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The rise of the connected car

Building the smart energy grid

The father of the mobile phone

June 6th 2009

The other kind of solar power

TQCOVERJune09.indd 1TQCOVERJune09.indd 1 26/5/09 13:27:5126/5/09 13:27:51

2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

FOR a long time the public has perceivedbiotechnology to mean dangerous

meddling with the genes in food crops.But biotechnology is of course aboutmuch more than transgenic food: it alsoencompasses the use of microbes to makepharmaceuticals, for example. The manybene�ts of the �rst wave of biotech products, in medicine, have unfortunatelybeen overshadowed by the supposedrisks of biotech’s second wave, in agriculture. Might its third wave�socalled industrial biotech, also known as �white biotech� or �green chemistry��resolvebiotech’s image problem?

As with other forms of biotechnology,industrial biotech involves engineeringbiological molecules and microbes withdesirable new properties. What is di�erentis how they are then used: to replacechemical processes with biological ones.Whether this is to produce chemicals forother processes or to create products suchas biopolymers with new properties,there is huge scope to harness biology toaccomplish what previously needed big,dirty chemical factories, but in cleaner andgreener ways.

Sales of industrialbiotechnologyproducts were about $140 billion in 2007,and 6% of all chemicals sales were generated with the help of biotechnology, saysJens Riese of McKinsey, a consulting �rm.Steen Riisgaard, chief executive of Novozymes, a biotechnology company, says he

imagines a future in which biore�neriesare dotted around the countryside producing fuels and other chemicals from biomass such as agricultural waste.

One company which has been working in industrial biotechnology for years isDSM, based in Heerlen in the Netherlands.In the 1990s it started making enzymes forcheese and omega6 fatty acids for infantformulas, and went on to develop a biological process to produce cephalosporin,an antibiotic, in a much cleaner way thanthe chemical processes used to make thedrug. Its most recent e�ort has been to �nda biological way to produce a chemicalcalled succinic acid (C4H6O4), which isused to make a wide range of productsincluding spandex, biopolymers for agriculture, deicing salts, esters, resins andacidity regulators in foods.

The usual chemical process involvesmaking succinic acid from crude oil ornatural gas. DSM’s biological approach isbased on fermentation using enzymesand genetically engineered microbes.After a successful pilotproduction phase,the next step is a demonstration factory inLestrem, France, which will be running bythe end of the year. If that goes well, amuch bigger commercial operation willfollow. The company says that as well asmaking succinic acid from biologicallyderived starch, rather than fossil fuels, itsprocess also uses 40% less energy andproduces fewer carbondioxide emissions.

Third time lucky

Industrial biotech: A �third wave� of biotechnology is arriving. Will it be ableto avoid a poor reception from the general public this time around?

Contents

Monitor

2 Biotech’s third wave, a betterrobot hand, red tape in space,pneumatichybrid engines,military blimps, interplanetaryemail, a new arti�cial heart,zapping mosquitoes withlasers, rewarding pillpoppers,campaigners embrace maps,and sewing with nanotubes

Rational consumer

10 With a little helpðDomestic robots’ slow progress

Energy

11 Building the smart gridAn internet for electricity

Automotive technology

14 The connected carVehicle shall speak unto vehicle

Case history

16 Solarthermal technologyThe other kind of solar power

Mobile phones

19 Sensors and sensibilityMining the data from handsets

Photoacoustic imaging

21 The sound of lightA new scanning technique

Brain scan

23 Cellular seerA pro�le of Marty Cooper, thefather of the mobile phone

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On the coverThink of solar power, and thechances are you will think ofphotovoltaic panels. Butthere is another way to makeelectricity from sunlightwhich may have even brighterprospects. Concentratingsolarthermal technology isgrowing fast and couldreemerge as the leading formof solar power, page 16

The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Monitor 3

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Novozymes, as its name suggests, hasfocused its attention on supplying optimised enzymes�biological moleculesthat help make reactions happen faster, orat lower temperatures. This sounds trivialbut it can make the di�erence between acommercial and a noncommercial process. The company says it has 47% of themarket for industrial enzymes, which areused in areas such as detergents, brewing,baking or to produce animal feeds.

Enzymes are the �rst tool of choice inwhite biotechnology if the chemicalconversion process is a fairly simple one.But if a more complicated series of reactions is required, or the enzyme in theprocess is used up during conversion andneeds to be regenerated, it is time to reachfor a microbe. Microbes can accomplishhundreds of chemical tasks at the sametime and are able to recreate the enzymesthey need. Novozymes is working on abiological process to make acrylic acid(C3H4O2) from starch or biomass ratherthan fossil fuels. One stage uses optimisedenzymes, and another is carried out byengineered microbes.

Creating a suitable microbe involvesstarting o� with one that does part of thejob in question, and then convincing themicrobe to specialise in that activity. (DSM

found its microbe, a yeast, living in elephant dung, where it broke down cellulose in starch; Novozymes started out witha bacterium from its large library of microbes.) The next stage is to eliminate thethings the microbe does that are not related to the task in hand by inactivatingnonessential genes. The modi�ed microbes are then produced in large numbers and those that are best at the job areselected. The result is a bug that is specially adapted for a particular task.

Novozymes says it is close to completing its acrylicacid process. Around 40% ofacrylic acid produced is used to makesuperabsorbent material like that foundin nappies (diapers); most of the rest goesinto paints and coatings. Novozymes saysits process will be competitive with chemical methods at an oil price of $60 a barrelor higher. Given the large size of the acrylicacid market and its steady growth (4% ayear), Novozymes is con�dent that itsprocess will grab a decent share.

Proponents of industrial biotechnology are optimistic that they can avoid thepitfalls that hindered the adoption ofbiotech crops, which have been criticisedby their opponents as unnatural �Frankenfoods� that extend corporate control ofagriculture. For one thing, unlike transgenic tomatoes, say, industrialbiotech products are not sold directly to consumers.And instead of displacing �natural� products with bioengineered alternatives, asin agriculture, industrial biotechnologygenerally displaces fossil fuels and theirassociated chemical processes with

greener biological alternatives. Surely thatshould make it easier to convince peopleof its bene�ts, and hence to rehabilitatethe notion of biotechnology more widely?

One problem is that even though theraw materials used in industrial biotechnology may not be derived from fossilfuels, they are still capable of stirring upsome di�cult ethical questions. In particular, using food crops like maize as rawmaterials to make biofuel is already hugely controversial because of its impact onfood prices. And even growing nonfoodcrops for industrial use is problematic,because it can reduce the land availablefor food production.

The use of agricultural waste is lesscontroversial. Mr Riisgaard reckons thatconverting agricultural waste into otherchemicals (including fuels) using industrial biotechnology could replace 2025% ofglobal oil consumption. And there isplenty of waste about. He also suggeststhat raw materials could be grown onmarginal land which is unsuitable for foodproduction. That is true, but it could haveknockon e�ects on biodiversity. Perhapsthe most promising approach for advocates of biotechnology’s third wave isto emphasise the potential for a new,greener chemicals industry to create jobsin remote rural areas. 7

THE arm of a typicalindustrial robot is a

crudelooking butfunctional implementdesigned for a singlejob, such as placing tinycomponents onto acircuit board or paintinga car. Some robots havepincerlike claws to pickthings up. But none comesclose to the complex abilitiesof the human hand. Or, atleast, none did until theShadow Robot Company, based in London, began workingon the problem.

Shadow Robot has developed a robotic hand that closelymimics the human version. Ithas already sold several ofthem to various universitiesand to NASA, America’s

space agency. And it has taken an orderfrom Britain’s Ministry of Defence, whichwants to try the hand out on the arm of abombdisposal robot.

Shadow Robot’s hand is about thesame size as a man’s. It has four �ngersand a thumb made from various metalsand plastics, and even has polycarbonate�ngernails to help it prise things apart. Thejoints in its �ngers, thumb and wrist provide 24 degrees of freedom (a degree offreedom is the ability of one part of asystem to move independently of theothers in a particular way). All this enablesit to copy the movement of a person’shand very closely. The robot hand mimicsthe movements of a human operator whowears a special �virtual reality� gloveequipped with sensors that can determinethe positions of the �ngers inside it.

And the robot hand mimics not just themovement, but also the means of achieving it. The hand has a combination ofarti�cial muscles and tendons. Each �airmuscle� in the forearm behind the handconsists of a rubber tube covered in a rigidplastic mesh. In�ating the tube strains themesh, providing a powerful pulling force.By using two air muscles to pull a joint indi�erent directions, the robot hand iscapable of strong and precise actions. The40 muscles are attached to �ne cables insheaths, much like the brake cables on abicycle, and these pass through the roboticwrist to operate the joints.

The tactile sensors which take the placeof nerve endings at the �ngertips are evenmore advanced. They are made from a

material that conducts electricityonly when it is squeezed. Thesensors rely on quantum tunnell

ing, in which electrons takejourneys that would not beallowed by the laws of classicalphysics, as long as the distancesinvolved are tiny.

Minuscule changes in thesqueezing of the sensortrigger far larger changesin the �ow of electrons,which makes the sensorextremely sensitive. Thesignals this generates can

then be fed back as resistance in the operator’s glove,and also limit the maximumpressure the robot hand canexert. The technology required for this was developed by another smallBritish �rm, Peratech,which is based in Richmond, North Yorkshire.

The latest version ofthe hand can pick up andhandle delicate objectssuch as fruit and eggs.The company hasdecided against mak

Very handy

Robotics: Mechanical handseeks dangerous, dirty anddull jobs. Quali�ed tohandle eggs


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ing it even stronger, says Rich Walker,Shadow Robot’s technical director, because that might be dangerous. Manyindustrial robots have to be containedbehind strong fences because they caninjure people who get in their way.

The next stage of development, saysMr Walker, will be to add some level ofintelligence. The company is involved in aEuropean Union programme to developtechnology, such as machine vision, tomake robots cleverer. This would enablethe hand, for example, to recognise anobject like an egg and know how to pick itup without breaking it. Unless, of course,it was clever enough to know that it wasmaking an omelette. 7

FOR many years people in America’sspace industry have complained that

the rules governing the export of technology are too strict. Understandably, thegovernment does not want militarilyuseful stu� to fall into the hands of its foes.But the result is a system that is too strict inits de�nition of �militarily useful� andwhich favours lumbering dinosaurs suchas Lockheed Martin and Boeing, whichsurvive on big government contracts,rather than small and nimble �furry mammals� that need every customer they canget, domestic or foreign.

In December 2007 one of those mammals, a company called Bigelow Aerospace, �led the �rst legal challenge toAmerica’s rules for exporting space technology. It disputed the government’s claimthat foreign passengers travelling on aspaceship or space station were involvedin a transfer of technology. The outcomesuggests that there may be a chink in thearmour of the exportcontrol regime.

Improbable as it sounds, BigelowAerospace makes and launches in�atablespacestation modules (pictured) andhopes, one day, to build a commercialspacestation. Under the existing rules,any nonAmerican passengers on its spacestations would have to comply with onerous exportcontrol rules. These takemonths to satisfy and could plausiblyeven require government monitors to bepresent whenever the foreigner was nearAmerican space technology. Even trainingon the ground in a mockup module isdeemed a transfer of technology and

therefore subject to controls. Yet taking a passenger �ight does not

mean you can then build an aeroplane,observes Mike Gold, head of Bigelow’so�ce in Washington, DC. His line of argument has, it seems, been accepted. MrGold says that his company received alegal ruling in February and that it hasspent the past few months digesting it. Hesays Bigelow has got �everything wecould want�, though the ruling still precludes passengers from what he describesas the �badboy list of export control��nationals from Sudan, Iran, North Koreaand China will not be allowed to �y ortrain on suborbital passenger �ights, orvisit Bigelow’s space station.

Other private space companies havewelcomed the ruling. Marc Holzapfel,legal counsel for Virgin Galactic, describesit as a �major development� because itfrees the industry from having to gothrough the �complicated, expensive anddilatory exportapproval process�. TimHughes, chief counsel of SpaceX, anotherprivate �rm, says the approval is exciting,because it seems to represent a �commonsense approach� and bodes well for similar requests made by companies, such ashis own, that hope to start ferrying foreignastronauts on missions to the International Space Station.

The ruling also has implications for theentire exportcontrol regime, known asthe International Tra�c in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Robert Dickman, executivedirector of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, says the decision appears to convey a new willingnessto �move away from the very restrictiveapproach that has been in place for almosta decade�. His organisation recently host

ed a forum involving the private space�ight industry and senior governmento�cials to discuss the regulations.

During the American presidentialcampaign, Barack Obama said that, ifelected, he would review ITAR, and inparticular the provisions relating to spacehardware. George Nield, associate administrator for commercial space transportation within the Federal Aviation Authority, says although he has not seen the newruling, it was good news that the government �may now be willing to revise someof its exportcontrol restrictions to enableAmerican �rms to be more competitive intheir e�orts to sell aerospace products andservices globally�. 7

Red tape in orbit

Space: A small company has won animportant legal challenge toAmerica’s spacetechnologyexportcontrol regime

Bigelow prepares for lifto�

BEING green can be expensive, as anydriver of a Toyota Prius can tell you.

The car is a hybrid, combining a petrolengine with an electric motor that powersit at low speeds in the city and providesbursts of acceleration when needed. It isthe most fuele�cient car sold in America,but it costs upwards of $22,000, a pricethat can wipe out the savings on fuel. Onereason for the high price is that the carcontains expensive batteries. Another isthat the transmission system had to becompletely redesigned. But there may be acheaper and simpler way to make a hybrid, using air power instead of electricity.

Using compressed air to power a carhas one obvious disadvantage: compressed air has a low energydensity, sonot very much energy can be stored.However, in urban driving this may notmatter. One of the most important roles ofthe batteries in a hybrid is to store energyrecovered when the car brakes. The ideawith a pneumatic hybrid is to store thisenergy as compressed air. Such a vehiclewould run on petrol but would use itsreservoir of compressed air to boost theengine’s power when needed. This wouldnot demand a serious redesign becauseevery car already has a makeshift aircompressor in the form of the engineitself. Building a pneumatichybrid carwould thus be relatively cheap.

When the driver of a pneumatichybrid car applied the brakes, the fuel supplyto the engine would be shut o� and thepistons that normally propel the vehiclewould help slow it, pumping pressurised

Running on air

Transport: Powering hybrid cars withcompressed air rather than electricmotors could be a cheaper way toincrease fuel e�ciency


2 air into a tank as they did so. This compressed air could then be used to forcemore air into the combustion chamberduring acceleration. This allows more fuelto be burned (since there is more oxygenavailable to burn it with) and thus provides a burst of extra power. According toLino Guzzella of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who hasbuilt a prototype pneumatichybrid engine, this sort of approach could reducefuel consumption by 32% compared witha normal engine, and would o�er 80% ofthe fuel savings of an electrichybridvehicle at a lower price.

It is well known that today’s enginesare too large, being sized for accelerationrather than everyday driving, says DrGuzzella. So the trend is towards smallerengines augmented with turbochargers.(A turbocharger uses exhaust gases todrive a compressor that forces more airinto the engine.) The trouble is that turbochargers can take several seconds to provide the extra oomph. But a pneumatichybrid engine can deliver it immediately,thus enabling a smaller engine to deliverthe same kind of driving performance as alarger engine, but with considerably better

fuel consumption.Pneumatichybrid cars are best suited

to city driving, according to John Heywood of the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology. The compressedair tankneeds to be kept topped up by regularbraking, and drivers brake less often onmotorways. But stopping and starting isnot a problem for one type of pneumatichybrid. Hua Zhao of Brunel University inLondon has been developing a variationof the technology for lorries and buses.Some commercial vehicles are alreadydesigned to use their engines as compressors to slow them down and prevent thebrakes from overheating when goingdown long hills. And many such vehiclesuse airdriven starter motors. Dr Zhaoreckons he can make a pneumatichybridengine using these existing components.

But instead of injecting compressed airinto the combustion chamber, Dr Zhao’sdesign would use the compressedair tankto replace the electrically powered compressors that feed airdriven starter motors. Simulations suggest this would signi�cantly reduce fuel consumption, saysDr Zhao, who is now looking for a commercial partner to build a test vehicle. 7

SPYING is a sophisticated and expensivebusiness�and gathering military in

telligence using unmanned aircraft can beprohibitively so. Predator and GlobalHawk, two types of American dronefrequently �own in Afghanistan and Iraq,cost around $5,000 and $26,500 an hourrespectively to operate. The aircraft themselves cost between $4.5m and $35m each,

and the remotesensing equipment theycarry can more than double the price.Which is why less elegant but far cheaperballoons are now being used instead.

Such blimps can keep surveillance andordnanceguiding equipment aloft for afew hundred dollars an hour. They costhundreds of thousands, not millions, ofdollars. And they can stay in the air for

more than a week, whereas most drones�y for no more than 30 hours at a time.They are also easy to deploy, because noair�eld is needed. A blimp can be stored inthe back of a jeep, driven to a suitablelocation, launched in a couple of hoursand winched down again even faster.

Unlike other aircraft, blimps do notneed to form a precise aerodynamicshape. This means they can lift improbable objects into the sky, such as danglingradar equipment. At altitudes of just a fewhundred metres, a blimp carrying 20kg ofremotesensing electronics (includingradar and thermalimaging cameras) canidentify, track and provide images ofcombatants dozens of kilometres away, byday or night. It can also help commandersaim the lasers that guide their missiles.

Blimps often operate beyond the rangeof machineguns and rocketpropelledgrenades. Even if they are hit, though, theydo not explode because the helium gasthat keeps them airborne is not �ammable. (Engineers abandoned the use ofhydrogen in 1937 after the Hindenburg, aGerman airship, was consumed by �amesin less than a minute.) Moreover, theyusually stay aloft even when punctured:the pressure of the helium inside a blimpis about the same as that of the air outside,so the gas does not rush out. Indeed, towards the end of 2004, when a blimpbroke its tether north of Baghdad andstarted to drift towards Iran, the Americanair force had trouble shooting it down.

At least 20 countries use blimps�bothglobal military powers, such as America,Britain and France, and smaller regionalones, including Ireland, Pakistan, Polandand the United Arab Emirates. Many areemployed in Iraq. In November 2008Aerostar International of Sioux Falls,South Dakota, began �lling a $1.8m orderfor 36 blimps to be deployed by the American armed forces in Iraq. But Afghanistanmay prove a bigger market. That is because it is di�cult to pick up satellite signals in the valleys of that mountainouscountry. As a result blimps, adjusted tohover at appropriate heights, are oftenused to relay data to and from satellites.

As politicians around the world seek tocut public spending, the attractions ofblimps are growing. In January America’sdefence secretary, Robert Gates, told theSenate’s armedservices committee thatthe Department of Defence would pursuegreater quantities of �75% solutions� thatcould be realised in weeks or monthsinstead of �99% exquisite systems� thattake more than a decade to develop. BarryWatts, an analyst at the Centre for Strategicand Budgetary Assessments, a thinktankin Washington, DC, says America’s airforce has been criticised for not providingenough aerial data to �insatiable� groundforces. Blimps, Mr Watts reckons, will helpthem sate that appetite. 7

Military technology: Blimps equipped with remotesensing electronics arecheaper than drone aircraft, and have many other advantages

Spies in the sky


CYBERSPACE is noisy, chatty and wellconnected. Space, by contrast, is not.

Communication between Earth andspacecraft is clunky and reminiscent of thedays when switchboard operators had toplug in telephone lines by hand to connectthe people at either end. But that is nowabout to change. America’s space agency,NASA, has been researching what it callsthe delay (or disruption) tolerant network protocol, or DTN. The idea is tointroduce to space the automated protocols that enable seamless communicationon the terrestrial internet.

Communicating in space is quite di�erent from the constant �ow of informationon Earth, where a buzz of greetings, acknowledgments and farewells �its between computers as they locate eachother, exchange data and then disconnect.Space communication happens in distinctjumps, and requires a �store and forward�system that can retain information at eachstep in the process. For example, if a roveron Mars needs to send data to Earth, itwould �rst need to store the data until itwas within range of an orbiting satellite.After receiving the data, that satellitewould hold the information until it couldbe sent on the next hop towards Earth.

Sending data from Earth to Mars andback can take anywhere between threeandahalf and 20 minutes, depending onthe positions of the planets and whetherthey are facing each other in their re

spective rotations. As a result, scientistshave to plan when to send data. The DTN

is an attempt to automate that process.�The idea would be that you could senddata from France to Mars in a seamlessway,� says Adrian Hooke, a NASA scientistbased in Washington, DC, who has beendeveloping the protocol over the pastdecade with Vint Cerf of Google, a founding father of the internet, and others.

In November 2008 NASA conductedthe �rst test of DTN. It installed softwareon EPOXI, a NASA probe orbiting the sunroughly 32m kilometres (20m miles) fromEarth, and used it to transfer data betweenthe probe and the planet. NASA is nowpoised to install newer versions of thissoftware on the same probe and on theInternational Space Station. The softwarewill be sent to the EPOXI computers usingpowerful antennas at three bases in California, Canberra and Madrid. Uploading

this onemegabyte software update takesaround an hour, so its speed is comparableto that of a 1990s modem connection. If allgoes well Dr Cerf says that by Septemberthere should be three nodes on the interplanetary network�including Earth.

Researchers at Ohio University arealready distributing a version of what isknown as the DTN protocol stack, so thatcomputer programmers can write programs that will use this new protocol. Itwill require new email clients, webbrowsers and �letransfer programs thatcould be used on the International SpaceStation or other future manned spacemissions, and which can interact withother nodes on the interplanetary network and the terrestrial internet. It willalso require changes to the internet’sdomainnaming system, so that scientistscan simply send email messages [email protected]. 7

Computing: A modi�ed version of theinternet’s communications protocol,devised for interplanetary use, isbeing tested by spacecraft

Dot Mars

EVOLUTION has favoured cockroaches above human beings, at least

when it comes to the functioning of theheart. A cockroach’s heart will continueto beat even when one of its chambershas failed; in similar circumstances, aman will die. Now a team led by SujoyGuha of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, has created an arti�cial human heart based on a cockroach’s, which they believe will beunusually robust and a�ordable.

A cockroach’s heart is a tube thatruns the length of its body. It has 13chambers, linked like a string of sausages. As each chamber contracts, theblood within is pumped to a higherpressure. Each successive chamberincreases the pressure. A human heart,by contrast, has four chambers. Two ofthese pump blood to the lungs, where itpicks up oxygen, then the other twopump this oxygenated blood throughout the body. One of these four chambers�the left ventricle�contracts moststrongly to pressurise the blood.

The arti�cial hearts developed so farhave mostly mimicked human ones.The �rst devices, developed in the 1950sand 1960s, were large machines placedon trolleys next to the patient and attached by tubes. Modern arti�cialhearts are less cumbersome, but theyare still rather unwieldy because theyuse compressed air to pump the blood

and are powered by heavy batteries.They are used temporarily, usually for afew days or weeks, until a real heart isavailable for transplant.

Instead of trying to mimic the actionof the left ventricle, Dr Guha’s designuses a multistep approach borrowedfrom the cockroach. His device, madefrom plastic and titanium, is the samesize as a human heart but with �vechambers arranged like the layers of anonion. Each chamber acts in successionto increase the pressure of the blood.The contraction of each chamber iscontrolled by a motor driven by bulkybatteries. The arti�cial heart is beingtested on goats, with human trialsscheduled for next year. If these aresuccessful, the device could be on themarket in three to �ve years.

The multistep approach makes thisarti�cial heart much cheaper to buildthan those that use compressed air topump the blood. Dr Guha says it wouldcost $2,0002,500. Peter Weissberg,medical director of the British HeartFoundation, says one reason clinicaltrials of arti�cial hearts are so di�cult toconduct is that the devices are so expensive, typically costing over $50,000. DrGuha’s cockroachinspired arti�cialheart promises to provide an a�ordableoption for cardiac care in emergingeconomies such as India, where heartdisease is on the rise.

On the pulse

Medical technology: A new, lowcost design for an arti�cial heart takesits inspiration from an unusual source�the cockroach


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is being developed by Szabolcs Marka, anastrophysicist, and his colleagues at Columbia University in New York. Dr Markahas created a curtain of invisible light thatmosquitoes cannot penetrate. He uses acommon diode laser, a simple lens and apower supply to generate an infraredbarrier that can cover a door or window.Mosquitoes are very sensitive to heat andlight (indeed, their sensitivity to infraredradiation helps them sense the presenceof food, in the form of people). The idea isthat when a mosquito encounters theinfrared curtain, its senses are overwhelmed and it �ies away. Tests haveshown that the curtain kills some mosquitoes that �y into it.

Even if a mosquito somehow managedto penetrate such a barrier, a second lightcurtain set up around a bed, for example,would provide further protection. DrMarka envisages two or three light curtains in a home: one at the door, onearound a sleeping person and one surrounding the area in which mosquitoestypically hide (under the thatched roof ofa hut, for example). Dr Marka calculatesthat if there is a 6% chance that a mosquitowill penetrate a light curtain, and a hutcontains four curtains, then only one in100,000 mosquitoes will be able to spreadmalaria. Dr Marka, whose research isfunded by the Gates Foundation, says thata prototype of his machine costs a littleover $100. 7

Zap!

Medical technology: Researchers aredevising laserdefence systems toshoot down mosquitoes and preventthe spread of malaria. No, really

TOWARDS the end of the cold warRonald Reagan announced plans to

use powerful lasers to shoot down anyincoming intercontinental ballistic missiles that the Soviet Union aimed at America. The lasers were real but the plan wasfanciful. Scientists now propose a moremodest system, aimed at insects ratherthan nuclear warheads. They think laserscould be used to zap the mosquitoes thatcarry malaria, a disease which kills morethan a million people each year, most ofthem children, and debilitates hundredsof millions more.

Researchers at Intellectual Ventures, aninnovations company established byformer Microsoft executives in Bellevue,Washington, have developed what theycall a photonic mosquito fence. It has aseries of posts, each of which is equippedwith a cheap camera and a light bulb(which will be swapped for a lightemitting diode in future versions). The camerasare connected to a central computer.When a camera detects movement,the computer analyses it to see whether it is consistent with the behaviourof a mosquito. If it is, then the computer trains a laser onto the insect andblasts it into oblivion.

Jordin Kare, an astrophysicist and aformer scientist on the missiledefenceprogramme, leads the e�ort. He says it ispossible to detect di�erent species ofmosquito because their wings beat with adistinctive frequency. He is aiming forAnopheles gambiae, the species moste�ective at spreading plasmodium, theparasite that causes malaria, when it bitespeople to feed on their blood.

Dr Kare imagines that the mosquitofence will be set up around a hospital or avillage in a malarial area. His experimentswith prototypes have shown that postsspaced 100 metres apart work best. Thelasers would target only mosquitoes,although Dr Kare says some work stillneeds to be done to ensure that the laser issafe for people and animals. Although hewill not give an exact �gure, Dr Kare sayshe built his prototype from parts bought atsurplus stores and on eBay, and has calculated that the cost will be comparable tothat of supplying all the inhabitants of amediumsized village with bed nets.

Another, somewhat simpler, approach

TAKING your medicineeven for a week is a drag.

Taking it every day for sixmonths is a real nuisance.Yet that is what is asked ofthose being treated for tuberculosis (TB).They need to pop their pills for half a yearif they are to eliminate the bacteria thatcause the infection and combat the emergence of antibioticresistant strains. Butthe actual symptoms of infection tend togo away after just two months of takingthe medicine, so the incentive to carry onis negligible. Worse, the drugs themselvesproduce unpleasant symptoms, includingnausea, diarrhoea, headaches and insomnia. Indeed, one common antiTB

drug, rifampicin, also has the unnervingside e�ect of turning people’s tears, sweatand urine a shade of reddish orange.

Every cloud, however, has a silverlining, for it was this strange (if harmless)side e�ect that gave a team of researchersat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) their crucial idea: stampsized patches, much like litmus paper, thatchange colour when exposed to the urineof people with traces of medicine in theirsystems. The crucial trick of XoutTB, as thesystem built around these patches isknown, is that the change in colour revealsa code that a patient can send by textmessage to a number which rewards himwith free airtime minutes on his mobilephone. Patients thus have a daily incentiveto take their terrible pills.

The XoutTB project began in the springof 2007, with the launch of the YunusChallenge, a nowannual contest at MIT topromote development in poor countries.Muhammad Yunus, after whom the challenge is named, is a Nobel prizewinningpioneer of micro�nance�the idea thatloans too small for traditional banks tohandle are crucial in enabling businessesto �ourish in the poorer parts of the world.

The winner of that year’s challengewas Jose GomezMarquez, a medicalengineer at MIT. His original idea, inspiredby Dr Yunus’s work, was to involve localbanks (in this case in Nicaragua) in ascheme that would give TB patients microloans in exchange for evidence that theyhad been taking their medication. Thatplan fell by the wayside because the banksdid not want to get involved. But phone

Taken yourmedicine?

Health care: Mobile phonesprovide a cheap and simpleway to ensure that patientshave popped their pills


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companies were willing to give it a try, andbrought with them the bonus of an established infrastructure for distributing therewards. The resulting trial, which involved 30 people with tuberculosis, was asuccess, and a second is about to be carried out in Pakistan, where a batch of 400XoutTB patches is arriving this month.

Conditions in Karachi, the Pakistanicity in which the trial is being conducted,could politely be described as �challenging�. According to Rachel Glennerster, amember of the XoutTB team who hasworked as an economist at the IMF andthe British Treasury, the local medicalclinics are closed about 60% of the timeand doctors or nurses are often absentduring the 40% when the doors are nominally open. Such absences�and the associated lack of compliancemonitoring�aresome of the problems for which XoutTB isdesigned to compensate.

Pakistan, though, presents a seconddi�culty. Aamir Khan, the director ofXoutTB’s operations in the country, quick

ly discovered that one of the neediestgroups of people there are 15 to 25yearold women. Unfortunately, they are oftenunder the thumbs of their parents orhusbands and are not allowed mobilephones of their own. Dr Khan is thereforeconsidering the idea of a di�erent reward�highenergy food supplements tocombat malnutrition. The system wouldnot supply food directly, but would instead top up credit at the patient’s grocerusing an automatic link.

If XoutTB does work, the team hasambitions to extend it. Other drugs canalso be a nuisance to remember. Theantiretrovirals used to combat AIDS, forexample, have to be taken for the rest of apatient’s life. And taking medicines fornoninfectious conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure is also a chore.Find the right �litmus test�, though, andwhat is now being done with TB drugscould succeed with any of these as well.Taking your medicine could, at last, become a truly rewarding experience. 7

Keep taking the tablets

CONVINCING people about the evilsof housing segregation can be tough,

says Barbara Samuels, a campaigner forfair housing at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland. �Peoplesay, ‘What’s so bad about living in anallblack neighbourhood?’ � she explains.But using a map that displays all the vacant houses in a segregated neighbourhood, how few jobs exist there and howlittle public transport is available, �you

can show graphically how people aresegregated from opportunity,� she says.�Maps help you take complex informationand portray it in a clear, intuitive manner.You can show segregation in a way thattalking about it doesn’t do.�

And compiling such maps is mucheasier than it used to be, thanks to newmapping tools and sources of informationon the internet. Ms Samuels remembers,for example, the tedium of trying to draw

basic data on maps by hand in the 1990s.But in 2005 she was able to use maps thatdisplayed 14 indicators of opportunity�created for her by a mappingtechnologyspecialist�to help win a housingdesegregation court case.

For most people it is merely a handytool to �nd a nearby pizzeria or get directions to a meeting. But mapping technology has matured into a tool for socialjustice. Whether it is to promote health,safety, fair politics or a cleaner environment, foundations, nonpro�t groups andindividuals around the world are �ndingthat maps can help them make their casefar more intuitively and e�ectively thanspeeches, policy papers or press releases.

�Today you are allowed to visualisedata in ways you couldn’t even understand just a few years ago,� says Je� Viningof Gartner, a consulting �rm. Along withwebbased resources, coalescence aroundmore advanced tools has also helped,such as the emergence of ESRI, based inRedlands, California, as the market leaderin mapping software. And the rise ofopensource projects such as MapServer,PostGIS and GRASS GIS have made sophisticated mapping available to nonpro�t groups with limited resources.

All this has made it much easier tocreate maps that explain�at a glance�something that might otherwise requirepages of tables or verbiage. �A percentageor a table is still abstract for people,� saysDan Newman of MAPLight.org, a groupbased in Berkeley, California that chartsthe links between politicians and money.�With maps, you can show people how anabstract concept connects to where theylive.� Wendy Brawer, founding director ofGreenMap.org, a mapping site based inNew York used by people in 54 countries,says maps can make a point even if theyare in a foreign language. �Maps are reallyhelpful for that ‘Aha!’ moment,� she says.

For example, �The Grim Reaper’s RoadMap: An Atlas of Mortality in Britain�,published in 2008, reveals that the placeswith the highest numbers of smokers alsohave the highest rates of death from lungcancer. No surprise there. But the collection of maps from a British publisher ofpublicpolicy books also shows that cervical cancer is more likely to strike those inthe north of England, and brain cancer ismore prevalent in the south of Scotland.Such revelations can lead to investigationsand eventual health improvements.

The Kirwan Institute for the Study ofRace and Ethnicity in Columbus, Ohio,which created the maps used in Ms Samuel’s ACLU court case, has made �opportunity� maps of several American cities. Theaim is to help people �nd neighbourhoodswhere jobs, health care, safety and publictransport are in better supply�or to spurthe creation of more such neighbourhoods. Rob Breymaier of MoveSmart.org,

Mapping a better world

Software: Interest groups around the world are using mapping tools andinternetbased information sources to campaign for change


2 a nonpro�t group that encourages peopleto �move to opportunity�, recalls usingKirwan’s maps in Chicago in 2006 to helpa family of eight. �They ended up �nding aplace in the northwest suburbs, which isa huge change from Chicago’s south side,�he says. The children ended up in betterschools and stayed out of trouble, he says.

Others have used maps to exposeviolence. Ushahidi.com was launched byfour technologists to map citizen reportsof postelection violence in Kenya lastyear using Google Maps. �We’re building aplatform that makes it easier to gatherinformation around a crisis so that governments, or whoever is trying to hide thecrisis, can’t do it anymore,� says Erik Hersman, Ushahidi’s operations director.

Sequences of maps can also be used todebunk misconceptions. Many in LosAngeles were pleased, for example, tolearn that gun violence had decreasedsince the mid1990s. But by developing aseries of maps showing where shootingscontinued to happen, a local nonpro�tgroup called Healthy City was able toshow that for some Los Angelenos, gunviolence was as bad as ever.

MAPlight used a similar timelapseapproach to show the in�uence of moneyon congressional votes. Starting in January 2007, it tracked which states (thosegrowing sugarbeets and sugarcane, itturned out) were making the most generous political donations in the runup to avote in July 2007 on subsidies for the sugarindustry. But once the vote was tallied andthe subsidy granted, states that had appeared bright red with political contributions suddenly revert to tan, indicating aninstant drop in donations. �We makevisible and real something that is usuallyinvisible and abstract,� says Mr Newman.

Changing the way American politics isfunded is a tall order. But some mapbasedcampaigns have already produced clearresults. For example, the Food Trust, acampaign group based in Philadelphia,used maps as part of its �ght to reducedietrelated disease and malnutrition inurban parts of America. �I remember the�rst supermarketcommission meeting,�says Jennifer Kozlowski, special assistantfor the environment to David Paterson,the governor of New York. �Some of themaps in the report mapped obesityrelated deaths and access to produce markets.It was as clear as day that something needed to be done.� In January Mr Patersonannounced the Healthy Food/HealthyCommunities Initiative, including $10m ingrants and loans for supermarket projectsin underserved communities.

Such examples underscore why campaigners are rushing to make the most ofmap technology. �We don’t just want to beabout mapping,� says John Kim ofHealthy City. �Maps don’t change theworld�but people who use maps do.� 7

Areas withfewer parks(lighter ratherthan darkergreen) havehigher rates ofchildhoodobesity (largerred circles)

BECAUSE they are both strong andlightweight, composite materials

made from carbon �bres are the darlings of engineers in the aerospaceindustry. Unfortunately, such materialsdeteriorate over time. Wind and rainattack the glue that sticks the layers ofcarbon �bres together. As a consequence, the layers peel away from oneanother. Many people have tried tosolve this problem, without success. Anew method aims to do so by stitchingthe carbon�bre layers together.

Brian Wardle of the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology and his colleagues noted that past attempts toreinforce composite materials, by sewing the layers together as well as gluingthem, often ended up damaging the�bres because the metal needles andthreads were so thick. Although thesewing did help the composite staytogether, its strength was diminished. DrWardle reasoned that if a needle andthread could be made thin enough, suchdamage could be eliminated.

Carbon nanotubes, which are justbillionths of a metre across, seemed theperfect needle. Because these tubes area thousandth of the diameter of carbon�bres, they can slip into the microscopicspaces between them.

Finding a thread for the nanoscopicneedle to pull required more thinking.Dr Wardle and his colleagues startedexploring the interactions between

carbon nanotubes and polymer glues.They discovered that when the nanotubes were just touching the glue, theysucked it up by capillary action, thesame physical mechanism by whichplants draw water from the soil. Becausethe nanotubes drew glue into themselves, they could be used as both needles and threads.

The team placed polymer glue between two carbon�bre layers andheated it. They then placed tens oftrillions of nanotubes on each of thecarbon�bre layers such that the tubescould just touch the glue. When the gluewas hot and runny, the carbon nanotubes sucked it up through the carbon�bre layers. The layers were thenpressed together and the glue was allowed to cool, before the material wastested for strength and toughness.

Dr Wardle and his colleagues foundthat the technique would make aerospace parts ten times stronger than atpresent. The nanotubes themselves arecheap and, as a happy coincidence,having them run perpendicular to thecarbon�bre layers makes the compositeover a million times more electricallyconductive than it otherwise would be.That means aeroplanes built with suchmaterials would be able to disperselightning strikes rapidly, avoiding electrical damage during storms as well asbeing better protected against whateverwind and rain can throw at them.

A stitch in time

Nanotechnology: A new way to prevent �aws in composite materials

ROSIE, the robotic maid in �The Jetsons�,was quite a character, but she did a rea

sonably good job of cooking and cleaning.Today’s domestic robots, alas, do not havesuch dexterity. If you can lay your handson an experimental Honda ASIMO orToyota Partner Robot, then it could greetguests, serve drinks and even play a musical instrument to entertain them. Thehousehold robots you can buy are, by contrast, still made for only one job. But withadvances in electronics they are at leastgetting better at the things they can do.

Floorcleaning machines capable of responding to their environment wereamong the �rst commercially available domestic products worthy of being called robots. The best known is the Roomba, madeby iRobot, an American company whichhas sold more than 3m of the frisbeesizedvacuuming robots. The latest model, the�fth incarnation of the Roomba, has moresensors and cleverer software than its predecessors. Press the �Clean� button andthe robot glides out of its docking stationand sets o� across the �oor.

Domestic robots are supposed to freeup time so that you can do other things, butwatching how the Roomba deals with obstacles is strangely compelling. It is capableof sensing its surroundings, and does notsimply try to adhere to a preplannedroute, so it is not upset if furniture ismoved, or if it is picked up and taken toclean another room. Its infrared sensorsenable it to slow down before nudging upto an obstacle�such as a dozy cat�changing direction and setting o� again.

It steadily works its way around theroom, �guring out how to get out from under the television stand or untangle itselffrom a stray Game Boy recharging lead.Watch it for long enough, and you cansometimes predict its next move. Themachine has a �dirt sensor� and �ashes ablue light when it �nds things to clean up.Only when it detects no more dirt does itstop going over the same area and, eventu

ally, conclude that the wholeroom is clean. It then trundlesback to dock at its rechargingstation. On the whole itdoes a good job.

So the �rst observationof life with a domestic robot is that you will keepwatching it before you trust itcompletely. Perhaps that is not surprising:after all, when automatic washingmachines �rst appeared people used to drawup a chair and sit and watch them complete their wash, rinse and spin cycles.Now they just load them, switch them onand leave them to it.

The second observation is that certainaccommodations must be made to get thebest out of a domestic robot, somethingthat seems unlikely to change any timesoon. The Roomba can be set up to clean atparticular times, and to clean more thanone room (small infrared �lighthouses�can be positioned in doorways, creating aninvisible barrier between one room andthe next that is only removed when the�rst room has been cleaned). A �drop o��sensor underneath the robot prevents itfrom falling down stairs. All very clever,but what the Roomba will not do is pick uptoys, shoes and other items left lyingaround. Rooms cared for by robots must be

kept tidy. To start with, children will happily put things away in order to watch therobot set o�, but unfortunately the nov

elty soon wears o�.Similar allowances must be

made for other domestic robots.Sweden’s Husqvarna recentlylaunched a new version of itsAutomower lawnmowing robot.Before it can be used, a wire mustbe stapled around the perimeterof the lawn to de�ne the area to

be cut. The Automower doesnot collect grass, but chops itup �nely and leaves it behind

as a mulch. If toys and other obstacles arenot cleared from the lawn before it startswork, the robot will steer around them,leaving uncut areas. The latest version caneven top up its batteries with solar power,or send its owner a text message if it getsinto trouble trying to climb a molehill.

But there is still only a limited range ofdomestic robots. Machines that mop the�oor, clean a swimming pool and clearmuck from guttering are made by iRobot.Several surveillance robots are also on offer. The Rovio, made by WowWee of HongKong, is a WiFienabled webcam, mounted on an extending arm, which rides alongon a nimble set of wheels. It can be remotely operated over the internet via a laptopor mobile phone. The idea is that Rovio canpatrol the home when its owner is away,either automatically or under manual control. Twoway communication allows theoperator to see and talk via the machine.So you could, for instance, shout at the dogif it is sleeping on your best sofa.

Some machines are called robots eventhough they cannot move around. There isan ironing robot, for instance, that takes theform of an in�atable dummy: put a dampshirt on it, and it pu�s up to remove thecreases. Similarly, there are elaboratetrouser presses that aspire to be robots. Butdo these devices, or petcare machines thatrelease food into a bowl every so often, orautomatically clean litter trays, reallycount as robots? If so, then surely dishwashers and washing machines do, too.

Yet whatever shape or size robots comein, many will be adored. Another important observation from living with a robot isthat it tends to become part of the family.People give them names, and if they haveto be sent back for repair they carefullymark them to ensure they get the samemachine back, says Nancy Dussault Smithof iRobot. Despite Rosie’s peculiar ways,the Jetsons would not have swapped herfor the world. 7

With a little helpð

Domestic robots: Machines that lookafter your home are getting cleverer,but they still need care and attentionif they are to perform as intended

The fantasy (top) and the reality (bottom)

10 Rational consumer The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

AROUND the world billions of dollarsare being invested in cleanenergy

technologies of one sort or another, fromsolar arrays and wind turbines to electriccars. But there is a problem lurking in thepower grid that links them together. Greensources of power tend to be distributedand intermittent, which makes them di�cult to integrate into the existing grid. Andwhen it comes to electric cars, a study byAmerica’s Paci�c Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) found that there is alreadyenough generating capacity to replace asmuch as 73% of America’s conventional�eet with electric vehicles�but only if thecharging of those vehicles is carefullymanaged. In order to accommodate the�ow of energy between new sources ofsupply and new forms of demand, theworld’s electrical grids are going to have tobecome a lot smarter.

Even though the demands being placedon national electricity grids are changingrapidly, the grids themselves have changedvery little since they were �rst developedmore than a century ago. The �rst gridswere built as oneway streets, consisting ofpower stations at one end supplying power when needed to customers at the otherend. That approach worked well for manyyears, and helped drive the growth of industrial nations by making electricityubiquitous, but it is now showing its age.

One problem is a lack of transparencyon the distribution side of the system,which is particularly apparent to consumers. Most people have little idea how muchelectricity they are using until they are presented with a bill. Nor do most peopleknow what proportion of their power wasgenerated by nuclear, coal, gas or someform of renewable energy, or what emissions were produced in the process. In theevent of a power cut, it is the customerwho alerts the utility, which then sends outcrews to track down the problem and �x itmanually. �I can’t think of another industry that still has that lack of visibility overits networks,� says Heather Daniell of NewEnergy Finance, a research �rm in London.

According to projections from America’s Energy Information Administration,electricity generation around the worldwill nearly double from about 17.3 trillionkilowatthours (kWh) in 2005 to 33.3 trillion kWh in 2030. Poor countries willshow the strongest growth in electricitygeneration, increasing by an average of 4%per year from 2005 to 2030, comparedwith 1.3% per year for their richer counterparts. In some countries, including America, the grid has not kept up with the growth

in demand for power. The deregulation ofAmerica’s utilities in the 1990s encouragedcompanies to transfer power over long distances. At the same time, regulatory uncertainty and increased competition led to reduced investment in new transmissionlines. As a result, some parts of the systemhave become increasingly congested.Blackouts cost America an estimated $80billion a year, according to a study by theLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Plugging inThe cure, many believe, is to apply a doseof computer power to the grid. Adding digital sensors and remote controls to thetransmission and distribution systemwould make it smarter, greener and moree�cient. Such a �smart grid� or �energy internet� would be far more responsive, interactive and transparent than today’s grid.It would be able to cope with new sourcesof renewable power, enable the coordinated charging of electric cars, provide information to consumers about their usageand allow utilities to monitor and controltheir networks more e�ectively. And allthis would help reduce greenhousegasemissions. �We have a fundamental beliefthat a fully e�ective smart grid is going toradically change the way an energy gridoperates,� says Michael Carlson, until recently a senior executive at Xcel Energy, apower company that is using the city ofBoulder, Colorado, to test various smartgrid technologies.

What exactly would a smart grid looklike? Many of the changes would be invisible. On the transmission and distributionside, sensors and digital relays installed onpower lines will enable utilities to operatesystems with greater e�ciency and reliability. Today’s supervisory control anddata acquisition systems, for example,typically provide data on the state of transmission lines every four seconds. Devicescalled synchrophasors can sample voltageand current 30 times a second or faster�giving utilities and system operators a farmore accurate view of the health of thegrid. A broad deployment of synchrophasors could be used as an early warning system to help halt or prevent power surgesbefore they develop into massive blackouts, says Je� Dagle of PNNL.

Other smartgrid technologies wouldbe more visible to consumers. Probablymost important would be the introductionof smart meters, which track electricity usein realtime and can transmit that information back to the power company. Smartmeters have been used by commercial and

Building thesmart grid

Energy: By promoting the adoptionof renewableenergy technology, a

smart grid would be good for theenvironment�and for innovation

The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Smart grids 11

1

12 Smart grids The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

2

1

industrial customers for decades, says EricMiller of Trilliant, an American companythat installs communications networksand software to implement smart meters.But in recent years they have becomecheap enough for wider deployment.

Smart meters establish a twoway dataconnection between the customer and thepower company, by sending informationover a communications network that mayinclude powerline, radio or cellularnetwork connections. Once smart meters areinstalled, power companies can determinethe location of outages more easily, and nolonger need to send sta� to read meters, orto turn the power on or o� at a particularproperty. Smart meters also help to curtailthe theft of electricity. Altogether some76m of them have been installed worldwide, according to ABI Research, and that

number is forecast to increase to 155m by2013. So far the pioneer is Italy, where themain utility, Enel, has deployed more than30m smart meters to its customers since2001. About 12m smart meters will be installed in California over the next fewyears, and the province of Ontario has toldits utilities to install a smart meter for everyhousehold by 2010.

But the smart meter is only the �rst step.Eventually smart meters will communicate with smart thermostats, appliancesand other devices, giving people a muchclearer view of how much electricity theyare consuming. Customers will be able toaccess that information via readouts intheir homes or webbased portals, throughwhich they will be able to set temperaturepreferences for their thermostats, for example, or opt in or out of programmes that

let them use cleaner energy sources, suchas solar or wind power.

As well as giving utilities more control,smart meters also give them more �exibility. In particular, they can vary the price ofelectricity throughout the day in responseto demand. Telling people that electricity ismore expensive when demand is high willencourage them to do their laundry whendemand has fallen and electricity is cheaper, says Rick Stevens of Hydro One, a power company in Ontario that has installedalmost 900,000 smart meters to date andplans to start sending price signals to itscustomers in 2010.

This could be done by showing realtime price and usage information on a display so that consumers can decide whether to turn on the washing machine. Studieshave found that when people are madeaware of how much power they are using,they reduce their use by about 7%. Withadded incentives, people curtail their electricity use during peaks in demand by 15%or more. But eventually it should be possible to do it automatically, so that the dishwasher waits for the price to fall below acertain level before switching on, for example, or the airconditioner turns itselfdown when the price goes up.

This is more complex than today’s pricing, of course, but customers will be able tosave money if they are prepared to put upwith a bit more complexity. �If you don’twant to participate, then you’re going topay a much higher rate per kilowatthour,�says Peter Corsell of GridPoint, a companythat has developed a webbased portalthat lets people respond to price changesfrom utilities. �And if you want to opt in,you may save a whole lot of money.� During a oneyear pilot study carried out byPNNL, for example, consumers reducedtheir electricity bills by an average of 10%compared with the previous year.

The advantage from the utility’s pointof view is that it becomes easier to balancesupply and demand by reducing consumption at times of peak demand, suchas during very hot or cold spells, whenpeople crank up their airconditioners orheaters. As well as improving the stabilityof the system, it could also enable utilitiesto postpone the construction of new power stations, or even do without them altogether, by reducing the peak level of demand that they have to meet.

Moreover a smart grid will make it easier to coordinate the intermittent and dispersed sources of power, from rooftop solar panels or backyard windturbines, forexample. And, of course, a smart grid

Once smart meters are installed, power companiescan determine the location of outages more easily.

The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Smart grids 13

2 could also help manage the charging ofelectric vehicles. The best time to chargevehicles is at night, when lots of cheapelectricity is available. �If we don’t do that,then we will add to peak loads and we’llhave to build huge amounts of infrastructure to handle our vehicles,� says RobertPratt of PNNL. The �ow of energy betweenthe grid and electric cars need not be oneway. With millions of electric cars pluggedin at any one time, they could act as anenormous energystorage system, absorbing excess power from wind turbines onwindy nights, for example, but also feeding power back into the grid if necessary(an approach called �vehicle to grid�, orV2G) if the wind suddenly drops.

Electricity billsImplementing all this will not be cheap. Asmart meter costs about $125, and can costseveral hundred dollars more to install,once the necessary communications network and datamanagement software atthe utility are taken into account. (Smartmeters can collect customer readings as often as every 15 minutes, rather than everymonth, so utilities need new software tocope with all the extra data.)

The American government is spendingsome $4 billion from its economicstimulus package on smartgrid initiatives, butproviding a smart meter for every American home would cost far more: California’s investorowned utilities alone arespending about $4.5 billion on deployingsmart meters over the next few years. Thatimplies that a nationwide implementationcould cost around $50 billion. But PNNL estimates that $450 billion would have to bepoured into conventional grid infrastructure to meet America’s expected growthover the next decade anyway. Mr Carlson,who now works for GridPoint, argues thata bit of thought is called for if the aim is tomove to a new energymanagement model, �as opposed to building more of whatwe’ve already got.�

One problem is that power companiesare understandably reluctant to invest intechnologies that will reduce consumption of the product they sell, even if thereare other bene�ts. One way to realign thepublic interest with that of the utilities isthrough a process called �decoupling�which breaks the direct relationship between electricity sales and pro�ts, a measure that has been successfully employedin California. Energy use per person has remained largely �at over the past 30 years inCalifornia, but it has increased by roughly50% for the rest of America. But in some in

stances the business case is straightforward. Enel spent around ¤2.1billion ($3 billion) installing its 30m smart meters inItaly, but now saves around ¤500m a yearas a result, so its investment paid for itselfwithin �ve years.

As well as producing savings from improved operational e�ciency, a smart gridcould also save utilities money by reducing consumption, and with it the need tobuild so many new power stations. Reducing peak demand in America by a mere 5%would yield savings of about $66 billionover 20 years, according to Ahmad Faruquiof the Brattle Group, a consultancy that hasworked with utilities on designing andevaluating smartmeter pilot programmes.Moreover, studies have shown that thebest inhome smartgrid technologies canachieve reductions in peak demand of up

to 25%, which would result in savings ofmore than $325 billion over that period,calculates Dr Faruqui. �Technology is expensive,� he says, �but not using it will beeven more expensive.�

Smartgrid technology o�ers a widerange of possibilities, so deployments willvary depending on each utility’s businessneeds, existing infrastructure and regulatory environment. Some utilities may seekto use the technology to maximise energye�ciency, for example, while others mayfocus on the integration of renewable energy sources. �You’re never going to build thesame smart grid twice, so you have to lookfor overriding themes,� says Brad Gammons of IBM, a computer giant, which hashelped dozens of utilities with their smartgrid implementations. Amid all the variations, however, one point of consensus hasemerged. To handle all of the information

that must be sent to and fro to make asmart grid work, �more bandwidth is better�, says Mr Gammons.

Although smart grids are often likenedto an internet for energy, there is one important di�erence. The internet is built onopen technical standards, from internetprotocol to move packets of data around tohypertext markup language to de�ne theappearance of web pages. But agreementon standards has yet to be reached forsmart grids, which can pose a problemwhen di�erent networks and technologiesare expected to work together.

Some standards exist, but others arejust emerging, says Don Von Dollen of theElectric Power Research Institute, whoseorganisation was recently asked by America’s National Institute of Standards andTechnology to develop a �smartgrid interoperability standards road map�. Agreedupon standards would allow companiesto buy and sell devices, services and software in the knowledge that they wouldwork together.

One area where such interoperabilitywill be critical is in the home. Many utilities want people to be able to buy smartthermostats, smart appliances and othersmartgrid technologies in shops, says SamLucero of ABI Research, �and if everythingis proprietary that becomes much moreproblematic.� Another complication isthat there is currently no standard way toaccess historical billing information orrealtime metering data, which would beextremely helpful to developers of webbased billing and energyanalysis servicesfor consumers, says Erich Gunther of EnerNex, a consulting �rm based in Knoxville,Tennessee, that is advising California’s energy commission on smart metering anddemand response programmes.

Once these issues are ironed out,though, the smart grid could provide theplatform for a huge range of innovationand applications in energy, just as the internet did in computing. �I think that an open,standardsbased network could give birthto a thousand new companies,� says EricDresselhuys of Silver Spring Networks, a�rm based in California that works withutilities to implement smartgrid networks. A smarter grid will not only helppeople save energy or use it more e�ciently, but will also promote the adoption of allkinds of green technologies, includingwind, solar and plugin vehicles. �It’s theplatform that allows for the transformation of one of the largest and most important industries in the world to take place,�says Mr Dresselhuys. 7

Smarter than it looks

A smart grid could promote innovation in energy, just as the internet did in computing.

14 The connected car The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

IN �KNIGHT RIDER�, a 1980s televisionshow, Michael Knight fought for justice

with the help of KITT, an arti�cially intelligent Pontiac Trans Am. The pair chattedamiably, with KITT sensing and reacting tonearby objects, navigating and looking upinformation about Mr Knight’s immediatesurroundings and deadly adversaries.KITT could even drive itself. Thirty yearson, many of the fantastical Pontiac’s features are becoming reality.

A modern car can have as many as 200onboard sensors, measuring everythingfrom tyre pressure to windscreen temperature. A highend Lexus contains 67 microprocessors, and even the world’s cheapestcar, the Tata Nano, has a dozen. Voicedriven satellite navigation is routinely usedby millions of people. Radarequippedcruise control allows vehicles to adjusttheir speed automatically in tra�c. Somecars can even park themselves.

Once a purely mechanical device, thecar is going digital. �Connected cars�,which sport links to navigation satellitesand communications networks�and, before long, directly to other vehicles�couldtransform driving, preventing motoristsfrom getting lost, stuck in tra�c or involved

in accidents. And connectivity can improve entertainment and productivity forboth driver and passengers�an attractiveproposition given that Americans, for example, spend 45 hours a month in theircars on average. There is also scope for newbusiness models built around connectedcars, from dynamic insurance and roadpricing to car pooling and locationbasedadvertising. �We can stop looking at a caras one system,� says Rahul Mangharam, anengineer at the University of Pennsylvania, �and look at it as a node in a network.�

It started with a satnavThe best known connectedcar technologyis satellite navigation, which uses the globalpositioning system (GPS) in conjunction with a database of roads to provide directions and �nd points of interest. InAmerica there were fewer than 3m navigational devices on the road in 2005, nearlyhalf of which were built in to vehicles. Butbuiltin systems tend to be expensive, arenot extensible, and may quickly be out ofdate. So drivers have been taking mattersinto their own hands: of the more than33m units on the road today, nearly 90% areportable, sitting on the dashboard or stuckto the windscreen.

Many consumers are now adding internet connectivity to their cars in the form ofanother portable device: the �smart�phone. A twoway internet link allows formore elaborate forms of navigation, andalso makes it possible to gather and aggre

gate information from large numbers ofvehicles, notes Dev Khare of Venrock, a Silicon Valley venturecapital �rm that is investing in connectedcar technology. Examples of such aggregation includeOpenstreetmap, a project to create opensource maps by collecting GPS data fromusers as they drive about, and Trapster, aconstantly updated database of the locations of police speed traps, compiled fromreports sent in by users of the software.

Inrix, a provider of tra�c data based inSeattle, has based its business model onthis approach. It combines informationfrom static sensors in the road with GPS information collected wirelessly from morethan 1m �eet vehicles to provide realtimeinformation about tra�c �ows. This information is piped in turn to navigation devices and smartphones, in order to adjusta delivery route in response to an accident,for example. The company can also forecast tra�c �ows on a particular route at aparticular time and date.

Information speci�c to individual carscan also present new opportunities. Someinsurers, for example, o�er dynamic insurance schemes that use GPS to determine adriver’s premiums, based on distance travelled, driving style and where the car is driven and parked. Similarly, the ability totreat a car as a node on a network is shaking up the idea of car ownership itself. Zipcar, the largest carsharing scheme, shares6,000 vehicles between 275,000 drivers inLondon and parts of North America�near

The connected car

Automotive technology: Cars arebecoming more connected, both toremote systems for navigation andinformation, and to each other

1

The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 The connected car 15

2 ly half of all carsharers worldwide. Itsmodel depends on an assortment of incartechnology. �This is the �rst largescale introduction of the connected car,� claimsScott Gri�th, the �rm’s chief executive.

Zipcar’s available vehicles report theirpositions to a control centre so that members of the scheme can �nd nearby vehicles through a web or phone interface.Cars are unlocked by holding a card, containing a wireless chip, up against thewindscreen. Integrating cars and backof�ce systems via wireless links allows Zipcar to repackage cars as a �exible transportservice. Each vehicle operated by Zipcar isequivalent to taking 20 cars o� the road,says Mr Gri�th, and an average Zipcarmember saves more than $5,000 dollars ayear compared with owning a car.

Vehicle shall speak unto vehicleThe next step is to enable cars to communicate with each other via vehicletovehicle(V2V) networks, and with infrastructuresuch as toll gates and tra�c lights via vehicletoinfrastructure (V2I) links. A newwireless standard called Dedicated ShortRange Communication (DSRC)�a sort ofWiFi for cars�provides highspeed dataconnections over distances of up to 200m,and safety and emergency communications at lower speeds over distances of upto a kilometre from one vehicle to another,and between vehicles and roadside transmitters. So far the technology is mainlyused in electronic toll booths, but it hasmany other potential applications.

DSRC could be used, for example, towarn nearby cars of sudden braking or anairbag deployment, thereby alerting carsout of visual range and preventing or limiting accidents. It could be used to set up adhoc networks to pass data between cars inorder to, for example, signal icy spots onthe road (many cars can detect ice as partof their skidcontrol systems) or coordinate �platoons��groups of vehicles travelling closely together under automatic control. Other proposed uses includesignalling the approach of emergency vehicles and ensuring that tra�c lights givepriority to buses and emergency vehicles.

V2V features depend on a network effect�the technology is useless to a driverwho is the only one using it�but a networkcould emerge surprisingly quickly. DrMangharam says his simulations and onroad tests in Pittsburgh, carried out in conjunction with the research arm of GeneralMotors, have shown that V2V networkinghas bene�ts when as few as 35% of cars areequipped to exchange just four pieces of

data�position, speed, direction and time�with other vehicles in the vicinity. As thesedrivers respond to their enhanced awareness, they in�uence the overall �ow of traf�c, bene�ting everyone. Dr Mangharamreckons this level of adoption is at least adecade away.

The prospects for adoption of new V2I

technology, beyond road tolls, seem to begreatest in Japan, where researchers havebeen testing tra�c signals that use videocameras and infrared beacons to communicate with approaching cars. Such systems can guide drivers into particularlanes as they approach a junction to ensure a smooth �ow of tra�c or allow emergency vehicles to pass, greatly improvingsafety. The Japanese government plans todeploy the system more broadly from2010, in coordination with local carmakers, who will provide the necessary incartechnology in new models.

Such cooperation is lacking elsewhere,where carmakers are understandably re

luctant to add new features to cars if thenecessary infrastructure is not being builtby local transport authorities. �It is a chicken and egg problem,� says Dr Mangharam,who estimates it would take $4.5 billion toupgrade every tra�c light and junction inAmerica with smart infrastructure.

Commercial vehicles may get the ballrolling �rst. Connectedvehicle technology is being considered for roadside inspections, freight tracking, roadconditionnoti�cations, parking management andenforcing rules on drivers’ working hours.And adoption of the technology could bemandated by governments, as in the caseof Germany’s Toll Collect system, a dynamic roadtolling system for lorries of 12tonnes or over that has been operatingsince late 2004. Toll Collect uses a combination of satellite positioning, roadside

sensors and a mobilephone data connection to work out how much to charge eachuser. Over 900,000 vehicles are now registered with the scheme and there are plansto extend this approach to roadtollingacross Europe from 2012. Eventually it mayalso be extended to ordinary cars.

Communication breakdownWill drivers welcome this? Driving alreadyinvolves a high degree of trust: people whodo not know one another routinely engagein lifeordeath cooperation. That trust,and the cues that engender it, may nottranslate into a V2V system, where a malicious or malfunctioning signal could snarltra�c or cause a pileup. Another problemis privacy. Cars are closely associated withthe notion of personal freedom, even if thereality often involves bumpertobumperagony. The use of GPS and roadside sensors to track vehicles and monitor how fastthey are moving is already unpopular andcontroversial in some quarters.

Yet if the bene�ts are palpable, driverswill be prepared to place their trust in connected car networks, and even to give upsome privacy. Early adopters of dynamiccarinsurance schemes, for example, tendto be safer drivers who pay lower premiums in return for allowing insurers to trackthem. Connectedcar technology couldhelp drivers �nd parking spaces, avoid traf�c and prevent accidents.�By 2045 it willbe impossible for a driver to impact another vehicle or drive o� the road without theserious intention of doing so,� says ScottMcCormick of the Connected Vehicle Association, an industry group established topromote the technology. Violating tra�crules could also become impossible�getting away with it certainly will be.

So why drive at all? Researchers at several universities have built autonomouscars to complete an urbandriving challenge set by the American armed forces in2007. Some of the technology is already inproduction cars: Toyota’s LaneKeepingAssist, for example, could easily do muchof the driving on long stretches of highway,but the �rm requires drivers keep theirhands on the wheel�for now. A team ledby Alberto Broggi at the University ofParma has built an autonomous car thatwill be set loose this summer to navigateItalian urban tra�c by itself�a formidabletest. And Sven Beiker, the director of Stanford University’s CarLab, says automaticdriving in some situations, such as stopandgo tra�c or smooth motorway driving, could be reliable enough for generaluse in a decade. KITT would be proud. 7

If the bene�ts are palpable, drivers willbe prepared to give up some privacy.

16 Case history The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

IN THE past few months BrightSourceEnergy, based in California, has signed

the world’s two largest deals to build newsolarpower capacity. The company willsoon begin constructing the �rst in a seriesof 14 solarpower plants that will collectively supply more than 2.6 gigawatts(GW) of electricity�enough to serveabout 1.8m homes. But to accomplish thisfeat BrightSource will not use photovoltaiccells, which generate electricity directly

from sunlight and currently constitute themost common form of solar power. Instead, the company specialises in �concentrating solarthermal technology� inwhich mirrors concentrate sunlight toproduce heat. That heat is then used tocreate steam, which in turn drives a turbine to generate electricity.

Solarthermal power stations haveseveral advantages over solarphotovoltaic projects. They are typically built on a

much larger scale, and historically theircosts have been much lower. Comparedwith other renewable sources of energy,they are probably best able to match autility’s electrical load, says NathanielBullard of New Energy Finance, a research�rm. They work best when it is hottest anddemand is greatest. And the heat theygenerate can be stored, so the output of asolarthermal plant does not �uctuate aswildly as that of a photovoltaic system.Moreover, since they use a turbine togenerate electricity from heat, most solarthermal plants can be easily and inexpensively supplemented with naturalgasboilers, enabling them to perform asreliably as a fossilfuel power plant.

Besides these bene�ts, the main driversfor the growth of the solarthermal industry are moves to limit carbondioxideemissions and requirements to increasethe proportion of electricity produced

The other kind of solar power

Energy: Think of solar power, and you probably think of photovoltaic panels.But there is another way to make electricity from sunlight, which arguablyhas even brighter prospects

1

The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Case history 17

from renewable sources. According toNew Energy Finance, about 12GW ofconcentrating solarthermal power capacity is being planned worldwide�a vastamount, given that only about 500 megawatts (MW) of such capacity has beenbuilt to date. To maximise the energy thatcan be collected from the sun, solarpowerfacilities are being constructed in regionsthat enjoy daily uninterrupted sunshinefor much of the year. According to MarkMehos of America’s National RenewableEnergy Laboratory, solarthermal powercould in theory generate 11,000GW inAmerica’s southwest. That is about tentimes America’s entire existing powergeneration capacity.

Simple techniques for concentratingsunlight to generate heat date back thousands of years. In China and ancientGreece, people focused the sun’s rays withmirrors or glass to light �res. In times of

war, the same approach is said to havebeen used to set enemy ships ablaze. Bythe early 20th century several scientistshad built simple machines that could runon concentrated heat from the sun.

A signi�cant milestone was reached in1913 when Frank Shuman, an Americaninventor, created the �rst large solarthermal pumping station in Meadi, Egypt. Hedesigned a system based on �ve largere�ectors, each 62 metres long and madeof glass mirrors arranged to form a troughin the shape of a parabola. Each parabolictrough focused sunlight onto a tube running along its length, heating the waterinside it. The resulting steam powered anengine connected to a pump capable ofdelivering 6,000 gallons of water a minutefrom the Nile to nearby �elds.

Do try to concentrateThe modern history of solarthermalpower began after the oil crises of the1970s, which prompted many nations tostart to investigate clean and renewableenergy sources as alternatives to fossilfuels. Over the following decades America, Spain and a handful of other countriesbuilt solarthermal pilot plants for research purposes. The �rst company toimplement the technology on a commercial scale was Luz International, an Israelicompany founded in 1980.

Drawing on prior research, Luz beganbuilding a series of solarthermal powerstations in California’s Mojave desert inthe mid1980s. Like Mr Shuman before, thecompany used parabolic troughs to focussunlight on to liquid�lled tubes, butinstead of water they used oil as the heattransfer �uid. Once it reached a temperature of about 390°C, the hot oil waspumped to a socalled �power block�where it went through a series of heatexchangers, turning water into steam andpowering a conventional steamturbine.The turbine then turned a generator toproduce electricity.

By 1990 Luz had constructed nineplants with a total capacity of 354MW. Atthe time, solarthermal power was producing about 90% of all solar electricity inthe world, says Arnold Goldman, theformer chief executive of Luz, who is nowchairman of BrightSource. But when theprice of natural gas fell and America’s taxincentives for solar power were not renewed, the industry came to a grindinghalt. For nearly two decades no new commercial solarthermal plants began operating. In the meantime, solarphotovoltaictechnology slowly took over the market,

and by 2007 worldwide installed capacityreached 9.2GW. Although it is more expensive per kilowatthour, solar panelscan be deployed in small, modular systems, and thus require much less capitalinvestment. Moreover, they can generatepower o� the grid, which turned out to bean important market for solar power in itsearly days.

Now, as the solarthermal industry isexperiencing a revival, parabolictroughprojects are garnering much of today’sinvestment money because of their proven track record. To improve the economics still further, SkyFuel, a �rm based inNew Mexico, is replacing curved glassmirrors, which are expensive to make,with a thin, re�ective lowcost �lm. Andother competing solarthermal technologies that were developed in parallel withtroughbased systems, but never commercialised, are also ready to be deployed.

Among them is an approach thatBrightSource uses, in which a �eld ofsmall, �at mirrors called �heliostats�redirect and concentrate sunlight onto acentral receiver at the top of a tower. Thetower contains a �uid, typically water,which boils and the resulting steam isthen transferred to a nearby �powerblock�, where it spins a conventionalturbine. The advantage of this �powertower� approach is that it can producesteam at a temperature of 550°C and canthus achieve a higher thermaltoelectrice�ciency than troughbased systems, saysJohn Woolard, the chief executive ofBrightSource. In addition, he says, powertower systems su�er from fewer pumpinglosses than troughbased designs. The �rstcommercial powertower began operatingin Spain in 2007.

2

A power of tower near Seville

Solar One, a pilot solarthermalproject in the Mojave desert

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18 Case history The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

Another advance that makes solarthermal power more economically andtechnologically viable than in the past isthe ability to use a large number of smaller and less expensive mirrors, steered bycomputer systems, to ensure more accurate and automatic tracking and redirection of sunlight than was ever possiblebefore. Bill Gross, the chief executive ofeSolar, a developer of �power tower�technology based in Pasadena, California,says his �rm is using software to turnthousands of �at mirrors and shape theminto a continuously evolving parabolaaround the tower.

Storage and hybridsBoth powertower and parabolictroughsystems can store thermal energy in theform of hot, molten salt. It is then possibleto generate steam, and thus electricity,even when the sun is not shining. Solarthermal plants without storage can operate about 30% of the year; but with storagethat number could climb to 70% or higher.Unfortunately storage is expensive, and isonly economical when regulators provideincentives. In Spain, for example, producers of solarthermal power receive a guaranteed feedin tari�. That makes it particularly appealing for Spanish plants to havestorage capabilities, to maximise theirability to sell electricity to utilities. InAmerica the main incentives for solarthermal projects are a 30% investmenttaxcredit or an equivalent cash grant. As aresult, American plants have to be builtmore cheaply in order to make a pro�t,

and thus typically do not include storage.A cheaper alternative to storage is

hybridisation. All the original Luz plantsalso have naturalgas boilers that cangenerate steam when the sun is not shining. Because solarthermal plants have apower block and turbine already in place,the extra cost is marginal. Hybridisationcould also be done the other way around,by using steam generated from solarthermal collectors to help drive the turbines at existing coal or gas plants. TheElectric Power Research Institute, based inPalo Alto, is studying the feasibility of thisapproach as a means of reducing fuel costsand emissions at existing power stations.

In addition to parabolic troughs andpowertowers there is also a third solarthermal technology, which combinescurved, dishshaped mirrors with heatengines. In a dishengine design, the mirrors concentrate sunlight to generate heat,which then typically powers a Stirlingengine�a machine that converts heat intomechanical energy by compressing andexpanding a �xed quantity of gas. Thechange in pressure drives the engine’spistons, which drive a shaft that turns agenerator to produce electricity.

Although they are highly e�cient,Stirling engines have seen little practicaluse since their invention nearly two centuries ago, and so far there are no commercial solarthermal systems that use thisapproach. Critics of the technology say itinvolves too many moving parts, makingit more complex and expensive to operateand maintain than competing technol

ogies. Stirling Energy Systems, based inPhoenix, Arizona, hopes to prove thedoubters wrong. It has signed two largepowerpurchase agreements, for up to1,750MW, and plans to ful�l them usingdishengine systems built in conjunctionwith its sister company, Tessera Solar. Bothprojects are due to start construction asearly as 2010.

One obstacle hampering the growth ofthe entire �eld is the di�culty of obtaining�nancing for solarthermal projects in thecurrent economic climate, says ThomasMancini, programme manager for concentrating solarpower at Sandia NationalLaboratories. As a result, some announcedprojects may be delayed or perhaps neverbe built. The situation has prompted somecompanies to change their business models: Ausra, a solarthermal company basedin Mountain View, California, hasswitched from being an independentpowerproducer to being mostly an equipment supplier, for example.

Although solarthermal power produces no carbondioxide emissions, it canhave some negative environmental impacts. Both powertower and troughbased systems are typically watercooled,and require millions of gallons of waterannually. That can cause big problems,especially in desert environments. TheCalifornia Energy Commission recentlyurged NextEra Energy Resources, a renewableenergy company, to consider drycooling instead of using water for its proposed solarthermal power project in KernCounty, California. (Stirlingengine designs do not require water for cooling.)Another potential problem when buildingpower plants in remote locations is a lackof transmission lines, since it is di�cultand expensive to get new transmissionlines approved and built.

Despite these problems, many peoplethink a massive scaleup of the industry isimminent. Among them is Mr Woolard,who believes that solarthermal powercould regain its historical lead over thesolarphotovoltaic approach. Competitionfrom photovoltaic systems for largescalepower generation should not be underestimated, however. According to Mr Bullard, thin�lm solarcell modules arerapidly falling in price, and can generateelectricity more cheaply than solarthermal power in some situations. But nomatter which approach comes out on top,competition between the two technologies is sure to foster continued innovation, and a growing supply of clean electricity, in the years to come. 7

Concentrating solarthermal technology could regainits historical lead over the photovoltaic approach.

Power from a parabola

2

IF YOUR mobile phone could talk, it couldreveal a great deal. Obviously it would

know many of your innermost secrets, being privy to your calls and text messages,and possibly your email and diary, too. Italso knows where you have been, howyou get to work, where you like to go forlunch, what time you got home, and whereyou like to go at the weekend. Now imagine being able to aggregate this sort of information from large numbers of phones.It would be possible to determine and analyse how people move around cities, howsocial groups interact, how quickly tra�cis moving and even how diseases mightspread. The world’s 4 billion mobilephones could be turned into sensors on aglobal datacollection network.

They could also be used to gather datain more direct ways. Sensors insidephones, or attached to them, could gatherinformation about temperature, humidity,noise level and so on. More straightforwardly, people can send information fromtheir phones, by voice or text message, to acentral repository. This can be a useful wayto gather data quickly during a disasterrelief operation, for example, or whentracking the outbreak of a disease. Engineers, biologists, sociologists and aidworkers are now building systems that usehandsets to sense, monitor and even predict population movements, environmentalhazards and publichealth threats.

A good example is InSTEDD

(Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters),a nonpro�t group based in California, which promotes the useof mobile phones to improve developing countries’ ability to respond to disasters. Launched withseed money from Google’s philanthropic arm and the Rockefeller Foundation in late 2007, it has just released asuite of opensource software to share, aggregate and analyse data from mobilephones. Its �rst testbed is Cambodia,where healthworkers can send text messages, containing observations and diagnoses, to a central number.

The sender’s location is determined foreach of the messages, which pop up asconversation threads on an interactivemap that can be called up on the web.Clicking on this map allows text messagesto be sent back to users in the �eld from thecontrol centre. InSTEDD says this service,called GeoChat, enables �geospatialgroundtruthing, as your mobile teamworks to con�rm, refute, or update data�.

Automating the reporting of titbits fromremote clinics has already had a profoundimpact, says Eric Rasmussen, InSTEDD’schief executive. Instead of recording information on scraps of paper, which wouldsometimes take days to reach higherupsand trigger an alarm, the cycletime has

been reduced to days or even hours. GeoChat has been o�cially adopted by the sixcountries which share a border in the Mekong Basin, including Myanmar and Yunnan province in China, establishing a �owof realtime disease data from villages inthe region to each country’s health ministry. Authorities can then choose to sharethis information with international bodiessuch as America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the WorldHealth Organisation. The aim is to enable aquick response to any outbreak of avian�u, cholera, malaria or dengue fever. InSTEDD is helping aid organisations andgovernment agencies deploy its free toolsin other countries, including Bangladesh,Peru and Tanzania.

An alternative approach is to gather information passively from mobile phones,

without any user intervention. AlexPentland, a computer scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, dreams of �Xrayingentire organisations, cities andcountries� by collecting data intwo ways. First, some handsets can capture informationabout individuals, such astheir activity levels or eventheir gait, using builtin motion sensors. (Modernhandsets use these sensors to work out whetherto display information inlandscape or portrait for

mat.) Second, information from mobilenetwork

operators, which keep track of handsets inorder to pass them smoothly from one network cell to another, can provide a highlevel view of how people move around. DrPentland’s algorithms can even cluster information from thousands of phones to divide people into �tribes� of likemindedfolk. He calls this �reality mining�.

Following the crowdSense Networks, a company cofoundedby Dr Pentland, wants to use the predictions derived from tracking mobile phonesnot only for commercial purposes�to produce realtime maps showing the mostpopular nightlife venues in a particularcity, for example�but also for the publicgood. The company’s charitable foundation is working with Vodafone, a big mobile operator, the CDC and other collaborators to build an earlywarning system formodelling and predicting the spread of tuberculosis in South Africa.

As a �rst step, Sense plans to collect po

Sensors and sensitivity

Data collection: Mobile phones provide new ways to gatherinformation, both manually and automatically, over wide areas

The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Mobile phones as sensors 19

1

sitional information from a control groupof infected patients being treated at HelenJoseph Hospital in Johannesburg whowould have to volunteer to participate inthe scheme. Dr Pentland and his colleagues will then be able to determinewhich neighbourhoods these patients frequent, and their commuting patterns between them. They hope this will then enable them to work out the characteristicsof typical TB patients, so that they can thenspot potentially infected people in thewider population. How publichealth o�cials will use this information has yet to bedecided: people who are thought to be infected could be contacted by text messageand asked to visit a doctor, for example.

Path Intelligence, a British �rm, is applying a similar approach to answer morecommercial questions. Its FootPath systemaggregates and analyses signals picked upfrom mobile phones as people movethrough a particular area. The results canbe used by planners to optimise the �owof pedestrians through railway stationsand airports or to guide the layout of shopping centres. It can determine, for example,whether customers who visit a given shopalso visit a rival shop. The same passivemethod can be used to �gure out wherebest to locate emergency exits, and even tolocate clusters of survivors after a disaster.

But some people �nd the idea of havingtheir movements tracked in this way unsettling, even when the data are anony

mised and aggregated. And knowingsomeone’s position is not enough on itsown to determine whether they carry adisease or would be interested in going to aparticular nightclub. So the best approachmay be to combine voluntary (but potentially unreliable) contributions that aresubmitted manually with automated datacapture that does not require user intervention, but may not capture the wholepicture. A good example is the study ofwellwater contamination in Bangladeshconducted by Andrew Gelman, a statistician at Columbia University. His projectcombined readings from remote watersensors with queries and data which villagers keyed into their mobile phones.

On a grander scale, InSTEDD’s Dr Rasmussen is trying to stitch together a globalnetwork, tentatively dubbed Archangel, tocombine all manner of data sources, fromsatellite imagery and seismic sensors to�eldworkers texting from refugee camps.A �rst glimpse of what such a networkwould look like is pachube.com, an experimental webservice launched in 2007 byUsman Haque, an architect based in London. He aims to patch together sensors andpeople into a �conversant ecosystem� ofdevices, buildings and environments.

Some computer scientists look forwardto the day when mobile phones and sensors can provide a central nervous systemfor the entire planet. An abundance of sensors, they believe, will lead to two things.

First, the amount of data will increase, allowing scientists to build more realisticmodels. Alessandro Vespignani of IndianaUniversity compares the current state ofa�airs to weather forecasting a centuryago, before satellites had provided meteorologists with the data to build and optimise mathematical models. When itcomes to problems such as tracking andpredicting the spread of diseases and otherenvironmental hazards, he argues, scientists can never get enough data.

The human touchSecond, once people are able to contributedata to research projects from their mobilephones, it could provide an ideal way tobroaden public involvement in scienti�cactivities. This would be the next logicalstep after the popularity of webbased participation in scienti�c research, from folding proteins to categorising photographs ofgalaxies. Eric Paulos, a computer scientistat Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, predicts the rise of �citizen scientists� able to measure and sample their surroundings wherever they go. When peoplecan report mundane variables such as thelevel of tra�c noise in their street or the degree of air pollution at the bus stop, he argues, their outlook on science changes.�People develop a relationship with and asense of ownership over the data,� he says.He foresees amateur experts being drivenby a new sense of volunteerism, the 21stcentury equivalent of cleaning up theneighbourhood park. Nokia has even designed a prototype handset with environmental sensors (shown on previous page).

Dr Paulos has already equipped streetsweepers in San Francisco and taxis inAccra, the capital of Ghana, with sensorsto measure pollution levels, which he thenused to create a map of each city’s environmental landscape. He plans to do the samewith cyclists in Pittsburgh. Graduate students in his newly created Living Environments Lab have loaded households withsensors to sample tap water and indoorairquality. Results are uploaded to a websitewhere participants can compare themwith other people’s contributions.

The technology is probably the easypart, however. For global networks of mobile sensors to provide useful insights,technology �rms, governments, aid organisations and individuals will have to �ndways to address concerns over privacy, accuracy, ownership and sovereignty. Only ifthey do so will it be possible to tap the goldmine of information inside the world’s billions of mobile phones. 7Watching while you shop

Mobile phones and sensors could provide acentral nervous system for the planet.

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20 Mobile phones as sensors The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

IF LIGHT passed through objects, ratherthan bouncing o� them, people might

now talk to each other on �photophones�.Alexander Graham Bell demonstratedsuch a device in 1880, transmitting a conversation on a beam of light. Bell’s invention stemmed from his discovery that exposing certain materials to focused,�ickering beams of light caused them toemit sound�a phenomenon now knownas the photoacoustic e�ect.

It was the world’s �rst wireless audiotransmission, and Bell regarded the photophone as his most important invention.Sadly its use was impractical before the development of optical �bres, so Bell concentrated instead on his more successful idea,the telephone. But more than a century later the photoacoustic e�ect is making acomeback, this time transforming the �eld

of biomedical imaging.A new technique called photoacoustic

(or optoacoustic) tomography, which marries optics with ultrasonic imaging, shouldin theory be able to provide detailed scanscomparable to those produced by magneticresonance imaging (MRI) or Xray computerised tomography (CT), but with thecost and convenience of a handheld scanner. Since the technology can operate atdepths of several centimetres, its champions hope that within a few years it will beable to help guide biopsy needles deepwithin tissue, assist with gastrointestinalendoscopies and measure oxygen levels invascular and lymph nodes, thereby helping to determine whether tumours are malignant or not. There is even scope to usephotoacoustic imaging to monitor brainactivity and gene expression within cells.

To create a photoacoustic image, pulsesof laser light are shone onto the tissue being scanned. This heats the tissue by a tinyamount�just a few thousandths of a degree�that is perfectly safe, but is enough tocause the cells to expand and contract in response. As they do so, they emit sound

waves in the ultrasonic range. An array ofsensors placed on the skin picks up thesewaves, and a computer then uses a processof triangulation to turn the ultrasonic signals into a two or threedimensional image of what lies beneath.

The technique works at far greaterdepths (up to seven centimetres) than other opticalimaging techniques such as confocal microscopy or opticalcoherence tomography, which penetrate to depths ofonly about a millimetre. And because thedegree to which a particular wavelength oflight is absorbed depends on the type oftissue and, in the case of blood, on whether it is oxygenated or deoxygenated, thereis, in e�ect, a natural contrast agent. Thismakes the technique superior to ultrasound alone when it comes to picking outdetailed features such as veins.

MRI and CT scans are also capable ofdelivering this kind of detail. But they usually require contrast dyes to be injectedinto the bloodstream, says Lihong Wang, aphotoacoustic researcher at WashingtonUniversity in St Louis, Missouri. CT scansalso involve potentially harmful ionising

The sound of light

Biomedical technology: A novelscanning technique that combinesoptics with ultrasound could providedetailed images at greater depths

The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Photoacoustic imaging 21

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22 Photoacoustic imaging The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

2 radiation. And MRI and CT scans are veryexpensive, using machines that cost millions of dollars and require dedicated sta�to operate them. Photoacoustic tomography, by contrast, could eventually be performed using portable handheld devices,similar to those used for ultrasound scanning. This would allow doctors to diagnose and monitor patients in clinics, andreduce the need to refer them to consultants. �Photoacoustics provides greater access at a much lower cost than these othertechnologies,� claims Michael Thornton ofEndra, a medicalimaging company basedin Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Shining a lightA pioneer of the technique in the late 1980swas Alexander Oraevsky, who was basedat the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow at the time. He had been evaluating lasers as a means of removing tissue, but inthe course of his experiments he realisedthat his samples were producing ultrasound, and began exploring the potentialof this e�ect for imaging. Since then thetechnology has come a long way, not leastbecause of the development of nanosecond pulsing lasers. Being able to deliversuch brief pulses of energy to the samplebeing imaged�a nanosecond is a thousandmillionth of a second�has helpedimprove the resolution of the resulting images. Dr Oraevsky and other researchershave shown that it is possible to image theentire bloodsupply system of a mouse, forexample, down to a resolution of abouthalf a millimetre.

One of the most promising applications for photoacoustics is inthe treatment of cancer. Sinceblood cells are natural absorbers of light, photoacoustics isparticularly good at providinghighcontrast images of theformation of blood vessels(angiogenesis) and detectingincreased metabolic activity(hypermetabolism), both ofwhich are hallmarks of cancer, notes Dr Wang. Preliminary clinical research is nowunder way to look at how thetechnology can be used tomonitor the development ofbreast cancer and identifyhow far it has progressed.

Even with mammographyand ultrasound, the currentgold standards for breastcancer screening, doctors cannottell if a tumour is malignant or

benign without performing an invasiveand expensive biopsy. �About eight out often patients who undergo a biopsy comeback negative,� says Dr Oraevsky, whonow works for Fairway Medical Technologies, a company based in Houston, Texas.Photoacoustic tomography could potentially be used to diagnose women in thedoctor’s surgery.

One approach being explored by Michael Pashley, head of ultrasound imagingand therapy at Philips Research in Briarcli�Manor, New York, is to develop a hybrid ultrasound scanner that can produce ordinary ultrasound scans as well as photoacoustic images. In theory the two imagescould even be superimposed, he says. Atthe moment the work, which is being carried out in collaboration with Dr Wang, isgeared towards monitoring the development of breast cancers that have alreadybeen diagnosed, says Dr Pashley. But if thetechnology proves successful, he hopes tomove on to using it for the initial diagnosis.

Although the di�erent absorption characteristics of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood provide an extremely good natural contrast agent, this approach has itslimits. So some companies are exploringthe use of photoacoustics in conjunctionwith arti�cial contrastagents introducedto the bloodstream. VisualSonics, an ultrasoundimaging company based in Toronto, has been evaluating contrast agentsmade up of gold nanorods attached toantibodies that bind to speci�c targetsfound in cancer cells. Ultrasound is alreadyused to detect such agents but its resolution is su�cient to show only the structure

of blood vessels. Dr Wang reckons that ifcontrast agents that are too small to bepicked up by ordinary ultrasound were introduced into a patient’s bloodstream,they could be detected using photoacoustic imaging. Furthermore, it would be possible to see where the contrast agents builtup, and hence determine the extent of a tumour. And by creating contrast agents thatbind to speci�c genetic targets, the sametechnique could be used to monitor geneexpression, he suggests.

Room for improvementDespite its potential and its many advantages over other methods, there are somedi�culties with photoacoustic imagingthat have not yet been resolved. As lightpenetrates deeper into tissue, the resultingultrasonic signal diminishes. This is partlybecause some of the light has been absorbed by the preceding tissue, but it is alsobecause the laser light is dispersed, diffused and backscattered. This places limits on just how deeply photoacoustic imaging can delve. In the future it might bepossible to go a little deeper, says Dr Wang,but probably not by much. �If light is delivered from both sides of the tissue, tencentimetrethick tissue can potentially beimaged,� he says.

Bone tissue represents another obstacleto the technology, but not for the reasonyou might think. Laser light usually passeseasily through bone, but sound does not.The speed at which sound travels throughbone is di�erent from the speed at which ittravels through soft tissue, and as the ultrasound passes from one medium to thenext it is distorted. Air cavities, many ofwhich are found inside the human body,pose a similar problem, says Dr Wang.

Even so, VisualSonics and other companies are keen to explore the use of photoacoustics for neuroimaging. It is not aninsurmountable problem, says Dr Wang,who is working on a technique to modelthe skull so that its e�ects on the ultrasonicwaves can be predicted and eliminated insoftware, restoring clarity to the signals. Ifhe can get this approach to work, it wouldfurther extend the revolutionary potentialof photoacoustic imaging in the comingyears. Doctors would not merely be able todiagnose cancer in the comfort of theirown surgeries�they would be able to perform brain scans, too. A technology thattraces its roots to a stillborn 19thcenturycommunications device would have takenanother step towards the futuristic dreamof the allpurpose handheld medical tricorder seen in �Star Trek�. 7

Photoacoustics provides greater access at a muchlower cost than other imaging technologies.

Getting the picture

UNLESS you work in the telecomsindustry, you are unlikely to have

heard of Marty Cooper. He is hardly ahousehold name. But his in�uence hasbeen felt across the world, because he isthe engineer who took the cellular technology used in the carphones of the 1970sand decided that phones ought to be smallenough to be portable. His determinationled to the �rst prototype, in 1973, and thento the �rst commercial mobile phone in1983. �Marty is the most in�uential personno one has ever heard of,� says RobertMcDowell, a commissioner with theFederal Communications Commission,America’s telecoms regulator.

The son of Ukrainian immigrants, MrCooper spent much of his youth in Depressionera Chicago. He says he neverwent hungry, but his parents made only amodest living selling merchandise doortodoor, on instalment plans. To �nancehis education at the Illinois Institute ofTechnology, Mr Cooper joined the ReserveO�cers’ Training Corps, and ended up ona navy destroyer, blowing up railwaytracks along the North Korean coast duringthe Korean war. Mr Cooper later switchedto submarines and spent a year and a halfstationed in Hawaii. There he picked upscuba diving, one of his many athleticpastimes. He enjoyed the navy verymuch, but he wanted to settle down, so hetook a job at Teletype, a subsidiary ofWestern Electric. He started working atMotorola in 1954 and had earned his masters in electrical engineering at nightschool by 1957, again at the Illinois Instituteof Technology.

Mr Cooper credits his family for hissubsequent success. �My resourcefulnessand persistence come from watching myfolks digging in,� he says. �My mother wasa dynamo. She would talk to anyone. Shenever walked slowly. And I am alwaysleaning forward into the wind.�

It’s an apt image for Mr Cooper’s career,during which he has repeatedly spottedwhat lies ahead and led others towardsthe creation of new industries. In the1960s he was instrumental in the establishment of the highcapacity pagingmarket, for example, turning paging froma technology used in single buildings toone that could stretch across cities. He also

helped popularise the quartz watch, by�xing a �aw in the crystals Motorola madefor its radios, and then encouraging the�rm to massproduce the �rst crystals foruse in watches. �Marty can see over thehorizon and see how things should be,�says Tom Wheeler, a managing director atCore Capital Partners, a venturecapital�rm. �And then he makes them happen.�

The idea for the mobile phone �rstoccurred to Mr Cooper in the early 1970s,at a time when cellular phones wereunwieldy devices built into car dashboards and attached to a box of equipment�a twoway radio and a powersupply�in the car’s boot. There were onlya few radio channels available on whichto make calls, and users often had to wait along time for one to become free.

Carried awayBut once Motorola put Mr Cooper incharge of its carphone division, he decided that such products should not merelybe able to move around in cars, but shouldbe small and light enough to be carriedaround the rest of the time. �I became azealot for products being portable,� hesays. From idea to prototype took 90 daysin 1972 as Mr Cooper sponsored a designcontest among Motorola engineers�manyfrom divisions he did not run. At a dinnerhe held that December, each engineerpresented his own prototype. �We endedup picking the least glamorous phone,�says Mr Cooper. �It was the simplest.�

That device lead to the famous phonecall on April 3rd 1973 after Motorola hadhosted a press conference to introduce thephone at the Hilton hotel on the Avenueof the Americas in New York. Althoughthe device had already been tested andmade successful calls, Mr Cooper’s decision to take it�and a journalist�onto thestreet to make a demonstration call was astroke of marketing genius. He cannotremember the journalist’s name, and JoelEngel, the rival engineer whom Mr Cooper called at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories thatday, says he does not remember taking thecall. But it was the �rst public call on ahandheld mobile phone. �I was talkingand stepped into the street and almost gothit by a car,� Mr Cooper recalls with animpish grin�the �rst hint of mobile telecommunications’ distracting downside.

The handset, called a DynaTAC, had 35minutes of talk time and weighed onekilogram (2.2 pounds). Four iterations laterMr Cooper’s team had reduced the DynaTAC’s weight by half, and it was �nallylaunched in 1983 with a list price of about

Father of the cell phone

Marty Cooper, the pioneer of mobiletelephony, has spent his entirecareer pushing wirelesscommunications to new heights

The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009 Brain scan 23

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$4,000. By this time Mr Cooper had foughtfor a decade with Motorola’s beancounters, who kept asking him when he wasgoing to stop spending so much money onhis pet project�he had become Motorola’shead of research and development in1976�and start generating revenue. �It costso much and took so long,� admits MrCooper. �But my focus has always been onthe longterm technology vision.�

Today over half the world’s populationhas a mobile phone, and it seems obviousthat the idea would succeed. But manypeople within Motorola in the early 1970swanted to focus instead on expanding theexisting market for businessorientedcarphones. �But Marty said ‘We’ll get thisthing down to the size of the palm of yourhand’,� says Travis Marshall, a retiredMotorola executive who worked with MrCooper. Most people at the time, he says,thought cellular phones would only everbe business tools, because of their highcost. �Marty kept preaching that the costwould come down and that it wouldbecome a consumer product,� he recalls.�He hypnotised everyone at Motorola tofollow him,� says Sean Maloney, a seniorexecutive at Intel, the world’s biggestchipmaker, who has himself spent severalyears championing WiMAX, an emergingmobilebroadband technology.

But by the time Motorola started sellingthe world’s �rst handheld mobile phoneto consumers, Mr Cooper had already leftthe company to launch a new �rm thatprovided billing systems for cellular operators. In 1986 he and his partners sold thiscompany, Cellular Business Systems, toCincinnati Bell for $23m. A few years laterMr Cooper got a call from Richard Roy, aresearcher at Stanford University who hadan idea to make mobile telecoms moree�cient: smart antennas.

By precisely steering radio waves froma basestation towards a mobile device, itis possible to establish a faster, more reliable link�and to support more users atonce, by sending di�erent beams to usersin di�erent directions using the sameradio frequencies. Mr Cooper gets a call ortwo every week from someone with abusinessdevelopment idea, so Mr Royhad to be persistent. He �nally got tospend some time with Mr Cooper byjogging with him while the two attendedan industry convention. Inspired by MrRoy’s ideas, Mr Cooper agreed to lead anew company, ArrayComm, set up in 1992.

While leading this smartantennacompany, where he is now the chairman,Mr Cooper coined Cooper’s law, which

notes that spectral e�ciency�the amountof information that can be crammed into agiven slice of radio spectrum�has doubled every 30 months since GuglielmoMarconi patented the wireless telegraphin 1897. Modern devices have a spectrale�ciency more than one trillion timesgreater than Marconi’s original device did112 years ago (it broadcast in Morse codeover a very wide frequency range). Smartantennas, Mr Cooper believes, will help toensure that this progress continues, andhis law continues to hold.

But ArrayComm has had only limitedsuccess. Having developed its own wirelessbroadband system, it now focuses onproviding smartantenna technology toother equipmentmakers, for use in cellular and WiMAX networks. �ArrayCommhas the same problem as many technology companies,� says Arthur Lipper, aWall Street veteran who plays tennis withMr Cooper. �They are ahead of the market,and this is an expensive place to be.� It isMr Cooper’s strength, but it can also be aweakness. As Mr Cooper himself puts it,�You could say I was visionary. Or youcould say I was too far ahead.�

Unusually for a technology visionary,however, Mr Cooper manages to keep theneeds of users in mind, rather than becoming enamoured with technology forthe sake of it. He recognised early on thatmobile phones would o�er people greaterfreedom and �exibility in their workingand personal lives�unlike �xedlinephones, which are tethered to one place,or carphones, which cannot be takeneverywhere. A further example is provided by the Jitterbug, a handset designed byhis wife, Arlene Harris, which Mr Cooperhelped bring to market. This handset,which is now sold by Samsung, has bigbuttons and basic features and is designedfor elderly consumers. As handsetmakerscrammed more and more features intotheir phones, Mr Cooper and his wiferealised that for some people, less is more.

Beyond the mobile phoneNow 80, Mr Cooper’s vigour is undimmed. Getting time on his schedulemay require donning skis or tennis shoes.�Marty scampers around the tennis courtlike a 17yearold,� says Mr Lipper. Despitehis achievements, he retains an endearingsense of graciousness and humility. Hemakes a point of replying to the manychildren who contact him for commentsfor use in their school reports.

Perhaps surprisingly, Mr Cooper thinksthe real impact of mobile communica

tions is yet to come. Things will get reallyinteresting, he thinks, when consumers�get away from the concept of the cellphone�that implies talk and listen� andnew applications, based on sending datato and from mobile devices, take hold.There are already glimpses of the potential for mobile data in the success of theBlackBerry email device and the iPhone,with its vast selection of downloadablesoftware. But Mr Cooper feels stronglythat such applications will be more likelyto �ourish if the world’s mobile networks,and the applications that run over them,are developed and managed by di�erentcompanies, in an open model that mimicsthe internet. This is yet another idea thatMr Cooper has been pushing for years,says Eric Zimits of Granite Ventures, aventurecapital �rm. �He is way ahead inthis notion of a mobile internet,� he says.

Once mobile operators focus on providing the network�while leaving application development to the open market�competition will �ourish, �so that consumers’ lives are improved,� says MrCooper. Open access, he believes, �is justgood business�. There are certainly signsthat things are heading this way, despitethe e�orts of operators to avoid beingreduced to mere �dumb pipes�. It may beanother case where Mr Cooper has correctly identi�ed the outcome, but it takeslonger than expected to materialise.

But that seems to be his role. �Martycreated the wireless industry,� says TimMcDonald, a former fund manager atMerrill Lynch and onetime board member at ArrayComm. �His greatest strengthis his ability to inspire the vision for wherethe wireless industry can go.� 7

Mr Cooper thinks the real impact of mobilecommunications is yet to come.

24 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly June 6th 2009

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