My Curious Life

Reading about the healthy and growing European rail system the other day made me get a bit misty-eyed and sentimental. I have many fond memories of the convenience of rail travel throughout Europe from my days living in Vienna, Austria. Since then, the Channel Tunnel has opened Paris to London travel, even bringing with it a renaissance for some previously deteriorating train stations.

Jump over the pond to the U.S. and you have essentially one rail option, Amtrak: slow routes that only cover a few major areas of the U.S., worn out rails and trains, and customer service that’s none-too-stellar. Yeah, that’s enticing. (Don’t even get me started about local mass transit … that’s something else lacking in the U.S., especially the West Coast.)

In fact, many of the Amtrak routes are at least partially served by bus and not truly rail at all. Amtrak’s only true recent success has been in the Northeast, where population density has made it more financially advantageous to make frequent rail trips, even quasi-high-speed rail reaching speeds in some sections up to 134mph (over about 18 miles of track).

Even given Amtrak’s rocky history and their current financial stats, I think that a few truly high-speed regional rail lines built with the financial cooperation of the cities, counties and states they would serve might turn around the aging giant and bring to the U.S. some of the class and convenience of the European railroad. Take into account soaring gas prices, frustrations with current airline service, and extensive security measures and the number of reasons to revisit rail as an option start making sense.

Even U.S. juggernaut GE could be called in to develop a new, more eco-friendly high speed locomotive based upon their Evolution^TM series engines. Or we could simply adopt Bombardier’sthe ICE train, as Germany and the Netherlands have, built by Siemens AG and Bombardier. Or settle for the not-quite-as-fast JetTrain.

Alstom, maker of Europe’s successful TGV train, already has a very high speed train that has set a speed record of 574.8 kph ( ~ 357 mph ). Getting reliable high-speed service up around 180 mph should be feasible and attainable.

Amtrak takes over 40 hours to travel from Vancouver, BC to San Francisco, the first 4 hours on a bus. What would happen to travel along the U.S. West Coast if high speed rail served the region? You could ride in an incredibly comfortable rail car for the same (or less) time and money as taking a flight. Would security have to be as tight? Would we be able to do high-speed cargo as well? Perhaps maximize the necessary infrastructure investments by taking fresh local goods and services from one region to another faster and more efficiently than by truck or conventional rail?

Admittedly, nationwide high speed rail might be a fantasy at this point, but isn’t a high-speed regional system possible?

It’s approximately 1400 miles from Vancouver, BC to San Diego, CA. The trip by a conventional airline flight averages about 5.5 hours — 1 hour in flight from Vancouver, BC to Seattle, WA, then a 1.5 hour layover and another 3 hour flight to San Diego, CA. This doesn’t include the additional time necessary to check-in at the airport and go through security or pick up your bags in luggage claim.

What if we had a high-speed rail service that traveled the West Coast and stopped in these cities:

• Vancouver, BC
• Seattle
• Olympia
• Portland
• Salem
• Eugene
• Sacramento
• San Jose
• Los Angeles
• San Diego

A high-speed rail line operating at about 200 mph and making 20 minute layovers in each metro area, could make the entire trip from Vancouver, BC to San Diego, CA in just over 10 hours (caveat: heavily averaged math). That’s about 1/4 of the time it takes now. That may still seem like a long time, but rail can offer things that air travel can’t, like dining cars, sleeper cars and no limitations on electronic devices (bring those laptops and iPhones). I know I’d gladly spend the night on a train in comfort on my way to California rather than waste an extra day at the airport on either end of my trips. Or gain the ability to actually get things done during the course of my trip, as well as eat a decent meal.

For now, I’ll just have to wait and dream. Amtrak’s FY2008 request makes it pretty clear that they are still trying to revitalize their fleet and bring the overall system into “a state of good repair” at this point, and they make no mention of the West Coast at all. Maybe, just maybe, their success in the Northeast can translate into something good for us in the West. And if you start looking for a place to start new experimental service, Mr. Kummant, we’d be happy to oblige.

About a month ago I got on my soapbox and made some suggestions about how Detroit needs to turn itself inside out and start anew.

Recently, though, I was reviewing concept designs and auto show prototypes from some of the big three U.S. auto makers (Chrysler, Ford and GM) and I’m feeling even more inclined to think that a newcomer to the industry is more likely to turn things around than an entrenched giant.

A couple of years ago Freeman Thomas, designer of the Audi TT and New Beetle, joined the ranks of Ford and there were several predictions that his design prowess could bring the company back from the brink. I had hopes that Ford would pull a miracle out of its hat with the hiring of Thomas, but alas, no. Instead, it seems to be pushing it’s more innovative designs into Europe and neglecting its U.S. audience and the growing need for smaller, more versatile and economical vehicles in the States. Ford’s U.S. auto designs are relatively stagnant, while Europe gets the Kuga and Mondeo and we in the U.S. get what? The Edge? The Flex?

Not surprisingly, Chrysler may be the one to actually make things happen for the U.S. auto market. It sounds like the privatization of Chrysler is bringing with it a new way of doing things. At least there are some tough decisions being made quickly at Chrysler, like paring down its lineup to reduce overlap, and a returning commitment to quality, even when this means taking an initial financial hit to do so. A glance at their current auto show vehicles still brings caution — there isn’t a lot of inspiring new design among the vehicles they’ve displayed so far. The Firepower is like a larger version of the Crossfire. The Imperial looks like a modernized K-car. The Nassau shows some promise as a smaller mid-size sedan, but takes a lot of design cues from existing Honda or Toyota models. Without something more exciting, Chrysler is doomed to repeat its recent past even with all its cost-cutting.

Lastly we come to poor, poor GM, whose almost complete and total dependence upon truck and SUV sales is contrasted by its relatively successful Flex Fuel vehicles. There seems to be an utter lack of anything inspiring coming from the GM fold, though. It’s all blocky and sharp edges.

With all this market turmoil, dissatisfaction with fuel economy, style and quality, I’m still anxious to see if some young upstart company will swoop in and come up with something inspired and take the U.S. market by storm. Now seems like the perfect time to do so. Otherwise, we might as well just ship our auto manufacturing to Asia with the rest of our goods. [Just watch out for a Chinese recall on carcinogenic parts.]

If you’re one of my kids, you’ve heard this phrase a million times: “Are you going to react or respond?”

While the question is a useful way of instructing an older child on decision-making and self-control, it’s also applicable to the world of business, as Clayton Christensen and Scott D. Anthony note in an article Forbes ran in early August.

Christensen and Anthony focus specifically on Sony’s crisis with the Playstation 3 and its lackluster sales as compared with Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s XBox 360. Pushing the technology envelope just for the sake of staying ahead seems to be more of a knee-jerk reaction to the ever escalating war in the game console space, while Nintendo’s Wii is more of a response, opting out of the war and venturing in an altogether different direction. Nintendo made a conscious decision to take this path.

The question now is what Sony will do next … react or respond? The battle now has become a duel with Microsoft, and so far Sony has taken some serious hits. It would be interesting to see if Sony can find new ways to make the PS3 the centerpiece of a home entertainment system and serve multiple needs, thereby justifying its bigger-than-average price tag. Or perhaps Sony can be creative and find ways to let PS3 owners interact directly with Xbox360 owners via some sort of online network? Or build-out online services that meet the needs of various members of a family, again trying to make the PS3 a central home device?

Here’s hoping that Sony takes some time to reflect on what it’s learned and makes a conscious decision to respond.

It’s always great to find a new blog that just resonates with you … as Bill DeRouchey’s History of the Button did for me today. He’s making it onto my regular reading list.

I especially enjoyed this post of his … a collection of computer objects (like keys) that have been transplanted or translated into other funny and entertaining objects of day-to-day life. In fact, I may just have to buy the Delete eraser for myself.

Brought back fond memories of receiving these Panic buttons:

They bring a smile to my face every time …

Is it just me, or has AT&T (nee Cingular) become a sloth when it comes to data transfers for those of us without an iPhone?

I admit it, I’d love to have an iPhone in lieu of my Motorola SLVR, but I’m just not sure I’m willing to pay that much money for a phone on a second-rate data network (EDGE 2.5g). If I’m going to fork out the money, it better darn well be top-of-the-line in all ways.

In all honesty, the SLVR has been a trusty, reliable phone for me for some time now. As a father of six (2 bio, 4 adopted — more on that in another post) I need a relatively small, indestructable device to service my needs, and I’m out of pockets to carry around an additional digital camera, despite my desire to do so, so a dual-purpose phone/camera combo is a must. The SLVR does just fine in both of those areas … the iPhone, well, I’m not so sure about the “indestructable” part.

The problem of late is that since the iPhone intro, any data I want to transfer, whether it be an email or the sending of a photo, has been terribly, horribly slow. I can now send an email from my phone and wait for hours (yes, hours) before it arrives in the recipient’s inbox. Prior to the iPhone release, this would take a handful of minutes at most, which is reasonable.

What I’m wondering is if this is a result of the hundreds of thousands of new iPhone users overwhelming AT&T’s infrastructure with data packets, or if those of us not on EDGE (hmm, pun oh-so-ironic) have been dropped to second-class citizens on the network in order to squeak as much bandwidth as possible to provide a better first impression to new iPhone customers?

A number of weeks ago, Wired invited its readers to submit a photo for one of 5,000 individualized covers to be printed for the July 2007 issue of the magazine. Dumb luck had it that my submission got picked to be one of the 5,000.

After the initial glee and gloating (Glenn, na-na-na-na-na!), I had forgotten about the whole thing until the magazine arrived in Monday’s mail, with the photo of my wife and I on the cover.

Wired’s tie-in for all of this is the hyperlocal, totally personal geoweb. It’s an interesting read that does pose some complicated questions … questions that are already on the table as more devices become GPS-equipped, trackable and interactive. Just look at the security issues surrounding the new U.S. passports with RFID chips and you get a glimpse of how this new global geo-presence can be both a blessing and a curse. Pair it with something like OpenID, and, well, things get exponentially more interesting … sure, I can be found anywhere, but which part or parts of my identity do I disclose and to whom?

In all honesty, I’m more optimistic about the potential of these technologies than pessimistic … though I’m sure there will be bumps in the road. I think we’ll see some privacy issues come flying to the fore as we as a society become more aware of our movements, but it seems that the new generation is more willing to make their lives an open book and will simply push through the changes necessary to keep reaping the benefits of being hyperlocal.

Came across ComputerWorld’s Top 10 Dead (or Dying) Computer Skills list the other day and was reminded of how far things have come in the technology industry in just the past twenty-some years. My kids take the internet for granted, and can’t imagine life without an MP3 player (or at least an “old” CD player) that will let you skip to the song you want.

It was like a trip down memory lane to look at some of the things on ComputerWorld’s list and see a number of technologies that I either dabbled in or outright immersed myself in (can you say ColdFusion and Netware?).

Even now, I have a hard time remembering life before the web … the days when getting directions to somewhere was an art form, finding a phone number required using the phone book, and operator assistance actually involved a living person.

So I wonder where the next 20 years will take us? The next 10? What technologies of today will show up on the top 10 dying list in 2017?

Regardless of the answers, I honestly can’t wait to find out. There’s a good reason why this blog uses “curious” as part of its name.

A good friend (thanks, Glenn!) passed on a link to Results Through Integrity to me today, and the title of Douglas Ross’ blog caught my attention.

It would be an interesting exercise to ask developers and producers of technology tools to identify the ways in which their products demonstrate integrity. I’d bet that most would instantly jump to the looser definition of integrity as “integrated” or “complete”, rather than as a consistently applied set of principles. Good visual or graphic design integrity means that the presentation is consistent. Good technical integrity means that widgets and data are cleanly shared and/or connected and do not generate errors. Even with both of these in place, experiential integrity may not be present.

Experiential integrity should be a (if not “the”) key goal of any technology project, since a product or service that has this integrity will represent itself truly and accurately, allowing a consumer of the product or service full understanding of its intentions before committing to use it. Wikipedia links integrity with responsibility, citing that “implementation spawning from principles is designed with a specific outcome in mind.” This implies a willful and intentional design of desired outcomes — the experience. If these outcomes are clear throughout the product or service, it demonstrates its integrity. This integrity builds trust, because the consumer knows what to expect from the product or service.

Demonstrating this integrity by no means prevents failures from occurring, nor does it mean that a product or service will be well liked or respected. It does, however, mean that when failures do occur, the product or service should “fail” with a specific outcome in mind. It also means that even products that are not intended to be “pleasurable” to use can have experiential integrity — they provide clear and intentional outcomes as designed.

So the challenge seems to be, above and beyond developing our own personal integrity, building tools and technology that have integrity, too.

Leisa Reichelt poses the question in a recent post about whether there will be a decline in anthropomorphism with the rise in social software. Her question sparked a rousing discussion and got me thinking about how I’d argue that the opposite is likely going to be true as our tools and interfaces become more sophisticated.

It seems that when our tools or devices are operating well, performing their tasks in ways that we expect them to, we hardly notice that they are present, in which case they are quite enabling. When they fail us, though, we are quick to invent reasons for their misbehavior, giving our devices human traits or characteristics. We also tend to give them a personality based upon our positive interactions, too … pleasant surprises or reliable behavior can also endear them to us.

As our technology improves, though, I believe we’re only more likely to instinctually or programmatically give our devices human characteristics. While tactile interfaces, like touch and keypress, and visual interfaces, like folders and animations, are sometimes easy to anthropomorphize, voice interactions almost require more human-like interactions to be taken seriously.

Think of voice activated systems for “climbing” a phone tree. Initial reactions to these systems in the 80s and 90s were skeptical, with the text-to-speech reading of information limited to small interactions due to the halting and jerky speech pattern most systems produced. Without adequate human-sounding output, this type of interaction was often featured as a frightening thing. Shall we play a game?

As text-to-speech and speech-to-text software has improved, more and more systems are featuring near-human level inflection and ever better speech recognition (though there is still much room for improvement in the latter). Ironically enough, many of these improved systems use bits of recorded human speech in order to produce a more life-like effect.

Humanoid animations, coupled with this improved text-to-speech are appearing as news anchors, and as our homes become centers of more intelligence, it’s not too farfetched to imagine your home having a name and a voice, interacting with you in various ways … sharing the weather report, reading news headlines, giving an overview of your calls and updating you on your schedule.

Rather than decline, I think we’ll see the anthropomorphism of technology expand as we begin to expect more and more interactivity and assistance from our devices. Until then, though, if your tech wants to play a game, make sure it’s solitaire.

Last fall I did a series of personal studies on case designs, the convergence of media and computing, and had the grandiose idea of submitting my Home Media Hub System Sketch to a couple of competitions which have since come and gone.

And to add insult to injury, Sony introduced a system in January similar to the one I sketched just a few months before. Apple, of course, has the Mac Mini, but I don’t want a system that’s so limited and hobbled at the heart of my living room. I guess Sony’s TP1 is at least validation that I was barking up the right tree.

The thing I’m more interested in, though, is extensibility of the base system without having to have an oversize case or even open the case for that matter. My sketch proposes a connector on the top and bottom of the unit that allows for pass-thru power and data, allowing the components to be stacked two or three high. This would just be one possible solution.

In a further attempt to push this concept, I posted on Dell’s fabulous IdeaStorm site, a place where anyone interested can initiate a conversation with Dell and its many customers/users/fans. We’ll see what happens … if just one company starts innovating in the case design space other than Apple, I’ll be happy to see it.