He often shows a complete disregard for regulatory principles in this sector. Instead of defending net neutrality and its implications, Trump seems more worried about entirely different priorities like the security of the conservative media and pleasing lobbyists.
Nowhere is this more clear than in his party's overall position on net neutrality. According to Ars Technica:
"Republicans in Congress have already proposed a variety of bills that limit the FCC’s regulatory authority, eliminate net neutrality rules, or replace the existing ones with rules that are less strict."
So what is this net neutrality that Republicans seem to hate so much? It's the basis of the entire internet as we know it.
The internet, as provided to homes, workplaces and government buildings by internet service providers, moves freely through all pipes and cables the same. This means that Wikipedia loads just as quickly as Facebook, and the Drudge Report loads just as quickly as Vox. As fast as those servers can get the data to you, nothing slows it down or helps it speed up. All traffic is treated the same.
Many companies, specifically internet service providers, want this to change to open up a completely new avenue of control and, thus, revenue. This would mean Netflix would have to pay Time Warner Cable huge sums of money for it to load to Time Warner Cable customers as fast as it does now.
This is a giant problem, mostly due to how much the consumer loses in this scenario. In a world without net neutrality, most of the services that we love today could not have come into being. Facebook never would've come about if it had to pay huge sums of money to load well. Google started as a curiosity by Stanford students; do you think they could've gotten the capital needed to compete right off the bat? No.
Without an open playing field, we lose out on awesome products and services that benefit our life. It's as simple as that, and no amount of moneymaking by big corporations should make the consumer feel better about that. It's our job to let Donald Trump know that he shouldn't weaken the FCC and he should defend what is right in regards to what the majority of people want for the future of the internet.
Mr. Trump, our newly minted President-elect, is a very controversial figure in the tech community. He often shows a complete disregard for regulatory principles in this sector. Instead of defending net neutrality and its implications, Trump seems more worried about entirely different priorities like the security of the conservative media and pleasing lobbyists.
Nowhere is this more clear than in his party's overall position on net neutrality. According to Ars Technica:
"Republicans in Congress have already proposed a variety of bills that limit the FCC’s regulatory authority, eliminate net neutrality rules, or replace the existing ones with rules that are less strict."
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| Donald Trump / CC by Gage Skidmore |
So what is this net neutrality that Republicans seem to hate so much? It's the basis of the entire internet as we know it.
The internet, as provided to homes, workplaces and government buildings by internet service providers, moves freely through all pipes and cables the same. This means that Wikipedia loads just as quickly as Facebook, and the Drudge Report loads just as quickly as Vox. As fast as those servers can get the data to you, nothing slows it down or helps it speed up. All traffic is treated the same.
Many companies, specifically internet service providers, want this to change to open up a completely new avenue of control and, thus, revenue. This would mean Netflix would have to pay Time Warner Cable huge sums of money for it to load to Time Warner Cable customers as fast as it does now.
This is a giant problem, mostly due to how much the consumer loses in this scenario. In a world without net neutrality, most of the services that we love today could not have come into being. Facebook never would've come about if it had to pay huge sums of money to load well. Google started as a curiosity by Stanford students; do you think they could've gotten the capital needed to compete right off the bat? No.
Without an open playing field, we lose out on awesome products and services that benefit our life. It's as simple as that, and no amount of moneymaking by big corporations should make the consumer feel better about that. It's our job to let Donald Trump know that he shouldn't weaken the FCC and he should defend what is right in regards to what the majority of people want for the future of the internet.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Wind Energy and Its Incredible Improvements
Wind energy, at its core, is about using large, tall turbines with several protruding petals to harness the power of the air flow of wind, creating electricity mechanically. Other than the footprint of the turbines and the possible dangers of the moving petals to airborne wildlife, wind power has a very small environmental footprint and overall has an incredible potential to use nothing but the weather to help keep our grid running.
The real problem, though, is that it has always taken a lot of turbines to create a sustainable amount of energy. It's not exactly reasonable to cover significant portions of our land with humongous, poled machines if they're not going to create a required amount of energy to replace fossil fuels.
One of the biggest advancements in recent years in regards to wind turbines has been capacity per turbine. While many efforts in turbine technological evolution have been about maximizing the potential total energy output of the turbines themselves, recent advances have focused more on the maximizing the actual day-to-day output of individual turbines, lowering costs and creating the best return on investment that wind power has seen in years.
These sorts of breakthroughs are really important as the planet continues forward towards self-sustainability. The human race is going to find it very difficult to find itself eternally churning forward if we continue to rely on finite resources of any kind, especially ones that are actively harming our planet and making things actively worse for future generations.
This sort of imperative isn't just a moral one - moral imperatives are important, but in the end ineffective. This is a humanitarian imperative. Real change on renewable energy and its accompanying technology would be a seriously significant step forward for the human race, and that's an important factor to consider.
The real problem, though, is that it has always taken a lot of turbines to create a sustainable amount of energy. It's not exactly reasonable to cover significant portions of our land with humongous, poled machines if they're not going to create a required amount of energy to replace fossil fuels.
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| A wind turbine / CC by jonbgem |
One of the biggest advancements in recent years in regards to wind turbines has been capacity per turbine. While many efforts in turbine technological evolution have been about maximizing the potential total energy output of the turbines themselves, recent advances have focused more on the maximizing the actual day-to-day output of individual turbines, lowering costs and creating the best return on investment that wind power has seen in years.
These sorts of breakthroughs are really important as the planet continues forward towards self-sustainability. The human race is going to find it very difficult to find itself eternally churning forward if we continue to rely on finite resources of any kind, especially ones that are actively harming our planet and making things actively worse for future generations.
This sort of imperative isn't just a moral one - moral imperatives are important, but in the end ineffective. This is a humanitarian imperative. Real change on renewable energy and its accompanying technology would be a seriously significant step forward for the human race, and that's an important factor to consider.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
How Renewables Like Solar Power Are Set to Save the World
Our economy, and pretty much all economies, greatly rely on fossil fuels. What are fossil fuels? They're essentially ancient compounds in the ground, such as natural gas, coal, and petroleum that usually contain a significant amount of carbon. They're ideal for chemical reactions that create energy, and, like most good things in life, they aren't set to last.
It's no secret that coal and oil are going to be gone someday, and even before they're gone they cause quite an environmental toll to burn. Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, may get natural gas out of the ground at unprecedented rates, but it also was the identified cause of the major midwestern US earthquake that occurred just earlier this month. Global warming is accelerating faster and faster as we burn harmful toxins and heat into the atmosphere, hurting the ozone layer. Nuclear reactors have caused some of the worst man-made environmental disasters of all time.
So what are the alternatives? Surely there is enough discussion about the harm of conventional energy that we can focus on the ways to move forward to help our society, economy, and environment. This is the first in a series of posts about how alternative energy is moving us forward. Let's start with solar power.
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| A Solar Panel / CC by Jimmy_Joe |
Solar power is a broad term, but in the context of using alternative energy as an economic resource, it's usually referring to using solar panels to convert our sun's energy into electricity. Our sun's light is the source of all life on Earth, so it's not a huge stretch at all to imagine us utilizing all the energy that otherwise often goes wasted.
The big problem here is that it's really hard to capture the sun's energy efficiently. We can put panels, like the one pictured above, directly in sunlight, and it's really not a big problem. Where we run into issues is how much of those rays actually come out the other end into the power grid.
The great news, though, and what makes solar power incredibly exciting, is that scientists are making huge gains here! While the normal solar panel in the 1950s could harness about 4.5% of its captured sunray's energy (yikes!), and most solar panels in the past decade have hovered between 14-20%, innovator and entrepreneur Elon Musk said in a Mashable article last year that his company was going to introduce a rooftop panel that would harness a record-setting 22.04%.
What's particularly exciting about this is that while it sounds like a small gain, even a gain of 2% creates a huge amount more over the course of a year, especially on a huge scale. With all the gains that have been occurring so rapidly in the 21st century with regards to solar efficiency, it's been risky to buy and install a panel on your house with the knowledge that it will soon be outdated. Now that we're reaching the outer limits of what we previously thought possible, many industry experts speculate that critical mass is soon to be expected. Neighborhood solar will be a reality.
This would be a huge, crazy, nation-altering shift for the US. Having solar panels installed on rooftops would become just another piece of maintenance. It would add a new sector to our economy and create a gigantic surplus of energy out of nowhere, almost overnight. Many could even sell their surplus power back to the grid, creating a profit, and better energy prices for all. With the prospect of electric vehicles in our future, electric-generating homes seem like a pretty smart bet. It may not be long before our daily routines and lifestyle change significantly for the better.
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
How VoIP Closed the Gap of Personal Communication
When it comes to historical significance, most would contend that the peak of communications technology was the telegraph or the telephone. The telegraph was the very first machine that allowed us to think of information as instantly transferable. It no longer had to be tucked away elegantly in a parcel, strapped to the back of a horse. We could transform a thought into just a few fragments of energy and transfer it along phone lines.
While these paradigm shifts were of great importance, another huge shift happened over the past decade or so that it seems a lot of us didn't even notice. This is the rise of Voice over IP communication or VoIP. Ever heard of Skype? Then you know what I'm talking about.
Skype, and many of the identical services like it, provide a way to easily connect with and actually see the person you're talking to. Like the video phones in The Jetsons, they give you a window into the facial expressions and room of the other person, creating a face-to-face conversation over long distances. While conversations over just voice are fine and dandy and were clearly very important on a technological level, Skype allows for a recreation of local, immediate conversation. It's much more intimate.
This opens up a lot of possibilities! Long distance relationships are infinitely easier, whether you're a couple hours away or an entire hemisphere. Doing interviews with someone becomes easier as you can see their hand gestures as they explain an important concept or their facial expressions as they attempt to inflect a certain tone. Parents with newborn children can call up the grandparents, creating those early, important visual interactions with family members despite them being on the other side of the nation. So many social possibilities are entertained just by this simple technological shift.
These are the little things we so often forget about when we keep our heads strapped forward, always looking to the newest thing. Parts of our social lives have changed dramatically due to technology, but we barely give thought to it because it seems like such a natural change. Video calls fit so naturally into so many of our lives, we don't really have to stress the innovation. I think that's a mistake! It's just another example of progress as our world continues to turn.
While these paradigm shifts were of great importance, another huge shift happened over the past decade or so that it seems a lot of us didn't even notice. This is the rise of Voice over IP communication or VoIP. Ever heard of Skype? Then you know what I'm talking about.
Skype, and many of the identical services like it, provide a way to easily connect with and actually see the person you're talking to. Like the video phones in The Jetsons, they give you a window into the facial expressions and room of the other person, creating a face-to-face conversation over long distances. While conversations over just voice are fine and dandy and were clearly very important on a technological level, Skype allows for a recreation of local, immediate conversation. It's much more intimate.
This opens up a lot of possibilities! Long distance relationships are infinitely easier, whether you're a couple hours away or an entire hemisphere. Doing interviews with someone becomes easier as you can see their hand gestures as they explain an important concept or their facial expressions as they attempt to inflect a certain tone. Parents with newborn children can call up the grandparents, creating those early, important visual interactions with family members despite them being on the other side of the nation. So many social possibilities are entertained just by this simple technological shift.
These are the little things we so often forget about when we keep our heads strapped forward, always looking to the newest thing. Parts of our social lives have changed dramatically due to technology, but we barely give thought to it because it seems like such a natural change. Video calls fit so naturally into so many of our lives, we don't really have to stress the innovation. I think that's a mistake! It's just another example of progress as our world continues to turn.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Preventing Maternal Hemorrhage & Shock in the Developing World
One of the biggest problems facing the developing world, and one that faced the entire world for centuries until modern times, is the serious injury and death that can result from complications during pregnancy. According to the World Health Organization, postpartum hemorrhage in developing countries is the single largest cause of maternal morbidity & mortality, accounting for 25% of maternal deaths globally.
These statistics lead to a great need for a solution, or at least some attempt to decrease the chance of serious complications in places where hospital care for a mother is by no means available or guaranteed. This is why the development of the Non-pneumatic Anti-Shock Garment (NASG) is so groundbreaking and important.
What is the NASG? It's a garment that is wrapped around a new mother's legs and pelvis and applies pressure to decrease the chance of pooling blood, increasing circulation and decreasing bleeding. The technology was developed by NASA in the 1970s, and it essentially mimics the lower half of a wetsuit, which is normally used to keep your body evenly compressed to prevent sicknesses such as the bends.
Not only does this decrease in potential bleeding lead to a decreased chance of hemorrhage, it also leads to a decreased chance of shock, which is where the greatest chance for serious injury or mortality arise. While the garment is a low-cost deployment that is more of a stop-gap than a full solution, it's still a very important part of the puzzle when it comes to preventing a horrendous injury until the mother can get more proper medical attention.
At a price of about 50$ and the ability to use it about 40 times, its cost-effectiveness is undeniable. It's just one way technology is making the world a better place for women.
These statistics lead to a great need for a solution, or at least some attempt to decrease the chance of serious complications in places where hospital care for a mother is by no means available or guaranteed. This is why the development of the Non-pneumatic Anti-Shock Garment (NASG) is so groundbreaking and important.
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| Courtesy of the World Health Organization |
What is the NASG? It's a garment that is wrapped around a new mother's legs and pelvis and applies pressure to decrease the chance of pooling blood, increasing circulation and decreasing bleeding. The technology was developed by NASA in the 1970s, and it essentially mimics the lower half of a wetsuit, which is normally used to keep your body evenly compressed to prevent sicknesses such as the bends.
Not only does this decrease in potential bleeding lead to a decreased chance of hemorrhage, it also leads to a decreased chance of shock, which is where the greatest chance for serious injury or mortality arise. While the garment is a low-cost deployment that is more of a stop-gap than a full solution, it's still a very important part of the puzzle when it comes to preventing a horrendous injury until the mother can get more proper medical attention.
At a price of about 50$ and the ability to use it about 40 times, its cost-effectiveness is undeniable. It's just one way technology is making the world a better place for women.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Artificial Intelligence and Its Potential to Revolutionize Healthcare
Back in the 1960s, Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI, was characterized by science fiction as a terrifying prospect. In the film "2001: A Space Odyssey," a monotone AI named HAL 9000 betrayed the main protagonist, locking him out of his own spaceship and preventing him from carrying out his orders. As the highest-grossing movie of 1968, "2001" set a tone in pop culture that is hard to overcome, that of the backstabbing, emotionally cold computer who has no respect for the value of human life.
What about today? Cinema is not known for its historical tendency to portray things accurately. It goes for the dramatic flair, the terrifying glamor. Today, artificial intelligence is just about as boring, but useful, as could be. Researchers at Indiana University discovered, just a few years ago, that if you take all the medical data that patients give their doctors, but instead gave it to an AI, the machine would spit back treatment paths that increase positive outcomes by over 40% while decreasing healthcare costs by over half. Half!
How is this possible? Computers are becoming far more intelligent every year, and these computers were doing something called 'simulation modeling.' This modeling is done by inputting patient info into a diagnosing, decision-making supercomputer that computes predictions and outcomes for every single path of medical treatment. As new information comes to light, new paths are considered. The AI is essentially programmed to 'think like a doctor.'
This sort of breakthrough would be guided by advances in voice recognition, which would allow patients to talk directly to a machine instead of a doctor in certain circumstances to allow for earlier diagnosis, and mathematical frameworks, which allow the programmers to deploy such discoveries at massive scales. In the rapidly-advancing future, the sky is the limit!
In the near-future, AI is going to define several significant developments in our daily lives, talking to our phones, replacing our doctors, and guiding us through our preferred entertainment. It's good to know that it's a technology that is not going to be used against us or used to surpass us, but instead one that will be used to intelligently help us and enhance our processes. It will improve things that much need improving, like healthcare, and make the world generally a better place. As always, that's something to look forward to.
What about today? Cinema is not known for its historical tendency to portray things accurately. It goes for the dramatic flair, the terrifying glamor. Today, artificial intelligence is just about as boring, but useful, as could be. Researchers at Indiana University discovered, just a few years ago, that if you take all the medical data that patients give their doctors, but instead gave it to an AI, the machine would spit back treatment paths that increase positive outcomes by over 40% while decreasing healthcare costs by over half. Half!
How is this possible? Computers are becoming far more intelligent every year, and these computers were doing something called 'simulation modeling.' This modeling is done by inputting patient info into a diagnosing, decision-making supercomputer that computes predictions and outcomes for every single path of medical treatment. As new information comes to light, new paths are considered. The AI is essentially programmed to 'think like a doctor.'
This sort of breakthrough would be guided by advances in voice recognition, which would allow patients to talk directly to a machine instead of a doctor in certain circumstances to allow for earlier diagnosis, and mathematical frameworks, which allow the programmers to deploy such discoveries at massive scales. In the rapidly-advancing future, the sky is the limit!
In the near-future, AI is going to define several significant developments in our daily lives, talking to our phones, replacing our doctors, and guiding us through our preferred entertainment. It's good to know that it's a technology that is not going to be used against us or used to surpass us, but instead one that will be used to intelligently help us and enhance our processes. It will improve things that much need improving, like healthcare, and make the world generally a better place. As always, that's something to look forward to.
Friday, September 9, 2016
How LifeStraws Save Countless Lives
Many years ago, back in the 2007-2008 school year, the policy debate topic was public health assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa. I was not yet in high school, as I would enter the next year, but I would hear about the topic regardless.
Some of the various proposed cases, also known as affirmatives, were legendary. Cheap robotic rats would walk over landmines and blow them up to prevent public injury and death. Gustave the man-eating crocodile would be neutralized by the United States government. Another silly one, at least at the time, were these LifeStraws.
LifeStraws were a revolutionary piece of tech at the time. Unveiled in 2005 but largely undeployed, they were little straws that you would put into a source of drinkable, yet most likely highly polluted or diseased, water and it would, on the fly, do the filtration for you. As long as you had access to a body of water you could drink from it without fear of contracting sickness or disease from a single straw for about a year.
As they were nowhere near ready to be a mainstream product at the time, it was an investment that would theoretically require a huge amount of capital, and even then it was not clear whether its availability would ever be widespread. Now, in 2016, the answer is a little more clear. LifeStraws are a huge success that is helping millions of people in developing countries and victims of natural disasters alike.
How does it work? Well, a Cosmos Magazine article gets into the nitty-gritty of it but essentially there's a big filter at the bottom of it that filters out the big stuff (think insects, dirt) followed by several more filters where the holes are constantly decreasing in size, getting rid of more bacteria in each step. There's finally an ultra-filtration filter where incredibly tiny holes - just microscopic - get rid of the smallest viruses. A piece of carbon at the top of the straw gives the water a normal palate and prevents it from tasting horrific. Voilà! You have clean water.
Technology like this is the kind of benchmark we'll judge our age by. Decades from now society will look back on the early 21st century and talk about the strides we made as we started to really lock down the importance of resource access and humanitarianism. Living in America, it's easy to forget that access to water is still a gigantic problem in the world, but here humanity is, making it better every year.
Some of the various proposed cases, also known as affirmatives, were legendary. Cheap robotic rats would walk over landmines and blow them up to prevent public injury and death. Gustave the man-eating crocodile would be neutralized by the United States government. Another silly one, at least at the time, were these LifeStraws.
LifeStraws were a revolutionary piece of tech at the time. Unveiled in 2005 but largely undeployed, they were little straws that you would put into a source of drinkable, yet most likely highly polluted or diseased, water and it would, on the fly, do the filtration for you. As long as you had access to a body of water you could drink from it without fear of contracting sickness or disease from a single straw for about a year.
As they were nowhere near ready to be a mainstream product at the time, it was an investment that would theoretically require a huge amount of capital, and even then it was not clear whether its availability would ever be widespread. Now, in 2016, the answer is a little more clear. LifeStraws are a huge success that is helping millions of people in developing countries and victims of natural disasters alike.
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| A LifeStraw / CC by Badri Seshadri |
How does it work? Well, a Cosmos Magazine article gets into the nitty-gritty of it but essentially there's a big filter at the bottom of it that filters out the big stuff (think insects, dirt) followed by several more filters where the holes are constantly decreasing in size, getting rid of more bacteria in each step. There's finally an ultra-filtration filter where incredibly tiny holes - just microscopic - get rid of the smallest viruses. A piece of carbon at the top of the straw gives the water a normal palate and prevents it from tasting horrific. Voilà! You have clean water.
Technology like this is the kind of benchmark we'll judge our age by. Decades from now society will look back on the early 21st century and talk about the strides we made as we started to really lock down the importance of resource access and humanitarianism. Living in America, it's easy to forget that access to water is still a gigantic problem in the world, but here humanity is, making it better every year.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Hello world!
Booting from CD-ROM...
95MB medium detected
HOPEFUL.PROGRESS.EXE 1.0 2016-09-07 Copyright (C) Jackson Hermann
Hello, reader! Welcome to my blog! Whether you're reading it because you're part of my group, because you know me, or because you just happened to stumble upon it, I appreciate your time and attention.
What is Hopeful Progress all about? Well, it's about technology. We constantly hear about technology being used to solve economic problems or day-to-day annoyances, but what about when a breakthrough means a real improvement for people’s lives? This blog covers the optimistic worldview that technology is constantly making our lives, and subsequently the world, better.
What does that mean in simpler terms? That this blog is going to talk about how technology is making the world a better place. :)
Now why should I be the one to talk to you about this? What qualifies me to tell you about the technology of the world? I've been passionate about tech ever since I first logged into dial-up when I was 4 years old. As a millennial, I didn't have to adapt older ways of thinking and doing to new technology, but rather was privileged to grow up in the midst of the Information Age.
This passion has shown all through my life, from uploading YouTube videos all the way back in middle school to hosting my own tech news podcast. My outlook is that tech enriches our lives, and I hope that after reading a few posts, you'll think that too!
Anyways, that's enough about me. This blog will be updating pretty regularly and soon we'll be progressing as normal. Hopefully.
95MB medium detected
HOPEFUL.PROGRESS.EXE 1.0 2016-09-07 Copyright (C) Jackson Hermann
Hello, reader! Welcome to my blog! Whether you're reading it because you're part of my group, because you know me, or because you just happened to stumble upon it, I appreciate your time and attention.
What is Hopeful Progress all about? Well, it's about technology. We constantly hear about technology being used to solve economic problems or day-to-day annoyances, but what about when a breakthrough means a real improvement for people’s lives? This blog covers the optimistic worldview that technology is constantly making our lives, and subsequently the world, better.
What does that mean in simpler terms? That this blog is going to talk about how technology is making the world a better place. :)
Now why should I be the one to talk to you about this? What qualifies me to tell you about the technology of the world? I've been passionate about tech ever since I first logged into dial-up when I was 4 years old. As a millennial, I didn't have to adapt older ways of thinking and doing to new technology, but rather was privileged to grow up in the midst of the Information Age.
This passion has shown all through my life, from uploading YouTube videos all the way back in middle school to hosting my own tech news podcast. My outlook is that tech enriches our lives, and I hope that after reading a few posts, you'll think that too!
Anyways, that's enough about me. This blog will be updating pretty regularly and soon we'll be progressing as normal. Hopefully.
 |
| (C) Jackson Hermann |
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