The Ultimate Gadget: Your Brain

On my way back from my bike ride this afternoon, I started listening to this Radio Lab show on NPR.  It was intriguing enough that I looked it up online when I got home and finished the episode.  It is a fascinating discussion of language and what it means to think.

Basically, experiments have shown that people's ability to think about complex topics (in some cases no more complex than the biscuit is in the corner to the left of the blue wall) is tied to language.  Language is thought to be a power connecting force in our brains.  Simple concepts like color can be linked to spatial concepts like "A is to the left of B".  Those connections don't exist from birth and only seem to develop in people who have language and actually, even people who only have reasonably complex language.  This concept fascinates me.

When I conveyed the basic concepts of the show to my son, his first question was the same one I had: what is the best language?  This question was not posed in the show (granted they only had one hour), but I think is very interesting.  It may be the case that all languages that are spoken by a reasonably large number of people are sufficiently developed to allow for complex thought, but can we test on the margin which is better?  And if so, doesn't humanity have a reason to want to all speak that language?

I think that there is an equally intriguing set of follow up questions:

• How can we make our language more complex to make our brains capable of thinking about even more complex concepts and topics?
• Is there a natural limit?  
• Can language be guided and crafted to make this happen?  How?
• Have there already been efforts in the past to make this happen?  Have they been successful?
• Are there ways of thinking or thought exercises that one can do to better connect various parts of their brains (and presumably have higher "horsepower" than before?

The Right Product: UPS

I have reasonably poor reliability at my house, in terms of how frequently the power cycles.  For my important electronics, I have a set (3) of full-sized CyberPower units that work well for my boys' computers upstairs, my computer downstairs and the LAN/AV equipment.  I have a Motorola Vonage box that sits in the garage so that it can be tied into the house's phone lines.  The problem comes when the power trips and the cable boxes go off-line.  What happens is that the Motorola box connects to the LAN first and disrupts (somehow, don't ask me) the ability for the FiOS cable boxes to get their proper IP addresses.  So the cable boxes just cycle until I unplug the Motorola box, reset the router, wait until all the cable boxes connect, then plug back in the Motorola box.  Annoying that this is an issue in the first place, but easily solved if the Vonage box never went offline to begin with (router stays online with my existing UPS setup).

Why is this the cheapest UPS that I can find - $39.95 on Amazon?

What I want is an inexpensive (~$20, half the above price) single outlet UPS that can support a small draw for a couple of hours or even less time.  Why doesn't this already exist?  I can't be the only one wanting something like this.

Perhaps this should be a Kickstarter campaign?

The Right Product: Motorcycle Bluetooth

I have recently been in the market for a bluetooth motorcycle intercom.  The first one I bought was a UClear HBC 100.  It was terrible.  We (my son and I) never got it to work for more than the left ear.  This was after he went to a CycleGear store and they went through about 4 pairs of ear buds (he doesn't have space to mount the helmet speakers).  The build quality of the gear seemed OK, but nothing special.  The instructions were confusing and it was difficult to get it to do what seemed like it should be easy.  Ultimately, we returned it and got our money back.

After waiting a while, and just using earbuds with my iPhone, I decided that I would spring for the Sena SMH10.  What a difference!

SMH10 - Just the Right Product

Everything about it was different.  The build quality seemed much better, which is tough to explain.  It wasn't heavier, but felt more substantial.  And the user experience was so much better.  I followed the instructions and was up and running within minutes.  It works fantastically and is exactly what I was looking for.

It is amazing how different the user experience is with a product that does exactly what you expect (and purports to do).

Solar Already Won?

I forget from where, but I read this article on the Guardian yesterday.  I kept thinking about it, so decided that it would probably be worth posting about.  The article is patently absurd.  Solar has not won yet.  Not at all.  Nor have regulators and customers come fully to grips with the impacts that significant solar deployment on residences and businesses are.

The biggest unaddressed area is that of consistent power delivery.  It's what is known as "reliability" in the industry.  Your house has whatever power it needs (barring storms or some other extraordinary event), whenever you want it.  Solar doesn't work that way.  Despite the positive economics the author cites for per kWh costs, the roof-top solar customers are taking advantage of the fact that whenever the sun isn't shining (or bright enough) to cover the electricity needs, they just draw from the grid.  Reliability is not cheap, but is bundled with your power.

In my opinion, the biggest problem is the way we pay for power (at least in most of the US, I can't speak knowledgeably about Australia).  We should be paying high fixed costs to be customers of the electricity network.  The cost of the wires (distribution and transmission) and transformers and substations is substantial and doesn't vary in the short-run.  Then, we should pay a relatively low variable costs that matches what the cost to produce and deliver the power is (here, delivery would only factor in line losses).  Why don't we pay for electricity this way?

I think that the major reason we don't do it this way is that the current approach tends to incent lower consumption on the part of customers.  That is to say that if people knew they had to pay $100 per month to be connected to the network and then only 4¢/kWh, then they would be less sensitive to leaving the lights on or lowering the AC temperature.  So given that most of us pay a very small fixed component ($10?) and something on the order of 10¢+/kWh, we use less.  Conservation rules! (I guess)

Maybe not all Wearables Make Sense

Or perhaps this post should be titled, Wearables for the Masochistic.  I don't see myself ever wanting to wear one of the new wristbands that will give you a mild electrical shock you when you don't do enough exercise, as this MailOnline article describes.  It is called Pavlok and it looks much like a FitBit Flex.

Certainly, there is going to be a raft of creativity applied to wearables over the next months and years.  Let's hope that results in useful, meaningful advances rather than more like this.

Wearables are Here to Stay (at Work)

So I rarely look at anything on Google+.  But as I was finishing up making a bunch of blog postings this morning, I happened to look at what is there.  I noted that Google is really pushing their Glass product through a gazillion posts.  One of their posts stuck out to me and I had to watch the YouTube video associated with it.

I've argued with my son about whether Google Glass will survive.  Andrew is quite convinced that it will not.  I think that it will and it will come through to general society after people are used to using them and seeing them in a work environment.  The video that I watched only served to harden my opinion on the matter.

This is the video:



The company, Wearable Intelligence, is planning on giving things a go in healthcare and the oil & gas production industry. Both, I believe are ripe for material productivity enhancements and I can see after some well publicized cost cutting, many other companies will be very interested in their use.

And this is how it will begin.  People will get used to wearing these things at work or seeing them on other people who they are working with (or shopping at their store, etc.).  It will be hard to escape them at some point.  Then, I think it will become more commonplace to see normal people wearing them and doing so for good reasons (usefulness in their daily lives).

But then again, perhaps we will always think of these items as the bluetooth earpiece that clowns will leave in their ear despite not being on a phone call, but still brandishing the large blue light.  I still think that Glass or something like it, will be with us for a long time (and not just in specialty applications).