Who would have thought even a year and a half ago that we would be able to use a table in order to plan a project; or split a bill in the restaurant; or even share photos between devices; or plan a trip. Microsoft Surface is able to do this and much more.

Microsoft Surface

At the same time who would have imagined that we are this close to discovering teleportation?

According to LiveScience, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland have come pretty close to achieving Star Trek’s main way of transportation: teleportation. So far they achieved to transport the information from one atom to another across a distance of a meter.

The JQI team explains that teleportation works because of a remarkable quantum phenomenon called entanglement that only occurs on an atomic or subatomic scale.

The experiment that they conducted uses two identical ions (A and B). Ion A is afterwards irradiated; a process that can be explained as “writing in its memory the information that will be teleported”. Immediately after, both ions are “excited by a picosecond laser pulse” in order for each of them to emit a photon.

The photons are then captured by a lens and they will interact at a beamsplitter. When both detectors recorded a photon simultaneously, the ions are entangled. At that point, ion A is measured, revealing exactly what operation has to be performed on ion B to teleport ion A’s information (see illustration).

It is important to note that the information disappears from ion A when this one is being measured and appears on ion B. This is why the achievement is distinguished from any other kind of communication and is classified as teleportation.

You can find out more about this achievement in the original article from LiveScience: “Teleportation Milestone Achieved”

At this stage there are lots of software companies which provide Real Time Energy Monitoring Systems and there are a lot more which are planning to enter this market.

During the last months I’ve been researching software that allows a company to monitor their energy consumption and here is what I found:

• Most of the software provides real time monitoring and alert systems.
• In order for that to happen, the companies providing the software will install their own meters.
• They store historical data in a database which can be accessed at any time through their software.
• They send alarms every time the energy consumption rises over a certain value.

These sound like really good systems that can help any company save some money from monitoring their energy consumption. At the same time they are a step forward from where we were 10 years ago, but here are some questions that I think deserve a little bit of attention:

Why can’t these companies use the existing meters and monitoring systems from a plant? We live in a world where technology evolves really fast and companies shouldn’t have to change their meters/hardware every time new software is released on the market. Imagine changing your computer each time a new version of Windows is released.

What is the software doing with all the data that has gathered throughout the years?In today’s society holding data is not that important any more. The most important thing is what you do with that data. Having access to information doesn’t make you better or stronger, but how you use that information does.

And most importantly why haven’t we evolved in the last 2, 3 or 4 years?At this stage the functionality diagram of each company that provides this kind of systems should look like this:

I found this by mistake today and it put a smile on my face because it includes all the functionality that I would expect from an Energy Monitoring System and all the functionality I was talking about in the last few months.

It looks like there still is some hope left and finally a system was developed which will challenge the other companies to rethink their products and evolve.

In an article from The Irish Times about Tom Allen’s upcoming presentation at the Innovation in Complex Social Systems conference at UCD, the benefit of having functional areas where people can meet to exchange information is discussed. Perhaps tea time is a gateway to innovation?

I suppose it’s time to put The Organization and Architecture of Innovation on the reading list.

What follows is an exploration of the way in which we might structure ourselves to survive the new century beautifully. It considers what we can do to engineer structures for the world in which we are to live, not simply as steel and concrete, but structures for work, learning, social structures and structures for thinking. It takes as its central theme the notion that as technology opens more and more doors, there will be a gathering need for people with ideas to direct it toward the common good. Although this sounds pious, it could be incredibly fertile territory for broad-minded engineers and specialists alike, a maturing of our role on the planet.

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