What happens when you cross the Google earth satellite image database, an ‘always on’ vehicle internet connection similar to what is used in Apples iPhone, and the vehicles GPS position?
This is the visualization challenge I set myself one day after enthusing about the rapid progress of Google Earth to a friend. If you’ve played with Google Earth for a while, you know that you can not only move around using a ‘birds-eye- view of the satellite image, but you can tilt the image until you are actually at ground level.
Then, with a bit of tricky mouse work, you can actually navigate through a real landscape as if you were driving. When you add some driving directions, a lovely purple line appears, showing you where to drive, and conveniently poping up the driving directions as you progress along your route. I took a short virtual drive from my home to my workplace to test out this concept. It turned out to be way cool…
Actually, hovering about 400 feet off the ground seemed to give you the best mix of clarity of the immediate neighbourhood, without actually sacrificing the sensation of more or less being in that actual location.
How could all of this work? Well, as you drive, your car’s GPS communicates real time information to some custom software. This software in turn logs into the Google Earth database synchronizes the GPS position of your vehicle with the onscreen satellite image, and the zoom and tilt view that you’ve chosen to use. If Google street view was available, it could also be used as an optional view.
In terms of data quantity - a vehicle driving at say 70mph, with a always on internet 3G/4G internet connection like your Droid or iphone users, would provide more than enough time to download the required satellite imagery. Buffering of the images along your route would be done in advance, to either reduce the bandwidth requirement, or make up for potential breaks in the cellphone net that provides the internet data stream. The GPS location of the vehicle would synchonise with the buffered version of the satellite imagery and the data objects, rather than a real time version.
The system could also ‘record’ a journey in real time, in order to give a ‘visual direction file’, that can be saved (ie. the GPS track of an actual or navigation generated journey, and given to friends as a preview of the route to their home or a meeting place. Your friends could download this journey from your car’s online system, and ‘pre-play’ the visual directions of the journey in order to familiarize themselves with the journey they are about to make.
Overlay, overlay
Overlays sourced from the Geographic Web database would indicate key reference points on the route, to make navigation easier.
For a major auto manufacturer to take on this solution, an alliance with the geographic web provider like Google, and a partnership with telecommunications provider that provides realtime data feed to the vehicle for the data synchronization. Ford has partnered with Microsoft with their ‘Sync’ product, I’ve heard its a good product but I’m not sure if it integrates navigation in any way.
A GM partnership with Google could revitalize the GM brand segment with it’s existing proprioritory Onstar offering towards the Google savy generation (late x and y generation).
This generation is the first one that has never known a world without ubiqutous electronic devices, and they are now buying their first vehicles. Thus, the similarity to video game concept is crucial. Current navigations systems are rather ‘adult’ in their approach to map display and functionality. The video game generation needs instant immersion in the system.
When you put directions in the system, it could be even programmed to zoom in on your current location, like Google earth at startup. This intensifies the feeling of ‘globalization’ of the system, and the video game like attractiveness of the navigation interface.
A ‘Safe driver’ view could provide a slightly zoomed out view of the road ahead - alerting to the driver to potential environmental hazards such as hidden driveways or unexpected bends, hundreds of meters down the road. Potentially, a zoomed out, at a glance view of the satellite picture of the road ahead could contribute much more to safe driving that the array of detection type radar systems being developed by Mercedes and other automakers - at potentially significantly reduced cost in on-car hardware and sensors - and significantly more day to day useability
Zooming out, you can search for restaurants in the vicinity of your route, and by using Geographic web content, select the screen to dial the restaurant using the navigation systems inbuilt functionality.
People location: Friends can turn on their ‘find me’ functionality to allow their friends to know where they are. When ‘Find me’ is turned on, their car or phone transmits their GPS location. Another driver can dial in your location to navigate to where you are, using your destination as the location.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Everyone thinks China is about manufacturing…
Everyone thinks China is about manufacturing. Outsourcing Nike sneaker production and well, just about everything else these days. But lets extend our thinking outwards, to the point where we are contemplating the whole development of civilizations in the last century. Lets zoom out to the point where you can look at the development of industrial nations in the twentieth century,the speed that they developed, and then overlay that with the quantities that China presents will bring to the table in the 21st century.
We start our short historical review with the reconstruction of Japan and Germany, after those countries were destroyed at the conclusion of the Second World War. Both countries benefited from heavy inflows of managed capital from the USA, which had the least rebuilding to do. Both subsequently underwent massive structural adjustment, experienced decades of growth, and successfully leveraged inate cultural resources to guide their success. In the case of the Germans, engineering expertise that is derived from a national culture that prides itself on precision, quality, durability and seriousness. In the case of the Japanese, the national trait was hard work, cooperative corporate structures, the application of familial ties of trust and honour to build business efficency to a new level.
China and Germany required nearly fourty years for this transition process. These fourty years were marked by steadily increasing standard of living and wealth levels.
Now look at South Korea. The race to industrialisation started later - sometime after the Korean war - and gathered speed much more rapidly. But it didn’t stop at industrialisation with the Chaebol, it leapfrogged into the silicon chip and the digital economy, as those things were developed when the capital accumulation of industry was at its greatest in the 90’s. Now south Korean cities are some of the most wired in the world, with broadband internet connection standard in new apartment complexes - unthinkable a decade earlier.
And then we come to China. Lets look at the cultural traits the Chinese can bring into play as they accelerate the development model of rural to industrial to information and beyond. The first and overwhelming factor is sheer potential size of the economy. With a population of 1.4 billion, based on just the ‘local’ economy, the potential Chinese economy size is twice that of the USA and the EU combined. Then there is the business savy, entreneurship, hardwork and risk aversity of the Chinese. Their cultural has withstood the rigours of communism, but is now adopting the benefits of capitalism.
After all, capitalism has proven itself in the twentieth century as the most effective social-economic model to increase overall wealth of civilizsations, and longer term, to increase individual freedoms while consolidating power even more effectively in the hands of the elite. Capitalism has serious flaws when for instance environment understanding is ignored. But the Chinese will find it impossible to ignore environmental issues when the numbers of people affected by those issues with be so great due to sheer population density. Also, the Chinese are developing industrially in the information age. The power of the internet to focus international attention on enviromentally damaging practice will mean that corporations that seek to polute their way to weath will simply find they are discovered before they have time to even their chemical dumps and political coverups. It will become easier to leverage the positive attention that deploying new evironmentally conscious technology will give them.
All of this points to the Chinese passing through the industrial development stage straight into the information age at a breakneck pace. The growth and confidence of Chinese information technology companies like www.alibaba.com are just the start.
The thousands of PHDs, engineering, biotechnology and computers graduates being churned out by Chinese universities will be combined with almost unlimited capital generated by their rapid industrial expansion. This capital will be used to build an entirely new type of 21st century infrastructure that will be tailored to the needs of the information and international thoughtsourcing economy rather than the industrial economy. The industrial development of the twentieth century industrial nations was built around the infrastructure constraints of the time.
And here is the real shocker. Post war Japan took about 40 yrs to complete the industrial change cycle to high tech, from post war ruins in 1945 to market domination in previously European and North American industrial strengths of consumer electronics and automobiles by 1985. South Korea, starting around 1970 decreased this cycle time to around 20 years, and by 2000 had more broadband internet connections than almost any other nation.
So China, if you follow this logic, is starting later still, and will advance even faster through this stage. The Chinese communist government is probably an ideal control and guidance mechanism to guide this rapid structural change. Why? Because it is very difficult to agree on massive infrastructure upgrade necessary during this key civilization transition without some central planner making decisions. Not only that, but China's enormous population mean that the leverage and economies of scale available during this period will dwarf anything humanity has ever seen.
Even if you find communisim abhorent politically, relax. As middle class weath increases in societies and infrastructure is fully built out, the majority shifts their attention from becoming middle class, to become free. Communism will stop being tolerated at a certain point, and a Chinese form of democrarcy will spontaneously occur.
To sum up these cycles:
- China is not just about low cost manufacturing
- Ratherm, it's a society on a well trod development path, that ends in a stable middle class and increasing human rights
- Due to its unprecedented scale, the wealth created in this transition will cause the 21st century to be dominated largely by Chinese influence and capital, just as the 19th century was dominated by British influence and capital, and the 20th by North American.
Please enjoy the show, we are watching a civilization transform within a few short decades. This transformation only happens once in a society. Once it's done, there is no going back.
We start our short historical review with the reconstruction of Japan and Germany, after those countries were destroyed at the conclusion of the Second World War. Both countries benefited from heavy inflows of managed capital from the USA, which had the least rebuilding to do. Both subsequently underwent massive structural adjustment, experienced decades of growth, and successfully leveraged inate cultural resources to guide their success. In the case of the Germans, engineering expertise that is derived from a national culture that prides itself on precision, quality, durability and seriousness. In the case of the Japanese, the national trait was hard work, cooperative corporate structures, the application of familial ties of trust and honour to build business efficency to a new level.
China and Germany required nearly fourty years for this transition process. These fourty years were marked by steadily increasing standard of living and wealth levels.
Now look at South Korea. The race to industrialisation started later - sometime after the Korean war - and gathered speed much more rapidly. But it didn’t stop at industrialisation with the Chaebol, it leapfrogged into the silicon chip and the digital economy, as those things were developed when the capital accumulation of industry was at its greatest in the 90’s. Now south Korean cities are some of the most wired in the world, with broadband internet connection standard in new apartment complexes - unthinkable a decade earlier.
And then we come to China. Lets look at the cultural traits the Chinese can bring into play as they accelerate the development model of rural to industrial to information and beyond. The first and overwhelming factor is sheer potential size of the economy. With a population of 1.4 billion, based on just the ‘local’ economy, the potential Chinese economy size is twice that of the USA and the EU combined. Then there is the business savy, entreneurship, hardwork and risk aversity of the Chinese. Their cultural has withstood the rigours of communism, but is now adopting the benefits of capitalism.
After all, capitalism has proven itself in the twentieth century as the most effective social-economic model to increase overall wealth of civilizsations, and longer term, to increase individual freedoms while consolidating power even more effectively in the hands of the elite. Capitalism has serious flaws when for instance environment understanding is ignored. But the Chinese will find it impossible to ignore environmental issues when the numbers of people affected by those issues with be so great due to sheer population density. Also, the Chinese are developing industrially in the information age. The power of the internet to focus international attention on enviromentally damaging practice will mean that corporations that seek to polute their way to weath will simply find they are discovered before they have time to even their chemical dumps and political coverups. It will become easier to leverage the positive attention that deploying new evironmentally conscious technology will give them.
All of this points to the Chinese passing through the industrial development stage straight into the information age at a breakneck pace. The growth and confidence of Chinese information technology companies like www.alibaba.com are just the start.
The thousands of PHDs, engineering, biotechnology and computers graduates being churned out by Chinese universities will be combined with almost unlimited capital generated by their rapid industrial expansion. This capital will be used to build an entirely new type of 21st century infrastructure that will be tailored to the needs of the information and international thoughtsourcing economy rather than the industrial economy. The industrial development of the twentieth century industrial nations was built around the infrastructure constraints of the time.
And here is the real shocker. Post war Japan took about 40 yrs to complete the industrial change cycle to high tech, from post war ruins in 1945 to market domination in previously European and North American industrial strengths of consumer electronics and automobiles by 1985. South Korea, starting around 1970 decreased this cycle time to around 20 years, and by 2000 had more broadband internet connections than almost any other nation.
So China, if you follow this logic, is starting later still, and will advance even faster through this stage. The Chinese communist government is probably an ideal control and guidance mechanism to guide this rapid structural change. Why? Because it is very difficult to agree on massive infrastructure upgrade necessary during this key civilization transition without some central planner making decisions. Not only that, but China's enormous population mean that the leverage and economies of scale available during this period will dwarf anything humanity has ever seen.
Even if you find communisim abhorent politically, relax. As middle class weath increases in societies and infrastructure is fully built out, the majority shifts their attention from becoming middle class, to become free. Communism will stop being tolerated at a certain point, and a Chinese form of democrarcy will spontaneously occur.
To sum up these cycles:
- China is not just about low cost manufacturing
- Ratherm, it's a society on a well trod development path, that ends in a stable middle class and increasing human rights
- Due to its unprecedented scale, the wealth created in this transition will cause the 21st century to be dominated largely by Chinese influence and capital, just as the 19th century was dominated by British influence and capital, and the 20th by North American.
Please enjoy the show, we are watching a civilization transform within a few short decades. This transformation only happens once in a society. Once it's done, there is no going back.
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