Keep it Sweet and Simple

3D printers present a whole new range of opportunities for users and telecommunications companies. They could also completely shape the landscape of factories and shops as we know them today.

They look like basic printers (a bit bigger) and they can produce a 3D object from a digital model of the object by laying down layers after layers of a special material until complete. You can use different materials, ranging from polymers, titanium, or even gold powder.

What could you print? I can think of things such as industrial components (pipes, parts for cars), clothes (e.g. shoes), furniture, jewelry, and why not, chip designs for electronics, and food!! (see this article for a printer that produces sugar objects)

For now they are mostly used to build models for architects and fashion designers, and they are a bit slow, but you can imagine how the technology could improve over the years to come.

I first saw one working last year at the Renacer conference and since then I have been thinking about their possible implications.

How many times you have waited for a product that is out of stock? What if you could just download a detailed digital design of the product and have it printed at home?

At that point, a lot of factories and shops could well disappear! Everything would be intellectual property and data flowing around. We would just spend time thinking and designing, not so much doing hand labor. Finally, human kind would be freed to do what they can do best, thinking. That would be a revolution!

And for Telcos and networking companies that would be a great opportunity too. Imagine how many terabytes of data would need to be shipped from one corner of the world to another to describe with the finest level of detail a given product so that the printer could build it. Huge volumes of data would be flowing from designers directly to user’s homes, and that would need to happen in a timely manner. We would be talking about shipping bits, not physical goods anymore, and Telcos would then become the FedEx of the Internet! Who said that networking was a dead field? J

For more info you can also see this Economist article.

Has the iphone really been hacked or just a “particular software” version of the software has been compromised? For the latest versions of the software you are basically temporarily (or permanently) stuck. If you want a more permanent solution, you need to go into painful hardware-based solutions.

The reason I am saying this is because a friend of mine recently bought an iphone in the US hoping to use it in Europe with some unlocking software and give it as a Xmas present. However, the iphone is still sitting in the box hoping that somebody breaks the new bootloader (see this blog for some efforts related to this http://11246unlock.com/index.asp).

Even if somebody manages to unlock the latest software (which surely will happen eventually), the rate at which iphone software versions are being hacked is slowing down and Apple could easily keep turning the screw releasing new functionalities more often and making life harder and harder. And things could get worse if Apple decides to use some sort of revocation system, e.g. similar to those used in many DRM systems. With DRM, content owners or distributors can revoke access to all previous hacked DRM software versions forcing you to keep your deviced updated.

So I guess, after too much hassle, hackers having proved their point will just give up, and eventually consumers will do to.

It is a while I wanted to talk about Japanese food. I think it exemplifies very well for the title of this blog — “keep it sweet and simple”. And I am not just talking about sushi, but the large variety of small, delicately cooked dishes, which are put together in little plates and beautifully decorated bawls.

When presented with the food, you feel a bit like an orchestra director, with lots of different instruments to play with, or rather, different foods to try. You can combine different textures, sweeter or spicier tastes, in whatever order you fancy, and then whenever you want, you come back to the sticky rice, or the delicious soup, which set the beat and average out your pallet for the next food composition. And the fascinating thing is that in each round you can try something different.

This is very different to traditional European food, where courses come one after the other and there is very little degree of flexibility on how and in which order you eat things. Ah… and a very important thing: regardless of how much you eat, it always sits very well with you, making you enjoy it for hours to come– what good is it excellent food if it leaves you with a heavy and painful evening…?

Ok… new year and new twist to this blog. I have decided that from time to time, I will expand the topics and briefly talk about other things such as politics, food, and other interesting random things that I bump into (i.e. not just research).

So here is the first one: since I moved back to Spain I have noticed how much effort we spend discussing about issues such as terrorism or national identity, which although extremely important, are likely diverting a lot of the focus and energy needed to tackle some other main challenges that Spain faces over the coming years.

I have recently read two articles, which I believe crystallize very well some of these problems (e.g. education, labor market, culture). In general, a lot of similar things could be said for most of the southern EU countries, not just Spain.

The second transition (the Economist, 2008):
On the challenges that Spain faces over the long run and how to avoid a “gentle decline”.
[Article]

Locals vs Cosmopolitans (Xavier Sala i Martin, La Vanguardia, 2007):
Extremely well written article on how the world can be viewed both from a local or a global point of view, and the challenges that a country/region faces when globalization hits in and you still think locally.
[Spanish Article]
[Google Translated]