iPhones and Public Records

Watching the row over the leaked iPhone prototype leaves me a little puzzled. Less about the details of the case--it's fairly easy to think of some chump "finding" a phone in a bar, heck, those phones are thief magnets. Most everyone I know who owns one (including myself), has had one stolen. I'm honestly surprised that there's never been a stolen prototype before! And why on earth would you put it in an existing iPhone case--wouldn't some really ugly case be a much better disguise? But I digress. It's the "trade secret" idea that is so foreign to me.

As a civil engineer, most of my work is very public. All projects, public and private, have to meet a set of minimum requirements for drainiage, pavement, zoning, structural, and so on. Those standards are published by cities and trade organizations. But more than that, the actual project construction plans become public records as soon as the project is completed and opened. All you need to do is call the city engineering department and ask for the "As-Builts" for a particular project, file a Freedom of Information Act request, pay a small fee, and they'll give you either a CD or physical copes of the plans. And if you say "Hi! I'm X from Y Engineering", they may not even force you to file a formal request. Incidentally, his is also why I've always found harassment of the photographers over "security" concerns to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard--why bother with crummy photos when you can get the actual engineering docs? There are of course exeptions to this--sensitive buildings will get their plans hidden and made confidental, but this is rare relative to the total number of private developments.

Many civil engineering firms are much more dependent on service. It's much more important to communicate with your client about the engineering process, the city submission process, and any relevant laws or regulations you have to follow. The paradigm is more like that of a law firm. You want to reuse as much work as you can--but you have to adapt it. You get the work done, obviously, but your client is really paying you to act as his or her guide. Every case and site is unique enough that "copying and pasting" typically won't work. And forget trade secrets--not only can your competitors look at your plans, they have to in order to build adjacent projects and have the utilities and storm water systems ect. interface properly. In this sense, I might guess that this promotes better quality than with heavily protected computer code, since mistakes can't just be corrected with a patch. Chewing gum and duct-taped solutions are open for the world to see.

If this is starting to sound a bit familiar, it should. It has some similarities to the open-source world--the one I'm thinking of now is Red Hat. It's reusable software, with a for-profit vendor that primarily sells customer service and some upkeep. Will true technical solutions become less novel and less common? And if so, will a more service based market develop?

Can Cars Drive Themselves?

Since "The Jetsons", it's been the dream of suburbanites that our loved and hated cars can drive themselves and save us the trouble. As it is now, driving is one of the most stressful and complicated activities we do on a daily basis. Those of you with any psychology background have heard of the 7 +/- 2, which is the approximate number of discrete things you can have going through your mind. Think of them as threads, if you prefer a computer science metaphor. As you drive, you must think about

1. Your car, and where it is
2. The road you are on
3. How to get to your destination
4. Road signs
5. The Other cars
6. Any hazards that may come your way
7. Radio/Cell Phone/iPod ect
   

And all of this as you are inside two tons of metal traveling faster than your senses were ever meant to comprehend. It's a wonder that there aren't MORE accidents! Wouldn't it be so much easier to let a computer do the driving?

But first, a word. Cars in general are not the best long term solution for transport. Today they consume huge quantities of non-renewable fossil fuels, and are the primary source of air pollution in most American cities. Renewable fuels and electricity would help with these, depending on their actual source, and assuming they can cover transfer losses. What I'm getting at is that just from a basic energy perspective, using two tons of metal to transport a 150 lb average person is just not efficient from an energy point of view, but I'm glossing over these issues today.

So as for the actual components of a potentially motorized car, it's not difficult for computers to drive in complex environments--the Mars landers, for instance, work mostly autonomously over very rough terrain. But no system has been developed yet that can work with active traffic. The predictive power simply isn't there yet, and I'm very sure no one will want to be the first. Still, I'm weary of Clarke's law--I'll say that I think that a self driving car in traffic very possible, but not likely to be practical for a long time.

What is more likely, and indeed is already happening, is that computers and sensors are being used to supplement weak spots in one's perception. Lexus cars, among several others, now have an option to parallel park themselves-see this YouTube link. Since the car "knows" exactly where its boundaries are relative to that of the other cars, this is fairly easy to automate. Other cars will now flash a small light in your rearview mirror's and beep at you if there is a car in your blind spot, or when you're backing out of a spot with poor visibility.