Vertical air flow for events to reduce aerosol transmission

I was thinking about how to reduce the transmission of aerosol-transmitted diseases at events. It seems the thing to do is to get contaminated air out of horizontal space that is head height. As such, vertical airflow is required. Small holes in the floor to suck air downwards, or push in clean air. And likewise in the ceiling. Perhaps the air flow direction would depend on whether the air is being heated or cooled.

Sensing sleep and pausing content

Wearable devices such as heart rate monitors, and more advanced technologies such as electroencephalograms (EEGs), are able to pinpoint the moment that a person goes to sleep. By combining this technology with smartphones and other devices that display or emit content (e.g. audiobooks, TV shows, etc), it should be possible to pause the content at the point the viewer/listener goes to sleep.

Such a technology would have two key advantages:

1. By pausing the content, it is less likely that the person's sleep will be disturbed (this is more likely to happen when there his a high dynamic range in the audio content - the person goes to sleep during a quiet period and is then woken up during a noisy period)
2. The person is able to resume their viewing/listening at a future time without having to rewind

Pascal's wager extended

Pascal's wager is a tool that helps us decided whether or not to believe in God. It runs as follows (lifted from Wikipedia):

Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).

It seems to me that this concept could be extended to work out which god to believe in. By comparing all the world's religions, past and present, and listing and weighting their promises for heaven and hell (and, although it's likely to be of lesser importance, the finite costs extracted whilst living), it should be possible to work out which is the best god to believe in. By believing in that god you maximize your utility.

I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce you to Lacsap, the one true God. Lacsap stays abreast of all world religions and guarantees that the true heaven shall contain all good things ever conceived by man as being in heaven, such that utility is maximized, and that the true hell shall contain all the bad things ever conceived by man as being in heaven, such that utility is minimized. All you need to do to get into true heaven is to renounce all other (false) gods and proclaim your believe in Lacsap prior to your death. If you do not do this, you will go to the true hell.

Adreama is the one true prophet of Lacsap.

Infra-red reflecting camp fire surround

Have you ever had a cold back sitting round a camp fire? It should be possible to reflect the radiated heat back in using a material that reflect IR radiation (such as foil). A windbreak coated with IR-reflecting material would serve this purpose whilst also serving as a windbreak. This device would allow a smaller campfire to keep the same number of people warm, reducing the environmental impact.

AR and the ideal home-working set up

I would like AR glasses with high resolution and a wide field of view. I can imagine a home-working setup where I can sit in an armchair (or perhaps in bed) with a keyboard/mouse on my lap and the equivalent screen real-estate of two (or more) 4k monitors in front of my eyes.

(I am doubting whether gesture recognition will be more efficient for data input than keyboard/mouse, which to me seems the most efficient user control interface yet devised.)

A question for Steven Pinker's optimism

I would love to be able to believe the message of Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature and other works that expound a worldview of progress. But it seems to me that at present those parts of the world experiencing the strongest population and GDP growth are those with characteristics I am not in favor of. The questions I would ask would be:

• What are the GDP and population growth rates of democracies versus non-democracies?
• What are the GDP and population growth rates of secular societies versus those dominated by religious fundamentalism?

And given that a classification between democracy and non-democracy, and between secular and fundamental, is somewhat arbitrary given these factors are a spectrum:

• Are countries becoming more or less democratic?
• Are countries becoming more of less secular?

Giving up your humanity

As we creep towards a post-human/trans-human future I am beginning to wonder not just what we will add to ourselves, but also what we choose to take away. Beyond the obvious elimination of disease, what else will we remove from our current selves? In a sense disease is a good place to start. We normally distinguish between physical health and mental health, but in reality there is a spectrum between the two. And it seems to be that there is a spectrum between mental health, personality, motivators/desires and intelligence.

So, would I give up or alter my personality? Or what motivates me? I am inclined to eliminate bias from my thinking in the first instance. I suspect this will have a profound change on my personality in itself. But I also inclined to meddle with my motivators. Perhaps reduce the desire I have for sugary food (perhaps it could be argued that the battle against this desire is advantageous for its willpower side effects - suggest this needs research). Perhaps increase the satisfaction I get from learning something new, or from doing exercise. These modifications seem without significant downsides. But what of changing your own sexual desire? There is no doubt that extremes of sexual desire have led people to acts of stupidity and evil. But sexual desire also seems to be something that is "human". What of changing ones own mechanism of attraction to emphasize the physical less relative to other characteristics.

If we do make such changes would we regret making them? Or would we be so different a person as not to be able to relate to our former selves? Is such a process reversible?

Scratch bed: the ultimate back scratcher

This is an idea for a spa/therapy type experience: a vibrating bed of bristles that you lie on. I would imagine that it would stimulate blood flow to the skin and would be effective to exfoliation. It might be necessary to separately vibrate each clump of bristles rather than have the bed as a whole vibrate otherwise relative movement might not be achieved. The bristles would need to be washable (e.g. nylon) so that the bed can be hosed down with warm soapy water between uses (for hygiene purposes). A hole in the table for the face like a massage table would enable people to lie face down.

Automated microscopes

A common technique in the biological sciences it to count the number of colony forming units in a sample by plating the sample, incubating, and then counting the number of colonies.

I wonder whether it might be possible to skip the incubation step and directly count the colony forming units (or potentially single cells). The process would involve plating the sample as normal (i.e. spreading over a thin area - possibly larger than a normal petri dish?). I imagine a microscope where the lens position and focus are controlled by stepper motors (with a fine thread screw). The lens is connected to a digital camera. The lens is moved over the sample, location by location, with an image collected at each location. Image recognition is then used to count the number of cells / colony forming units.

I'm also wondering if it's possible to individually manage/monitor/interact-with cells (or colony-forming units) if their location on a slide can be recorded, and hence the location re-visited.

Bumper-car style power delivery for factory/warehouse robots

I was thinking about the warehouse robots created by Amazon Robotics (formerly Kiva Systems). These robots have a battery inside of them which means that the robots have to take time-out of the process to recharge (according to the Wikipedia article, 5 mins per hour, roughly 8.3%); they need to carry the weight of the battery (reducing energy efficiency); battery charging/discharging is not electrically efficient; and the battery is likely to wear out significantly earlier than other components.

It occurs to me that power could be delivered to these robots the same way power is delivered to bumper cars: either via the floor or ceiling (or both).

Thoughts as to why this wouldn't be viable: cost of the floor; health & safety risks (i.e. electrocution, risk of sparks igniting flammable materials); lower versatility.

3D search engine (reverse 3D search)

As 3D scanning becomes more common, it would be useful to be able to take a 3D scan of an unknown object, submit this scan to a 3D search engine, and then receive information about it, or links to similar 3D objects. This is an extrapolation into the 3D world of a concept called reverse image search (popularized by the web service TinEye).

I would anticipate that such a search engine would need to rely on machine learning technology due to the wide range of shapes and sizes of functionally-equivalent objects. Consider, for example, the wide variety of objects such as pop-up toasters. Would a 3D scan of any given toaster result in the correct classification as a toaster?

If a library of scans (or photos) of objects is maintained, it may be possible to search for the exact make and model of a man-made object, facilitating ordering spare parts or maintenance guides for those objects that no longer bear their original labels.

The technology would not be limited to identification of man-made objects, but also identification of objects in the natural world, for example identifying invertebrates and fungi are often difficult due to the vast number of species.

Dedesertification of the mid-oceans

Many parts of the oceans, most notably the South Pacific Gyre, are biological deserts. Unlike the land deserts most commonly associated with the word, it's the micronutrients rather than water that's lacking. The most fertile areas of the oceans are where rivers flow into the sea, providing micronutrients that have been eroded from the land, and where currents bring up nutrients from the ocean floors.

So, can we dedesertify these mid-ocean areas by piping water from the lower layers or the ocean floor? Imagine a floating platfrom, with solar and wind power generation powering a pump connected to a long pipe that descends into the depths.

It may even be possible to power the movement of water purely using the heating of the water by the sun. For example, consider that the pipe has a one-way valve (i.e. up only). The cold water is drawn up, then expands, overflowing the edges of the container. The sun then evaporates some of the water, causing lower pressure, which then sucks up more water.

Automating shampoo dispensing

Are we ever going to get to a point with resource conservation where it would be beneficial to automate shampoo dispensing?

The problem I'm thinking about is that when you squeeze shampoo from the bottle to your hand, you are measuring by eye, which is less accurate that what we can achieve with machines. Getting feedback on too little shampoo is easy - the user requests another amount. But feedback on whether there was too much shampoo dispensed is more tricky. Perhaps human voice feedback? Or a camera with image recognition? Or analysis of the soapiness of the water entering the drain? Or some kind of glove that you wear whilst washing your hair that contains sensors?

Will the cost of soap outweigh the cost of the technology (potentially amortized over some years)?

More generally, how deeply do we expect technology to get into the small parts of our daily lives? How much measuring? How much automation?

Ad blocker for the real world - the end of out-of-home advertising

One of the great benefits I'm looking forward to when donning my AR glasses in the, hopefully not too distant, future is the software that I'm sure will quickly be developed allowing me to block out all out-of-home advertising.

Using AI/machine learning/image recognition every billboard can be detected, and it's contents changed to something I want to see, rather than something someone else wants me to see. It could be that the billboard itself is detected, or perhaps the content. Content detection could be through either machine learning techniques or crowd-sourcing, or a combination of the two.

It might even possible for my AR glasses to block TV advertising, and use noise cancelling technology so I don't have to hear them either.

I hope these technologies empower consumers to have a more balanced relationship with the brands that advertise to them.

Pooing in bags

When we flush faeces and urine into the drains we flush away valuable data. Data that is important for our own health, but also for medical research and for the early detection of transmissible diseases.

In the future I expect we will poo into bags and pee into pots, which are immediately sealed and taken by robots to automated laboratories.

Rotating climbing wall with servo-controlled pins for holds

Rotating climbing walls already exist, but as far as I can see from my research, they are a fixed set of holds on a rotating surface (by fixed I mean that they don't change within one continuous climb).

It should be possible however to make a rotating climbing wall with servo/solenoid-controlled pins for holds. These holds can come in and out of the surface, changing the configuration dynamically whilst the user is on the other side of the board. Hence the user has a continuous non-repeating climb.

The holds could be made from the same material as normal climbing holds, and could be configured with various shapes. It may be possible (and necessary) to have a door that covers the hole for the hold to retract into, so the user isn't tempted to use the entrance of the hole as a hold.

Storing stuff in caves with drones

There are a number of advantages to storing things in caves: the potentially vast area relative to surface land costs; the lack of construction necessary; the constant temperature; the inherent security (provided all the entrances to the cave system are know). But they can be dangerous, and hard to navigate (uneven surfaces, etc).

Enter drones. Inaccessibility / navigation is drastically improved with UAVs. And there's no hazard to human health. The cave system can easily be mapped by UAVs, and watertight packages deposited throughout the system.

How do people become successful?

Perhaps there are other factors that I'm missing, but I have attempted to summarise the key factors that enable people to become successful, as follows:

• Money
• Status
• Power
• Contacts
• Good looks
• Skill
• Intelligence
• Hard work

The first five are circumstances of birth - being born to parents that have money, status, power or contacts, or being born with good looks. The next two are partially nature, partially nurture. I suspect there's both nature and nurture elements to being a hard worker, but it starts to get into free will debates if you think too hard on this one.

Status vs contacts

I have considered whether status and contacts could be conflated, however is possible, particularly historically, to have status without a particularly useful set of contacts. For example, being born with a hereditary title provides status without necessarily providing contacts.

It perhaps could be argued that status is the formal recognition of a person's place in society (through title or position), whereas contacts are an informal recognition of place in society.

Top trumps

It would be interesting to have a top trumps game with successful people rated by which of the above listed factors contributed to their success.

What we copyright, and how AI might change that

Copyright protects the expression of ideas, not ideas themselves. And at some point, artificial intelligence is going to automate the expression of an idea. This will mean that it will be possible to copy a copyright protected work without infringing copyright.

Computer games are a particularly good example. The graphics of the game are copyrightable as is the story. But not the gameplay. All the thousands of first person shooters out there don't pay royalties to the creators of Wolfenstein 3D. With advanced artificial intelligence it should be possible for the AI to analyse a game, understand the gameplay, and then create a new game that is sufficiently different in graphics and plot, but nonetheless captures idea. And given its the AI doing the implementation in the first place, what value then is there to the human coming up with the novel gameplay mechanic? Not much. There are cheaper clones within minutes of release.

To a lesser, but still significant, extent the same is true of movies and books. The plot can be analysed and an expression thereof created.

What does this tell us?

In some ways it suggests that copyright is somewhat strange: it values expression (implementation) more than ideas. And yet it is ideas that seem to me to be what advances us as a species. Someone could take the idea expressed in this blog post and, using different words express it themselves in a revenue-generating medium, and I would have no recourse against that person profiting from my idea (as an aside I have not done the necessary research to confirm this is an original idea, but I can confirm it is independent).

The other thing that this expected future suggests is that copyright will either be extended in some way to ideas, or will lessen in significance as automation of expression becomes feasible.

Optimizing train carriage utilization - signs on platforms

For various reasons different carriages in trains get fuller than others. This reduces the comfort of passengers, and in extreme cases means that other passengers do not have enough space to board.

But this is a fairly simple problem to solve with existing technology. We can measure the occupancy of a carriage in numerous ways:

• optical cameras coupled with image recognition technology
• thermal imaging that captures the number of separate heat sources, or perhaps the aggregate heat being emitted
• thermometers would probably be sufficient to assess the occupancy to some degree
• pressure sensors on the seats or floor
• carbon dioxide levels
• optical beams measuring entry and egress
• etc

And we can communicate that information to passengers at subsequent stations. For example, the platform could have lights built into the floor which are greener where the carriages are emptier, and redder where they are fuller.