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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 2000 Exploring the depths EVERY now and again I find myself with a few spare moments on a flight where I can play with the technology and explore the depth of what is available. On most international and intercontinental flights of any great distance there is a range of audio and video entertainment channels including movies, music, comedy shows, news, sport and stock market reports. Some flights even have a nose camera so passengers can enjoy a heads-up cockpit view as seen by the crew at take off and landing. On many flights it is also possible to listen in on all the cockpit communication while tracking the flight progress on an LCD screen showing a moving map giving the latest location, altitude, heading, speed, wind speed and outside temperature. On a recent trans-USA flight I dialed in and logged on to the net via an in-seat phone at 4800 bit/s. To my delight I located the FAA's real-time Air Traffic Control radar information system that details flight-planned routes (http://www.thetrip.com/usertools/flighttracking) of most commercial aircraft, and displays progress in real-time, on a map, complete with aircraft identification, heading, speed, and altitude. At this point I powered up my pocket GPS receiver, placed it in the window, achieved a lock to five satellites, and cross-checked with the location on my lap-top screen. All agreed, and I knew our location down to a few metres. I was tempted to connect the GPS receiver into my lap-top, but I thought better of it. So I then switched to the US Doppler radar display from The Weather Channel (http://www.weather.com) and was able to track a line of very active thunderstorms directly in the flight path, and get a general forecast for the rest of the flight. Next I accessed the local weather station and several street cameras at my destination airport to check out the local weather and road conditions. All looked well for our arrival, no rain, snow, high winds, or traffic jams. Granted all of this was slow at 4800 bit/s, and expensive at $2 per minute, but the point of the experiment was to see just what was possible with a lap-top and a meager net connection. Overall, I have to say I was impressed, and got to wondering just what the pilot had by way of real-time information. What next? A quick look at the latest football scores, the BBC world news, my email and electronic diary. A visit to the web-site of the next company I was about to call on, and a download of a file from my office machine back in the UK. And of course a glance at the activity in my office, several other offices, and the road system around my home village through my laboratory network. Just don't ask what all this cost. To me this experience exemplifies the word convergence. A world where we will be able to access almost all information sources and things on-line, from anything, any time, anywhere, and in any form. What is missing right now is the bandwidth and the right price tag. It is all too slow and far too expensive to be practicable. Communicating at 4800 bit/s at a cost of $2/minute is a killer for all but the experimenters, but suppose it was 480kbit/s at 2 cents/minute, then we would really be cooking. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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