8 Quiet Firsts In Tech In 2014
Maybe you didn't hear about these science and technology breakthroughs, from robots to space exploration. But they will be remembered 20 years from now.
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Every year has its firsts and lasts. Many of the firsts are significant to only a few (say, the first world champion in a minor sport); others are trumpeted as big events (a tsunami wiping out a heavily populated area).
But there's a category in between "first-ever international competition for mixed-doubles curling" and "first black person elected president of the United States" (both of which happened in 2008): things that aren't trivial but receive much less attention than they deserve.
I like to call these "quiet firsts": events that might not have made a splash or that might have slipped by you in the news, but are nevertheless harbingers of important things to come.
Here are eight quiet firsts that you may or may not have noticed -- things that happened for the first time in 2014 that led to the world becoming a different place. If there are trends to be spotted among these eight, they're probably my personal biases: I tend to think of science and technology, and particularly space, as where the future of humanity lies. But I would also note that the world is becoming more inclusive: Several of the stories are about people from poorer nations breaking into global prominence with world-class accomplishments. The old easy dominance and hegemony by the usual forces seems to be over -- and good riddance.
In science and technology, small steps can enable great things. Might a better understanding of the math of dynamic systems lead to an evolutionary process -- operated remotely in labs throughout the planet via the cloud -- that makes lighter, stronger materials that enable more responsive robotic legs?
Or if you like, choose a dark path: The knowledge is turned to making weapons, the human connectedness into envy and anger, and we drift back into the old bad habits of our species, made worse by more potent weapons and more knowledge of exactly what it is about each other that we don't like.
What you'll see in these stories is probably not exactly what I see. But they are worth your attention because they are, quietly and unobtrusively, turning the world into something new.
Where else was the world quietly changing while I was distracted with mathematics, space travel, robotics, cloud computing, and the revolutions in chemistry and nanotech? Think small but important -- there were big and loud events, but this slideshow is not about bigger and louder, but rather the small events that mean so much. Where else should we have looked? Tell us in the comments.
Every four years since 1936 (with a long break around World War II), the International Mathematical Union has awarded the Fields Medal, originally to two mathematicians, and now usually to four. It's often described as "the Nobel Prize for math" but that's misleading; in fact it's a great deal harder to win a Fields Medal than a Nobel Prize in science or literature. To be eligible, mathematicians must be younger than 40 and must have made fundamental contributions to mathematics. The award is given in part to ensure that enough attention is called to that work. In other words, its purpose is not to tell the winners, "Wow, you're good," or "On the whole, that turned out to be important" years after the fact, as is often the case with the Nobel Prize. Rather, its message is this: "The most profound and insightful mathematicians in the world think your work is among the most important being done today, and we want to call the attention of all mathematicians to it."
In short, the Fields Medal is one of the most extraordinary awards for accomplishment, significance, ability, and further expectation ever created. And this year, there were three Fields Medal firsts:
The first South American medalist was Artur Avila of Brazil, whose insight into discrete dynamical systems (all that chaos and catastrophe stuff you've heard of) and mixing processes looks very likely to be the basis of many breakthroughs in physics and many developments in engineering across the next half-century or more).
The other two firsts belong to the same person: Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman and the first Iranian to win a Fields Medal. Her exploration of Riemann surfaces points toward deeper unities across many disparate branches of mathematics.
For both Avila and Mirzakhani, the "firsts" are mostly novelty. More important, we're looking at the dawn of something really big -- it just might be a decade or two before we know what it is.
On Sept. 24, Mangalyaan, the first Mars probe of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), assumed orbit around Mars and began transmitting pictures of the Martian surface and atmosphere. The primary scientific mission of Mangalyaan is to investigate the Martian upper atmosphere, which has been under-investigated by the probes of other space-faring nations. Three of the five instruments on board are dedicated to that primary mission. Mangalyaan's continuing observations from orbit might eventually provide clues to Martian life (or to its absence). There were also multiple technological objectives, but they could all be summarized as "prove ISRO can do this" -- and that has been accomplished, brilliantly.
The club of spacefaring nations gained another member. On Oct. 17, ArSat-1, Argentina's first domestically designed and constructed satellite, soared into geosynchronous orbit, where it will handle digital communications traffic from Argentina as well as Uruguay and Paraguay.
That's a pretty big first, but it's also a step toward an even bigger first. ArSat-1 demonstrated that Argentina could build a modern communications satellite, but it rode to orbit on an Ariane V launched from French Guiana as part of a paid cargo, along with a satellite for DirectTV. ArSat-2 is in preparation for a 2015 launch, and if things go according to plan it will fly from Puerto Belgrano, in southern Argentina, on board a Tronador II -- Argentina's first orbital-launch capable rocket.
Will they make it next year? The Tronador program has been troubled with accidents and wrecks, but so was every now-successful space and rocketry program in its infancy. The Argentine space program has shown tenacity and commitment in addition to talent and a willingness to learn. If a fully independent Argentine space program does not materialize in 2015, it will eventually. Meanwhile, building and launching a modern communications satellite means Argentina already is competing with nations that have been in space for a long time.
The cane, the crutch, and the wheelchair were the first medical devices to assist the mobility impaired. But if you've ever used any of these devices, you know they can have frustrating limitations.
With the advent of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and sleeker tech (along with a somewhat more compassionate society), today we see many people using motorized wheelchairs or other devices that improve mobility and enable them to enjoy a freer life.
Now Rewalk, which has just won FDA approval, offers something far more revolutionary than a better wheelchair: a genuine set of motorized, user-controlled legs. The user can walk, stand upright, sit, and get around much more freely in general. The technology is still very new, so the legs are heavy, and balance still requires crutches. A stair-climbing function also exists but is not yet FDA-approved. Rewalk is also expensive and not yet covered by insurance -- but the technology is here and is bound to improve. The first automobiles were not as good as today's riding lawnmower, and the first airplane achieved its highest speed while being shipped in a crate on a train. With the revolution Rewalk is sure to ignite, our society will become a freer, fairer place in which more people can contribute and enjoy life.
For many years the US was confident that in the event of a military clash with China, America had stealth and the Chinese didn't. With the B-2 Spirit bomber and the F-117 Nighthawk fighter, the US could penetrate deep into Chinese airspace to strike at control centers and transport hubs, disrupting Chinese air defenses to allow conventional planes access. This advantage was to increase with the F-35 Lightning II, which will use stealth technology in a mainline fighter.
Though Chengdu has moved forward in producing the J-20, a next-generation fighter with some stealthing, the gap still seemed comfortably wide: The Pentagon could still hit deep into China with minimal threat of Chinese retaliation.
But this November, at the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, major Chinese aerospace contractor Avic unveiled the J-31, a second-generation stealth aircraft that appears to be serious competition for the F-35. Furthermore, the rollout of what looks like a pre-production prototype of the J-20 implies that the Chinese air force is going to be stealth-capable, at least in a limited way, almost immediately.
As with much of US and allied defense planning in the last few decades, it's back to the drawing board.
(Image: J-20 fighter via Wikipedia)
At the University of Michigan School of Engineering, they're thinking really small. Last year, for the first time, groups led by professors Michael Solomon and Sharon Glotzer produced fibers, about a micrometer in length, that lengthen or shorten by as much as 36% when an electric field is applied to them. If that doesn't sound like big news, it isn't -- yet. But fibers that expand and contract on cue work exactly like the muscles in your body. Fibers working together could lead to creation of controllable devices -- no longer than the thickness of your hair -- that can propel themselves, grab things on cue, and apply force when needed.
In short, this development could make possible all the wild ideas about nanotech that have been floating around for 30 years. 2014 was the year when, if we didn't exactly take the baby step, we at least acquired the ability to move our feet.
In July, the Cloud Select Industry Group -- a European Commission working group of government bureaucrats along with representatives from IBM, Microsoft, the Cloud Security Alliance, and a number of European telecom and computing firms -- proposed guidelines for service contracts, service and support quality, security, and data storage and management for cloud services providers.
The guidelines were created mainly as an attempt to bring some order to the chaos of cloud services, and to increase public confidence in the cloud. But it's possible to see much more behind this: Rather than simply migrating services and data into the cloud, for the first time there is talk of comparability, interoperability, eliminating the need to negotiate a new deal every time the cloud is used, and constantly checking compatibility between different cloud-delivered services.
The reason Apple's slogan of a few years ago -- "It's a Mac; it just works" -- resonated so strongly with customers was that most users, whether home or business, don't particularly want to become computer experts; they just want the computer to do the things they need it to do. Similarly, if the cloud is to achieve widespread success, connections between cloud providers need to be simple and easy, and everyone needs to know what to expect when they sign on with a cloud service provider.
The European group hoped that their guidelines would prompt greater use of the cloud primarily because people would become more comfortable more quickly. That view might have been too modest: A standardized cloud will be an easy-to-use cloud, where people can say, "It's the cloud; it just works." Historically, people migrate toward what works. 2014 might be the year that started that migration in earnest.
Dr. Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow has been exploring the link between evolutionary processes and living things for several years. His research takes a very unusual approach: He tries to make things that are not alive evolve.
Because drops of mixed oils in water move and "behave" differently depending on their composition, for example, Cronin was able to demonstrate that when an arbitrary selection rule is applied, oil mixes that produce a desired result (drops that split, vibrate, or move), were more often reproduced, and those that didn't were discarded -- the equivalent of being eaten by predators, killed by disease, or unable to find a mate. Using a 3D-printed robot, he was able to work with large populations of oil drops quickly, and the oil drops evolved in a surprisingly lifelike manner.
Not only does this further reduce the barrier between the chemistry of living and non-living things (and suggest that non-living predecessors might evolve toward living descendants), it also has a wide array of practical applications. Industry is full of problems that could be fixed using a chemical that does not yet exist. The same process by which Cronin investigates the relation between life and evolution may one day lead to better rocket engine linings, furniture polish, or pavement.
The Cronin Group is well attuned to practical needs. Its work in other areas of synthetic evolution has already pointed to possible breakthroughs in flash memory and in hydrogen energy production.
Robot-driven evolution toward a product with a business goal -- you heard it first in 2014.
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