1600 Years Without Technological Progress

Why do some technologies take off and and others go nowhere?

(Please visit http://modelengines.info/aeolipile/
to find out more about the aeolipile in the image)

There are all sorts of reasons if you talk about a specific invention. Everything from the insight of the inventor to grasp the value of what they have invented, to being unable to obtained financing, and on... An invention can be considered to be the exploitation of a technology, or a an exploitation of a technological breakthrough.

If you consider a technology why do specific inventions fail? The base reason is the economic viability. Economic viability can be measured in the following ways, the ability to recoup the costs of making and marketing the invention. The ability to recoup the cost is based on the value of the invention to the end user, either monetarily or in saving of the end users labor (occasionally in entertainment value).

Look at an automobile. Terribly expensive, but I don't have to go out and feed the horse. That makes economic sense, at least to me. (OK a Ferrari would be entertainment, but I don't own one.)

But a couple of fascinating technologies are the steam power and the turbine. The first recorded steam-powered device attributed to an individual, the aeolipile, was described by Hero of Alexandria (Heron) in 1st century Roman Egypt, in his manuscript Spiritalia seu Pneumatica.^[1] The Babylonians are sometimes sited as having simple steam devices in about 2000 BC. So was Hero a zero and drop the ball on this invention. No, it was a cool novelty, capable of spinning at 3000 RPM, but the Roman empire ruled the world. It was cheaper to use slaves. There is a very good article on the later economics of steam power at: http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Steam-engine

1600 years later manpower suddenly came into short supply through hard times and plagues. Suddenly steam became worthwhile. Once some of the details were worked out in several generations of inventions the industrial revolution began.

Today we are still exploiting this technology in steam turbines in nuclear power plants, jet engines, and possible rocket engines. Just add a fer magnets to the aeolipile and it becomes an electric generator. The modern turbine below might be a more efficient version.

40 Years Waisted, And Economic Stimulis That Works

NASA, the USA, and consequently the world has wasted 40 years (actually 37, since December 14, 1972 when Harrison "Jack" Schmitt and Eugene A. Cernan became the last man to walk on the moon) of progress, failing to go any further, much less returning that far.
Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin is among those who think NASA is off target with its current plans to reach the moon by 2020. Aldrin, the second human to walk on the moon's surface during the historic 1969 Apollo 11 mission, calls the new race to the moon a "glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago."



Instead of targeting the moon, Aldrin outlines a manned spaceflight plan for NASA that would use the moon as little more than a staging area for a 2025 manned landing on the Martian moon Phobos. What exploration takes place on the moon, Aldrin has urged, should be jobbed out to an international consortium.


Writing in the August edition of Popular Mechanics, Aldrin said, "As I approach my 80th birthday, I'm in no mood to keep my mouth shut any longer when I see NASA heading down the wrong road, and that's exactly what I see today." Aldrin further wrote of NASA's lunar plans, "The agency's current Vision for Space Exploration will waste decades and hundreds of billion dollars ... Instead of a stepping-stone to Mars, NASA's current lunar plan is a detour."



I have 3 points to make about manned space flight investment.

1. Space exploration is one of the few things that the government can spend money on that will actually create wealth. By "creating wealth" what is meant is that the money spent will create enough economic growth to cause the tax revenue generated to be greater that the amount of money spent. How does this happen? Not from the direct high tech employment. Not from the secondary trickle down from the moneys such employed peoples spend their money on. Not from the displacement of jobs in the commercial marketplace to replace the direct employed people. It is from the economics of commercialization of technology spin-offs. Examples are Sorbent Hemodialysis System, Teflon, Tang, Artificial Heart.... (see http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/apollo.htm for an official listing)

2. It is sometimes argued that such technological advancement would have happened faster and more effectively if the money would not have been spent by the government. This in general is true. However, with space exploration the government is spending money on R&D for items that have no immediate commercial value and therefore companies would therefore not invest in them. Additionally, it spends money on technologies that are beyond the affordability of companies otherwise (since it has to pay for expenses first, a company spends R&D money as a percentage of its gross profits, not its income). An example of technology time line being beyond the reach of investors vision is the 1960 development of the "Electrolytic Silver Ion Cell" for water purification without chemicals. It has now been marketed since 1985 by Carefree Clearwater LTD for pools and spas (Clear eyes and no more green hair or dangerous chemicals). As a note, copper silver ionization is proved in studies to be effective against E. coli, Pseudomonas, Legionella Pneumphilas (Legionnaires' disease), Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Salmonella, and other pathogens, some of which have been proven resilient even to high levels of chlorine, and only took 25 years to reach the commercial marketplace.

Despite the argument for the above about government spending, I am rooting for Virgin Galactic to be successful. I would like be able to able to build my retirement home on Mars. I think Bill Gates and Larry Elison are about rich enough to pull that off if they started tomorrow morning, but I'm no where near close to that.

3. Discovery is part of mans nature, it is something we(mankind/America) must do as part of our destiny. The resulting learned knowledge and socioeconomic impact to of leading the world into space is incalculable. Columbus set sail to find bring back spices to Spain on the assumption that the world was round and not flat. The expense to government of Spain was similar to going to Mars as a percentage Spain's wealth at the time. Spain went from practically bankrupt to being the worlds leading super power overnight. Sailing off, to "fall the edge of the world" was far more dangerous and a much greater unknown. If we don't it will, eventually be someone else will reap the rewards, and they may not represent peace and freedom.


"Here man completed his first explorations of the moon. December 1972 AD. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind" -Plaque left on the moon by Apollo 17

The Oracle Sun Purchase

Image via Wikipedia

Oracle's purchase of Sun went on hold while the DoJ continues its review. Last Friday, Daniel Wall, a lawyer at Latham & Watkin representing Oracle, said that “we were almost able to resolve everything before the Second Request deadline. All that’s left is one narrow issue about the way rights to Java are licensed that is never going to get in the way of the deal.” So, what does Oracle owning Java mean to technology companies? The answer depends on if your perspective.

First from an economic point of view. Oracle is making money in the recession. That equates to job growth. That of course is a good thing.

First from a consumer point of view, it means Oracle any where. Not just mainframes, and server farms, and website databases, but all the way down to your cell phone. Combined with the recent acquisitions such of BEA (J2EE) and Virtual Iron (Xen based virtualization). That provides a monopolistic view down to the core library device level for that the DoJ should be taking a good long look at, the only real large scale direct Java competitor will be IBM. Other competitors that lose significant market share are Microsoft, SAP, and Cisco Systems.

Java in general may take a big short term boost forward as IBM and Oracle go head to head.

Open source in general, may take a hit. Like IBM, Oracle will have little interest or need for open source middleware or service oriented architecture (SOA) components. Further, given Oracle's early and deep interest in Eclipse and OSGi, the Java tools will stay free and open. The tussle for influence between Oracle and IBM in Eclipse and the Java Community Process (JCP) will be great fun to watch in coming years. Or then again, maybe Oracle will adopt Netbeans and start a wave plugins for supporting Oracle. But Oracle historically is not hug supporting driver in Open Source.

OpenJDK would take a big boost, except that it is a GNU license. Dealing with GNU license is always an issue, but will save as a seperate blog topic, other than to point out that java license issues is where the DoJ got stuck.

Well if you have to make a short term decision on what path to take for your java based products, things just got a lot tougher for the next 6 months till it becomes more apparent what Oracle does with the Sun product line.

Federal C.T.O. Track History of Public-Private Partnershp

Aneesh Chopra is a now well known as the new Federal CTO. But now he has a new legacy to deal with in his track record as a technologist, and currently it doesn't look to good for him or the president. Aneesh Chopra is well know in Virginia as Governor Tim Kaine's Secretary of Technology. For the Commonwealth, he was charged with leading the state's strategy to effectively leverage technology in government reform. If his strategy for the state can be used as an indicator for his plans in President Obama's administration, you should take a look at Virginia's Strategic Plan for Information Technology.

One of the state's most recent innovations was the Virginia Information Technology Agency (VITA), the Commonwealth's consolidated information technology organization. The 10-year, $2 billion public-private partnership between VITA and Northrop Grumman is transforming state government's IT infrastructure technology and providing the expertise and resources to support improved delivery of government services. It is believed to be the first and the largest of its kind in the nation, the IT Infrastructure Partnership will deliver state-of-the-art technologies with significant resources for the benefit of citizens and consumers.

Our nations first Federal C.T.O. only has two outstanding problems with this innovation that he was responsible for as CTO for Virginia.

First is the that Virginia is now accusing the contractor with breach of contract. You can read about this in the Richmand Times article "State Accuses Northrop of Breach of Breach" So, the state is pretty much locked into the technology of a single contractor for the next 10 years, and already there is a problem.

The second is the plague of security breaches. Most worrisome is the one that relates to Health Care. The one that had the $10M ransom posting on the home page and all of the backup reportedly erased. You can read about this in the Washington Post article "Hackers Break Into Virginia Health Professions Database, Demands Ransom" The system is supposed to prevent people from fraudulently filling the same prescription multiple times. According to the DEA, "Prescription drug monitoring programs are being used to deter and identify illegal activity such as prescription forgery, indiscriminate prescribing and 'doctor shopping."

So Virginia lawmakers have intensified their scrutiny of the six-year-old agency created to consolidate the state's diverse and far-flung computer systems after the Prescription Monitoring Program was hacked on April 30 and after the dismissal of former VITA chief Lemuel Stewart. With the prescription database still offline two months after it was accessed because of FBI and state criminal investigations and work to upgrade the system, "some doctors are reluctant to prescribe highly addictive painkillers such as Oxycodone, Vicodin, morphine and Valium", said Sandra Whitley Ryals, Virginia's director of the Department of Health Professions. Among the information accessed were names, birth dates and addresses of people who received the prescriptions and, in an undetermined number of cases, Social Security numbers, the single bit of data most valuable to an identity thief.

In his weekly address, Obama said that Chopra's job would be to "promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities, from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure." Before joining state government, Chopra was managing director of health care consultancy The Advisory Board Company. That experience could be useful since the administration is promoting a plan to establish electronic health records for all Americans.

I certainly hope that this is not the technology that will be applied to Obama government health care.