Northern Colorado Business Report
“Solar Powered Hot Tub”
By Kai Staats
12 August 2011

This summer I collaborated with three friends on the design and installation of a grid-tied, battery backed 5.6KW, 24 panel photovoltaic array on a 260 acre ranch near Bailey, Colorado. Despite the challenges of a relatively large-scale renewable energy project, it was an incredible pleasure beginning to end, given the stunning beauty of the location and contagious energy of the tireless individuals who were as eager to dig a seventy five foot trench as they were to learn hands-on about electrical wiring.

Twenty four, four foot deep holes filled with concrete provide the foundation to six aluminum frames which hold four panels each. We rewired three electrical boxes, migrating mission critical circuits (ie: lights, outlets, water pump, refrigerator) to the panel which is now isolated from the grid and powered by the battery-backed inverter. Best of all, there is ample power for the hot tub.

At 8,000 feet the ranch is surrounded by ten thousand foot peaks, undulating hilltops and ravines which harbor horses, deer, coyotes, bear, and buffalo. Any sense of guilt at having enjoyed such a job site is completely washed away when I consider that the power required to heat the hot tub is more than offset by the new solar PV array.

The introduction of a passive solar water heater would certainly be more efficient than converting sunlight to electricity which in turn heats the water, but as with most adoptions of technology, change is best taken one step at a time. This is true not only on the small scale of one ranch in the middle of thousands in Colorado, but also for the worldwide effort to transition to renewable energy.

Too often I hear the argument that we will never be able to rely entirely upon renewable energy sources, that the efficiency of solar panels and wind turbines is simply not high enough to produce the power required.
This skepticism is parallel to the naysayers of so many human achievements—and a failure to recognize the relatively brief history of research and the commercial application to renewable energy. As with all evolving technologies, renewable energy will not achieve full market play until market demand and the resulting mass production forces a higher level of efficiency. In this case “grid parity,” or the ability to produce energy for the same or lower cost than traditional methods such as coal, nuclear, or gas. The good news is that we have achieved this in certain markets, and are moving to find grid parity in a greater diversity of regions.

The history of photovoltaic energy production goes back to 1883 where Charles Fritts created a solar cell which converted just one percent of sunlight into electricity. In the late 1960s Elliot Berman and an Exxon research team increased the power-to-cost ratio by five fold in just two years. Fast forward and solar cells are manufactured today for roughly $1 per watt, compared to $250 in 1954. A two hundred and fifty times reduction in the cost of manufacturing in roughly sixty years without a market nearly as substantial as the housing, automobile, or even bicycle industries.

So what is holding solar power back?

I will not dive into the politics of renewable energy, for that alone could fill a few columns. At a lightly technical level there are some hurdles which have only recently been surmounted. The entry at wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell provides an in-depth journey through the history and technology of the photovoltaic principal. The basic concept, however, is this: humans see what we call the visible portion of the spectrum while silicon-based solar cells are able to convert only a portion of that light energy into electricity. While the visible spectrum represents a good bit of the energy produced by the sun, this does not constitute the full energy available for conversion to electricity.

We are missing the tremendous potential for conversion of infrared and ultraviolet light energy. Relatively recent research into combinations of elements to expand the sensitivity of the solar cell has increased the efficiency of energy conversion.

In our own backyard, the National Renewable Energy Lab is researching cells with upwards of 40% efficiency, more than forty times greater than the original solar cell just 150 years ago. While southern California and Hawaii have achieved grid parity using traditional silicon based solar cells at efficiencies at or below 20%, the near-future potential for doubling this efficiency lies in the ability to reduce cost of production, the result being that multi-spectral systems are available to you, me, and those who have solar powered hot tubs in the mountains of Colorado at a market friendly price.

Until that time, I am pleased to sit back after a hard day’s work and know that the warm water which gives me comfort was generated, even if indirectly, by energy from the sun. I believe the near-future holds an exciting, rapid evolution for renewable energy production, soon becoming something greater than an alternative, rather, simply the way it is done.

Northern Colorado Business Report
“A consumer’s guide to adoption of technology, part 4”
By Kai Staats
30 June 2011

This is the fourth and final entry in a guide to the adoption of technology into one’s personal life. This is not the typical guide that offers a comparison of the speed of wifi networks or the quality of LCD screens. Rather, this is a guide for you, a window into your own consumer behavior when considering the purchase and addition of new technology into your daily life for leisure or for work.

In the previous column we explored questions four, five and six of ten questions concerning the adoption of technology: Does it help me to better understand or improve myself? Does it help me to better understand or to help others? Does it improve my communication with others?

Since beginning this series on “A Consumer’s Guide to Technology” in April, my questioning my own consumer behavior has been further shaped by my travels and encounters which gave me opportunity to be unplugged while further connected through face-to-face conversations and the sharing of stories. During these times I was more at ease as I my mind stopped juggling the potential of a phone call, text message, or email. Instead, I was present with whomever was the focus of my attention.

I am now sitting on the living room floor of my family’s farm in rural Iowa where there is neither cell phone reception nor Internet access. Echoes of five generations of stories told here reverberate throughout the house, perfect timing to address the final four of the ten questions:

7. How did I perform this function prior to owning this device/gadget?
8. Does it improve upon a former means of operation?
9. What is the worst thing that would happen if I do not make this purchase?
10. If I wait three weeks, will I still have a need or desire to make this purchase?

My grandfather, Raymond Kruse, was a farmer, inventor, and environmental activist in this heartland community. He was an avid reader, staying current with trends in scientific research, discoveries, and consumer products. As is the case with many who lived through the Great Depression, my grandfather was conservative with his money, careful to research and purchase only the highest quality products, his intent to maintain each for use as long as possible.

I am fortunate to be the recipient of his legacy, inheriting a means of moving through the world in which material objects are not in and of themselves a goal, rather a gift to our already abundant life not to be taken for granted. Therefore when I ask myself How did I perform this function without this device? I see my grandfather’s face and hear his voice, “Kai-boy, don’t you already have one of those? Seems like the one you got is working just fine.”

Before I could answer, “Yes, but this one is faster, and has more …” I knew he had me beat. As a child, it was challenging to have my desire for instant gratification curbed, but as I grew to recognize his wisdom I learned to ask myself, Does it improve upon a former means of doing so? What is the worst thing that would happen if I don’t purchase it?

As the ultimate litmus test, I ask myself what my parents routinely asked me when I desperately pleaded that they buy the latest LEGO set, “If I wait three weeks, will I still have a need or desire to purchase it?” Often the answer to the last question satisfies the prior three in this series, my appetite for the latest, greatest technical device temporarily, if not permanently quelled.

You may ask, “Why does any of this matter?” While the full answer would likely demand a venture into the deeply ingrained psychology of consumption, I offer in response a well executed short film available on YouTube called “The Story of Electronics” which touches upon much of what I have called to attention, and expands the conversation to include the environmental impact of poor design.

One only needs to read the news to know that technology is rapidly changing the world. But the focus of this series has been on the adoption of technology into one’s personal life, I will summarize this four-part series as I began, with a quote from Langdon Miller, “The Whale and the Reactor,” 1986, “Through technological creation and many other ways as well, we make a world for each other to live in, much more than we have acknowledged in the past, we must admit our responsibility for what we are making.”

Responsibility begins with designers and ends with us, the consumers, a responsibility to the world around us, yes, but also to ourselves. It is my hope that ten questions I have asked will in some way stay with you, adopted and adapted to your benefit.

Northern Colorado Business Report
“A consumer’s guide to adoption of technology, part 3”
By Kai Staats
3 June 2011

This is the third in a series in what is unfolding as a guide to the adoption of technology into one’s personal life. This is not the typical guide which compares the speed of wifi networks or the quality of LCD screens. Rather, this is a guide for you, a window to your own consumer behavior when considering new technology.

In the previous column we explored three of ten questions concerning the adoption of technology and how we, as the consumer and owner are affected by our purchase and use decisions: Does it save time? Does it provide a foundation for education, entertainment, or improved safety? How do I feel when I use this product?

Having just returned from three weeks travel and volunteer work in northern Peru, I find the next three questions invigorating:

4. Does it help me to better understand or improve myself?
5. Does it help me to better understand or to help others?
6. Does it improve my communication with others?

Because I am not fluent in Spanish, I sometimes struggled to convey to those with whom I worked more than a basic concept of the projects with which I was engaged: electrical wiring, solar PV array design, and the architectural design of an open air sanctuary and meditation center.

Sarah and I intentionally traveled without electronics save a camera and old cell phone for emergency calls. Where a 3D sketch program or electronic translator could have assisted me, when communicating with the electrician and construction engineer I was reminded of the simplicity and ease of using pen and paper, even a stick for drawing in the sand.

Not long after our return to the States, I found myself in Best Buy, my mind pondering the next three questions concerning technology products:

Does it help me to better understand or improve myself? Very few consumer electronic products satisfy this question, except possibly a digital camera and computer. Through a camera, we can see the world in a new way and express ourselves artistically. Through the use of a computer, we can expand our knowledge.

Does it help me to better understand or help others? [This question has been slightly modified from the original, as published at NCBR.] When used with discretion, televisions and computers both provide a window to a greater world, a means of virtual travel to other places and opportunity to learn about people who are different than ourselves and those around us. In this respect, yes, our understanding of one another may be improved, if that is how we use these devices. To help? It is my experience that computers do play a significant role in organizing and managing projects, in sharing information.

Does it improve my communication with others? Does a mobile phone or laptop allow us to coordinate events, stay in touch, and move through our world with relative ease? Sometimes, yes. But both have a way of causing us to be distracted when we would benefit from being focused.

I often find a state of relief, nearly bliss when I leave my phone at home or in the car for I am free of the potential of an interruption and the people I am with benefit from my full attention. I experienced this several times during our journey, both with Sarah and with those whom we met along the way—educators from Holland, climbers from Colorado, and the staff of a church and clinic in Piura.

We engaged until the embers of the fire were too low to keep us warm, until the tea in our cups ran dry, and until the conversations were simply … done. It is in my experience that only a lack of technology does enable this kind of human interaction, when face-to-face encounters unfold.

The most memorable of our journey in Peru was in a stone cabin located in a high, green valley of the Cordillera Negra. At 14,200 feet elevation nine rock climbers wore multiple layers to find warmth against the sleet outside. The fog pressing against the windows was countered only by the single kerosene lantern and shimmer of the wood burning stove.

Not for one moment did I desire a cell phone, laptop, or television. The conversations carried us into the night for no digital device could fully capture or enhance the aroma of home cooked meals over a gas stove, the mixing of four languages spoken in whispers, and the sharing of that space by people who before that day had never met. We shared what humans have experienced for tens of thousands of years—our stories.

I offer that when next you find yourself reaching for your smart phone to record the moment for Facebook, stop and consider whether you will experience that time more vividly from behind the camera, or by being fully engaged in the moment, you yourself the best recording and playback medium.

Northern Colorado Business Report
“A consumer’s guide to adoption of technology, part 2”
By Kai Staats
6 May 2011

This is the second of a multi-part series in what I hope will unfold as a guide to the adoption of technology into one’s personal life. This is not the typical guide which compares the speed of wifi networks or the quality of LCD screens. Rather, this is a guide for you, the consumer, as a window into your own behavior when considering the technology you wish to adopt.

As mentioned in the prior column, Henry Dreyfuss in “Designing for People” (1955) offered five points by which products could be designed and developed: 1) Utility and Safety, 2) Maintenance, 3) Cost, 4) Sales and Appeal, and 5) Appearance.

What Dreyfuss may not have known is that Appeal would fifty years later gain a momentum so strong that consumers find themselves compelled to replace perfectly functional products every 18-24 months due to the allure of Utility and Appearance. Maintenance becomes irrelevant as nearly all consumer electronics are disposable, designed to be neither repaired nor upgraded.

What concerns me most is not the speed at which we purchase goods, but how we are affected by the use of these products. I have prepared 10 questions to get the gears turning:

1. Does it save time?
2. Does it provide a foundation for education, entertainment, or improved safety?
3. How do I feel when I use this product? (or does it cause me to reduce or increase my stress?)
4. Does it help me to better understand or improve myself?
5. Does it help me to better understand or help others to improve themselves?
6. Does it improve my communication with others?
7. How did I perform this function without this device?
8. Does it improve upon a former means of doing so?
9. What is the worst thing that would happen if I don’t purchase it?
10. If I wait three weeks, will I still have a need or desire to purchase it?

Despite the fact that all phone models are moving toward smart phone capabilities, let’s look at the upgrade from an older model to a smart phone as an example of how to apply the first three questions.

Does it save time? Hard to say. One could argue that you can do more in less time with so many functions at your fingertips, but as I offered last fall in “The Myth of Free Time,” we tend to just fill that space with doing more things. There are seldom, if ever, inventions which truly save time. In part because they only add complexity to our lives; in part because we just fill that void with doing more. If smart phones actually saved time, people would be using them less, not more.

Education? Entertainment? Safety? Yes. Yes. And maybe. A smart phone can provide a weather update for mountain travel, but you are likely to use it while driving which is both dangerous and increasingly illegal. Again, the potential is there, but the consumer gets in the mix and the value-ad is undermined by human behavior.

Number 3 is complex. This is one that we talk about in the form of complaint, but seem to be helpless to do anything about. Let’s ask the same question applied to other devices, and see how we respond. “How does my car make me feel?” Safe, comfortable, content, even at home, if it is in good condition and runs well. Frustrated, angry, scared, even embarrassed if it is in need of repair and often fails to perform its basic functions.

You may not believe you have a relationship with your microwave oven, but when it warms a cup of coffee or fills the kitchen with the aroma of a hot bowl of soup, chances are you have a smile on your face when the oven door opens wide. But if the buttons on your oven are temperamental, or the insides nasty due to lack of cleaning, then perhaps you cringe at the very thought of the noontime meal.

Concerning your mobile phone: Does it feel good in your hand, or is it awkward to hold? Do you find it to be intuitive and seemingly designed just for you? Or do you get lost in the interface, often wondering why your friend’s number is missing, again!? Does it always work, no matter where you go? Or does it lock-up, hang-up, and get beat-up (as you slam it against the wall)? Do you carry it with pride? Or does your body tense every time it rings because you have not, after six months, determined how to change the ring tone?

Let’s return to How does the upgrade to a smart phone benefit you? Will you immediately use text messaging, email, news feeds, calendar, camera, and video conferencing? Or will you determine that simply because these functions are available, you may choose not to use them? Most important, do you feel compelled to check email just one more time, because it is right there, in the palm of your hand? Do you often interrupt face-to-face conversations to answer a quick email? Or are you comforted and relaxed knowing that your entire digital world is within reach, at all times?

I recommend paying more attention to how you feel, in the moment, when using your phone than whether or not it has a larger memory capacity or higher resolution camera. Remember, Responsibility begins with designers and ends with consumers. Be responsible to you.

Northern Colorado Business Report
“A consumer’s guide to adoption of technology”
By Kai Staats
8 April 2011

As I walked out of the Miramont North gym this afternoon, I felt the warmth of the sun against the cool, crisp spring air. As I approached my car, however, the roar of gasoline powered hedge trimmers and leaf blowers filled the air. The foul stench of poorly combusted two-stroke engine pollution was unavoidable.

I was overwhelmed by the contrast, having just left the relative calm of yoga class and rock climbing to witness the rapid, noxious reduction of the budding greenery. It just didn’t feel right, that the tools and methods used in an attempt to create beauty were themselves not beautiful.

When I arrived home and prepared to write this column, I struggled between two topics: the sorry state of downloaded digital movies versus hi-definition home theater appliances, or a larger, more engaging, even risky introduction to the concept of appropriate application of technology and how it affects our functional intelligence as individuals and as a species.

The former would have been too simple to compose, easily summarized as The quality of Netflix sucks. Better to rent Blu-ray Disc.

The latter, however, is a return to my Sr. year Industrial Design thesis “Confused Vanity and the Mad Dog TV” written eighteen years ago. The three chapters “Down the Tube,” “Forced Obsolescence,” and “The Power Blower Wars” take the reader into a mindset beyond form follows function, calling upon my experience as a design student and consumer, and that of several profound, world-renowned designers and technology writers.
In review of my thesis (which was great fun to read again) I was pleased to rediscover a completely relevant five-point formula for product design written by Henry Dreyfuss in “Designing for People” (1955):

1. Utility and Safety
2. Maintenance
3. Cost
4. Sales and Appeal
5. Appearance

In the same vein, Buckminster Fuller concluded, “You have to make up your mind either to make sense or to make money, if you want to be a designer.” (Operation Manual for Spaceship Earth, 1969) How many products on the market today follow this type of formula? Of equal importance, how many of us as consumers challenge the true value of a new product before we make our purchase?

I will for the next several columns engage you in a conversation around appropriate technology, consumer products comprised of software or hardware, and how they affect us as consumers. In particular, I will explore the categories of entertainment, communication, and transportation, leaving medical, military, and safety to another time and space.

For as much as I am an advocate of advances in technology when and where they assist us in finding greater personal health and satisfaction, understanding the world around us, and moving ourselves and our things from place to place, I am increasingly wary of technology which diminishes our individual creativity, self-awareness, ability to make decisions for ourselves, and functional, real-world intelligence.

I am concerned that Google’s Gmail search keeps us from invoking the cognitive function of organizing and managing the emails we create and receive, instead encouraging a mental clutter which spills over into our virtual and physical life. I believe GPS units keep us from visualizing our world in three dimensions, causing us instead to become reliant on technology and less capable of conducting the very basic act of navigating from point A to B. I am concerned that new model cars which automatically conduct parallel parking on our behalf are in fact reducing our motor skills and ability to problem solve in real-time. If we cannot organize, navigate, nor move through our world without assistance from computers, then what exactly are we able to do on our own?
I ask, “How many of our modern technology-based products are denying us the very functions our brain offers instead of encouraging dynamic improvement of our intelligence?”

While researchers discovered a half dozen years ago that the human brain does in fact grow new cells throughout our lives, SPECT imaging conducted by Dr. Daniel Amen (Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, 1999) has demonstrated time and again that exercising the brain improves cognitive abilities, even slowing or reversing the onset of mental disorders and disease, does it not stand to reason that not using our brain also reduces our cognitive capacity?

Calling upon the research I conducted at Arizona State, I find it refreshing to read again Langdon Miller’s words, “Through technological creation and many other ways as well, we make a world for each other to live in, much more than we have acknowledged in the past, we must admit our responsibility for what we are making.” (The Whale and the Reactor, 1986)

Responsibility begins with designers and ends with consumers.

In the coming months I will guide you, the intelligent consumer, through a thought process that may alter the way you look at the multitude of products you consider for purchase, even those which you already own.

Northern Colorado Business Report
“The Last Will & Testament of the Book”
By Kai Staats
11 March 2011

Attorney: I recognize this is hard for you, to have lost someone special, someone important to you. (pauses, looks down at the documents in his hands) In this time, we are honored by the giving of a few possessions. Of course, no amount of money, no gift could replace the time we did share with the living. However, in reading Edmond’s will, it is clear how much he did care for each of you (looks around the room).

Rebecca: Thank you. (pauses to control her tears) Our family has trusted you for as long as I can remember, to take care of our family’s (crying again) … our family’s financial security.

Tim: What did I get?

Rebecca: (angry, turning to face her son) Tim! Don’t be rude!

Attorney: (annoyed, forces a polite smile) Edmond has left each of you with something that was very important to him … as I will share with you now. (clears his throat) “To my only daughter, Rebecca, I grant you my favorite Blue ray disc, a compilation of all my favorite Lost and Friends episodes.”

Rebecca: Oh! Oh! (sobbing) Thank you. Thank you Dad (looking up and out the window).

Attorney: (nods, then continues) “To my only son, Samuel, I grant to you a USB jump drive with every photo I have ever taken,” (pauses to double check what he is reading) “of all my duck hunting trips.”

Samuel: (emotions under control) Thank you. Truly, thank you Dad. I don’t know what to say. (shakes his head, turns to give his sister Rebecca a hug, then holds her hand).

Attorney: “Finally, to Timothy, my favorite grand–”

Tim: Sooo, what’d I get?

Attorney: (ignores him) “To Tim, I leave ten million dollars, the full value of my estate.”

Tim: What?! (looks to his mother, back to the attorney) Are you sure? (tears well up in his eyes … looks down at the floor and then rises up from his chair) Are you kidding me?! What a rip-off! What about his iPod! Or his Sony PlayStation? What about all the games—he has hundreds of games! I can’t believe this! I knew he didn’t love me … he always hated me!

Just as we sort through our physical possessions every few years to determine what is needed and meaningful, and what is just junk, I believe in the end, we all will find the value of a single printed photo held behind a chipped piece of glass in a tattered wooden frame to be of greater value than the tens of thousands of digital photos accumulated over the years. For all the time spent organizing and preserving, it will be that one photo which we cherish most when the backup drives have long since spun down.

You may recall the above at the closing of my last column “The Inevitable Loss of Data & the Last Printed Photo.” It is a subject, it seems, which I am not yet prepared to relinquish.

In my Loveland home I have a ninety-nine year old piano, a couch, a chair, hand made rugs from Turkey, Namibia, and Kenya, several framed photos, some six hundred CDs, and a few hundred books. As I prepare to put my house on the market, I have become keenly aware of what is and what is not important to me. I have even asked myself, what would I secure in my will?

Today I worked for several hours from the City News cafe and book store in downtown Loveland. It’s quiet, but not still. On a cold winter day, every time the door is forced open the smell of book, magazine, and newsprint ink mixes with the aroma of fresh brewed coffee, tea, and pastries. Mmmm, I love that combination. I can’t imagine a world without dusty, ragged novels and high gloss, large format photo essays. They are for me more important than furniture, and far more important than a television (which I have never owned).

The opening scene may seem a bit over the top, yet its message is clear—what will the next generation give to their children if books and music are no longer tangible items? In my experience, when someone has spent a lifetime collecting books, the act of giving is made real by the effort required to move them, to care for them each passing year. Each generation adds their story to the one originally told. Electronic books, however, can tell only one story for there is no medium by which they may record another. Without scribbled notes in the boundaries of fading, folded pages, the eBook is but a perfect copy missing the imperfection of time.

Perhaps I am stuck, antiquated, a product of a prior generation, but it is my parent’s library as much as anything in their home which defines who they are. A few thousand books is demonstration of their lifetime of research, knowledge—my heritage awaiting rediscovery of what they learned. I want to hear the spine flex when each book is opened. I want to smell the ink mixed with the dust of their desert home, my fingers moving pages of books which they once read to me.

Northern Colorado Business Report
“The inevitable loss of data and the last printed photo”
By Kai Staats
11 February 2011

How many digital photos, music, and word processor documents do you store that you consider valuable? Do you have backups? What software was used to create them and when was the last time you attempted to open a five year old document?

An article in the back pages of December’s issue of Rolling Stone magazine makes clear the challenges and pitfalls of recording, preserving, and recovering information in the digital age. Major music labels such as Sony Music Entertainment are finding that some digital recordings less than a decade old cannot be recovered due to degradation of information or more often, the loss of the proprietary software used to edit the tracks.

In a world where software applications change nearly as often as the top bands, the music industry is reconsidering both analog and digital tape archives while paying closer attention to the evolution of editing software where backward compatibility is concerned. The data that recalls how the tracks were mixed is too easily lost through consecutive upgrades and in worse cases, data corruption results in the loss of songs, tracks, even entire recording sessions.

To maintain a fully functional, fully recoverable archive, every label world-wide must test every recording in their digital archive against each new editing suite version in order to make certain their valuable data remains in tact. To ignore this process, to cut corners results in the loss of data, time, and money.

You may think, “That doesn’t concern me because I use iTunes and iPhoto and … iEverything!”

Sorry. What applies to the big guys is only compounded for you. You also use software whose media formats will someday be abandoned, requiring that you also open and re-save every photo, song, and video you own. What’s more, your $15-$250 backup solutions (if you backup at all) are far less reliable than those which are used by recording and film studios. But truly, it’s less about the software and hardware you own, for the real concern is–you.

Consider that prior to the late 1970s with the introduction of personal computers, only in the memorization of story and song had our species managed data which we could not see or touch. In the ancient and medieval times, librarians and hooded monks transcribed, copied, and created archives by candlelight, using pen, ink, and parchment. But in this modern world of digital data, our minds must visualize, organize, and preserve thousands of assets, more files than all the original works estimated to have been in the ancient Library of Alexandria. While some people have an innate sense of the virtual and are able to effectively visualize and manage their computer’s storage, most cannot.

In the January 2010 TechSpot.com article titled “Amazon Kindle ebook sales surpass paperbacks”, Amazon states it now sells 115 Kindle books for every 100 paperbacks, more than 800,000 electronic titles in all. Yes, ebooks are typically stored on the vendor’s server, available to view anywhere, at any time. But what happens when Amazon.com is beaten at its own game by a competitor whose prices and services are more appealing?

You will of course open a new account. A year later, another. In a half dozen years from now, you will likely have engaged a half dozen ebook vendors in addition to your then more than fifty online accounts. Even if you do not find need to manage the ebooks themselves, or do not archive myriad songs and photos, you will need to track the usernames and passwords of all your online accounts. In this digital world, you do not have a choice but to learn to organize and preserve your virtual assets, just as Sony and the other big studios are doing right now.

My suggestion? Practice. Make backups and integrity tests a habit. As home burnt CDs and DVDs scratch easy and die fast, don’t use them. USB memory is designed as a transport medium, not an archival solution. Duplicate external drives are ideal for capacity and reliability. Remote backup services offer protection against local failure, loss, or theft, but also place your personal, often private affairs onto a system over which you have very little control. Keep at least three copies of all your files at all times, one of which is not stored with the others. Use automated backup software if you are not trained as a librarian or if you are not a natural at virtual management.

When is enough, enough? Just as we sort through our physical possessions every few years to determine what is needed and meaningful, and what is just junk, I believe in the end, we all will find the value of a single printed photo held behind a chipped piece of glass in a tattered wooden frame to be of greater value than the tens of thousands of digital photos accumulated over the years. For all the time spent organizing and preserving, it will be that one photo which we cherish most when the backup drives have long since spun down.

Northern Colorado Business Report
“In our own image: The pursuit of living machines”
By Kai Staats
14 January 2011

We are all aware of industrial robots, programmed armatures designed to do the dirty, dangerous, tedious tasks we’d rather avoid or cannot do to the same degree of accuracy, speed, and repetition. Nearly every product you purchase is created using a semi-intelligent, autonomous robotic system: from the stamping of aluminum cans to the assembly of injection molded parts for your mobile phone; from laser engraved beer mugs to order fulfillment and shipping of everything we take for granted. All accomplished by high-speed, highly efficient robotic systems.

In our homes commercially available, low-cost robot toys continue to perform, relatively speaking, little more than collision avoidance and basic interaction with the environment while robot vacuum cleaners keep up after our kids and pets.

However, what is happening in the field of robotics as a whole is astounding. Educational, research, and military robotics are making science fact from what was not long ago science fiction. Take a look at Dean Kamen’s (inventor of the Segway) “Luke Arm”, a highly advanced robotic arm funded by DARPA and inspired by Star Wars which is giving those who have lost a limb in military conflict a chance at a normal life.

What’s more, there is significant headway being made toward synthetic skin created of both biological and mechanical foundations. When these two research efforts merge, we will have a means of repairing our own skin and at the same time providing a naturally appearing shell more sensitive than our own living skin.

In particular, I encourage you to search YouTube for “Big Dog” by Boston Dynamics, the Honda Asimo, the Akiba android actress, robots that automatically reassemble themselves, human child robots (iCub), fish, spider, and snake robots that in one form or another mimic the real thing. Each is created in an effort to study means of locomotion and interaction with the real-world.

While I could prepare a column of this length every hour of every day and not keep up with the advances in synthetic eyes, ears, hands, finger tips and joints, balance, perception, and cognition, what interests me as much as the applied technology is the motivation which compels our species to create machines in our own image.

Consider the relatively recent examples in print and film: Pinocchio, Frankenstein’s monster, Metropolis, Westworld, Blade Runner, Artificial Intelligence, Bicentennial Man, iRobot, and many more. Look then at the ancient legends and texts which reference gods in human form and humans having been made in the likeness of God. While it is not my goal to give this column a religious overtone, I do call focus to what I believe is an intrinsic desire for humans to give life to the inanimate.

Close your eyes, for just a moment, and imagine yourself as a child again. Recall how easily you arrived to that magical world where dolls and stuffed animals spoke to you, their voices as removed from your vocal cords as were their actions from your fingers. It was real to you then, just as the creation of life-like robots are to those who animate them now.

Just a few days ago, hacker Taylor Veltrop was successful in combining the real-time feedback of a Microsoft Kinect controller with a small humanoid robot, granting an uncanny glimpse of near-future, remotely controlled robots. Every move he makes, his robot attempts to duplicate. Combine Veltrop’s hack with Emotiv’s EEG, Kamen’s prosthetic arm, bio-synthetic skin, and Boston Dynamic’s running humanoids, and we will, in only a few years, be walking alongside robot androids fully human in appearance and function—personal avatars far more 3D than the imagination of James Cameron.

Scary? Perhaps. Inevitable? No doubt. While mobile phones have slowly evolved into smart phones with highly interactive systems, the rate at which robotic devices will move into the mainstream of our commodity world will likely be far faster because we are, in many ways, prepared for the next leap. The next generation of our children will not know a world in which there was not a choice between a real dog or a synthetic pet nor will they necessarily understand what the world was like before bio-mechanical organisms catered to our needs.

Children caring for aging parents, who require daily living assistance, may soon find they are replaced (for better or for worse) by a care giver which is omnipresent, forever alert, and fully trained to prepare food, change bed sheets, and administer life preserving drugs. In fact, children and physicians alike will be able to log-in to their parents’ care giver to observe and to interact from afar, the care giver’s synthetic face automatically changing shape and voice to match that of the person who is temporarily channeled by the host.

By the time you purchase your fully electric, five hundred miles per charge Honda, a family home assistant will be bundled with the car, the transfer of your prior model’s persona and memories conducted in the sales manager’s office as easily as you swipe your smart card.

The boundary between biological and mechanical is fading. The division between natural and artificial is being merged. I believe we are fast becoming the creators of new life forms in the pursuit of living machines for there is something that drives this innovation beyond commercial gain or the desire to replace aging or disabled body parts. We are compelled to learn about our own bodies and behavior through duplication, even improving upon the very foundation of that which makes us human.

We are in the pursuit of living machines.

Northern Colorado Business Report
“Opportunity for a New Kind of Self-Awareness”
By Kai Staats
17 December 2010

Growing up I often heard that we use a mere twenty percent of our brain, the rest left to waste, or at best, a relatively dormant lack of application. It was claimed that only true genius, such as that of Albert Einstein, enabled the engagement of anything more than a paltry, minor fraction of our full potential.

As one who hates to waste anything, I took this on as a challenge, motivation to try to gain another three, four–even ten percent of my brain’s function. But without a means by which my desired improvements could be measured, the goal remained elusive and I gave up the effort.

Three decades later, I learned about the nature of evolution of life on this planet and came to understand that nothing gains improved function in advance of environmental or social pressure, meaning it is impossible for our brains to have evolved to a capacity greater than that which we need in any given task. There is no evidence for any such quantum leap in evolutionary progress whereby a single organ gains a capacity far greater than its immediate need and then just sits there, waiting for the rest of the organism to catch up. Our brain is sized and powered exactly to the capacity required for what we do: walking, talking, hunting, eating, even sending text messages on our mobile phones.

The March 10, 2010 issue of Scientific American featured the cover story “The Brain’s Dark Matter.” In this article, a comparison is made between MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) brain scans of the past which noted that relevant to a particular conscious activity (such as reading, talking, or catching a ball) the brain would exhibit only a small increase or decrease in activity (confusing, at best) in comparison to what was then deemed “background noise,” an in-discernible wash of electrical activity not associated with any significant brain activity.

While the introduction of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has improved resolution and accuracy of brain activity imaging, it is the relatively recent recognition of the importance of the background noise which has changed our understanding of the human brain. Studies show the noise to be, in fact, the internal communication between the brain’s compartments. What’s more, the number of channels for communication within the brain, to connect one piece to another, far outweigh the number of channels for receiving and processing stimuli external to the brain (body monitoring plus our five senses).

As a species which enjoys a wide variety of external stimuli, we talk about, act upon, and focus almost entirely on our conscious brain, the functions we are immediately aware of through our daily tasks. It seems that as yogis and masters of meditation have claimed for thousands of years, we should spend a little more time looking inside, tapping into that highly evolved, complex infrastructure for internal communication and real-world problem solving.

The Scientific American article went on to show that when an individual is focused on a task, catching a ball or reading a book, for example, it is the re-purposing of the brain’s background processes to that particular foreground task that is more important than the increase or decrease in overall activity.

Now this is where it gets really interesting. When we focus on a particular task, such as reading a book, we have all experienced our minds wandering, causing us to return to the same paragraph three or more times in order to comprehend and absorb the content. The same researchers discovered the ability to predict, up to twenty seconds prior to the event, when an individual will lose focus on any given task. fMRI gives us the ability to see the shift in the brain activity that leads to distraction before it happens.

This level of research is opening new doors in the cognitive sciences which in turn will lead to advances in medicine, therapy, learning, and product development. Soon, real-time brain imaging technologies will be incorporated into portable, personal devices (“iPod EEG App”) and awareness studios adjacent to the food court in shopping malls where you can for just $9.95 see the state of your inner self.

As we are just now beginning to observe the internal reflection of the most beautiful actions which we as a species bestow on each other–love, compassion, and empathy; and the most disturbing displays of anger, fear, and hatred, I am enthralled by the potential for a quantum leap in understanding the human species. I believe if we are to find some semblance of world peace, it will start with a new kind of self-awareness gained not through self-help books, regression therapy, or channeling the dead, but through a truly deep understanding of how we function.

As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” or, “if you want to change the world, start with yourself.” I’ll bet Gandhi was using more than 20% of his brain.

Northern Colorado Business Report
“Make your awareness a personal shade of green”
By Kai Staats
19 November 2010

A few weeks ago I stayed in a hotel for a night. Before heading to bed, I entered the shower and took note of two shower heads in an otherwise average shower/tub combination. While I could not recall the last time I had seen two shower heads in a hotel bath, I found the note affixed to the tile wall most perplexing: “SAVE THE PLANET! In an effort to save water, we have disabled one of the shower heads.”

I laughed aloud, “Are you kidding me!?” for the juxtaposition of the shower heads and note is analogous to driving a hybrid Hummer as claim to concern for the vehicle’s carbon footprint. This was not the first time I had seen such a ploy, for most hotels post “SAVE WATER! SAVE THE PLANET!” and then go on to state that reusing your towel saves resources.

Saving resources is of course a good thing, logical and true. However, the promotion of saving the planet through reduced laundry is what bothers me, for it reeks of a marketing engine gone awry–a legitimate need for change in the behavior of consumers lost in a nearly cliche phrase, relegated to the automatic “bless you” following a sneeze.

For AZCentral.com, October 26, Wendy Koch writes “More than 95 percent of consumer products marketed as ‘green,’ … make misleading or inaccurate claims … ‘The biggest sin is making claims without any proof,’ said Scot Case of UL Environment, adding that companies want consumers to ‘just trust them.’ The report finds ‘vagueness’ is the second-leading problem (a shampoo claimed it was ‘Mother Earth approved’) in ‘greenwashing’ – a term that refers to misleading green claims.”

It is not the point of this column to tell you be more green, nor to disclaim all green products, rather to bring to light the need to be aware of the intended value of the word “green” in a society driven by slogans, catch-phrases, and over zealous marketing … and consumers who seldom give a second thought to that which they consume.

So let’s set a few things straight.

ONE: We are not separate from the environment. The environment is not something over there, a thing or a place we can point to. It is not removed from our daily lives. We cannot preview the environment on a Google map nor come home from it after our vacation. In “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth” Buckminster Fuller suggests treating our planet as a self-contained spaceship with finite resources to manage as we do a financial budget or bank account. The environment is every cubic inch of this spaceship Earth. It is our home.

TWO: The environment does not require saving. Due to the clever nature of our species, the environment is whatever we make it, and it will continue with or without our awkward, often too late attempts at making corrections to our behavior. We do, however, risk destroying much of what we take for granted.

THREE: Green is not a short-lived trend. It is not a temporary act of kindness. The reference to green was invoked as a reminder of the need for a paradigm shift, a transition to a more sustainable means of keeping balance between our desired lifestyle and the resources at our disposal.

FOUR: Green is not a religion. To say, “I believe in global warming” is to say “I believe in burnt toast.” Worship your breakfast if you so desire. Defend your slice of seven grains to the death if you must, but to state belief or disbelief in the physical change in the environment which surrounds you is only to further create factions around what should be a logical, factual conversation, a chance to debate that which we observe to be happening.

FIVE: To misuse or overuse terms such as green, eco-[insert adverb], or bio-[insert shampoo made from organic, humanely harvested carrots and Red Sea mud] is to devalue the entire concept and actually reduce effective awareness.

(This fifth and final point may appear to counter this particular issue of the Northern Colorado Business Report, so if my column is missing in the next issue, you know what happened.)

To create marketing slogans from legitimate issues often reduces their impact. Perhaps “sustainable living” invokes a more complete mental image, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue as does “green,” … and so the trend continues. It’s not that I discourage the use of green products, rather, I encourage personal awareness and subsequent choices which lead to being a well informed consumer.

In closing, I ask that when you see the note in the hotel bathroom, or read the labels on the shampoo bottles, be critical and be engaged. Don’t allow your knowledge to stop there. Think beyond the garbage disposal, trash can, and recycling bin. Challenge the marketing and challenge yourself to be educated in the entire system.

If you so choose, be green, by all means possible, but make it a personal shade of green.