The Power of a Good Demo

While in Japan this last week I got the chance to look at a bunch of new technology currently in the research and development phase. Unfortunately I can't go into what innovations I think are exciting, due to non-disclosure agreements, but I can use examples from years ago to help illustrate the point I am trying to make.

There are some inventions that change the world yet can be difficult to understand without a compelling demo. Imagine being at Bell Labs in 1948 when William Shockley invented the bipolar junction transistor. At the time, it served as a replacement to vacuum tubes and some engineers saw it as an inferior replacement. Audiophiles or people who are looking for pure sound from their audio equipment still prefer tube amps to solid-state ones (those that use transistors). Yet look at how many inventions came out of something so small and simple as the transistor: calculators, mobile phones, computers, and pretty much every electronics device being sold today.

I think it took a lot of imagination for the early inventors to realized the importance of their discovery. I remember hearing about Google's acquisition of YouTube and laughed at the huge price they paid. At the time I didn't know how people would use this new online service. Now any time I go to work on a car, I check YouTube first to see if there are any helpful videos. I'm not alone as Thomas Watson, the president of IBM is claimed to have said, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." We all can fail to see the greatness of certain innovations.

Going back to my trip to Japan, I got to see some really new technology and one of the things that made the trip so interesting was all of the compelling demos. While an introduction to a particular invention is good, seeing how it can be used really helped me understand how groundbreaking it is. This helped me with some of the projects I am working on as I can see that I need to create some compelling demos so other can catch the same vision I see. Now I just hope that I can write about some of the things in the near future.

Best Inventions of 2018

One thing about being in Tokyo is my hotel room always has the latest copy of the Asian version of Time Magazine. I used to read it in my youth but stopped as an adult as I didn't see the need to pay for a subscription. When I do see a copy in my hotel, I will go through it and this time found a number of interesting articles. The one that made me stop browsing and focus on the entire article is the one on the 50 best inventions of 2018.

I think Time has a tough job trying to come up with the top inventions for any given year. What may seem groundbreaking to some is ordinary to others. Therefore it is not surprising that I disagree with some of their winners. For instance, they awarded a bicycling helmet with built-in headlights and turn signals. While that is a cool-sounding idea, it is actually a bad one. Bicycling helmets are disposable items that are not meant to be kept for more than a year or two, depending upon frequency of use. Embedding lights in the helmet double the cost. That means people are going to be reluctant to replace their helmet at proper intervals. Now if the helmet lights could be removed and put in a new helmet shell, that would be an innovative idea and deserving of an invention-of-the-year award.

While I disagree with some, there are a few inventions that I agree should be listed in this year's awards. I think my favorite is the roofing from 3M that fights smog pollution. This is probably important to me because of the recent fires in California reducing air quality to extremely unhealthy levels. I also know that I create a lot of pollution driving my car and flying all over the world. Doing something to right that wrong should be high on my priority list. When it comes time to put a new roof on my house, I will definitely look into pollution reducing shingles.

Going through Time's list of inventions for 2018 has been insightful. There are a lot of good ideas out there. Reading about them may spark new ideas. I know I came away with some thoughts on how to improve some of the things I use every day. You may too.

Inspiration From a Hobby

On Monday I met with our company lawyers to start the application process for another patent. This will be my second with my current company. I can't really go into the idea as it will take some time to get the application completed and it is best not to say anything about it until that point.

I can write about the inspiration for my idea though and where it came from. At the start of my career I took a class titled, "Thinking Outside the Box." There were a lot of people with many different careers and so it was kind of fun to find out what other people did and why they were there. During the course of the class we all talked about our hobbies. Our instructor mentioned that we might find solutions to our work problems from other sources, including our hobbies. For some reason, that idea stuck with me. I still can't figure out how to get good ideas from skiing, but the idea for my patent came from another hobby: ham radio.

I have been given a new project at work and started thinking about how to break up a really large task into smaller ones. In working with machine learning (ML), one needs a large training data set. So before you can really do anything with ML, you need to gather data. While thinking about how to get this information for my project I started thinking about the data gathering process and realized that something I do with ham radio could be used to help with my project. I immediately sat down with one of our patent agents who agreed my solution could be used to solve a number of problems and so he set up an appointment with our lawyers.

I used to think that the best way to get ahead with my career was to focus on computers and even make it my hobby. After 30 years in the computer industry, I can say that is a recipe for career burnout. Instead take the time to pick up a hobby or two. You never know when it will be the source for a brilliant idea.

Inventions in Japan

I am in Japan this week and it is probably the only time I ever read Time magazine as there is a copy in my hotel room. This week's cover story is about the 25 greatest inventions of 2017. I have glanced through the list and have to wonder how many of the devices will continue to be great in 5 years. I know that predicting what will be great is a bit difficult and nobody ever gets it right but that doesn't keep us from trying.

If you were to ask me my thoughts on the greatest inventions in the past half-century, personal computers would definitely make the list. There is one invention that has yet to really make its way from Japan back to the United States that I would like to highlight instead: the heated toilet seat. I don't know why I continue to forget about this modern marvel until I return to Japan each time, but I do. I constantly tell my wife that we need to redo the master bathroom so that it has a heated toilet seat but there is a lot of work that goes into it. It is not something you can just bolt on to your existing toilet. Why? Well it needs electricity to keep it warm and power outlets are not something you generally put next to water-filled objects that occasionally have the tendency to overflow.

In the middle of summer, I don't mind a cool toilet seat. It can be somewhat refreshing on a scorching-hot day. In the middle of winter a cold toilet seat can be quite a shock and downright uncomfortable. It may sound funny but a heated throne adds significantly to your personal comfort. In a world of uncomfortable situations, who doesn't need more personal comfort. I therefore nominate heated toilet seats to be one of the greatest inventions of that past 50 years and encourage you to give one a shot. You may be pleasantly surprised.