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Archive | Technology

Japan’s Solar Boom

By | June 12, 2013
Solar panels are situated on the rooftop of the Itochu Corp. headquarters in Tokyo. Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Solar panels are situated on the rooftop of the Itochu Corp. headquarters in Tokyo. Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

As Japan still struggles to contain leaks from its tsunami-wracked Fukushima nuclear plant, its alternative energy sector is growing rapidly to meet electricity demand. The island nation is poised to overtake Germany as the world’s largest solar revenue market this year.

In the first quarter of 2013, 1.5 gigawatts (GW) of solar PV systems were installed in Japan. Analysts expect to see $20 billion in PV installed this year, up 82 percent from $11 billion in 2012. The market could top out at 6.1 GW by year’s end. One GW can supply about a quarter million homes with electricity.

Japan’s energy reformers celebrate the solar boom as proof of the country’s smooth transition away from nuclear—technology deemed too dangerous after Fukushima’s meltdown. The country is projected to install solar capacity this year equivalent to five to seven nuclear plants.

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Edward Snowden: Whistleblowing at the NSA

By | June 10, 2013
President Obama has offered a vigorous defense of the NSA program known as 'PRISM'. Evan Vucci/Associated Press

President Obama has offered a vigorous defense of the NSA program known as ‘PRISM’. Evan Vucci/Associated Press

He has been so naughty, at least in the eyes of the security establishment. The British are up in arms about what information is being obtained on their citizens via U.S. channels. Foreign Secretary William Hague has tried dousing the fires, claiming that GCHQ’s alleged involvement in the global surveillance program PRISM did not involve any circumvention of the law. There was merely, claimed the Secretary, “targeted” monitoring within the bounds of the law.

Former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis and Labour chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, Keith Vaz, are not convinced. America’s great ally is proving to be testy and suspicious. It has every reason to be.

The Obama administration has gone into apologia overdrive. Senator Mark Udall has called for amendments to the Patriot Act to clip some powers of the NSA. “I’m calling for reopening the Patriotic Act. The fact that every call I make to my friends or family is noted, the length, the date, that concerns me.” Udall’s concerns are not small beer.

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The ITU’s Quest for Relevance

By and | May 22, 2013
Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Image via the WCIT

Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Image via the WCIT

The United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has received a lot of attention over the hotly contested debate regarding Internet governance. During the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) in Dubai, the ITU meant to renew an outdated treaty about simple international telecommunication regulations (ITRs) but instead, nation-states walked out of the conference accusing the ITU of trying to control the Internet. This past week, at the most recent WCIT conference, the ITU failed again to rally sufficient support for its agenda.

The inability of the ITU to get all member states to sign the updated ITR treaty has revealed a barrier to its effectiveness and has continued to make Internet governance a controversial topic, especially among Democratic states. The ITU can solve this challenge by revising the wording of the treaty regarding Internet governance. The revision of the treaty ought to increase the likelihood that it would pass and ensure the Union has a role in future discussions about the development of the Internet.

Previously considered weak, declining in importance and necessity, the ITU decided to update its ITRs to include the Internet as part of its telecommunication jurisdiction. However, many of the Western democratic members states (G55) feared that the treaty could be interpreted as granting governments legal rights to manage and regulate the Internet. With the current treaty, the ITU has failed to convince member states that the above accusation is false. Months later, with member states still disputing, the ITU has proven that it is incapable of resolving this issue. In many ways this is counterproductive to the ITUs quest for relevance in the international community.

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The “Cyber Weapons Gap”: What do we really know about China’s Cyber Warfare Capabilities?

By | December 22, 2012
US Navy cyber-command

US Navy cyber-command

The journalist, Joseph Alsop, was not mincing words in his syndicated column on August 1, 1958: “The Eisenhower Administration is guilty of gross untruth concerning the national defense of the U.S.” The reason behind this vitriol was the now infamous (and fictional) missile gap—a presumed strategic advantage for the Soviet Union over the United States in bombers and nuclear missiles—that Alsop believed was factual.

When Ike read the paper he supposedly threw it across the room. The president knew the gap was fictional due to top secret, U-2 spy flights over the Soviet Union, but he could not inform the public about the non-existing missile gap due to the top-secret nature of the flights. Alsop had received incomplete intelligence from the Air Force and a couple of US senators. For years the fear of a missile gap poisoned the discourse about Soviet capabilities and led to an increase in military spending under the Kennedy administration.

Today, we are in danger of falling into a “cyber weapons gap”—exaggerating the capabilities of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army—when it comes to waging cyber war. Halting just short of an Alsop indictment, the press and various national security experts have sensationalized the technology developments of the PLA and the exploits of Chinese hackers. Fear of a cyber “Pearl Harbor” against critical US information infrastructure is exaggerated. While some of the danger of cyber espionage from China is real, doomsday scenarios distort the true nature of the threat.

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Arlington and Shenzhen: A Tale of Globalization, Innovation, and Technology

By | February 8, 2012
Arlington, Virginia. Arlington County/Flickr

Shenzhen skyline, China. dcmaster/Flickr

Seven thousand miles separate Arlington, Virginia and Shenzhen, China. Two continents apart, these two cities could not be more different. Yet they are similar, geopolitically and globally.

The characteristics of today’s globalization have united and connected cities like Arlington and Shenzhen.

Arlington sits a stone’s throw from Washington, DC, just across the Potomac River.

The city is adjacent to major technology service providers such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin, along with a number of nationally ranked high schools and universities. Arlington is also the home of National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), the association that finances start-up businesses to promote innovation.

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Maintaining U.S. Space Primacy during China’s Rise

By | November 11, 2011
An artistic rendition of the Dream Chaser vehicle launching into space. Image via Sierra Nevada

An artistic rendition of the Dream Chaser vehicle launching into space. Image via Sierra Nevada

Has space exploration just become too costly, politically unappealing, or both? In the 1960’s, the U.S. and the then-Soviet Union, whose publics where fueled by the tensions of the Cold War, found themselves as pioneers of space travel and exploration technology.

Now with a space race that’s no more, the political will and pursuit of going into “the beyond” has garnered a lackluster appeal by the public and policy makers. And it’s showing in both Washington and Moscow.

This past September at a recent Congressional hearing, Neil Armstrong, the iconic figure in space exploration history, had nothing but rebuke for the current NASA program, calling it “embarrassing and unacceptable.” His fellow colleague Eugene Cernan described the current U.S. space program as “on a path to decay.”

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Steve Jobs as a Genius, Visionary, and a Saint: But what about Apple’s Chinese Suicide Jumpers?

By | October 11, 2011
Thousands line up for Foxconn jobs in Zhengzhou. Giddy/Flickr

Thousands line up for Foxconn jobs in Zhengzhou. Giddy/Flickr

America’s response to the death of Steve Jobs was an outpouring of grief, and love, similar to the behavior people show at the death of a beloved rock star – like John Lennon (one of Jobs’ favorite performers). But what of the rest of world? Specifically, what of Asia?

China, where Jobs’ brilliant inventions were manufactured and where millions paid the supreme tribute by buying, either the real thing, or millions of Apple knock offs?  At first, Asians mirrored the waves of grief that flooded the U.S. Shock, genuine grief, and an outpouring of homage from country after country.

At the other end of the spectrum, many Apple workers from China came forth to remind the global community that Jobs’ and Apple’s devices had been created to the detriment of Chinese workers’ lives and health, and that those issues have never been resolved.

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Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs Dead at 56

By | October 7, 2011
Apple's Steve Jobs

Apple’s Steve Jobs

Apple co-founder and Chairman Steve Jobs died two days ago at the age of 56. Jobs, a legend in US technological history, and a culture hero for many of his generation and indeed, subsequent generations, was involved in the technology industry for 35 years. In that time, he turned three separate industries on their heads and reinvented a fourth.

• Personal computing, with the launch of the Apple II in 1977.
• Legal digital music recordings, with the iPod and iTunes in the early 2000s, and
• Mobile phones with the 2007 debut of the iPhone.
• The iPad, invented in 2010, a touch-screen tablet computer, Jobs’ vision for a more personal computing device.

These revolutionary inventions have transformed the way the entire world thinks and communicates and the way it speaks, listens and searches for the truth. If we struggle for a comparison, perhaps Thomas Alva Edison comes to mind. But it’s a reach.

But much more is needed to be said to do justice to this extraordinary inventor.

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BRICS are Conquering the Developing World and Space is Next

By | October 3, 2011
Annual BRICS Summit

Annual BRICS Summit

While some of NASA’s old equipment falls back to earth, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are doing just the opposite, by launching massive technologically advanced hunks of titanium into earth’s orbit. Ever since Wan Hu, China has been aiming for space and it’s a frontier that it has finally conquered.

On 29 September 2011, China successfully launched its first space lab module into orbit in an impressive nighttime display. The unmanned Tiapong blasted off on a Chinese Long March 2F rocket at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. The growing economic giant wants to put a man on the moon by 2030.

They already put their first citizen in space in 2003 and completed their first space walk in late 2008, when three Chinese astronauts released a small satellite.

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Russia Wins the ‘Space Race’

By | July 18, 2011
Alexei Leonov

Alexei Leonov

When the space shuttle Atlantis returns to earth in a few days it will be the culmination of a decades long NASA program that allows Russia to chalk up the Space Race as a win, by default. While important in the Russian psyche, this win may prove to be a mere footnote in the history of U.S.-Russian relations.

Russia, then the Soviet Union, was the first to reach space on April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the earth in his Vostok spacecraft.  Previously, Russia’s Luna 2 became the first unmanned aircraft to reach the moon in 1959.

However, Russia was bested, in embarrassing and televised fashion by the United States, when Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 set down on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. He was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978. While Gagarin received a hero’s welcome and has had statues dedicated to him, it is Armstrong who was immortalized in the recent Transformers movie.

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Securing Japan’s Clean Energy Future

By | June 24, 2011
Police officers in Minamisoma, Fukushima prefecture. Photo by Warren Antiola

Police officers in Minamisoma, Fukushima prefecture. Photo by Warren Antiola

As Japan recovers from the spring tsunami and Fukushima nuclear station disaster, it plans for a clean energy future. It is tempting for its energy industry officials to categorize all the lessons of the nuclear crisis as specific to the atomic energy industry.

Accidents happen, however, in all complex energy production systems.  Accidents in the most abstruse technology systems, from commercial airplanes to tankers to space shuttles to nuclear plants, can overwhelm even the most conscientious designers and operators.

As Japanese clean energy hardware makers Toshiba, Panasonic, and Sharp expand production and design prototypes to meet a new national demand for renewable energy, they should heed one of the lessons of the nuclear industry: keeping it simple keeps it safe.

In Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, Yale sociologist Charles Perrow posits that modern technology systems contain so many connected, interactive parts that accidents are inevitable and natural during their operation. Thus he calls these events “normal accidents.”

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Generation Wiki

By | March 31, 2011
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

We are Generation Wiki. We are interconnected collaborative creatures, and we like to share. We link and like, comment, post and poke. We Yelp when we’re hungry, Skype when we’re lonely and Gchat throughout the day. Our cell phone bills are light on minutes and long on data almost every month.

We are the first of our kind. A computer has sat comfortably in some nook of our home for as long as we can remember. We grew up trying to find Carmen Sandiego, and came of age to the beeps and cackles of a 14k modem connecting to America Online. Before we had our own car, before we had our own cash and before we had a fake ID, we had chat rooms, instant messages and inboxes. We had an entire world wide web of possibilities with which to explore beyond the confines of our bedroom walls. Our rebellion was data-driven, a battle cry of zeros and ones where power grew out of the results of a search engine.

We are broadcasters, mini-content creation machines, and this is how we communicate. But while we may share more publicly, we are hardly the open books some claim us to be. Our online profiles reveal little more about our character, competence and intellect than our choice of clothing does, because we know our boundaries, however unspoken. In fact, we are remarkably self-regulating and adept at maintaining privacy, in a very public manner. What we share tends to be topical, trivial and rapidly replaced. The way we share it is marked by a unique etiquette.

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