James L Adams—People and Products

The Small as Well as the Large

As I discussed in my last blog, we can improve our lives by developing a better feeling for very large (to us) quantities, but the same is true with the very small. As I mentioned in a recent post, some modern integrated circuits contain over five billion electronic components (a large number), with transistors separated by only 22 nanometers (small— a human hair is approximately 75,000 nanometers in diameter). Integrated circuits are all over the place these days, and I think it is fair to say that most of us have only a marginal feeling for five billion, and none at all for a nanometer. Does this matter? I think so, for reasons both economic and our overall understanding and appreciation of our world.

 As you may have read, not too long ago, through the use of extremely sophisticated instrumentation, scientists succeeded for the first time in detecting a gravity wave, an important phenomenon theorized by Einstein, but only recently measured. There is a nice article by Bryan Green on what that means in the Smithsonian magazine, entitled Catching a Wave, here. The wave had been traveling through the universe for over a billion years, after having been generated by the collision of two black holes the size of the sun. Since gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, there are some very large numbers indeed involved here. I find thinking about the dimensions and the nature of the universe to be good for me, because I can’t even begin to get a sense of them. It certainly keeps one from becoming too centered on oneself. I think we should all occasionally think about how trivial we are as individuals in the cosmic sense of things. But as the Smithsonian article states, detecting this wave required an instrument capable of measuring a variation in length of a laser beam of less than a billionth of a billionth of a meter —a very small distance.

At present there is a great deal of research in an area called nanotechnology with an increasing amount of successful application. In fact we are increasingly profiting from our ability to make use of our knowledge of the behavior of very large numbers of very small things. Some examples are here. Related examples, are resulting from study of the microbiome, or bacteria population of the human body. Our bodies contain more bacteria than human cells. Exactly how many and what kind is still being determined. An interesting article on the topic is here.  Or you can just type microbiome into your browser.

Without these bacteria, we can’t live. Anyone who has had a large dose of ciprofloxin (an antibiotic commonly used for treating food poisoning, but that kills good bacteria as well as bad) has had a bit of insight as to the importance of these bacteria. Out of this microbiome research is coming such things as fecal transplants and other new and powerful methods of curing previously difficult medical conditions, which I will not discuss because my wife considers them gross, but which can be found on the internet. Feel free to type it into your browser.

The estimate in one of the web links above is that we have about 50 trillion bacteria in our body, of which 40 trillion live in our colon. We have approximately 30 trillion of our own cells, of which 80 percent are red blood cells. (more big numbers of little things)

Incidentally, another method I have of realizing I am not as big a deal as I sometimes think I am is to consider myself primarily a very sophisticated system to provide food for the bacteria living in and on me. At times they seem much more impressive than I—of course I am better looking.

Large Quantities and Elections

The presidential election is beginning to become more real, as the candidates are being forced to deal with more serious questions – such as the federal budget. This is the time when the federal debt becomes an issue and people begin to speak of trillions. This is interesting, because most people know that a trillion is a large number, but have no “feel” for it. That is because most people can live happily avoiding large quantities, and tend to do so because their lives are complicated enough. We shorthand such quantities (using trillion, or tera instead of “a thousand thousand thousand thousand”), but even that does not capture the exponential nature of powers of ten. A short and clever movie was made by Charles Eames, a famous designer, in 1977, and was entitled Powers of Ten. It is now not viewed as much as it used to be, but perhaps should be if we are going to deal with numbers such as a trillion. If you have never seen it, it is here on You Tube.

Around election time, the U.S. national debt comes up (federal debt in 2015 was about $19,009,230,758,000, or  19 trillion dollars, but of course there is state debt, individual debt, and so on). Politicians like to blame the other party and other causes for this, but the government traditionally overspends. But how much should we worry about this? Do we really know what 19 trillion is? Techies like me would approximate it as 1.9x10¹³ dollars, but even that is hard to get a feeling for. If we break that down to on the order of $60,000 or so per person in the U.S., we can think about it more clearly, but it isn’t like our personal debt, because governments can print money and sell bonds, but we can’t.

I think most of us can get our heads around a million, since many houses now cost that much, and after all, a million is a thousand thousands. But a billion is more difficult. Bill Gates has a net worth of about 82 billion dollars, but to appreciate that, it is necessary to put it into a form that is more understandable. For instance, the world’s population is about seven billion, so he could give 11 or 12 dollars to everyone on earth, and he and his family could still have five billion to cover their personal expenses. But if he has it invested in interests that return him 5% per year, he is making over 40 million a year, so he could keep his capital growing and live quite well.

But 19 trillion? It is a very big number. Let’s say I had a job which required me to type 19 trillion x’s on my computer. Using my trusty smart phone, I see that I can type this many—xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or about 70 in ten seconds. That is or on the order of 500 in a minute if I practiced a lot. That’s believable, since when I took a typing course in high school I got up to 100 words a minute (piano player). According to the Guiness book of records, Barbara Blackburn is the champ at 212 words a minute, and typing test words average about five letters each. But I obviously couldn’t keep up this pace either physically or mentally for a whole day, so let’s imagine that with training I could put in the equivalent of six hours a day without going mad, and in the process type 60x500, or 30,000 x’s per hour, or 45 million per year (5 day week, 2 week vacation).   That means that even a million is a big number. But a billion is a thousand million, so to type a billion x’s would take I,000,000,000 divided by 45,000,000, or a bit over 22 years. So 19 trillion? How about four hundred and eighteen thousand years or so? Of course if we put 100,000 people on the job, they could finish in about four and a half years. (I may have slipped up on the arithmetic here, but you get the idea)

But how much should we care about the national debt? A lot. A simple discussion of the components of the national debt is here. It is a complex thing, ranging from repayment of bonds owned by individuals, companies, and governments inside and outside of the U.S. as well as intergovernmental loans, and other such complexities. and we have to cover the interest on much of it. Unlike individuals and companies, governments can not go bankrupt (as a few U. S cities and foreign countries have) and easily recover, if at all. Bankruptcy of the U .S. is unthinkable, since the U.S. as it is would no longer exist. Eventually the bill must be covered.

Focusing in on the election, many groups are calculating the effects on the national debt of the economic plans being proposed by the candidates. One of the less biased groups is called the Tax Foundation, and their findings are here. A more politically liberal group is the Brookings Institution, and their conclusions are here. They are saying that in ten years, Trump’s plan could add over ten trillion dollars to the national debt, and perhaps up to 80 % (over 15 trillion).

Trump is, of course, telling us that his plan will benefit us all at no cost, the increase in expenses and decrease in tax income will be overcome by the tremendous savings he will make in the costs of government and the surge in economic activity that will result. Are we going to continue to believe that one? Hopefully not, although we have accepted similar arguments in the past. We seem to be eternal suckers for supply-side economics.

But too many of us will focus on what the candidates say, rather than what they will do. And we will not pay as much attention as we should to the numbers , because they are so large they have little meaning compared to the incomes and expenses we are used to.

I will talk a bit more about magnitudes in my next post, because our ability to avoid thinking deeply about very large (and small) quantities is being overwhelmed by the necessity of doing so, whether elections are forthcoming or not.

Digital Clutter

The “Technology Quarterly” section in the March 12^th-18^th issue of The Economist magazine is concerned with the future of computing. Quite a few people, many in the media, are predicting that Moore’s Law, which has predicted the incredible increase of computing power over the past 50 years, is beginning to no longer hold true. Initially, in 1965, Moore’s law, named after Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, predicted that the number of electrical components that could be put into an integrated circuit would double every year.

In 1970, he changed that to every two years, and it has been amazingly accurate. It is difficult to realize what this means, but as the author of the initial article in the section points out, an integrated circuit manufactured 44 years ago by Intel had 2,300 transistors on it, which was thought miraculous. But since then the count has doubled 44 times, leading to a recent chip released from Intel that has over 5 billion transistors on it, only 22 nanometers apart. This incredible shrinking of transistors and increasing power of a chip will probably continue, but at a slower rate. As chip dimensions have increased, and the size of the electronic components decreased, they have become incredibly more powerful. But now the transistors are becoming so small that the performance gain is not as great, and simultaneously the manufacturing is becoming more expensive, it is probable that Silicon chips will to some extent slow down their miraculous growth

But no one expects the growth of computation to slow. Many organizations are working on alternate ways to build digital devices, ranging from using the strange behavior predicted by quantum theory, to using light, to carbon atoms, to following the processes in the human brain. But The Economist articlea emphasize that a great deal of development and business will accompany the better and alternate use of the integrated circuits we now possess. In particular, it speaks of the predicted coming of the “internet of things”, in which low cost, and perhaps lower performance integrated circuits will be integrated in almost everything we use or contact. As examples one article predicts refrigerators that order food, washing machines that ask dirty clothes for instructions, and paving that is capable of monitoring traffic. Apparently a consulting company named Gartner is predicting that by 2020 there will be 21 billion connected devices in the world. You can find the section at http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-03-12/after-moores-law#section-3

I read it with mixed feelings. I am an engineer, and have made use of computers since 1960 when I ran into an early IBM mainframe when I went to work at the Jet Propulsion Lab. Like most people, I have been amazed at the rapidity of their growth in power, and am fascinated that the little thing in my pocket that insists on slipping out and falling on the ground has more computing power than the big computers of those days, and the spacecraft we were designing and successfully launching on then exotic flights contained computers that would hardly deserve the name these days. But these days, I am not involved either in building spacecraft or trying to model the atmosphere, and am quite frankly swamped by the relatively small amount of digital equipment I own and use. This is partly due to the constant “upgrading” I am being asked to do and learn, the proliferation of hardware and software, the various encryption and security packages I am required to have and use, and in particular the lack of standardization. Most of my friends who use Apple desk-tops (as I do) are fed up with the frequency of operating system upgrades, what seems like backward progress in their programs such as the move from iPhoto to Photos, and the increasing “features” which make almost everything more, rather than less, confusing. In fact many of us would switch to Windows, except we did that when the University decided to standardize on it, and although the operating systems are not all that far apart, the distance is enough to be confusing, and Windows will not hold still either.

As to reliability of “things”, within the last few months I have replaced a washing machine, a dishwasher, and a microwave oven because the digital control systems gave up and replacing them was more expensive than the devices were worth. The old fashioned “machinery” part of them was fine. And now, a couple of months after I bought the microwave, the touch pads that control the cycles that depend on humidity are beginning to fail.   On the other hand we have a gas stove that is probably seventy years old and a refrigerator that is probably thirty, and they are doing fine —nothing digital.

I am tired of being unable to open my friend’s cars at night from the back seat, being required to read the operator’s manual (if available) on modern TV’s and audio systems in other people’s houses and in motels and hotels, and risking my neck in random rental cars that have too many controls that operate functions I don’t want located in what seem like strange places. Do we need this?

I realize we love innovation, and that digital capability is moving fast, but maybe it’s time to consider more standardization, before we connect up all of the 20 billion devices_— In fact, before we design them. I realize that great diversity of digital devices makes for challenge and  feelings of accomplishment, for engineers, lots of profit for companies, lots of IT jobs and openings for people who write instruction manuals and give classes on how to use the newest thing, and big profits for companies who can rapidly replace their products with “new and better” ones. But I want to keep using hardware and software that does what I need done, I know how to use, is reliable, and especially does not become useless to me  because the company developing it no longer ”supports” it. Many devices being considered for the “internet of things” should have a lifetime of many years, and perhaps will be imbedded in “things” in a way that makes it difficult to change them, especially if the format keeps changing (think of Apple’s projector plugs, the increasing flavors of USB plugs, and the pile of different looking, and sometimes different voltage transformers that pile up in people’s basements until they hit the trash barrel}.

It’s time for digital devices to start growing up. They are supposed to help us, not clutter up our lives with buying and learning to use new features we don’t need or want. Maybe if the magic growth of integrated circuits is going to slow down, we should take advantage of the opportunity to learn to build devices that fit the average user a little better, and the people who want to make exotic equipment should target users who need it—somebody must be building a simulation of expected earthquakes on Ceres. 

Having criticized the direction Apple’s desk tops are taking, I should say I think their iPhones are following a much more reasonable change pattern, since features (apps) are optional, and the yearly releases don’t change radically in operation. Maybe Apple is putting more effort and thought into hand-helds than desk-top models. But I just had to buy a new phone, because the operating system in my old one could not be encoded by whatever software is being used by Stanford to encode smart phones. And it is still ridiculously difficult to change iPhone batteries.

Get a Better One!

My father was an unknowing philosopher. He had various favorite rules of life (if work was fun, someone would do it for free), but didn’t know they were philosophy. One was “if you love something, and either lose it or someone takes it and you can’t find them and beat them to a pulp, get a better one”. I am a particular believer in the latter wise belief, so when someone swiped a bird I had made for my wife out of junk (reported on in a previous post), I could not find out who, and it did not seem a large enough theft to report to the FBI, so it was necessary to make at least a replacement, if not a better one. The result is shown at the left, and now sits splendidly overlooking our second floor deck and fastened securely to earth. Since I had much of the original material, it is the same as the first one, except for redder eyes, a different shaped head, and a better tail.

But that did not seem adequate, so I decided to make another one. Since my wife is often working in her garden, and I in my shop, our house doorbell doesn’t always do much good for visitors. Some time ago I suggested an outdoor klaxon (like submarines use before diving) instead of the indoor bell, but was vetoed. So I hung up an old-fashioned farm bell (see picture to the right). Hauling on the rope definitely lets us know someone is at the door, whether inside or outside. But I decided to add to that, and hung a no- longer-usable bottomless small welding gas tank by the back door with a stick beside it. (see left below) Hitting the tank with a stick also sends a noticeable signal. But not as splendid as the front door bell. So a few years ago I got another cylinder that was larger and cut the bottom off, thinking I would make a two-toned bell. But the cylinder was much thicker than I expected, so it made more of a clunk than a bell tone. So I put it in my “assorted metal things” pile and went on to other projects.

But I noticed while replacing my purloined bird that it could be a bird body , and right next to it was a scythe blade that could be a beak………..etc.etc.etc. The result is shown below. It is still under construction, but definitely bird-like. I apologize for the lack of legs, but after all, penguins don’t show much leg. And now I feel like I made up for the loss I received after some scum-ball(s?) stole my old bird. But fear not, some day I will find them.