The cable & wireless series

Historical evidence reveals that wireless communication is not a new fad, but a centuries-old practice.

News has it that a high profile project is currently on to develop a wireless communication system that can transmit data at 100 Gbps, across an incredible distance of up to 120 miles. To put that in perspective, a new film carefully locked up in the hard disk of a high-end computer in a studio in Chennai can be 

transmitted in roughly a hundredth of a second to Venkatagirikota - all two hours and twenty three minutes of it - and burnt onto a million DVDs before the first reel gets to the second frame. But since this column adopts a strong anti-piracy stance, we'll overlook such disturbing uses for new technology and focus on the more productive ones. (Yes, that means you will have to catch that flick in the theatres.)

The first ever wireless communication system was developed by the Persians, and later adopted by the Greeks and the Romans. It was far more advanced that the present one - they could transmit messages beyond the 120 mile barrier and could send several Terabytes of data, as long as it could fit into a little scroll which was rolled into a tiny packet and sent through a pigeon network.

However, most people began forwarding useless jokes and small messages in less than 140 characters which gave rise to the now-popular small packet problem and caused a congestion collapse. Besides, mischief mongers would catch pigeons and interchange the messages they were carrying - this led to packet switching issues as well. Special packet protocols were created to ensure that such glitches could be controlled in future. Well, the future is here - and so are the problems. Obviously things have not worked out as planned.

But the concept of wireless technology has been gainfully exploited by mobiles, with most leading mobile manufacturers offering wireless charging. Nokia, for instance has introduced the Lumia series of mobiles with a charging plate called the Fatboy Pillow on which they can be rested, to be completely charged.

Unhappy with this development, mobile users have launched a series of complaints citing that mobiles now have an unfair advantage over man. Apparently, a couple of them were fired from their jobs when they were caught resting on comfortable, fluffy pillows at work. They tried to reason that they were simply getting charged up for the job on hand, but the management wouldn't listen. Life was unfair – why was it that when they rested on pillows, they were derogatively referred to as couch potatoes, but the mobiles resting on their Fatboy Pillows were called ‘smart’ phones?

This complaint didn’t go down well with the potatoes – the tuber population had enough reason to be annoyed with this insulting reference, for they were playing a key role in wireless research. Around 20,000 pounds of potatoes were used for testing wireless signals inside an aircraft. After careful observation, the scientists had decided that sacks of potatoes best replicated human behaviour – the converse was also found to be true, especially when a TV was switched on.

The experiment has not only resulted in a major breakthrough in Wi-Fi in the sky, but has also given the food industry the secret of making light original potato chips - sending the potatoes 40,000 feet in the air made them lose excess starch. However, the wireless charging technology for mobiles – not involving potatoes - can be traced back to the Chinese theory of energy flow, known as Qi.

So, even as technology is freeing itself from the maze of wires, we are being strung along like puppets on a string. But there’s nothing new about that – which is why every new invention is merely history repeating itself. 

The lies of Pi

It took a bit of technology to make a stunning revelation about Mars that left the planet red-faced.

Before technology kept little boys busy with PSPs, tablets and Attacknids, they had little to do except indulge in outrageous creative exercises, during which they imagined that they saw the emperor without his clothes or had conversations with stuffed tigers.

Close on the heels of the story about a boy who stayed afloat on a boat for months with a tiger for company, has come another incredible tale about this kid and his gigantic dog being lost in Mars. Apparently they were afloat for several days in the sea of tranquillity on the moon. And when they sighted Mars, the boy expected his companion to come back to him, with his tail wagging. But the dog simply looked up at the planet, howled and gravitated towards it.

Heartbroken, the boy got back to earth. Night after night, he watched the stars and the planets. And on one cloudless night, he zoomed into Mars and spotted the huge canine.

Needless to say, no one was willing to believe him - until he shot images of what he saw and posted them via Instagram. His argument was simple – if there could be a rabbit on the moon, why couldn’t there be a dog on Mars? Besides, Instagram itself was an acronym for ‘Mars giant.’ He sent a white paper on the topic to NASA, but they found his story unbelievable. The image of the dog on Mars soon featured on Facebook, which was the quickest and the most sure-fire way of catching the attention of any authority and predictably enough, the powers-that-be ordered a probe into the matter.

 A ‘name the dog’ contest was conducted online by an unknown body which also announced that Bill Gates would give away half his wealth to the name that most people liked. A tidal wave of creativity engulfed cyberspace and finally the dog on Mars was named Rover. A space song titled Hover like Rover was created by Snoop Dogg and The Mars Volta, an American rock group and went viral, infecting the entire planet.

Meanwhile, NASA decided to prove the boy’s story wrong and, leaving the moon and the rabbit alone, embarked on a mission to Mars. If it didn’t work, at least they had good footage from Brian De Palma’s movie of the same name that they could beam across to the world.

There were several parallels between their mission and the child’s story. To start with, there was a Rover, but it was the robotic space vehicle that they had sent to Mars – Curiosity Rover. The incredible story of the boy’s space odyssey with his dog was the outcome of a child’s curiosity, and NASA’s next expedition to Mars in 2020 was nicknamed Curiosity’s child - aptly so, as it would be based on Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) architecture, which was used to design and develop the Curiosity rover.

But the clincher was what the Rover - the space exploration vehicle - dug up. It was a bone, which not only proved that life existed on Mars, but also the fact that Rover - the dog - had hidden the bone playfully, hoping to find it later on an acid-rainy day. The dog was wrong about the acid rain, but the kid was right about there being a dog on the planet. With the exhumed part of the skeleton becoming a bone of contention, the space organization finally decided to go with the child’s story – and that’s how, when we look at the sky with superhuman vision or through a high-powered telescope, we can spot a dog on Mars. 

Tracker, scanner, detector, spy...

Man’s got no place to hide, because technology’s quietly shadowing him everywhere.

First there was nothing. Then came the fig leaf that clung on for centuries. And just when man decided not to give a fig about it anymore, technology took a leaf out of Lex Luthor’s creations – and radiation blocking underwear was created.

No, seriously. It’s already available abroad and could soon cover the entire globe. To understand the demand for this product, we need to go back in time to Hollywood, because research has shown that 97.5% of all people understand technology only when it is demonstrated in an English movie, is set in the future and features either an action hero or Keanu Reeves.

The year was 1990, when a Schwarzenegger-starrer titled Total Recall was released. It showed the future with total body scanners that bombarded the human body with powerful X-ray blasts. People would walk past a screen and their skeletons would be seen from the other side.

Then came the era of biometrics, made popular in films like Mission Impossible, Gattaca and Minority Report, where an individual's retina, fingertips, DNA, molars, premolars and canines – in short, everything except his ID Card - were scanned to ascertain his identity. Another system of tracking made popular by Bond movies like On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Casino Royale, and sci-fi and action movies like Demolition Man, The Day the Earth Stood Still and Safe House was RFID.

Things could have stopped there, but since man's curiosity constantly gets the better of him, he moved on from writing Software For Dummies to writing software for dummies. And the result is available in every major store worldwide, in the form of store mannequins - with a difference. These are as inquisitive as we are, and constantly seek to collect information about the shoppers.

They have a camera for an eye, are installed with facial recognition software and record everything, including the way you looked at the attractive woman in the other corner of the store and walked up to her on the pretext of examining shirts in the nearby rack, and to your utter disappointment, found that the shirts were actually neatly folded aprons and the pretty woman, another mannequin. Thus vital information is gathered about you – the mannequins have noted that you not only have a roving eye, but also myopic vision that can't see distant objects very clearly. So the next time you visit a mall, a bouncer grabs you at the car park, sets right that glad eye and then whisks you away to the nearest Lawrence & Mayo where your short sight is rectified. Needless to say, you pay for both and the world of retail remains eternally grateful to technology.

Unfortunately for you, the evolution of this peek-a-boo technology is not likely to stop here. The next step could well be a combination of some of the technologies mentioned above. Consider a scenario where these mannequins are fitted with the x-ray scanners seen in Total Recall. (Incidentally, this technology actually became a reality when such scanners were installed in airports. Most passengers felt outraged that their skeletons were being ogled at, leading to such full-body scans at airports being appropriately named terminal exposure.) Besides laughing all the way to the bank, the retail stores fitted with these mannequins would also be giggling their way to the security room where scantily clad images of customers will be displayed on multiple monitors.

Without an iota of doubt, there will be immense pressure from various bodies (pun not intended) to stop such scans. And if they have it their way, there's only one thing that various leading innerwear brands can do with their gargantuan piles of radiation blocking underwear in every store - total recall.