Show me the hardware apps!

There is a lot of energy focused on hardware hacking and composable controllable ubiquitous computing but there do not seem to be any usable consumer applications yet. Paul Saffo is somewhat of an ideological leader for the movement in calling ubiquitous sensors the next wave of infotech innovation, on the order of the PC revolution. Mashup culture is becoming more pervasive and the hardware hacking community is getting busy tinkering, inventing and collaborating online and IRL, particularly through Make, Hacker Spaces (165 worldwide), Dorkbot (80 worldwide), Fab Labs (26 worldwide), RepRap and the TechShop.

Where can I get some stuff to try it myself?

Hardware componentry and kits are available from many vendors such as Bug Labs, SparkFun Electronics, Gumstix, MakerSHED, Adafruit Industries and Digi-Key. Some standard building blocks include the Arduino computing platform (which even has a microcontroller board for wearables, the LilyPad) and the BUGbase Hiro P Edition. The TikiTag also looks quite interesting as an RFID reader that can be used to create web services linking physical world objects with the Internet.

Hardware hacking is reinventing everything
The best thing about hardware hacking is that every aspect is up for reinvention, including at minimum, interfaces, signal processing, form factor and power. Additional interfaces are coming, voice (earlier this week, IBM announced a synthesized voice that is nearly indistinguishable from human), haptic (like Anarkik3D) and projection are the most obvious. Another novel interface could be a hack for the rudimentary manipulation of household objects with the Wii hand-held controller. Signal processing could include more options for shifting between and integrating digital and analog signals, Paul Saffo suggests a return to analog computing but hybridization and rapid switching could become standard. Form factors in various stages of maturity include any range of computing via implant (brain-computer interfaces), wearable, adjacent or distributed architecture. Power is a challenging problem to solve; some interesting innovations could emerge from energy-harvesting techniques such as piezoelectronics, optical Wi-Fi and thermoelectrics, converting, respectively, sound waves, light and heat to energy.

World's Ruling Elites Must Power Share

The Long Now and other future prognosticating outfits made the prediction that an end to human suffering would occur in this century. This means an end to starvation, massively preventable disease, poverty and other impediments to basic life fundamentals.

Indeed, this will probably come to pass more quickly than originally expected in this century due to a variety of factors. First and most basically, eradicating third world need is an idea whose time has come. Perhaps somewhat guilt-triggered, it is increasing unacceptable and unpolitically correct for the developing world not to have its basic human needs met. The July 2005 Live8 worldwide concerts exemplifies this reigning attitude.

Second, together with the unacceptability of developing world status quo is the belief that it is possible, even easy, to resolve these issues. Although, as Paul Saffo reminds, we should not mistake a clear view for a short distance, it is increasingly clear that solutions exist and have not been implemented as a matter of choice, partly due to the choices of the ruling elites and geopolitical influences. Amy Chua's "World on Fire" notes that development or indeed any modicum of progress is not in the incentive of ruling elites (in industrialized or developing worlds!) because it erodes their power base.

Third, the simultaneous realization that previous aid programs failed and the implementation of programs with results as a requirement is helping to eradicate poverty and disease. Former World Bank officer William Easterly points out in "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics," that aid recipient countries were worse off in nearly every dimension twenty years after the formation and deployment of the World Bank and IMF. Unstructured and unmeasured financial aid failed. Newer philanthropic, NGO and non-profit efforts such as the Gates Foundation malaria program and Dr. Paul Farmer's Partners in Health tuberculosis and other programs are generating success with a results-oriented focus and willingness to address the cause rather than the symptom.

But.......the really interesting idea is not that humanity will progress (this is excellent but not the most interesting aspect), the really interesting idea is that world power and influence dynamics must necessarily change when there are suddenly hundreds of millions of people "coming online." Hundreds of millions of developing world people will be becoming independent, capable, educated and healthy and competing in and contributing to the global market. For example, Africa's labor force could quadruple rapidly because malaria is no longer an issue. What is really interesting is how the (current) industrialized world will respond to the increasing weight and influence of the (currently) developing world.

Economist Jeremy Siegel's view is that this will be a fairly smooth transition. The retirees in Europe, Japan and the US will welcome, indeed rely on, developing world purchasers of their stocks, bonds and businesses as they liquidate their assets to retire. Multinational brands, as recent trends suggest, will continue to matriculate to developing world ownership.

However, cultural issues and value systems are very difficult to manage, especially with the perceived diversity that currently exists in this world. There can be hope but not likelihood in the possibility of industrialized nations not seeing the inevitable and hastening decline of Western world rule but rather focusing on the continued higher levels of human achievement that will now be possible, massive innovation and transcendence into the next era of human civilization and advancement.