The push to wire the whole wide world has taken another brave
step forward. In a collaborative effort with UC Berkeley, Intel has developed a new wi-fi
platform that allows data to be transmitted more than 60 miles away
from the transmitter. Their focus is to bring connectivity to
remote areas all over the world, and the goal is to make it
commercially available in the second half of 2008.
Other methods of bringing wireless to a rural area, like laying
cable or using satellite connections, have proven to be impractical
and too expensive to implement. Intel’s Wi-fi radio is set to have
a $500 price point, and requires so little power that it could be
built to run on solar. The technology requires two devices to
operate. One is installed on the outskirts of an urban area, wired
to a local area network cable. The other goes to the previously
unconnected village, and viola!, the first Internet connection is
made.
Emerging markets are jumping on board, with devices already
installed in India, Panama, Vietnam, and South Africa. The
long-term implications for bolstering a rural community are
limitless, but the most immediate application is being used to
provide better healthcare.
One of the advantages that robotics, computers and anything that
uses AI in general have is that they are non-biological substrates
that allow for recombination of many different aspects from the
physical world. In the video below, Intel’s robotic hand
incorporates “pre touch” which is inspired by the electrolocative
ability found in sharks (and other fish) that is believed to be the
most sophisticated of any animal. By sending electrical impulses
towards an object, the robotic hand is able to prejudge and react
to an articles’ position. So in essence, engineers are grafting one
animal’s highly evolved ability onto a non-biological substrate, in
order better replicate the ability of another’s. Pretty cool.
Unsurprisingly, Intel CTO Justin Rattner believes that accelerating computation will soon transform our everyday lives and experiences, perhaps enabling a not-too-distant Singularity.
In this exclusive Future Blogger interview, shot at the Singularity Summit, Rattner lays out his core near-term predictions for the field of computing:
Rattner's core prognostications include Massively Multi-Core Processing, and Evolving Memory Hierarcy and Infinite Battery Life.
Multi-Multi Core Processing: "Certainly systems based on processors with large numbers of individual processing elements are a major part of what we're going to see in the middle of the next decade."
The latest in the foresighted line-up of Singularity Summit speakers, Justin Rattner, VP and CTO of Intel, just spoke about achieving programmable matter. The possibility is there, especially when you consider where he sees the processor in the next decade.
“We think several terrabytes/second per chip is well within our possibility within 4-5 years,” said Rattner. The example he cited was in the vehicle design field. Model cars, real physical ones, could be interactive as well as modified.
“What if you could take data elements from multiple websites and
mash them together into a single, integrated view?”
Intel’s new Mash Maker, a suped-up take
on Yahoo
Pipes, now allows us web surfers to take pieces of sites and to
assemble them into a single super-site. It’s kind of like
RSS, but instead of modules of
standardized text feeds you can clip most of the visual and
interactive portions of sites that you find useful. Like Pipes, the
data flowing through these micro interfaces can be threaded
together to make for more efficient browsing, seaching, sorting
experiences. For example, you can use Mash Maker to easily connect
your Facebook friends’ profiles with a google map, creating a image
of where they’re all located on a map that’s located on the same
page as the profiles.
Overall, Intel’s new product represents the next stage in
user-friendly web mashing and is a big step up from the less
accessible Yahoo Pipes. It’s most powerful feature may well prove
it’s ability to suggest pre-made mashups as you browse. If it can
attain critical mass, this may be the the first web masher to gain
incredible market share – it looks as though it’s got a shot.
Otherwise, we’ll just have to wait for an improved version or a
slicker, more dummy proof product from Company X to truly transform
our web browsing experience. Either way, big changes in the way we
browse are coming sooner or later, but definitely within 2 years,
or so I’m betting.
Intel CTOJustin Rattner paints a scenario in which humans have access to “computers, and cameras, and phones that run infinitely”, relating that the feasibility and demand for such devices has spurred Intel to seriously research the underlying technologies that could spawn such a future reality.
Rattner says Intel has been coming at wireless power “in a number of ways”, first from this notion of “scavenging free energy … from the environment to power all sorts of sensing devices” that broadcast data as they filled up with sufficient energy, but more recently through “injecting energy into the environment … particularly at this idea of coupled magnetic resonance circuits as a way to transmit power in a perfectly safe way.”
With such a heavyweight company devoting real-deal R&D dollars to wireless power one has got to wonder when well start seeing some serious breakthroughs and if, eventually, pervasive power that enables always-on pervasive computing, sensing, and production could become a human reality.
For example, you can use Mash Maker to easily connect
your Facebook friends’ profiles with a google map, creating a image
of where they’re all located on a map that’s located on the same
page as the profiles.