It’s that time of year again. Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I just attended a session on the future of autonomous vehicles. Elaine Chao, Secretary of Transportation was due to speak. However, with govt shut down her appearance was canceled. The other panelists were excellent especially Deborah A. P. Hersmsn, national safety council. They stressed the need for standards for autonomous vehicles rather than each manufacturer making flashing technology decisions to benefit their sales. More to come.

Lots of discussion of Smart Cities these days.  The current estimate is that 66% of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050.  Given that, data driven smart cities can provide enhanced city services, decreased pollution and traffic congestion, and improved public safety and citizen interaction.

Read more on the Consumer Technology Association site.

Even though the eclipse wasn’t total at my location just north of Memphis, it provided some pretty interesting photos.  Thanks to Spectrum Telescope for their solar filter. 
Nikon D800, Tamron 150-600mm lens

5G wireless technology allows us to create spectrum-devouring services from driverless cars to home sensors and smart cities.  Qualcomm predicts as many as 22 million technology jobs will be created worldwide due to 5G.

Read a great article on 5G via the Consumer Technology Association site.

Once again, off to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It starts in less than a week, so the list of celebrity appearances has come out. Not too impressed, I must say.  I’d have to give it a 4/10.  Honestly, if Ryan Seacrest doesn’t get a job or disappear off the face of the earth soon, I’ll puke.  Of interest is that the “Shark Tank” producers will be there recruiting entrepreneurs for upcoming episodes.

I’m proud to have been a judge for the Innovation and Technology design awards again this year – 3rd time.  Check out the winners here.

Most people these days are so hooked to their cell phones that they are hardly seen without one, and many don’t even have a landline. But at what point does incessant phone use and the resulting fear of being out of touch become a real phobia? Two psychologists argue that “nomophobia” (an abbreviation for “no-mobile-phone phobia”) should be added to the DSM-V manual of psychiatric disease.

The authors do caution that it is important to distinguish between pathological and normal behaviors — which is probably good, because according to a 2010 UK study, “53% of mobile phone users in Britain tend to be anxious when they ‘lose their mobile phone, run out of battery or credit, or have no network coverage.’”  Not only that, but “58% of men and 47% of women suffer from the phobia, and an additional 9% feel stressed when their mobile phones are off”. . It’s 10 PM – do you know where your phone is?

Today computers—and, therefore, the Internet—are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly 50 petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data available on the Internet were first captured and created by human beings—by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital picture, or scanning a bar code. Conventional diagrams of the Internet … leave out the most numerous and important routers of all – people. The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy—all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world. And that’s a big deal. We’re physical, and so is our environment … You can’t eat bits, burn them to stay warm or put them in your gas tank. Ideas and information are important, but things matter much more. Yet today’s information technology is so dependent on data originated by people that our computers know more about ideas than things. If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things—using data they gathered without any help from us—we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they were fresh or past their best. The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the Internet did. Maybe even more so.