Prophecy can
be perplexing
Techno Talk
Max the Magnificent
Many of the technological discoveries we once found exciting are now lucky if they can elicit a ‘Meh!’
But what about the possibility of teleportation, the ability to speed up, slow down, or reverse time, or
the capability to extract free energy from a quantum vacuum?
A
popular Nostradamus quote
goes something like, ‘Predicting
things is difficult, especially if it
involves the future’. What? You thought
Mark Twain said that? Well, according
to Quote Investigator, it’s been attributed to everyone from Niels Bohr to
Yogi Berra: https://bit.ly/2D0jiSw
Whoever said it first, this sentiment is
spot on. When I graduated from university in 1980, there was no way I could
have predicted the far future we now call
the present. I mean to say… the Internet,
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and MEMS sensors, all coming together to realise smart
things in the form of phones, buildings,
cities and even watches, for goodness’
sake. And then there are robots and cobots (collaborative robots) along with
machine vision, artificial intelligence
(AI) and machine learning (ML) that
actually works, and… the list goes on.
As I mentioned in my previous column, I’ve been immersed in science
fiction since I was a sprog. When I was
young and foolish, I truly believed all
the technologies I read about were just
around the corner. As I grew older and
wiser (and balder and sadder), I came
to realise that the chances were slight
that many of these technologies would
ever see the light of day. So, you can
only imagine my excitement to discover
that, in many cases, those fantastic futures might arrive sooner than expected.
Let’s not chat!
You’ve probably noticed that AI-based
tools are currently sprouting up like
metaphorical mushrooms. In addition
to AI chat and search tools, there are
AI art generators, AI writing tools, AI
content summarisers, AI speech-to-text
transcribers, AI visual editors and AI audio tools, to name but a few.
I bet you think I’m going to chat about
ChatGPT – see: https://bit.ly/3JaHyQH
– if so, you’d be wrong. Even though a
friend did ask it to, ‘Explain semiconductor technology in the style of Clive
(Max) Maxfield,’ I’m going to restrain
myself from discussing the scary results.
However, I did recently use an art generator called Stable Diffusion Online (see:
8
https://bit.ly/3LeUYxJ). I asked it for ‘A
pencil sketch of two little boys in boots
and shorts using shovels to dig a hole in
the back yard.’ Only seconds later, I was
the proud possessor of an awesome image.
Also, I just tried using Whisper to transcribe the audio recording of a customer
call into a text file. This literally saved
me a couple of hours of wading through
the video and making notes by hand –
see: https://bit.ly/3mKIV1f
Interested in learning more? Fast
Company provides a wonderful overview of 33 different AI tools you can try
yourself for free: https://bit.ly/3YyYd6t
Ew! Sticky!
Do you remember the ‘before times’ prior to the COVID-19 pandemic when we
didn’t give a second thought to being in
a crowded room packed with strangers,
shaking hands, or using doorhandles in
public places? These days, by comparison, the simple act of using the pump at
a petrol station is ‘fraught with danger’.
Although they’re relatively new,
there’s nothing revolutionary about
the idea of self-cleaning germicidal door
handles (https://go.nasa.gov/3yvwEjO).
But what about touch screens on electronic devices? In addition to the
ickiness associated with touching public products, have you looked at your
smartphone or tablet computer screen
recently? If you do, holding it up to
the light, you may well find yourself
exclaiming ‘Ew! Sticky!’
Happily, the days of sticky screens
may soon be gone. I just saw an article on New Atlas telling how General
Motors (GM) has patented self-cleaning
touchscreens that erase oily fingerprints
along with all other signs of your presence overnight: https://bit.ly/3J4TBPL
In addition to the usual red, green, blue
(RGB) pixels, GM proposes to add a fourth
ultraviolet (U) pixel type. Meanwhile,
the surface of the screen will have an
additional transparent coating of a metal-oxide-based catalyst like titanium
dioxide. The UV would be activated
when the equipment was inactive (like
in the middle of the night) resulting in
a sparklingly clean and sterile screen.
The Gods Themselves
Everything we’ve discussed this far is
‘small potatoes,’ as it were. What about
antigravity, spaceships with hyperdrive
engines, teleportation, and things of that
ilk? On the one hand, it’s easy to say that
these things are impossible because they
defy known physics, but the physics we
know and love today was inconceivable
not-so-long ago.
As the American physicist Albert
Michelson said in 1894, ‘The more important fundamental laws and facts of
physical science have all been discovered…’ This was just three years before
the British physicist JJ Thomson discovered the electron.
In 1972, Isaac Asimov published a science fiction novel, The Gods Themselves.
In a crunchy nutshell, aliens in a parallel
universe with different physical laws establish communication with us. They are
seeking to exchange matter and exploit
the differences between our respective
physical laws to provide us both with a
source of energy. What they don’t tell us
is that this exchange will cause our sun
to go supernova (thereby giving them all
the energy they desire). Fortunately, we
detect the problem and determine the
solution, which is for us to start simultaneously exchanging matter with a third
universe whose physical laws cancel out
the instability caused by the first. And
then things start to get complicated...
These are just stories, right? Of
course, they are. It’s barely worth noting that, just a few years ago, Chinese
researchers demonstrated the ability to
transport photons from the ground to
a satellite orbiting 300 miles in space,
see: https://bit.ly/403IXj7
How about the fact that physicists can
speed up, slow down and even reverse
the flow of time within a quantum system (https://bit.ly/3ZXoegB)? And, just a
few days ago as I pen these words, I read
how – using quantum mechanics – it’s
possible to extract energy from a vacuum: https://bit.ly/3mKGD24
All I know is that I’m more than ready
to take possession of my self-powering
antigravity flying car with the optimal
teleportation feature.
Practical Electronics | May | 2023
