Blockchain Is a Process Innovation That Will Make Financial Records More Reliable and Easier to Access

(p. A13) Until the mid-1990s, the internet was little more than an arcane set of technical standards used by academics. Few predicted the profound effect it would have on society. Today, blockchain–the technology behind the digital currency bitcoin–might seem like a trinket for computer geeks. But once widely adopted, it will transform the world.
Blockchain offers a way to track items or transactions using a shared digital “ledger.” Blocks of new transactions are added at the end of the chain, and encryption ensures that it remains unbroken–tamper-proof and error-free. This is significantly more efficient than the current methods for logging and sharing such information.
Consider the process of buying a house, a complex transaction involving banks, attorneys, title companies, insurers, regulators, tax agencies and inspectors. They all maintain separate records, and it’s costly to verify and record each step. That’s why the average closing takes roughly 50 days. Blockchain offers a solution: a trusted, immutable digital ledger, visible to all participants, that shows every element of the transaction.

For the full commentary, see:
GINNI ROMETTY. “How Blockchain Will Change Your Life.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Nov. 8, 2016): A13.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Nov. 7, 2016, and has the title “KEYWORDS; Is Engine of Innovation in Danger of Stalling?”)

Internet Innovations Only Arose After Entrepreneurs Created PCs

(p. B15) Leo L. Beranek, an engineer whose company designed the acoustics for the United Nations and concert halls at Lincoln Center and Tanglewood, then built the direct precursor to the internet under contract to the Defense Department, died on Oct. 10 [2016] at his home in Westwood, Mass.
. . .
After the war, Dr. Beranek was recruited to teach at M.I.T., where he was named technical director of the engineering department’s acoustics laboratory. The administrative director of that lab was Richard Bolt, who later founded Bolt, Beranek & Newman with Dr. Beranek and Robert Newman, a former student of Dr. Bolt’s.
The company was conceived as a center for leading-edge acoustic research. But Dr. Beranek changed its direction in the 1950s to include a focus on the nascent computer age.
“As president, I decided to take B.B.N. into the field of man-machine systems because I felt acoustics was a limited field and no one seemed to be offering consulting services in that area,” Dr. Beranek said in a 2012 interview for this obituary.
He hired J.C.R. Licklider, a pioneering computer scientist from M.I.T., to lead the effort, and it was Dr. Licklider who persuaded him that the company needed to get involved in computers.
Under Dr. Licklider, the company developed one of the best software research groups in the country and won many critical projects with the Department of Defense, NASA, the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. Though Dr. Licklider left in 1962, the company became a favored destination for a new generation of software developers and was often referred to as the third university in Cambridge.
“We bought our first digital computer from Digital Equipment Corporation, and with it we were able to attract some of the best minds from M.I.T. and Harvard, and this led to the ARPA contract to build the Arpanet,” Dr. Beranek said.
“I never dreamed the internet would come into such widespread use, because the first users of the Arpanet were large mainframe computer owners,” he said. “This all changed when the personal computer became available. With the PC, I could see that computers were fun, and that is the real reason why all innovations come into widespread use.”

For the full obituary, see:

GLENN RIFKIN. “Leo Beranek, 102, Who Pivoted From Acoustics to Computers, Dies.” The New York Times (Tues, OCT. 18, 2016): B15.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date OCT. 17, 2016, and has the title “Leo Beranek, Acoustics Designer and Internet Pioneer, Dies at 102.” )

Flaws in Early Tech, Solved by Later and Better Tech

(p. A2) Mr. Mokyr says innovators gravitate to society’s greatest needs. In previous eras, it was cheap and rapid transport, reliable energy, and basic health care. Today, seven of the top 10 problems he says are most in need of innovative solutions are instances of bite-back. They include global warming, antibiotic resistance, obesity and information overload. Fixing these problems may weigh heavily on growth. Yet Mr. Mokyr argues past productivity was overstated because it didn’t include those costs.
Nonetheless, he’s an optimist. For every unintended consequence one innovation brings, another innovation will find the answer. Fluoridation cured tooth decay, and automotive engineers found alternatives to leaded gasoline. And distracted driving? Driverless cars may take care of that plague before long.

For the full commentary, see:
GREG IP. “CAPITAL ACCOUNT; When Tech Bites Back: The Cost of Innovation.” The New York Times (Thurs., Oct. 20, 2016): A2.
(Note: the online version of the commentaty has the date Oct. 19, 2016, and has the title “CAPITAL ACCOUNT; When Tech Bites Back: Innovation’s Dark Side.”)

Winemakers Adapt to Global Warming with Owls and Technology

(p. 7) As California heats up, winemakers are confronting new challenges large and small — some very small.
Mice, voles and gophers love vineyards. “We’re seeing more pest pressures due to warmer winters,” Ms. Jackson said, walking through rows of cabernet grapes. Another emerging issue: Grapes ripen earlier, and swallows and crows are eating fruit before the harvest. “It’s a big problem,” she said.
That explains the owls. Sixty-eight boxes are occupied by hungry barn owls; during the harvest, a falconer comes to some vineyards every day, launching a bird of prey to scare away other birds with a taste for grapes.
The Jacksons have also begun analyzing their crops with increasingly sensitive tools. Ms. Jackson recently installed devices that measure how much sap is in the vines. They transmit the data over cellular networks to headquarters, where software calculates how much water specific areas of vineyards do or don’t need. “Data-driven farming,” Ms. Jackson said.
The Jacksons are also monitoring their crops using drones equipped with sensors that detect moisture by evaluating the colors of vegetation. The wrong color can indicate nutritional deficiencies in the crops, or irrigation leaks.
“Previously, it would require an experienced winemaker to go and look at the grapes,” said Clint Fereday, the company’s director of aviation. “Now we can run a drone, tag an area of the vines with GPS, and go right to the spot that has a problem.”
The drones have other uses, too. An infrared camera can scan for people guarding illicit marijuana operations on nearby lands.
Not all the changes being made on the Jackson vineyards involve advanced technology. Some are simply ancient farming techniques that the drought has made increasingly relevant.
Field hands plant cover crops, like rye and barley, between every second row of vines, to help keep the soil healthy. The family is stepping up its composting program. Pressed grapes are composted, then placed beneath rows of vines, since the organic matter is better at retaining moisture than soil.
Ms. Jackson’s husband, Shaun Kajiwara, is a vineyard manager for the company, overseeing the grapes that go into many of the upscale labels.
. . .
Ultimately, Mr. Kajiwara believes that with the right mix of new rootstocks, cover crops and fortuitous rainfall, some of the Jackson vineyards might not need irrigation at all. “In a few years, I think we could be dry-farmed up here,” he said. “Our reservoir will just be insurance.”
It is a snapshot of the future for the Jackson family: a vineyard north of traditional wine country, where natural features might offset some of the deleterious effects wrought by climate change. And, in combination with the adaptations Ms. Jackson has put in place, it might just be enough to allow the company to keep making fine wines for many years to come.

For the full story, see:
DAVID GELLES. “A Winery Battles Warming.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., JAN. 8, 2017): 1 & 6-7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 5, 2017, and has the title “Falcons, Drones, Data: A Winery Battles Climate Change.”)

NASA Funding Depends on “Pure Pork-Barrel Politics”

(p. A15) “Beyond Earth” is delightfully different from any other book I’ve ever read by human-spaceflight cheerleaders. The authors have put their thinking caps on and broken out of the usual orthodoxy by presenting cogent ideas on why humans should go into space, including their lovely idea of going to and living on obscure (to most folks) Titan. We go, they say, because we need to go, not just to explore and study but to find another place to live and, if we want to, screw it up just as much as we have screwed up Earth, because that’s what we do, that’s what makes us human. We may make mistakes but, by God, we also produce great civilizations and art and, yes, science in the process. We’ve done Earth, so let’s now go wherever our abilities take us and physics allow.
. . .
The one great truth I always tell people wanting to understand the American space program is this: The federal government doesn’t give a flip about human spaceflight. That’s why Apollo was canceled just as it hit its stride, why the shuttle program was underfunded from its inception, and why, after the shuttle was retired, NASA had nothing to replace it with. No one who holds the purse strings for NASA really cares whether American astronauts ever go anywhere. It’s just not that important to a country beset with a vast array of pressing problems.
What keeps the current space program going at all is pure pork-barrel politics. That’s why President Obama didn’t blink an eye when he signed NASA budgets that provided funds to build a giant rocket called the Space Launch System, which has no well-defined purpose, as well as a crewed capsule called Orion, which has no specifically assigned places to go. As proof that spending money isn’t evidence of support, there wasn’t one dime in those budgets to procure and deliver the accouterments needed for true human space endeavors–no space suits, no planetary landers, no rovers, no habitats, nothing but the bottom and top of a big, expensive rocket that will require a vast marching army to operate for no apparent reason.

For the full review, see:
HOMER HICKAM. “BOOKSHELF; Forget Mars, Aim for Titan.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., December 16, 2016): A15.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 15, 2016,)

The book under review, is:
Wohlforth, Charles, and Hendrix. Amanda R. Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets. New York: Pantheon, 2016.

Not All Old Ideas Should Be Recycled

(p. C16) “What is true in the consumer tech industry is true in science and other fields of thinking,” Mr. Poole elaborates. “The story of human understanding is not a gradual, stately accumulation of facts” but rather “a wild roller-coaster ride full of loops and switchbacks.”
Horses, for example, are once again being used in warfare in the Middle East. Vinyl records are back after losing out to digital CDs and internet streaming. Leeches, whose use was once considered a barbaric medieval practice, are now an FDA-approved “medical device” for cleaning wounds. Bicycles are making a comeback as a popular and efficient means of moving about in large, crowded cities. Blimps are starting to compete with helicopters for moving heavy cargo.
. . .
To understand this process of rediscovery–“old is the new new”–we need to abandon the myth of progress as something that results from a rejection of all that is old.
Still, not all old ideas will return reconfigured into new and useful ones, and it is here where readers may find room for disagreement, despite Mr. Poole’s many caveats.
. . .
That there are many unsolved mysteries in science does not always mean that we should turn to the past for insight. Sometimes–usually, in fact–the bad ideas rejected by science belong in the graveyard. Phlogiston, miasma, spontaneous generation, the luminiferous aether–wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.
Nevertheless, those notions–and many others that Mr. Poole surveys in this thought-provoking book–were wrong in ways that led scientists toward a better understanding, and the middle chapters of “Rethink” elegantly recount these stories. Going forward, Mr. Poole ends by suggesting that we adopt a “view from tomorrow” in which we “try to consider an idea free of the moral weight that attaches to it in particular historical circumstances” and that “we could try to get into the habit of deferring judgments about ideas more generally” in order to keep an open mind. On the flip side, skeptics should not rush to dismiss a consensus idea as wrong just because consensus science is not always right. Most of today’s ideas gained consensus in the first place for a very good reason: evidence. Do you know what we call alternative science with evidence? Science.

For the full review, see:

MICHAEL SHERMER. “Everything Old Is New Again.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 10, 2016): C16.

(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 9, 2016, and has the title “Electric Cars Are Old News.”)

The book under review, is:
Poole, Steven. Rethink: The Surprising History of New Ideas. New York: Scribner, 2016.

Invention Requires More than Just Necessity

If necessity is the mother of invention, why did it take 2,000 years for necessity to give birth?

(p. D2) Archaeological evidence suggests that after setting sail from the Solomon Islands, people crossed more than 2,000 miles of open ocean to colonize islands like Tonga and Samoa. But after 300 years of island hopping, they halted their expansion for 2,000 years more before continuing — a period known as the Long Pause that represents an intriguing puzzle for researchers of the cultures of the South Pacific.
“Why is it that the people stopped for 2,000 years?” said Dr. Montenegro. “Clearly they were interested and capable. Why did they stop after having great success for a great time?”
To answer these questions, Dr. Montenegro and his colleagues ran numerous voyage simulations and concluded that the Long Pause that delayed humans from reaching Hawaii, Tahiti and New Zealand occurred because the early explorers were unable to sail through the strong winds that surround Tonga and Samoa. They reported their results last week in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our paper supports the idea that what people needed was boating technology or navigation technology that would allow them to move efficiently against the wind,” Dr. Montenegro said.

For the full story, see:
NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR. “Long Layovers: A 2,000-Year Pause in Exploring Oceania.” The New York Times (Sat., November 8, 2016): D2.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 1 [sic], 2016, and has the title “How Ancient Humans Reached Remote South Pacific Islands.” The passages quoted above are from the much-longer online version of the article.)

Montenegro’s academic article, mentioned above, is:
Montenegro, Álvaro, Richard T. Callaghan, and Scott M. Fitzpatrick. “Using Seafaring Simulations and Shortest-Hop Trajectories to Model the Prehistoric Colonization of Remote Oceania.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 45 (Nov. 8, 2016): 12685-90.

Video Gamers Become “More Optimistic, Creative, Courageous and Determined”

(p. 10) The principles of game design, McGonigal argues, can be used to turn not only leisure into productivity, but also sickness into health. By reframing recuperative tasks such as going for a walk, reconnecting with a friend or writing a short story as gamelike quests, healing can be systematized. Moreover, when you begin to tackle these life quests (McGonigal provides nearly 100 examples) you will, she writes, enter a “gameful” state, becoming more optimistic, creative, courageous and determined. By applying the psychological attributes that games unlock to real-world scenarios, we become like Mario as he guzzles a power-up and transforms into Super Mario.
McGonigal’s promises come thick and early, propped up by the results of two clinical studies. The 30-day program contained in the book will, she writes, “significantly” reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety and decrease suffering. It will increase optimism, make you “more satisfied” and even lead, incredibly, to a life “free of regret.” McGonigal claims that every day for more than five years she has heard from someone telling her that the program changed his or her life.

For the full review, see:
SIMON PARKIN. “Taking Games Seriously.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., OCT. 12, 2015): 10.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date OCT. 12 [sic], 2015, and has the title “‘SuperBetter’ and ‘The State of Play’.”)

The book under review, is:
McGonigal, Jane. Superbetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient–Powered by the Science of Games. New York: Penguin Press, 2015.

Vacuum Tubes May Be Revived

(p. B1) PASADENA, Calif. — The future of computing may be in its past.
The silicon transistor, the tiny switch that is the building block of modern microelectronics, replaced the vacuum tube in many consumer products in the 1970s. Now as shrinking transistors to even more Lilliputian dimensions is becoming vastly more challenging, the vacuum tube may be on the verge of a comeback.
. . .
The Achilles’ heel of today’s transistors is the smaller they get, the more they leak electrons. In modern computer chips, as much as half of the power consumed is lost to electrons leaking from transistors that are only dozens of atoms wide. Those electrons waste energy and generate heat.
In contrast, Dr. Scherer’s miniature vacuum tube switches perform a jujitsu move by using the same mechanism that causes leakage in transistors — known by physicists as quantum tunneling — to switch on and off the flow of electrons without leakage. As a result, he believes that modern vacuum tube circuits have the potential to use less power and work faster than today’s transistor-based chips.
. . .
Vacuum tubes are one of a range of ideas that engineers are looking at as they work to create chips that can do more while using less power. Other promising approaches include exotic materials such as carbon nanotubes and even microscopic mechanical switches that can be opened and closed just like an electronic gate.

For the full story, see:
JOHN MARKOFF. “Grandma’s Radio Helps Computer Chips Shrink.” The New York Times (Mon., JUNE 6, 2016): B1 & B3.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date JUNE 5, 2016, and has the title “Smaller Chips May Depend on Vacuum Tube Technology.”)

Blockchain Can Cut Out Financial Middlemen

(p. A9) Blockchains are basically a much better way of managing information. They are distributed ledgers, run on multiple computers all over the world, for recording transactions in a way that is fast, limitless, secure and transparent. There is no central database overseen by a single institution responsible for auditing and recording what goes on. If you and I were to engage in a transaction, it would be executed, settled and recorded on the blockchain and evident for all to see, yet encrypted so as to be villain-proof. “The new platform enables a reconciliation of digital records regarding just about everything in real time,” write the Tapscotts. No more waiting for that check to clear. It would all be done and recorded for eternity before you know it.
The digital currency bitcoin is currently the best-known blockchain technology. If I wanted to pay you using bitcoin, I would start with a bitcoin wallet on my computer or phone and buy bitcoins using dollars. I would then send you a message identifying the bitcoin I would like to send you and sign the transaction using a private key. The heavily encrypted reassignment of the bitcoin to your wallet is recorded and verified in the bitcoin ledger for all to see, and they are now yours to spend. The transaction is likely more secure and cheaper than a traditional bank transfer.
. . .
The layman, . . . , might want to wait for a more penetrable explanation of blockchains to come along–as one surely will if the authors’ predictions are even one-zillionth right.​

For the full review, see:
PHILIP DELVES BROUGHTON. “BOOKSHELF; Bitcoin Is Just The Beginning; Imagine a personal-identity service that gives us control over selling our personal data. Right now, Google and Facebook reap the profit.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., May 27, 2016): A9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 26, 2016.)

The book under review, is:
Tapscott, Don, and Alex Tapscott. Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World. New York: Portfolio, 2016.