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Technology Science

MIT Emerging Technologies Conference 101

Posted by michael from the cocoonlike dept.
StoneLion writes "At Technology Review's Emerging Technologies Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week, speakers in various disciplines provided fascinating glimpses of future technology, including exotica like hydrogen energy and smart dust. NewsForge has a conference report." Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
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MIT Emerging Technologies Conference More

MIT Emerging Technologies Conference

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  • Resistance is futile (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Brahmastra ( 685988 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:14PM (#7064455)
    But the most interesting discussion came from Intel's David Tennenhouse. He noted that we've passed the one person, one computer milestone. The next wave will include networked embedded computers that give real-time information, enabling proactive computing that can anticipate our needs. Enabling technologies for that trend include physical control of biological and chemical elements; ubiquitous computing in the form of smart dust, RFID, and software radio; planetary-scale distributed systems (PlanetLab is one example); and new probabilistic methods of machine learning.

    We are Borg?
    • "We have already evolved so much, our actions would be incomprehensible to a human from a thousand years ago, it's the evolution revolution. Tomorrow we speed up the process, all sectors, all species. Only the strong shall evolve."

      --Trevor Goodchild

  • Interesting quote from Dell (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HanClinto ( 621615 ) <hanclinto AT gmail DOT com> on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:15PM (#7064472)
    I liked this one:

    To determine what businesses his company wants to be in, Dell looks for large markets where there are inefficiencies or high mark-ups. He looks for standards, because markets don't usually become high-volume until standards exist. Dell said standards benefit users, while proprietary hardware benefits only the company selling it.

    +4 insightful to Dell there.

    • Perfectly ties in with why Dell is going into the wireless biz to compete with Blackberry (RiM); Hardware benefits only the company selling it.
    • Dell was the only speaker to mention Linux

      That was nice too.

      But actually pretty disappointing if you give it some time... only one company :(

    • Re:Interesting quote from Dell (Score:5, Insightful)

      by b0r0din ( 304712 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:23PM (#7064540)
      It's sort of ironic that Dell has any part in a conference on emerging technologies, because what Dell specializes in is supply infrastructure. They don't have nearly as many patents as IBM or HP but they are VERY VERY good at getting things to their customers and keeping their customers happy. In other words, they create extremely efficient processes and have outlasted other PCs because they understand the commodities market. Why Dell is considered a major player makes little sense.

      A better way to buy, sell, and trade your games. [supergameworld.com]
    • Dell against proprietary hardware? Since when. I have a dead Presicion 220 in my office because it needs a proprietary power supply. The new desktops have a power supply that runs across the bottom of the case. Dell has used a lot of proprietary hardware.
    • Dell said standards benefit users, while proprietary hardware benefits only the company selling it.

      Mr. Greedy Bastard replied by saying, "I have no incentive to create a standard unless I get to benefit the most. Giving and getting back from the community doesn't build vacation homes, or improve my chances of catching a trophy wife by having MORE than the next guy!"

      --

    • Obviously no one shares this vision in their printer-sales department. Dell's printers use propietary ink cartridges full of proprietary nonsense.

    • Please permit me to laugh sarcastically at Dell. Their ad campaigns champion a non-proprietary approach, but how is Intel hardware any less proprietary than anybody else (or their other buddies Microsoft)? I don't see any open source CPU's on the market. Sure, there are multiple vendors you can get system boards, disks etc etc from for PC's, but the same also applies for SPARC, MIPS, PPC et al. Not to mention that some of the proprietary O/S's run on more than one CPU family (HP-UX, VMS, Solaris). Let's no
    • Dell said standards benefit users, while proprietary hardware benefits only the company selling it.

      Yeah, one of the biggest examples of this is Microsoft's proprietary Office formats. From the user's point of view, it's really too bad vendors can't compete fairly on merits...despite the ideas like those in this thread [slashdot.org].
    • Unfortunately they sell laptops with a choice of two wireless cards: the intel "centrino" thing and a broadcom 'satan' card, neither of which have Linux drivers...

  • conference presentations (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:17PM (#7064492) Homepage
    i wish the presentations from MIT Emerging Technologies Conference, LinuxWorld, and Apache be available on the internet for free. I can't go to all of them. i only have money to goto to ApacheCon :(

    Video taping them, and making them available on the internet or on a CD for a charge could be also beneficial. Just a thought.
    • Well, I live in Norway, Europe, and going to America for a conference is way to expensive. I totally support your idea, and I would also like to see some more conferences here in Europe. Even in England, it would still be a lot easier and cheaper for me to go to than USA.

      I find conferences like this both interesting and important. Both to keep up with what's going on, and a way of expressing your own ideas. But like I said, it's hard for people like me to attend, when most of the conferences are held in
    • Try MIT world [mit.edu] they video lectures and presentations by current and former MIT professors.

  • Smart dust (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does this mean my appartment will become self aware ?

  • Contextual marketing -- for example, ads on Google searches -- is gaining ground over non-contextual content, such as e-mail lists.

    I've had a guy from ah-ha.com [ah-ha.com] call me three days in a row wanting to sell me pop unders and large banners on search engines that wrap google's results with their advertising.

    Just hung up on a telemarketer who was reading from her screen about 'being very impressed with my site' and would like to improve it's rankings.

    There is money in this market.

  • Dell's business niche, and music service (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pavon ( 30274 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:20PM (#7064510)
    This caught my eye.

    Dell words of wisdom
    To determine what businesses his company wants to be in, Dell looks for large markets where there are inefficiencies or high mark-ups. He looks for standards, because markets don't usually become high-volume until standards exist. Dell said standards benefit users, while proprietary hardware benefits only the company selling it.

    Which is interesting in light of the anouncement of the music service, since the music industry is a glarring example of high mark ups.

  • Is that an emerging technology? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Or are you just glad to see me?
  • 15 months to get there? What, are they letting one of the blue hairs from Sun City (a retirement community near Phoenix) drive?

  • Why Dell as the Keynote? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MyNameIsFred ( 543994 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:21PM (#7064524)
    While Dell is a successful company, I don't think of them when it comes to emerging technologies. As he said, "Dell looks for large markets where there are inefficiencies or high mark-ups..." This sounds like the stable, mature technologies. Wouldn't some company on the bleeding edge been a better choice?
    • Well, one could argue that Dell has developed some very successful technologies that relate to supply management. Perhaps they look for large, stable markets, and apply new management technologies to make them more efficient and stable.

  • One I predict will be big (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    those specially designed surfaces that deflect all dirt, water, etc. When combined with paper display technolgy, you'll have a tactile user interface on any piece of paper or surface, and it won't even become dirty.
    • You bet it will be big.
      Non stick baking pans are just the beginning.
      No wax cars.
      No clean windows, HUGE issue on skyscrapers

      Oh yeah, and the fact it will mean a significant breakthrough in technology is nice too.

  • Hydrogen? Er... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by metroid composite ( 710698 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:23PM (#7064539) Homepage Journal
    GM's Lawrence Burns gave a vision of technology in the auto industry. He envisions fuel cell propulsion, hydrogen fuel, and electronic and software systems replacing the internal combustion engine, petroleum fuel, and mechanical controls.

    Unfortunately, last time I checked Hydrogen just wasn't particularly practical. Why? It takes up too much space for one thing; unles you're going to use Liquid Hydrogen which takes a lot of energy to keep cool. Secondly how do you make the stuff? Electrolosis with water right? This is all based on articles I saw years ago, but I remember you needed roughly twice the electricity to make the Hydrogen than you get back when you run the car. That's fine if you're running on Hydroelectric dams, but what about all the cars in areas where they have coal or Nuclear Power Plants?

    • OK... you can store hydrogen densly in metal matrix form, IIRC. I think you have to heat the matrix to release it, but it's been ages since I looked at it. You may not need to "get back" the electricity if you burn it as a fuel, eg BMW's H2 powered 7-series of many years ago. There's plenty of other way s to generate power too, solar, wind, and wave come to mind.
      • the most efficent way of making solor power would be to tunr a seasonal plant into ethanol. the net effect on carbon levels is zero since you are just replacing the carbon that was used during growth, and if you have a continuous growth cycle that keeps up with energy demands, then you are not affecting the environment in any way at all. it takes carbon to make plants, perhaps grass would be a good choice since it grows like crazy, or mabye bamboo since it can make a huge regrowth in a few weeks giving you

        • True. IIRC, rapeseed and sun-flowers and similar are apparently the shiznit for producing bio-diesel, and there's no reason that the same can't happen for ethanol with other fuels.

          It makes a lot of sense, hugely reduces processing, is cleaner, and is renewable.

    • you are WAY behind the times.

      the point of hydrogen is not a source of energy, but a place to store energy. so we make hydrogen by electrolosys at some huge nuclear facility. then we can turn that huge energy source into a portable energy source. we can make it even more practicle by making a metalic hydride, then just pump the hydride dust into your tank and boom, you have power.

      another alternative to hydrogen would be the use of fast growing plants to create ethanol and then use the enthanol in the fuel
    • Yes, I agree with another poster saying this is way behind the times. Always remember there were times when people questioned the practicality of all technology, even the computer you are using to see this and participate at Slashdot. Cars and traffic control, electric street lights in every town, etc., all had problems and issues and have been handled in some way.

      During the last great black out, there was a business that still had power in southern Ontario. Stuart Energy Systems. It was from a hydroge
    • ...I remember you needed roughly twice the electricity to make the Hydrogen than you get back...

      I was wondering that too... but I'd consider things like vast arrays of floating solar cells, you can pepper miles upon miles of ocean with'em (not enough for a person to walk on, just enough to capture the sun light), and have them somehow grid the generated elecriticy to where it will be used to generate hydrogen.

      • use direct sunlight?

        My idea (use it distribute it for the greater good if it is worth it):

        Rather than convert to electricity using solar cells (adding an expensive inefficient step) why simply focus sunlight using molded plastic panels (over the ocean) that let sea water seep in the bottom with a collecting station sucking in the hydrogen oxygen mix - at about 1500degC water dissociates (IIRC). Only real problem is keeping the H and O separate until you can store them separately. Then pipe ashore to mar
    • It takes up too much space for one thing; unles you're going to use Liquid Hydrogen which takes a lot of energy to keep cool.

      Er, why do you need to cool the H2 to minimise volume? Why not just keep it under pressure?

      but I remember you needed roughly twice the electricity to make the Hydrogen than you get back when you run the car. That's fine if you're running on Hydroelectric dams, but what about all the cars in areas where they have coal or Nuclear Power Plants?

      You have to compare this ratio to the
    • I submitted a story on using Boron as an alternative energy carrier, but it was rejected. Woe is me. Anyway, here's the interesting link:
      http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.htm l

      Boron is inert both in energetic form (boron) and dead form (boron oxide glass). It is very energy dense and you can recycle the combustion product using a straightforward sequence of reactions.
  • Having sat in on a few meetings with Intel and Dell guys, I can say for certain that they are really sharp. I am thrilled to see that Dell has stepped up to the hardware standards intelligence, and realized that benefitting the consumer in the end benefits the company, while creating things purely for profit inevitably ends in disaster :)

  • I predict the pants of the future... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...will automatically alter themselves as fashion dictates (and waistlines demand)

  • Recycled emerging technologies. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:27PM (#7064579) Homepage
    Every one of those ideas was being talked up ten or more years ago. Fuel cells, large numbers of networked embedded computers, nanotech, and the hydrogen economy have all been around before. We need some new new ideas.

    Or we need to make some of the important older new ideas, like fusion power, work. We desperately need a new power source. If we don't get one, we're headed back to a coal economy.

    • ...Fuel cells, large numbers of networked embedded computers, nanotech, and the hydrogen economy have all been around before

      Nanotech has been around? What? The idea yes, actual implementation no. I am pessimistic about nanotech in the near term, but really, if it can be made to work you aren't going to need a lot of other new, new ideas.

      Or we need to make some of the important older new ideas, like fusion power, work.

      What does fusion power get you that a breeder reactor doesn't? You still have nuclea

      • What does fusion power get you that a breeder reactor doesn't? You still have nuclear waste issues as a result of neutron emission. Even without (fission) breeder reactors, the thorium in the earth's crust would allow us to meet our energy needs through nuclear fission for some millenial span into the future - if we could deal with the environmental issues.

        Umm, less sources of nuclear contamination, theoerticaly more energy, and a safe biproduct to name a few.
        You were joking right?


        • Well, let's see:
          1) Less sources of nuclear contamination

          OK, the fuel may or may not be as bad as in a conventional fission reactor: I agree that I'd rather have a tritium leak than a plutonium one. But there will still be a neutron flux that will ultimately result in nuclear waste that needs to be disposed of. And unless you have an idea as to what the final configuration of a working fusion reactor is going to look like, I think it's premature to declare contamination less of an issue.

          2) Theoretically mo
          • From the Fusion FAQ:

            *** H. What is aneutronic fusion?

            Some researchers feel the advantages of neutron-free fusion reactions offset the added difficulties involved in getting these reactions to occur, and have coined the term
            "aneutronic fusion" to describe these reactions.

            The best simple answer I've seen so far is this one: (I've done some proofreading and modified the notation a bit.) [ Clarifying notes by rfheeter are enclosed in brackets like this.]

            >From: johncobb@emx.cc.utexas.edu (John W. Cobb)
      • What does fusion power get you that a breeder reactor doesn't?

        Maybe a technology that works.

        Breeder reactors have a terrible track record. Graphite reactors and sodium-cooled reactors are both major fire hazards, and there have been major fires at both types of plant. Windscale and Chernoybl were both large graphite reactors, and both had major fires. Most large sodium-cooled reactors have been shut down, either after a major fire (Joyu A, Beloyarsk, Monju) or because of concerns about one (Kalkar,

      • I am pessimistic about nanotech in the near term

        Define "near term." Advances in the evolution of all kinds of technology will continue to progress at an exponential pace [kurzweilai.net]; so the long-term is closer to the near-term than you would think.

        but really, if it can be made to work you aren't going to need a lot of other new, new ideas.

        What do you mean "if it can be made to work?" Nature already does it, and "The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering th [zyvex.com]

        • Advances in the evolution of all kinds of technology will continue to progress at an exponential pace; ...
          Hand-waving nonsense. What does it mean for technology to advance at 'an exponential rate'? Is technology some sort of scalar quantity? And yes, I know about Moore's law, and I am aware that memory density is also following something like an exponential curve. Neither of those get you to nano-scale self-replication simply by getting bigger, though. If replication is so easy, why hasn't a replicator bee
          • I know about Moore's law, and I am aware that memory density is also following something like an exponential curve.

            And harddisk size, and backbone bandwidth, and the number of internet nodes, and the cost/performance of tech, etc. Any evolutionary process progresses at an exponential rate if you just observe history. (Take the evolution of transportation as yet another example - with its 'Singularity' being the speed of light (or FTL, if possible)).

            If replication is so easy, why hasn't a replicator been

            • And harddisk size, and backbone bandwidth, and the number of internet nodes, and the cost/performance of tech, etc. Any evolutionary process progresses at an exponential rate if you just observe history.

              Exponential: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Go back and look at history, there may be rapid, pseudo exponential growth during the initial stages of technology and life (Cambrian explosion comes to mind) but inevitably, the laws of physics and the limits of re


          • If replication is so easy, why hasn't a replicator been built at the macro scale?

            This is one of the key questions. So far as I can tell the key problem is that, unless you specify your feed-stock / parts-supply you haven't really defined the problem.

            For example, it would be relatively easy to build a replicator to function in an envirionment that consisted of a 50/50 mixture of tested-snap-together-replicator-tops and tested-snap-together-replicator-bottoms (batteries included). But there's no point t

        • Advances in the evolution of all kinds of technology will continue to progress at an exponential pace;

          You can measure "all technology" with a single variable (or each technology depending on how you parse your sentence)? Gimme a break. So, it's just a matter of time before we have more artificial memory capacity than there are atoms in the known universe? Kurzweil may be smart, but that doesn't mean everything he writes is correct or even reasonable. In some areas, he's a certifiable nut.

          What do yo

    • Don't worry. When Coal runs out, Solar will become cheaper, and we'll be on a Solar economy. Assuming, of course, any sunlight will still make it down to the surface after we've burned all the fossil fuels we can. But hey, profit's important, right?
    • I think that if every car had a gps and a wi-fi connections than every car should know about all cars within 300 ft of them and their speed and direction of travel. I would think that with this information they could alert the driver of any possible collision and how to avoid them.

  • GE's China and India competition? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cpopin ( 671433 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:45PM (#7064720) Homepage
    Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of General Electric: "China and India will be strong international competitors, while the Internet levels the playing field for price."

    Part of leadership is personal. Immelt said, "People in the organization need to feel you're a part of their life, that they're a phone call away from the top of the company. They need to be able to trust the organization's command chain to pass information in an unfiltered way."

    As a former GE employee I can say GE is an innovator in outsourcing competition to China and India. I'd like to make a phone call to the top of the company: "Hey, could you please stop sending American jobs overseas?"

    The board will award Immelt 250,000 performance share units (PSUs) with a present value of $7.5 million -- 8.5% more than Immelt's 2002 salary and bonus.
    ...he already makes $6.9 million in bonuses and salary...
    Source: RatcliffeBlog [ratcliffe.com]

    • Re:GE's China and India competition? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Stiletto ( 12066 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @01:24PM (#7065072)

      They are not American jobs. They are GE jobs.
      • Yes, they're all GE jobs. Only now the Minnesota employees that have worked at the twenty year old company ITI, purchased from GE one year ago and renamed the GE Interlogix Division, have lost their jobs to overseas outsourcing. The IT employees have been replaced with Indian employees and the blue-collar workers with Mexican workers.

        So you're right, they're not longer American jobs. They're Indian and Mexican jobs. And all because ITI built a better home and office security system then GE. If you can
  • Where are the flying cars? I want my flying cars!!!

  • I got enough "dumb" dust to last so long I don't know when I'll need "smart" dust!

    I want my flying cars and my person spaceship.

  • Pictures here (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xyote ( 598794 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @01:21PM (#7065049)
    here [boston.com] under Photo Gallery [boston.com]. I'll let you pass your own judgement.
  • The simple fact is that patnets have no place in the future of commerce and business. In fact, even today they are rarely good for anything but defensive purposes against useless litigation and cross licensing. Just like the PC era exploded specifically because nobody could patent interfaces, the next generation of technology is going to take the same route.
    • Let's put forth the abolish-patents (and copyright) meme for every related story (about one in two here).
      • I'm with you. It's amazing the kind of abuse people will lay on you for pointing out simple facts about property and information. (even from open source gurus) Us people who understand that patents and copyrights suck need to team up and make some publicity.

        BTW, type in "against copyrights" in any internet search engine and you will likely see my bitter protest against copyrights right up there. (I also rewrote it and put it in a journal under slashdot user ~myprotest) But I've been searching for more
        • By the way, I'll be sending you an invoice for using my idea linking slavery to "intellectual property". I patented it! I think the slavery angle is so dead-on in many ways. The opponents calling us unrealistic utopians. The compromisers. Others are using it too. Let this meme catch on!
  • CEO Dell said Dell Corp. doesn't want to reinvent technology it can get from partners.

    And then he goes off and builds an MP3 player and a music store. No other companies that have done THAT yet, eh Mr. Dell? Guess he doesn't want to share as much as the quote above would indicate.

    The funny thing is that they mention the new music service and consumer devices just two paragraphs later!!
  • ... of gentoo are they running???

    MIT Emerging Technologies Conference ... yet, when i type emerge -s Technologies Conference

    i don't get any results :(

    maybe i need to emerge sync.. hmm ill try that :D

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