OurGlass: The Update

The OurGlass blog began on April 3, 2010, and my writing process began shortly thereafter. Statistically, here is where I stand with this novel, and my Independent Professional Project.

As far as word count goes, I’ve reached a modest count of 43,000 words. On my word processor screen this translates to 83 pages. Wow! (you might say) Well, let’s just say I feel I’m falling a little bit short. I’m nearing crunch time for my personal goal to reach 140 pages by the end of October. With four weeks to go, it’s not Mission: Impossible, but it’s pretty darn close.

It’s going to take a considerable amount of energy to find the required time in the face of the rest of my course-load. But that’s what this program is all about; reaching your goal, and meeting your deadline. My IPP advisor, Chris Petty, is relatively happy with my draft so far, so that’s a plus in my corner. And, once this book is complete, in the least it will be a portfolio piece.What, no New York Times Bestseller List?  One must be realistic…:)

As a tie-in to my project, tomorrow at 10 a.m. I will be giving an oral presentation about my book, OurGlass. The exercise is meant to prepare students to speak publicly about something they know about, hence, our year-long IPP projects. Each student has been asked to prepare a speech about what his or her project is about, the reasons it was chosen, the challenges encountered, and a progress update. I’m not terrified about speaking in front of a room of people, but it certainly is a humbling experience. Not many people strive to be the only voice in the room, except CEO’s or politicians, neither of which I aspire to be. Our “performances” are recorded so we can see where we might need improvement. That’s going to be sommmmme awkward viewing. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll learn from it and better myself in the process for the next time around.

Wish me luck.

p.s. next OurGlass excerpt in one week!

Kiri Amazing

Halliday placed his hand atop Silas’ head and guided him to his side as he walked back to the car. He had been listening to the radio chatter on the transmitter inside his ear. There was still no trace of the submersible. He buckled Silas into his seat and they sped off, bits of gravel flinging from the tires, leaving only a cloud of dust behind them as the car met the asphalt.

The world outside began to blur as the trees and buildings rushed by. Halliday was silent as he concentrated on keeping the car on the road as it accelerated. The only words that had come from his mouth were to ask if Silas was okay. Silas wanted to ask what had gone wrong, but he had seen how upset his father had been at the park, so he kept silent. Halliday never said where they were going. Whatever the destination, they were wasting no time in getting there.

“Silas, do you you remember the boat you described to me?” Halliday asked, as he weaved the car from lane to lane, “Would you recognize it if you saw it again?”

“For sure,” Silas answered, “there’s no other like it.”

Hundreds of mariners ventured into Halifax harbour each day. There were days when the water traffic was so high, any vessel that could withstand the constant assault of the open ocean were obliged to remain outside the harbour. They came from all over the world; tourists, adventure seekers, container ships. It was time for Halliday to move among them, to take matters into his own hands. The hunt was on.

I can’t help but notice a certain theme that I seem to step back to in this blog; that being environmental sustainability. It’s an essential topic that will only build in interest as Earth does its best to support all the species upon it.

One of the biggest issues facing our environment is excess CO2 in our atmosphere. While many ideas out there exist on how best to deal with this overabundance of gas, I like it best when an idea comes to light that’s practically “shovel ready.”

Enter ECO2, a company created to deliver large scale sustainable forests in order to help preserve the old growth forests that remain. Ahem, of course they expect to profit from it as well. Its forestry projects are operated under the Global Forestry Plan, an initiative that puts the kiri tree at center stage.

The kiri is a hardwood tree that can capture carbon in excess of five times that of most other trees. After the first season of growth, its leaves can measure a metre in diameter and absorb up to ten times the CO2 as other trees. After 7 years, the tree can reach a height of more than 65 feet. Once harvested, the kiri can start its growing process all over again from the stump left behind. In comparison, trees such as oak or fir (popular in the building industry), can take up to eight decades to reach maturity. With numbers like these, the kiri is poised to be a major player in the carbon sequestration market.

While re-planting trees in the wilds of British Columbia will always be a noble act, the pines that are replaced can take decades to reach maturity. If three kiri trees can grow in the space of time it takes to grow one pine (and remove a small cloud of CO2 in the process), this project needs to be considered in as many parts of the world that have the most basic growing conditions.

Observer and the Deflection of Light

Fewer than one-hundred people on Earth knew of the Observer’s existence.  In his absence, Victor Booth had trusted Kent with the access code to the satellite. Observer was a breakthrough in science. Soaring in a low-earth orbit, pulse technology emitted into light particles increased the effect of gravity within the constrained beam. By adjusting the pulse frequency, the lens curved to see horizontally. Light would bend as Einstein had predicted.

It had taken Kent twelve minutes to find Khai Mohamed’s boat, The Eye of Mediterranea. Its name emblazoned onto the stern, the ocean marvel was returning from the open ocean. As the boat floated on the screen before his eyes, he attached a digital marker to the vessel on the translucent screen. The marker guaranteed it couldn’t disappear.

Now, as he rounded the bend and drove onto the dock, Kent’s nerves made him stiffen. The ship’s black hull mirrored the daylight, its twin-column dual mast stretched fifteen metres into the air. The vessel looked like a sabre afloat on the water. Kent’s vehicle rolled to a stop and he stepped out. As he walked closer, the ship’s name came into view, The Eye of Mediterranea. No one was on deck. He took a deep breath as he walked toward the platform that linked her to the dock. He considered again what he was about to do. It was no less than treason. Before his first step touched the platform, a man appeared, but it wasn’t Khai.

The best thing about science is that it is always moving forward. It may encounter speed-bumps as politics occasionally become involved, but in the very least it progresses in a five steps forward, one step back fashion. In writing a science fantasy novel one can allow himself certain liberties, but shouldn’t stray too far off the mark.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity was one of the greatest breakthroughs in scientific understanding. I won’t claim to understand much of Einstein’s theories beyond E=MC2, but I do my best to allow my imagination to fill in the blanks.

What I’ve proposed for this scene is straight out of Einstein’s theory that light could bend under certain gravitational conditions (light deflection and gravitational time delay) Hence, the satellite camera I’ve described sees at a horizontal attitude in real-time. Would it work? In OurGlass, it does, and it’s both terrifying and exciting in the same breath.

The beauty of science fiction.

The Future of Cellphones

As he spoke to Halliday, he drove the stolen car towards the bridge. Khai had timed the drive perfectly, keeping his visor down as he approached the toll booth, aware of the closed circuit cameras at both ends of the bridge. He was at the bridge’s center when he ended the call, exactly where he wanted to be. Khai pressed a button on the steering arm of the car, slid his side window down, and flipped the phone out the window like a credit card. It sailed over the railing into the deep channel below and slowly sank to the bottom. He was three kilometres from the bridge when the police cruisers arrived, sealing the traffic at both ends.

In an earlier post, To Ping, or Not to Ping, I wrote about technological development in GPS tracking of cell phones. A more appropriate question would be what might these devices look like in 2050. To say the least, phone technology from 40 years ago has changed dramatically. Back then, phones were only expected to connect a single person to person call. Today’s smart phones have web browsers, email, texting, camera and video, games, music, voice recording, and the list goes on. Our current level of connectedness would astound anyone 40 years ago. It will be interesting to see if this continues to rise, or if users will start to rebel against it and try to seek a little more privacy. As it sits even now, it could be a difficult slide backward.

A particular challenge to writing OurGlass is to include devices and settings that will hopefully put the reader into a near future frame of mind. When the subject of the future comes up, I think there’s a tendency to let our imaginations run wild with design. I’m the first to admit these settings are interesting to look at, but I don’t think many are practical. As humans continue to grow as a species, I think our challenge above all will be population management. With more people on the planet and limited space to occupy, the time will come when real world solutions will outweigh the need for gadgetry and (dare I say it) artistic invention.

Lightning Enlightening

“His name is Mohamed Aftar,” Kent said, a lump rising in his throat, “He’s an artifact dealer from Alexandria.”

“How did you find him?” Halliday answered.

“His name turned up in the past few days,” Kent said, burying his lie deeper, “You’ve been back for over a week now. He’s connected to someone you visited before you left Morocco.”

Halliday rose from his chair and went to the window, a twinge of failure running through him. The wind was howling against the window inches from his face, rain spattering against the glass. A flash of lightning exploded in the sky and Halliday’s mind flashed back to Tangier.

Lightning is the purest form of energy man has ever encountered. The bolts of electricity it produces shoot across the sky in wicked fashion, seemingly unable to be harnessed outside of science fiction. This may hold true for now, but there are scientists who theorize there is a way to capture one aspect of this wild, untapped resource.

The humid regions upon Earth are consistent with occurrences of lightning strikes. While it would be too unpredictable and dangerous to capture a bolt of lightning, there are changes that occur up in the clouds during a storm that do produce electricity. Scientists have discovered that water droplets suspended in the air have the capacity to pick up an electrical charge. In order to capture the stored energy in each droplet before it hits the ground, “hygroelectric panels” attached to the rooftops of homes could collect the energy and store it for later use. In areas like Singapore where it experiences the highest level of lightning activity in the world, there could be a burgeoning business in the making.

As always, no single solution will get civilization off of its need to power our daily lives with fossil fuels. By employing different methods that suit a particular region the most, we will be off on a pretty good start.

The Impair of Solar Flares

Halliday sat silent, his face white with anger.

“I’m sorry, John. After that the satellite signal fails for six minutes,” Palmer explained sadly, fraught by bearing the unfortunate news, “The entire eastern seaboard has been experiencing extreme levels of solar flare activity.”

His mind rewound the images he had seen. Munro being grabbed violently from behind, cast into the van like baggage. Silas falling to the ground out of reach of his abductor. The silver van running down a passer-by as it tried to escape. These men weren’t professionals. They reacted like scared animals when cornered. Fight or flight. They could be capable of anything.

Munro’s father reacts to the digital images recorded by satellite of his daughter, Munro, being abducted. Just after the escape vehicles are switched, the satellite signal fails and any hope of tracking the destination of the second vehicle is gone. As OurGlass is set in the year 2052, the Earth is now experiencing extreme levels of this activity and it’s causing higher frequencies of satellite interference.

Created from sun spots that follow an 11 year cycle, a solar flare is the result of an explosion of energy and magnetic force hurled out from our sun. Under certain conditions, the Earth is bombarded by X-rays, gamma rays, and magnetic disturbance keeping our ionosphere in a constant state of defense. While solar flares are not dangerous to humans as of yet (our ionosphere does its best to deflect these harmful rays), they are capable of disrupting communications equipment high above Earth. Some believe orbiting satellites are even having their paths disrupted by these powerful occurrences.

There is on-going research into the long-term effects solar flares inflict upon Earth and its many life forms, but more data is required to draw any certain conclusions. As the Sun ages alongside the entire solar system, it’s a guarantee we will witness more changes in its behaviour that could negatively affect life on Earth in the centuries ahead.

To Ping, or Not To Ping

“Once I have the Sphere in my hands, your daughter will be returned,” Khai tells Munro’s father, John Halliday, stating his sole demand. Halliday is baffled by the request and the voice’s admission that Silas knows what needs to be delivered. Halliday goes to Silas’ room to learn more and wakes him as the police attempt to trace the location of the call.

In 2010, there exists a technology capable of determining the location of a mobile/cellular phone any place in the world. The process is called “pinging” and it involves the mathematical triangulation of the transmission tower used (mobile phone tracking is another term for this) In the field of police work, it can be a valuable tool to connect the criminal to the crime. In the early beginnings of this technology, companies provided a service to the general public looking for individuals. In 2007, due to privacy concerns, legislation was introduced making it a felony to own or possess phone records in the US.

Several years ago the technology took anywhere from 7-10 minutes to pin-point the location of a cell phone. As more and more communication satellites roam the Earth’s stratosphere, by 2052 this technology will have likely matured to a point where it will take mere seconds to do just the same.

As long as your on the right side of the law, most of us should have nothing to worry about. One day it could even save your life.

“May I have your coin-card please?”

Tragedy strikes when Munro is abducted by Khai’s men after he suspects the children have discovered the wood box containing the Earth Sphere. Silas had just exited a convenience store with a pair of drinks for he and his sister and avoided being taken due to a clumsy grab by the abductors. Silas is left lying on the sidewalk, stunned, as people around him gather to help and to chase down the silver van with Munro inside.

Traditional currency in today’s world is continuously being redesigned to save on the cost of production and simplicity of POU (point of use) transactions. The first debit card was issued by Seattle’s First National Bank in 1978 to preferred customers, marking the beginning of a revolution in consumer purchasing. In 2009, there was an estimated 37 million debit cards in use in Canada; for the same year, worldwide credit, debit, and prepaid transactions (gift cards), reached a staggering 99 billion.

In OurGlass, I’ve proposed an idea that would eliminate paper and coin currency that make up the bulk of  small transactions. It’s called the coin-card  and in 2052, it’s a nod to a bygone era. It would be flexible with a grey and black display and pre-loaded to a maximum of $50 capable of showing the card’s current value. The target user would be children under 16, and parents could transfer money to it through their bank account using a home computer with a built in receptacle. A user would pass the coin-card to a cashier and a debit device would automatically subtract the amount owing from the card. A neat aspect about the card is that amounts are easily transferred from one card to another by wiping them together, just in case you’re a little short when you’re buying that candy bar and soda.

With the coin-card, metals that are used to produce the world’s coins could be put to better use. It would likely save on the bottoms of pants pockets as well. As many of us know, the practice of home sewing is a dying art, likely to disappear altogether by 2052.

The Grey Area of Cloud Seeding

The contents of the Earth Sphere are murky, and despite Silas and Munro’s best efforts, they cannot see what lies behind the thin turbid veil that lies within. Though the activity they experienced earlier with the Sphere has captured their imagination, they are unaware of its purpose or origin.

While the murkiness inside the Earth Sphere represents the planet’s failing health in OurGlass, in the future a particular type of clouded atmosphere could benefit life on Earth and help to resist the negative effects of climate change. Cloud seeding using seawater  increases the density of clouds and their reflective capability of sunlight called, albedo. The theory proposes that salt crystals injected into the cloud would increase its “brightness,” reflecting sunlight away from Earth. Cloudseeders would patrol the ocean spraying saltwater into the air and thicken the clouds to produce the desired effect. Entrepreneur and billionaire Bill Gates has even thrown his hat into the ring, agreeing to help fund a company called Silver Lining, a geoengineering company that will conduct an ocean test using 10 ships to spray seawater as high as 3,000 feet.

Cloud seeding emerged after the Second World War with the testing of silver iodide to help produce rainfall. Obvious problems can occur when water shed in one area was naturally intended for another. Techniques such as this could be seen as hostile depending on who your neighbours are and a treaty was developed to avoid this type of problem from occurring. The safest bet would be to not have to resort to these modifications, but it’s ideas such as these that could be implemented to offset the negative conditions of climate change and allow life to thrive here on Earth. Hopefully our best scientific minds can stay ahead of the process and succeed for all our benefit.

From Plasma to Plants

Silas and Munro become enthralled by the Earth Sphere when a storm cell courses through its interior. The result is the transference of static electricity into their arms as they hold it, causing their hair to stand on end. Silas likens the Sphere to, “a gizmo from a collector’s shop,” (plasma ball) he’s seen while passing by a store-front window. Munro isn’t buying into his theory though, and is positive the Sphere is more than just a few decades old and is meant for a specific, larger purpose.

Henry Ford envisioned a future when fuel for his automobiles would be produced by plants and slowly begin replacing fossil fuels. Ethanol has been used as a fuel additive for many years with Brazil having the largest national fuel industry for the product. Since 2007, a company named Joule Unlimited, out of Massachusetts, has developed something that captures the essence of Henry Ford’s vision with a twist; a plant that sweats diesel. Joule Unlimited has designed a tiny, gene-altered organism that uses the process of photosynthesis to create liquid fuel. After a few days of growth, a genetic switch is flipped and the plant’s energy is directed to create fuel (or any other chemical the company wants to create) which is then later sent to a separator and storage tanks. After a few weeks, the plants become depleted, are removed, and the process is started from scratch. The beauty of this system is in its simplicity. The only inputs required (besides construction of a facility) are sunlight, and our most infamous greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (plants eat CO2, remember?) Commercial production of its fuel could begin in Texas as early as 2012.

This is biofuel at its brightest and most ingenious and its only 2010. Humanity’s only barrier is its imagination and our ability to put it to good use. One can only imagine what greater solutions will be discovered by 2050.