Bench Talk

Electric vehicles feature some impressive technology but suffer from an image problem that’s proving to be a drag on popularity. Sales of EVs (cars driven by one or more electric motors powered by batteries recharged from an external electricity supply) are tiny compared to consumption of conventional autos. Although over a million EVs have been sold since 2008, the entire fleet makes up just 0.1 percent of global vehicle numbers.

The buzzword “innovation” has become something of a mantra for the technology sector, designed to stimulate the out-of-the-box thinking needed to come up with winning products against ever tougher competition. But innovation is perhaps as wrong a mantra today as it was in the seventeenth century when, according to an article in The Atlantic, innovators were more likely to have their ears cut off and be thrown into jail than celebrated. What we need today, more than ever, is not innovation, but invention.

Those of us of a certain age survived in the period before the Internet, yet, such has been the transformative power of the technology, even we have difficulty working out how. But today’s Internet is just the beginning; extending it to billions of tiny, inexpensive sensors that continuously generate useful data will exponentially multiply the network’s power and its influence over daily life.

Today’s wireless charging is like commuting to work by bicycle: great in principle but a pain in practice. Cycling promises fitness, no gas bills and freedom from public transport schedules but the reality involves dodging cars, inhaling truck fumes and arriving in the office disheveled. Similarly, wireless charging has the potential (excuse the pun) to free consumers from the tedium of finding the correct charger from the dozens of incompatible units in the kitchen drawer and to cut through the Gordian knot of power cables lurking under the office desk. Yet wireless charging systems remain thin on the ground and compatible mobile devices are rarer still.

The century-old U.S. electricity grid is the largest interconnected machine on Earth. But this infrastructure––comprising more than 9,200 electric generating units with more than 1,000 gigawatts of generating capacity connected to nearly 300,000 miles (483,000 km) of transmission and distribution lines––is facing the largest disruption in its history as the way power is generated undergoes a revolution.

There is little debate that LED lighting has hit the mainstream with the technology projected to achieve a market share of 84% in the general illumination market by 2030 (saving the equivalent of the total energy consumed by nearly 24 million U.S. homes compared to today’s inefficient lighting, according to the U.S. Department of Energy). But like many emerging technologies, LED lighting has taken a long time to actually emerge – much longer than you might think.

In its pomp the electronics retailer RadioShack enjoyed years of big profits from nerds looking for components for their next electronics project. (Two of those nerds used the company’s diodes and transistors to build a “blue box”, a device that tricked the phone system into letting them make free long-distance phone calls. Later those same nerds, both named Steve, went on to found Apple.) But then RadioShack changed its identity, lost its core constituency and, after years of struggle, filed for Chapter 11 in 2015.

It’s a familiar pattern; a new technology is introduced, everyone gets excited about its potential and then a seasoned engineer inquires if it can be exploited by the bad guys. Such security questions are now being asked about the Internet of Things (IoT); a network currently under development that makes today’s Internet look tiny in comparison.

Until now, Bluetooth® Smart has largely had a free run as the preferred communication technology for beacons – compact wireless proximity sensors that transmit a short-range radio signal advertising their position which can be picked up by compatible smartphones.

Hiring care for ailing seniors is expensive, and healthcare costs promise to outstrip tax revenues – a problem compounded by a diminishing workforce. Recent developments in technology promise a new generation of “cyberconscious” robots that take on the well-being of seniors from human caregivers, including the ability to determine mood and strategies to alleviate boredom.