Aeromobilities

Aeromobilities is based on the 2006 Cosmobilities conference on Air Time Spaces in Lancaster. It provides a broad introduction to the study of air travel, airspaces and aviation from the perspective of the social sciences and the humanities. The book makes a strong case for a systematic, interdisciplinary study of some of the most powerful forces that have shaped our mobile globalization.

‘Aeromobilities’ by Saulo Cwerner, Sven Kesselring and John Urry, available from all good bookstores or direct from the Routledge website.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Aeromobilities, Globalization and Social Theory 1. Aeromobilities and the Global 2. Global Transfer Points: the Making of Airports in the Mobile Risk Society Part 2: The Production of Airspaces 3. >store>forward> Architectures of a Future Tense 4 Connecting the World: Analyzing Global City Networks Through Airline Flows 5. Airport Codes/Spaces 6. Air Craft: Producing UK Airspace 7. Around the World in 80 Airports Part 3: The Social Life of Air Travel 8. Airborne on Time 9. A Life in Corridors: Social Perspectives on Aeromobilities and Work in Knowledge Organizations 10. Getting into the Flow Part 4: Governing Air Travel 11. Science, Expertise, and Local Knowledge in Airport Conflicts: Towards a Cosmopolitical Approach 12. Helipads, Heliports and Urban Air Space: Governing the Contested Infrastructure of Helicopter Travel

Click to read more on 'Aeromobilities'

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RFID Revolution: Your cars will be tagged

The Economic Times writes about government proposals in India are seeking to make it mandatory to fit RFID-enabled devices in the cars manufactured > in India:

It will be the responsibility of the car manufacturers

to ensure that all new cars have these radio-frequency identification tags. It is believed that RFID tags would help in traffic management as traffic violations by motorists could be tracked and all violations identified. Also, motorists would get charged automatically as soon as they enter a toll area.

The RFID

-based system that is proposed to enable tracking of vehicles relies on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transporters . An RFID tag is an object that can be fitted on any object for the purpose of identification using radiowaves.

“The expected increase of cars and SUVs from 2005 to 2035 is 13 times (35.8 million to 236.4 million vehicles), while two wheelers are expected to increase about 6.6 times (35.8 million to 236.4 million vehicles). This coupled with declining share of public transport is leading to severe problem of congestion , inflicting a high cost on the economy in the form of travel delays, loss of productivity and increase in road fatalities and air quality deterioration. Therefore, enabling every car with RFID would help the government track them remotely,” an official said.

Read more at - 'RFID Revolution: Your cars will be tagged'

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The flying car

Here's the latest attempt to beat traffic congestion... it's the newest attempt to create the flying-car concept. Yet this one seems to be getting off to a flying start! (sorry....).. and is currently on its maiden voyage.

It is the ultimate off-roader and it is coming to an airstrip near you. The flying car has been talked about for almost as long as cars have existed, and now a prototype built by a small American company is finally ready to make the idea a reality.

The Terrafugia Transition is a two-seater plane that at the touch of a button converts into a road-legal car. It takes its maiden flight next month and is scheduled to hit the showrooms by next year. You can’t help but wonder whether, if Bob Nardelli and Rick Wagoner, of Chrysler and General Motors respectively, had been forward-thinking enough to fly into Washington DC in swept-wing Dodge Vipers and Cadillac Escalades instead of corporate jets when they were seeking bailout cash, they would have been showered with government money, downturn or no downturn.

Read more at - 'The Flying Car'

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T-ray scanners – the future for airports?

Euronews has a video post on a new type of scanner that uses a terahertz or T-ray camera that scans people for hidden weapons, and which could be the future of airport security:


Watch video here at 'T-ray scanners – the future for airports?'

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Army developing ‘synthetic telepathy’

Here we go again: more news on what the military is attempting to develop in terms of mind-interface-technology. It appears that the U.S. Army is developing a technology known as synthetic telepathy that would allow 'someone to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. The concept is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG'. Well, this has been going on for a while - see 'Opening Pandora's Box' by Kingsley Dennis. The post continues here:

	View related photos

Known as synthetic telepathy, the technology is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Similar technology is being marketed as a way to control video games by thought.

"I think that this will eventually become just another way of communicating," said Mike D'Zmura, from the University of California, Irvine and the lead scientist on the project...

...The first is to compose a message using, as D'Zmura puts it, "that little voice in your head."

The second part is to send that message to a particular individual or object (like a radio), also just with the power of thought. Once the message reaches the recipient, it could be read as text or as a voice mail. While the money may come from the Army and its first use could be for covert operations, D'Zmura thinks that thought-based communication will find more use in the civilian realm.

Read more at - 'Army developing ‘synthetic telepathy’'

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Cars With Black Boxes

Euronews has a short video on how some manufacturers are beginning to add airplane-like black boxes to their cars. Brazil, for example, will make it law for all cars manufactured from summer 2009 onwards to have the black boxes fitted. Not only will they track the cars but they will also offer personalised insurance as well as automatic distress signal in the case of accident.

See video here in 'Cars follow planes with black boxes'

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Festive Wishes

Wishing All Readers of the NEW MOBILITIES blog many healthy & happy festive wishes.

And - importantly

- A HAPPY NEW YEAR!! -

MAY 2009 BRING CONTINUED GROWTH & SUCCESS
& WELL-BEING

'NEW-MOBILITIES' WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR READERSHIP OVER THE YEAR.

NAMASTE - KINGSLEY

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The hands-free future for transport

Euronews has a good video post on a new breed of transport that is being developed to relieve the congestion which is choking Europe’s city-centres:

Researchers are looking for answers to ease the inner-city jams, and clear the air. And their prototypes are cleaner and safer, even though they drive themselves.

Watch video post here: 'The hands-free future for transport'

See also http://www.citymobil.org

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Study shows hotels' Internet connections unsafe

PhysOrg.com reports that travelers who use a hotel's Internet network risk the possibility of data theft, citing a new study from Cornell's School of Hotel Administration:

The analysis of the networks in 46 hotels and a survey of 147 U.S. hotels found that a majority of the hotels do not use all available tools to maintain network security.

For example, about 20 percent of the hotels surveyed still use simple hub-type systems, which are most vulnerable to hacking. The findings of the firsthand analysis of 46 hotels were no more encouraging.

"Even with hotels that required authentication, I found helpful employees who got me past that barrier," said Josh Ogle '08, a Cornell Hotel School graduate, president of TriVesta LLC. and a co-author of the study. "So, authentication is not as effective as we think, and then I found that of the 39 hotels that offered WiFi connections, only six used encryption to help protect the system."

Read post at - 'Study shows hotels' Internet connections unsafe'

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India's Highway

National Geographic has an interesting piece on India's new 'superhighway' that links four of its major cities - bringing 'old and new India into jarring proximity'. Here's what the article says:

India's new national highway, part crushed rock and asphalt, part yellow brick road, swings through Bangalore as it races across southern India bearing the turbocharged hopes of a billion people from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. In downtown Bangalore the wheels roll to a stop, briefly, beside an ornate, 50-foot-high Hindu temple where every night a cheerful little man in horn-rimmed glasses named R. L. Deekshith, the temple priest, delivers the Hindu equivalent of curbside service. His specialty is the ritual called a puja, in which he spreads the munificence of the god Lord Ganesh upon a parade of newly purchased vehicles—cars, trucks, SUVs, motorcycles, and auto rickshaws, along with the occasional bicycle or bullock cart—whose owners wouldn't think of hitting the road without the blessings of a happy, four-armed god with the head of an elephant who brings prosperity and good fortune, particularly to machines and those setting out on something new.

Read original post - 'India's Highway'

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The Atlas of the Real World

UK's The Telegraph is hosting what it calls 'The Atlas of the Real World' which uses software to depict the nations of the world - 'not by their physical size, but by their demographic importance on a range of subjects'. On their site they select a series of travel- and news-related maps:



See images at 'The Atlas of the Real World'

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Observing urban drivers in their natural habitat

Here's a post from Kevin Harris over at the Neighbourhoods blog, on a somewhat humourous, somewhat disturbing, real-life ditty of human urban driving habits:

I was walking up the road this afternoon and heard a car start up nearby. The driver pulled out of the drive, rather closely in front of an oncoming car, then after a short distance drew in alongside a post box. I watched a woman get out and post a letter. She was clearly able-bodied. She got back in, turned the car round and headed back the way she came. I thought, well I suppose you might do that if you're off somewhere. So I turned round to see if she was. But she drove straight back into the driveway of the house.

I crossed the road to take this pic of the house, from beside the post box. It's about 75 metres away I reckon.

Read original post at 'Observing urban drivers in their natural habitat'

Thanks to Kevin for the heads-up on this one!

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Growing Vertical: Skyscraper Farming

Scientific American has a post on how cultivating crops in 'downtown skyscrapers might save bushels of energy and provide city dwellers with distinctively fresh food'. The article goes on to say that

Why not grow grains, vegetables and fruits right where the expanding crowds of consumers are: in the middle of a city, inside a tall glass building? Poultry and pork could be reared there, too. A vertical farm would drastically reduce the fossil-fuel use and emissions associated with farm machinery and trucking, as well as the spread of fertilizer and its runoff. Crops could grow and be harvested year-round instead of at the end of one season, multiplying annual yield by at least four times. Urban agriculture could also convert municipal wastewater into irrigation water, reducing a city’s refuse problem. And consumers would get the freshest food possible, without pesticides.

Is this such a fanciful notion?


Read more at - 'Growing Vertical: Skyscraper Farming'

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Filmmaker Plans to Install Camera in His Eye Socket

Wired's blog has an unusual post about a Canadian film-maker who's planning to become a 'lifelong' film-maker - by putting a camera in his eye!

Rob Spence looks you straight in the eye when he talks. So it's a little unnerving to imagine that soon one of his hazel-green eyes will have a tiny wireless video camera in it that records your every move.

The eye he's considering replacing is not a working one -- it's a prosthetic eye he's worn for several years. Spence, a 36-year-old Canadian filmmaker, is not content with having one blind eye. He wants a wireless video camera inside his prosthetic, giving him the ability to make movies wherever he is, all the time, just by looking around.

"If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?" he asks.

Spence, who calls himself the "eyeborg guy," will not be restoring his vision. The camera won't connect to his brain. What it will do is allow him to be a bionic man where technology fuses with the human body to become inseparable. In effect, he will become a "little brother," someone who's watching and recording every move of those in his field of vision.

If successful, Spence will become one of a growing number of lifecasters. From early webcam pioneer Jennifer Kaye Ringley, who created JenniCam, to Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell, to commercial lifecasting ventures Ustream.tv and Justin.tv, many people use video and internet technology to record and broadcast every moment of their waking lives. But Spence is taking lifecasting a step further, with a bionic eye camera that is actually embedded in his body.

Read in full - 'Filmmaker Plans to Install Camera in His Eye Socket'

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A Tour of Tesla Motors

Another post from the Worldchanging retrospective month - this time a post about the rise of the Tesla electric speed cars:

You've heard about Tesla Motors already--the silicon valley startup that's making the next generation in electric cars, a roadster that can go from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds, and that looks like a million bucks. (It'll also cost nearly $100K, but that's cheap compared to a Lamborghini, and you just might beat it off the line.) There have been plenty of great articles on the company and the car, from Wired, The Guardian, and others. As it happens, I know several of their engineers, so I was able to get a tour of the company a few weeks ago...

Tesla's motor is a high-performance induction motor; not revolutionary new technology, but top-of-the-line. In fact, it's the same one the EV1 and AC Propulsion's tZero prototype cars used. Tesla's innovation is in the way it is manufactured, keeping performance quality high but reducing costs. I also asked whether they thought about using in-wheel motors, since putting a small motor in every wheel instead of having one big motor with a drivetrain connecting it to the four wheels can greatly reduce mechanical complexity and weight, as well as improving reliability.

Read more at - 'A Tour of Tesla Motors'

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Train 'n Wheels: the Perfect Commute?

Wired's Autopia blog has a good story on what is being dubbed 'the benefits of bicycle transit trips':

We love public transportation. We also love bikes. Judging by a recent increase in bike rides to and from public transportation known as "transit trips," American commuters are starting to feel the same way. "Transit trips are way up," Tim Blumenthal, head of the national bike advocacy group Bikes Belong, told Wired.com. "More buses have racks on the front, and more light rail and subways are allowing bicycles on board even during peak hours." According to Blumenthal, the benefits of bicycle transit trips are huge: commuters lose weight while the air gets cleaner, and highways get less crowded while America starts to recover from its oil addiction.

San Francisco's Caltrain commuter rail service was one of the pioneers in bringing "bikes on board," dedicating certain cars of each train for bikes and allowing up to 64 bike commuters to ride their own bikes to and from work (video after the jump). The program took off, and also took some cars off the road: 80% of cyclists who started taking Caltrain only did so after they could bring their bikes along. "Caltrain has for awhile now provided exemplary bike service," Andy Thornley, Program Director for the San Francisco Bike Coalition (SFBC) told Wired.com."Other systems have accommodations, but its usually one or two bikes per car."

The program was so successful that demand soon surpassed the supply of bike cars, and non-biking passengers began to complain that their train was overrun by a peloton of two-wheeled commuters. "The success of the program is outstripping the system," Thornley said.

Read more at - 'Train 'n Wheels: the Perfect Commute?'

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Using your voice to pilot your computer

Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends has a post on how a team of scientists of the University of Washington (UW) has developed Vocal Joystick, a software which enables people with disabilities to control their computers using the sound of their voice and without the need to use a mouse:

Their virtual computer mouse driven by sound has already been tested at the UW Medical Center with spinal-cord-injury patients and other participants with varying levels of disabilities. The researchers, who developed their own voice-recognition technology, hope to have a prototype available online this fall. But read more...

You can see above "the mapping of the vowel sounds recognized by the Vocal Joystick engine to the radial direction resulting in a mouse pointer movement. The VJ engine also captures loudness and pitch information, which can be used to control the speed of the pointer movement." (Credit: UW) Here is a link to a larger version of this diagram.

Read original post - 'Using your voice to pilot your computer'

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Revolutionary Virtual Reality Training Originally Designed For The Army

The capacity of virtual reality simulation is rapidly expanding - no wonder then it is increasingly being used for real-life training. Here's some latest news:

Development studio Intelligence Gaming is behind a different kind of game, dubbed “serious gaming” - games that are designed to teach users rather than entertain them. The company has previously created games for the United States Navy, and has now been contracted by the Army to develop a new kind of game that is part virtual reality, part movie. The company teamed with development and design firm EffectiveUI to create a technology called RealityV based on Adobe’s upcoming Flash 10 platform. The result: 3D interactive simulations that could revolutionize training in the military, health care, retail stores, and any number of other industries.

At the core of each RealityV experience is a a full motion movie shot in 360 degrees. This movie is projected into a special headset that strongly resembles the “Virtual Reality” googles of yore. As the user rotates, their perspective in the video rotates as well (they can only rotate around a single point, as the technology doesn’t yet support movement). During the videos users are forced to make quick decisions that affect the scene’s outcome - it’s sort of like a ‘Choose your own adventure’, except you feel like you’re actually there. Users can also use RealityV from their browser, but this effect is lost.

The first application of the technology is “Immersive Cultural Simulation Product”, a game created for the Army that teaches soldiers how to handle cultural differences in Iraq. Soilders are forced to make decisions in real time as they watch the people surrounding them, paying attention to gestures and facial expressions to decide who to pay attention to and look for any possible threats.

Read more at - 'RealityV: Revolutionary Virtual Reality Training Originally Designed For The Army'

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IBM builds online version of China's famed Forbidden City

The ultimate in 'virtual tourism', and this time it's a forbidden city!

IBM on Friday opened online doors to an interactive, animated replica of the 178-acre (720,000 square-meter) walled fortress of the famed Forbidden City in China, which served for centuries as an exclusive realm for the nation's emperors.



"Forbidden City: Beyond Space & Time" is billed as a first-of-a-kind, fully immersive, three-dimensional virtual recreation of "this Chinese cultural treasure."

Visitors to the virtual Forbidden City can explore it as animated avatars, able to chat with others or take part in activities such as archery, cricket fighting, or a board game called Weiqi.

Read more at - 'IBM builds online version of China's famed Forbidden City'

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The revolution of paperless paper

Is it finally going to arrive? Are we still not convinced? Well, the BBC looks into the 'revolutionary' electronic newspaper:

At Plastic Logic's factory in Dresden, British engineer Dean Baker shows me a new kind of newspaper.

What's new about it? Well, for a start there's no paper - it's electronic.

The device looks just like a table mat, it's as light as a magazine.

But onto it you can download hundreds of newspapers and - at the touch of a button - browse through them quite safely, without elbowing anyone ever again.

"It's very robust," says Mr Baker.

To prove it he whacks the screen with his fist. Not a scratch.
The machine's so tough, because everything, from the screen to the electronics inside, is made of plastic.

That's why the electronic newspaper is so light, flexible and revolutionary.

Mr Baker believes the device will help consign ordinary paper to the rubbish bin of history.

"There's a huge amount of waste," says Mr Baker.

"We have paper being distributed all over the country which is consumed on that day and then discarded into the bin. This doesn't need to be the case.

"All of that contact could be transmitted electronically and stored on a single e-reader, with the same visual appeal as paper. "

Read original post at - 'The revolution of paperless paper' - video on site.

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