Yeah … right … 3G is going to be the solution …
I have long said that 3G looks like it’ll be too little, too late. These companies are looking to invest billions of dollars to provide kilobits/sec of digital data access! What a joke. I have yet to hear a good story about how this is all going to happen in time. My belief is that the “parasitic networks”, like the 802.11b networks, will be here far sooner …

FCC Delays 3G Allocation Study. Will cause delay in U.S. spectrum auction [allNetDevices Wireless News]

Bluetooth confusion continues …
I met with the President and CEO of a Bluetooth development company the other day. I was really impressed at his perspective, and our agreement, of the potential of the Bluetooth market. It’s funny how so many people see the “conflict” between Bluetooth and 802.11b … and yet this executive doesn’t see any!
Bluetooth is a very cool wireless solution for certain applications. Most people don’t understand the various bandwidth limitations, and understand the Bluetooth profiles that have been defined. I’m impressed that Bluetooth is getting closer, and looks like a great solution for ad-hoc networks. I’m going to do more investigation at Comdex … I want to understand the costs and capabilities. I have also found that the SDKs and developer tools are very thin at this point … I really can’t write the Bluetooth applications that I want to yet … 😉

Survey: IT Managers Want Bluetooth. But often confuse it with WLANs [allNetDevices Wireless News]

Another interesting computer being proposed and built in India …
I really like this one for a couple of reasons:
1. This is being developed in India! I am a huge fan of India, and the potential of this country to evolve into a dominant world force.
2. This is running Linux … not a crippled partial operating system, but a full blown PC operating system.

India to Compute on the Cheap. In a country of nearly 1 billion people, there are only about 2 million PCs. This could change with the ‘Simputer,’ a Net-accessible computer that could cost about $200. Swaroopa Iyengar reports from India. [Wired News]

More early experiments of Mirror Worlds …
For those of you who have not read the book Mirror Worlds by David Gelernter, this description by Dan Gillmor starts to fit the bill. Gelernter writes about software systems which allow the real-time observation of almost anything on earth, anywhere, at anytime. And the ability to zoom into business and personal processes that are automated to see what is really going on from the macro-scale to the micro-scale. I agree completely with Gelernters basic premise that this type of software is inevitable … and I can see many ways that it is starting to appear …

Dan Gillmor: “Imagine, for example, that you’re looking at a map of major Bay Area highways. The map is embedded in a PC spreadsheet or Web browser. Every 30 seconds, it updates the average traffic speeds noted by road sensors at various locations along those highways. I saw such a map earlier this week in Mountain View, at the offices of KnowNow.” [Scripting News]

Some perspectives on Xybernaut and Wearable Computers …
I wrote this on the Xybernaut thread on SiliconInvestor … a stock and market discussion board. I figured that I would post it here also …

Hello Truthseeker,

> Is this crap paid for? i only ask because xybr has been
> recommended by fraudulent analysts in the past such as
> Donner Corp and Access1Financial/Mark Bergman.

I have no way to speak for anyone but myself … so I can not answer your question about this press release.

I *am* (and have been for quite some time) an advocate of the wearable computer marketplace. I do a lot of research into leading edge trends, and use evolutionary theory to create frameworks for predicting future trends.

I am not sure who the companies are going to be, but I can see that there are some very powerful indications (to me) that wearable computers will become a very fundamental part of being human … in the core industrial and technological communities of the world.

Some of these indications are:

1. Communications, and the devices that facilitate communications, are a fundamental part of an efficient organization of any kind.

2. The ability to effectively organize, communicate, and share information within an organization is directly related to the effectiveness of that organization. This includes effectively “staying in communications” within the organization – hence pagers, cell phones, and demand for “always on” wireless connectivity.

3. Practices, methods, and devices which enhance and extend the human beings ability to organize, communicate, and share information are coming into higher and higher demand … for obvious reasons. These are what transform a human being into what I call a “Humaneural” element within an organization.

4. Devices which can enhance and extend our human capabilities, adding to our abilities to “sense” the world around us, to “remember” more information for future use, and to “augment” our perspective of the world around us are increasingly becoming integral in our daily life experience. The lines between where we end, and these devices end, are going to blur more and more in the coming years. (e.g. think about pacemakers, hearing aids, contact lenses, and now cell phones, and PDAs)

5. Our ability to create more and more powerful computers, in smaller and smaller form factors is nearly limitless … and is only a matter of time.

6. Microsoft, even with all of the criticism, is not going away any time soon. The demands for their products, and their evolutionary process of creation, will only continue until something massively disrupts or shifts the market.

7. Any company, IMHO, creating hardware products which will bring Microsoft software platforms, and Linux software platforms, closer to being tightly integrated into the human experience is on the right track. This includes the core compute platform, along with the peripherals which integrate with the human senses – eyes, ears, mouth, etc.

I believe that over the next 5-10 years we are going to witness some incredible evolution of what it is to be human. We are going to see people who will become more and more dependant on “new” senses which result from a net-connected world.

In the business/organizational world, this means more effective and immediate access to information to react to market conditions, and deliver to customer/employee demands. In the personal world, this means being in communication with the important communities and organizations in ones life on a full time basis … being available to those communities, and having those communities be available … on demand.

I believe that Xybernaut is on the right track when I compare their vision of the future to the PDA and cell phone visions. I can not promise that they will, as a organization, transform from an innovative company to a dominant force in the industry … but I believe that they are heading in the right direction …

This is probably more than you were looking for … but I felt like rambling … 😉

Scott C. Lemon

As we approach the Singularity … and Gattaca?
These articles are an interesting overview of what the government sees coming … and what is going to be inevitable. The ability to map the genome is now here … the inexpensive way to test for the presence and patterns of genes is coming … and so the scenarios that are presented in the movie Gattaca are not so far away.
What I find amusing about these types of efforts by the government is that they are simply creating delays on what will occur. If the work is not done in the USA, it will be done elsewhere. I can see the day that 7-11 stores are going to have gene-sequencing kiosks to verify the genetic background of your friends, family, and potential mates or employees … 😉

Bush discusses genetic discrimination in radio address. Nando Times Jun 24 2001 9:29PM ET [Genetics news]

Powerline Networking integrated into charging systems …
It seems to me that powerline networking would be best implemented if it were integrated into the power supplies, and charging systems, of home computers, laptops, and other computing devices. This way they would just work when I plugged in to charge the batteries or power the devices. If all home computers had this, then it would seem to be a valuable service. If the laptop chargers had these networking solutions, then airports, etc. could just provide access via the power in their facilities that is being used by passengers anyhow! This might then offer some competition to other wireless solutions …

Powerline Networks Finally Viable? [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]

Synchronization … and the future …
In my research into evolutionary theory, and optimal systems development, I have made the observation that replication and duplication of information is a naturally occurring solution. If we look at even our own DNA, we can see that the instructions that define the construction of our own human bodies is replicated and duplicated in every cell in our bodies.
Relating this to my research into identity, I have come to the conclusion that identity information is not going to be accessed by reference, but instead will be synchronized to all of the places that it will be used. This synchronization is key to how identity will be maintained by end-users, and the communities that they belong to.
It’s too bad that Yahoo! is dropping this service now … since they will be putting it back into place if they are going to move forward in the future of identity management …

Yahoo cuts a useful sync service. Up until recently, you could sync your Yahoo Address Book with your desktop, or PDA or mobile phone. You could use the Yahoo Yellow Pages to quickly add local businesses to your address book, and then download the results to carry around with you. It was a fantastic way to fill up your mobile phone with all the local Pizza delivery, Chinese take out, and car repair places. An real example of a online service removing a little bit of drudgery from our lives. [kuro5hin.org]

The proliferation of the pico-nets …
This is yet another example of how I see high-speed wireless Internet access proliferating. One of the aspects that I think will make this a very difficult business model is that MobileStar is “owning” the infrastructure. As new wireless technologies emerge, they are going to be stuck doing constant upgrades to support the newest technologies … and so I predict their demise, unless they can propose a way of dealing with this!

Network World: Starbucks wireless network a sweet deal for MobileStar. The initiative is a boon to MobileStar Network, the ISP responsible for the wireless LAN connectivity in each Starbucks stores and the backbone network connecting the shops to the Internet. MobileStar expects Starbucks will account for 50% of its network footprint by 2003. [Tomalak’s Realm]