I Got Nothin’

The last month has been crazy with the onset of lacrosse season and the perpetual grading of papers, so I leave you with a bit of late night TV to enjoy.

As well as the reverb:

~Forth

Ideas I’ve Talked to Others About

Has anyone ever seen Minority Report?  It’s okay to admit.  While not a flawless movie it is interesting.  In the movie there is something that has been done in many of other near future movies, for instance Demolition Man.  Automated Driving.  I’m going to throw into today’s post two present day articles about transportation.  One from a recent Sen. Obama speech and the other from Engadget.  I’ll start with the Engadget since I already mentioned automated driving.
The article itself doesn’t point out the uses beyond the pedestrian traffic warnings but I immediately thought of a conversation I had with a friend when we were in college.  I had mentioned how my family was talking about how nice automated driving would be but we couldn’t figure out how the task could be accomplished without an expensive infrastructure upgrade.  This friend jumped in rather quickly and said “Radio transmitters, simple.”  He explained that that car could have a transmitter and receiver that would be calling out its position to to tags along the road and in other cars.  The car would be sending and recieving information and allowing the onboard computer to evaluate and moderate the driving.  It was really the first time I’d heard a simple workable solution.  This led me to think of loop holes that I in turn filled with solutions from movies like Minority Report.  One thought I had was what would happen when I driver got off the highway?  Well if you watch Minority Report the car isn’t always computer controlled.  If you were on a street without it, you’d just have to take control.
Flash forward to this article on Engadget.  The EU has set aside a section of frequency for mobile communication.  There is a GPS system right now called the Dash that reports to the user direction and traffic but also reports back to the server the conditions that particular car is experiencing. In this way others with the Dash service are receiving real user information.  The more of these in use the better the information will inevitably be.  This section of the spectrum could thus be implemented for many car technologies.
Now the comments on the article from readers are interesting as well.  These bring up many of the ideas that I had been thinking about.  How this will open up other ways of traffic control.  Imagine being shown potential light changes a block away?  No more need to rush if you know that it is impossible for you to make that next light.  William, a commenter, also pointed out that there is a track in California that is used for car studies like this.  If you’re thinking “great this is the end of speeding,” think again.  At this track they have cars traveling one foot apart at 80 mph.  This revolutionary way of driving would transform the idea of public transportation.  Many people dislike trains and planes because they don’t want to rent when they get to their destination.  In America, we like our independence.  If this were implementable the problem would be solved and lets face it beyond the actual technical hurdles there are many problems to surmount.
Unfortunately, I don’t see it as implementable on a wide scale in a country such as ours.  It would require infrastructure spending that we’re unwilling or unable to part with.  It would require taxes the likes of which this country is uncomfortable with.  It will take a dozen bridge collapses and the failure of the highway system nationwide to get America to spend and that would be understandably too late.  Further, we would have a difficult time implementing this on a small scale on current highways.  It would require all participants to have the enabled cars and it would also have to be isolated from other traffic to keep other cars from interfering.  No, I’m afraid, I won’t be seeing this sort of innovation stateside for many many years, if at all.
Case in point: high speed trains. It takes a little over an hour – give or take – from Milwaukee to Chicago.  An hour from Milwaukee to Madison.  1.5 to Rockford.  Yesterday, I threw out a Twitter post – www.twitter.com/forthandback – about a mention of high speed rail by Sen. Obama in an article from ABCNews.com.  His mentioning of it took me back to a month ago when I decided that I’d rather drive into the northern suburbs of Chicago than catch the train.  ForthandBack was meeting my sister and parents who have cars, who could have very easily picked me up Back and I up.  The problem is the ride would have taken the same amount of time and caused a hassle.  On the way out of Ravinia Park I went off on how it was past time this country had something that actually cut travel time.  Americans won’t give up the freedoms that driving provides without substantial returns.  Imagine a high speed train from San Diego to LA to San Francisco.  Three major Californian population centers that could be connected by trains that could transport travelers easier and faster than car or plane.  The same goes from my Milwaukee thought.  If the rail took a mere twenty minute ride to Chicago that day I opted to drive, I’d have been on it.
The further beauty of trains is that, unlike cars, when cleaner energy becomes available more centralized transportation can change energy supplies at a faster rate.  If they are electric trains -I’m not certain how high speed rail works though – then the electrical plant can be switched from coal to wind to I don’t know what.  Notice, I skipped Nuclear since the biggest nuclear plants in the country use uranium that is enriched from the some of the biggest coal burning plants.  The dirty underbelly of Nuclear power is a topic for another time.
But who am I kidding.  I might be a supporter of Sen. Obama but I think this was an off-handed reference to something that would be nice but I don’t think it will be in his power to provide it even if he is around for eight years.

~Forth