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The Grid, Our Cars, and the Net
Wired is running a piece on the big idea of Robin Chase — the founder of Zipcar — that we need to build our smart power grid on open standards and include cars as nodes in a mesh network. "'Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers and tanks and airplanes are running around using mesh networks,' said Chase. 'It works, it's secure, it's robust. If a node or device disappears, the network just reroutes the data.' And, perhaps most important, it's in motion. ... Build a smart electrical grid that uses Internet protocols and puts a mesh network device in every structure that has an electric meter. Sweep out the half dozen networks in our cars and replace them with an open, Internet-based platform. Add a mesh router. A nationwide mesh cloud will form, linking vehicles that can connect with one another and with the rest of the network. It's cooperative gain gone national, gone mobile, gone open."
Just think though, if you no longer had to pay 2.25 per gallon of gasoline, but instead your electric car just pulled energy from the road it traveled on at a rate that would not only be lower but would then be tacked on to your electric bill. The same is true for the future as it is now, the best we can do to keep our privacy is make sure laws protect them, and more appropriately require a WARRANT. No more of this warrantless bullshit.
I guess the "electric-car" angle comes because if you're charging an electric car overnight, you probably want to charge it when it's cheapest, or something to that effect. And I can see the merit of some sort of open standard here, so you can make a chip which plugs into whatever-and-the-power-line and make that sort of decision. But that's not quite what he's suggesting; he's suggesting turning that device into a wireless mesh node.
Now, I know a guy who worked at IBM and was really big into this sort of "pervasive computing" stuff. I think some of it sounds neat; I was at a park the other day where one of the water fountains was not working, and I thought, "some day, there will be a little cheap chip in there which will let them know that the fountain isn't working, and they might actually fix it within hours or days instead of months or years. And they will have one in every streetlight, too. Everything. Because it will be so ridiculously cheap. Oh, and they will use IPv6."
Someday. But today, that sort of equipment will probably cost you a couple hundred dollars per installation. And why you'd mount it on a car, I'm not sure: the car itself doesn't have too much data to transmit, and we have pretty good cellular coverage in most urban areas, and the car density is relatively limited in most other places. Why would anyone with a useful packet to send want to go through this mess of a moving mesh when you can do a quick point-to-point link is beyond me. His "in Iraq, everything is mesh" in fact highlights this - in Iraq, there is not all that much infrastructure, and you probably have a bunch of high-power tanks and jeeps and such with high-power long-range antennas on private frequencies. They can sling data a few dozen miles, and probably have to.
Oh. His "without spending a dollar more" is total BS, too. Of course it would cost money. A half-decent wireless mesh node these days will run you a couple hundred each. That's coming down all the time, sure, but the alternative is already fairly cheap.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
It is true. Phones are NEVER off, they are in sleep mode.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Those who actually bothered to read TFA, what exactly is the point of this? I understand Robin Chase loves feel-good social causes, and she is a good organizer, but no one ever accused her of being an engineer. Having read TFA, it sounds to me a bit like confused meandering of someone trying to figure out how to use some of the stimulus billions for yet another social pet cause, but without the clear definition of what that cause is.
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And why you'd mount it on a car, I'm not sure: the car itself doesn't have too much data to transmit
Some ideas:
And for some privacy nightmare:
Cars are not inherently inefficient.
And neither are SUV's.
The energy expenditure comes from moving mass, be it of cargo, passengers, or vehicle.
An SUV is a gas-guzzler when used for just a few folks, but it can't be beat if you have heavy and/or bulky cargo to carry. If you have a big family and go on camping trips frequently, an SUV is probably the best way to do transportation. Whether said family should be big enough or go on enough camping trips to make an SUV cost effective to begin with is another matter altogether.
Public transportation or even bicycles are a good thing. Only economics and personal greed stand in the way.
It's one kind of efficiency to reduce energy consumption for a given task. It is quite another to decide if that task should be performed in the first place.
The earth is capable of healing itself if pollution is generated no faster than it can be metabolized away.
It's every earthling's obligation to not harm the earth. However, it's only due to greedy human nature that "what's in it for me" ruins the economics of it. If everyone cared about the common good (cooperated) instead of themselves (defected), then the Game Theory of Life would benefit all.
Pollution is nothing more or less than Tragedy of the Commons.
What if a city like mine would buy 1000 bicycles and let those circulate among people? You could build a couple of strategically placed bike garages and just let people drop them of themselves.
Yes! Exactly. This has the potential to (ultimately) make automobie-related deaths a thing of the past.
Go one step further:
Basically have cooperative traffic "networks" where cars can be safely "parted" (for example) on a three lane road for an emergency vehicle, without anyone having to stop. Have a whole lane speed up (to relieve congestion) or slow down (when road conditions deteriorate).
That'd require that all cars have basically network-controlled cruise-control -- not technically difficult -- but is a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" kinda thing, though if it could be made 99.99% (or so) reliable, with safe failure modes, the possibility of a fully informed "swarm" of vehicles, automated with regard to speed, especially on crowded highways would be a godsend. Think: no more traffic jams. Ever.
Think about "speed limits" that are, while automatically enforced, twice the limits (in the fast lane) we have now, since safety can be assured by automatic vehicle spacing and collision avoidance. Drivers pick a lane that has a speed that they (and their car) are comfortable in.
As for privacy implications, yeah, that'd have to be worked out. How about any sustained erratic driving behavior, like swerving or inability to stay in-lane (without having already declared an emergency) and the network/car gives the driver a warning or two before simply giving you a buffer zone in traffic, and if the erratic driving continues, then call the cops.
Performance-based warnings in driving systems could make driving safe enough to allow us to have more reasonable legal BAC levels, to where you can have a couple glasses of wine with dinner at a restaurant and not worry about having your life turned upside down by a DUI charge -- and also flag drivers who are unsafe when sober.
Oh, and I'm off-topic now, but get the frigging truck trailers off the highways and use trains for long-haul freight, and box trucks for short haul/delivery.
How many miles are you willing and able to walk to and from work, every day, in all weather conditions, year-round? More to the point: How many HOURS are you willing and able to walk to and from work, every day, in all weather conditions, year-round?
Figure 80 paces/minute cadence (standard military marching pace), 6 steps to 5 yards (standard military marching pace) and you get 12,000 ft/hour, or about 2.3 mph. If you live 5 miles from work, that's over two hours EACH WAY. On a bicycle, that's less than 30 minutes each way. In a car, you're probably looking at 10-15 minutes each way, with a lot of it being traffic lights and parking time and walking from house to car and parking lot to "workstation" (desk, assembly line, McDonalds drive-thru window, ...).
Now: How much is your time worth?
Regarding the US: Mass transit is fine for many but certainly not all people living in urban areas, a lot fewer people who live in the suburbs, and almost nobody who lives in rural areas. The nearest grocery store to my house is 18 miles away. Mass transit would be an extremely inefficient method of transport out here.
If you build roads and no transit you get the US-style sprawl you describe. If you build transit and only minimal roads you get high-density transit-friendly development.
The transport infrastructure "drives" the style of city you get. Build it and they come.