7 Gadgets That Changed the World
By Stephanie Pappas, TechNewsDaily Contributor
Companies like to call their new gadgets revolutionary. Amazon did it when it introduced its Kindle e-book reader in 2007, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs used the word often last week while unveiling his company's new iPad – a tablet computer that also doubles as an e-reader. Jobs even threw in a "magical" here and there when describing the device.
Corporations aren't the only ones predicting that the digitization of books will bring great change. Take author and journalist Steven Johnson, who's Kindle moved him to envision a paperless future:
"I knew then that the book's migration to the digital realm would not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but would likely change the way we read, write and sell books in profound ways," Johnson wrote in The Wall Street Journal in April 2009. "It will make it easier for us to buy books, but at the same time make it easier to stop reading them. It will expand the universe of books at our fingertips, and transform the solitary act of reading into something far more social. It will give writers and publishers the chance to sell more obscure books, but it may well end up undermining some of the core attributes that we have associated with book reading for more than 500 years."
Only time will tell if these devices will live up to the hype, but throughout history, the truly revolutionary innovations are those that so fundamentally changed how we work and play that it's hard to imagine modern life without them.
With all due respect to many other game-changing inventions and technologies, here are seven gadgets dating back to the 15th Century that sent transformative ripples throughout society and whose legacies still make waves today.
7. The Printing Press
The original game-changing gadget was too big to fit in your pocket, but it revolutionized literacy all the same. Around 1450, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenburg transformed printing with his press, a table-sized machine modeled after the wine presses of the day. The invention used thousands of movable metal letters to quickly and cheaply copy text. Gutenburg's press took the spread of ideas out of the hands of elites and paved the way for the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment.
6. The point-and-shoot camera
George Eastman brought photography to the masses in 1888 with the Kodak camera. For the first time, the average person could freeze reality in images, which became worth, well, a thousand words. With the advent of digital cameras 100 years later, photography became even more ubiquitous. Now almost every cell phone comes equipped with a camera, and low-cost digital recorders like the Flip camera are democratizing video as well.
5. Radio
When Guglielmo Marconi patented his radiotelegraph system in 1901, he envisioned it as a way for ships to wirelessly communicate with one another. But by the 1920s, regular broadcasts of music and news exploded, ushering in a new era of mass media. From baby monitors to military radar, radio is now firmly entrenched in everyday life. The ability to harness radio waves eventually made possible all forms of wireless networking, from cell phones to Wi-Fi.
4. TV
Barely 20 years after radio shook the entertainment landscape, broadcast television sent out another temblor in the 1930s and 1940s. Television changed everything from the way people got their news to how advertising was done.
Despite being blamed for everything from our sedentary lifestyles to societal violence, TV isn't going anywhere, and in fact an incredible number of waking ours are spent in front of the boob tube. Last year, a Nielson report estimated that Americans watch more than 5 hours a day, on average. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) recently estimated that, recession be danged, ownership of high-definition TVs in U.S. households has doubled in the past two years.
3. The PC
Once upon a time, computers were room-sized behemoths well outside the price range of the average Joe. Home computers were available in the 1970s, but the market only really took off in 1981 with IBM's PC, which cost less than $1,600.
Since then, PCs have of course become smaller and more powerful, and they have paved the way for laptops, netbooks, smartbooks, smartphones and other mobile computing. Oh, and they made the Internet possible. By 2007, 75 percent of U.S. households had a broadband connection, and more than 230 million PCs were in use nationwide.
2. Smartphones
Continuing the trend toward smaller and mobile, smartphones enable users to surf the Web, send email and run applications, or "apps," from their phones. As with the PC, IBM took the lead on the world's first smartphone, introducing the "Simon" in 1993. Weighing in at more than a pound, the Simon offered a touch-screen keyboard, email and fax capabilities, and functions like a calendar and address book. It cost $900.
Smart phones got smaller and cheaper throughout the '90s, and the first decade of the 21st century saw Treos, Blackberries and iPhones becoming household names. Whether it's text messaging, social networking or Googling the answers at Trivia Night, constant connectedness is a given in the era of the smartphone. The Pew Internet & American Life Project estimates that on any typical day, nearly one-fifth of Americans use the Internet on a mobile device such as a smartphone or laptop.
All that convenience may make traditional cellular phones a thing of the past: According to Pyramid Research, by 2014, 60 percent of new handsets sold in the U.S. will be smartphones.
1. E-readers
As a relative newcomer, e-readers have huge potential to change the way we consume media, Dan Schechter, vice president for media and entertainment at L.E.K. consulting, told TechNewsDaily.
A recent L.E.K. study found that almost half of people who bought e-readers reported reading more newspapers, books and magazines than they otherwise would have. E-readers also offer the chance to make reading more interactive. Imagine a fashion magazine with embedded links to the designers' Web sites, or a scheme that would offer discounted e-books for readers who didn't mind seeing advertisements in the margins.
And while it remains to be seen whether Apple's new iPad will usher in a new era of tablet computing, the device has already had an effect on the e-book market, as seen in last week's e-book price dispute between Amazon and publisher Macmillan. Allowing publishers freedom to set prices could mean that the iPad (and other e-reading gadgets) won't hurt the publishing industry the way the iPod damaged the music industry.
While only about 10 percent of people currently use e-readers, the gadgets are "taking off," L.E.K.'s Schechter said. The tech analyst firm Forrester Research expects 10 million of the devices will be sold by the end of 2010.
"These are still first generation products and you're already seeing vast increases in reading," Schechter said. "It's pretty exciting stuff, and they're selling like hotcakes."
* 10 Profound Innovations Ahead
* iPads Could Encourage Bad Posture, Experts Say
* E-Book Wars: Other Publishers Likely to Raise Prices
Friday, 5 February 2010
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Loopholes Allow Tainted Money Into U.S., Report Says
Real estate agents, escrow agents, lawyers, attorneys and others are involved in scandal
Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. lawyers, real estate and escrow agents and other professionals are enabling the flow of tens of millions of tainted dollars into the country due to loopholes in anti-money laundering laws, a Senate report says.
In one case, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president relied on lawyers, shell companies, bankers and real estate agents to help move more than $110 million in “suspect funds” into the U.S., the report said. The money was used to buy a $30 million home in Malibu, California, and a $38.5 million Gulfstream jet, the report said.
“With the help of U.S. lawyers, real estate and escrow agents, lobbyists and others, politically powerful foreign officials, and those close to them, have found ways to use the U.S. financial system to protect and enhance their ill-gotten gains,” Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said at a hearing today.
“While U.S. financial institutions have become more vigilant and built stronger barriers to keep out suspect funds, their anti-money-laundering safeguards still have holes,” he said.
The first three witnesses at the hearing, two lawyers and a lobbyist, invoked their constitutional right against self- incrimination and declined to answer questions from Levin.
Circumventing Laws
The subcommittee’s investigation examined how some powerful foreign politicians, their family members and associates may be circumventing U.S. laws and safeguards to bring money into the U.S. financial system that may be the product of corruption.
The report said financial institutions generally have become more vigilant since the 2001 Patriot Act required more scrutiny of such private banking accounts.
Still, the 325-page report cited a series of lapses by banks. For example, an HSBC Holdings Plc bank in New York gave an Angolan bank, Banco Africano de Investimentos, “ready access to the U.S. financial system” despite the latter institution’s ties to corrupt oil and diamond industries, the report said.
HSBC Bank USA’s director of anti-money laundering compliance, Wiecher H. Mandemaker, testified today that the bank’s “broader practices today exceed even the more robust post-Sept. 11 federal regulations in a number of important respects.”
Source of Funds
Politically powerful people and their associates in other countries are able to bring into the U.S. millions of dollars without having to provide information on the source of the funds because of lax controls in other professions, the report said.
“Real estate agents, escrow agents, attorneys and others do not have the legal obligation the way banks do at the moment to take action to prevent their participation in suspect transactions,” Levin said at a briefing with reporters on Feb. 2.
Levin said today that as the U.S. leads efforts to stop the flow of illegal money into places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, it must do a better job of halting the movement of suspect funds into the U.S.
Among the report’s recommendations are that Congress enact a law and the U.S Treasury issue rules that would strengthen bank screening of politically powerful foreign clients.
The report called on the Treasury to repeal a 2002 exemption given to real estate and escrow agents for anti-money- laundering programs under the Patriot Act, which gave law enforcement greater latitude to investigate terrorism.
Names of Owners
Congress also should pass a law that requires people forming U.S. corporations to disclose the names of the beneficial owners, the report said. Professional groups such as the American Bar Association and National Association of Realtors should issue guidelines involving acceptance of funds from potentially suspect foreign sources, it said.
The report centered on examples from four oil-producing African nations that have been cited for corruption by organizations such as the U.S. State Department and Transparency International, a global group working against corruption.
Aside from Equatorial Guinea, they are Angola, Gabon and Nigeria.
In the case of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the son of the president of Equatorial Guinea, the report said two lawyers helped him bypass anti-money-laundering laws by allowing him to use shell company accounts as conduits for his funds without telling U.S. bankers that Obiang was using the accounts.
‘Set Up Another’
“If a bank later uncovered Mr. Obiang’s use of an account and closed it, the lawyers helped him set up another,” it said.
Many of the professionals in the Obiang case were under no legal obligation to take anti-money-laundering precautions, the report said.
Attorneys Michael Jay Berger and George I. Nagler, both of Beverly Hills, California, invoked their constitutional right against self-incrimination and declined to testify today.
The report said Nagler worked with a colleague in the insurance industry to provide insurance coverage for Obiang’s 32 motorcycles and cars, which included seven Ferraris, five Bentleys, four Rolls-Royces and two Lamborghinis.
The report cited a 2007 U.S. Justice Department memorandum that said it was “investigating suspected criminal conduct” of Obiang, who is the minister of agriculture and forests.
Obiang hasn’t been criminally charged. The subcommittee investigators couldn’t confirm the investigation, the report said. A lawyer for Obiang didn’t return phone calls seeking comment.
Lobbyist Cites Rights
Another witness, Jeffrey C. Birrell, a lobbyist with the Grace Group in McLean, Virginia, also invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination today.
The report said Birrell was hired by the late president of Gabon, Omar Bongo, to help buy six U.S.-built armored vehicles and get government permission to buy six C-130 military cargo aircraft from Saudi Arabia. The aircraft sale never occurred.
Birrell’s attorney, Ian Pitz of Madison, Wisconsin, said in an interview yesterday that the transactions were “undertaken with complete transparency and with required approval from the United States government.”
“We’re not aware of any wrongdoing by any party related to those transactions,” he said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Catherine Dodge in Washington at cdodge1@bloomberg.net; David Voreacos in Newark, New Jersey, at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net.
Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. lawyers, real estate and escrow agents and other professionals are enabling the flow of tens of millions of tainted dollars into the country due to loopholes in anti-money laundering laws, a Senate report says.
In one case, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president relied on lawyers, shell companies, bankers and real estate agents to help move more than $110 million in “suspect funds” into the U.S., the report said. The money was used to buy a $30 million home in Malibu, California, and a $38.5 million Gulfstream jet, the report said.
“With the help of U.S. lawyers, real estate and escrow agents, lobbyists and others, politically powerful foreign officials, and those close to them, have found ways to use the U.S. financial system to protect and enhance their ill-gotten gains,” Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said at a hearing today.
“While U.S. financial institutions have become more vigilant and built stronger barriers to keep out suspect funds, their anti-money-laundering safeguards still have holes,” he said.
The first three witnesses at the hearing, two lawyers and a lobbyist, invoked their constitutional right against self- incrimination and declined to answer questions from Levin.
Circumventing Laws
The subcommittee’s investigation examined how some powerful foreign politicians, their family members and associates may be circumventing U.S. laws and safeguards to bring money into the U.S. financial system that may be the product of corruption.
The report said financial institutions generally have become more vigilant since the 2001 Patriot Act required more scrutiny of such private banking accounts.
Still, the 325-page report cited a series of lapses by banks. For example, an HSBC Holdings Plc bank in New York gave an Angolan bank, Banco Africano de Investimentos, “ready access to the U.S. financial system” despite the latter institution’s ties to corrupt oil and diamond industries, the report said.
HSBC Bank USA’s director of anti-money laundering compliance, Wiecher H. Mandemaker, testified today that the bank’s “broader practices today exceed even the more robust post-Sept. 11 federal regulations in a number of important respects.”
Source of Funds
Politically powerful people and their associates in other countries are able to bring into the U.S. millions of dollars without having to provide information on the source of the funds because of lax controls in other professions, the report said.
“Real estate agents, escrow agents, attorneys and others do not have the legal obligation the way banks do at the moment to take action to prevent their participation in suspect transactions,” Levin said at a briefing with reporters on Feb. 2.
Levin said today that as the U.S. leads efforts to stop the flow of illegal money into places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, it must do a better job of halting the movement of suspect funds into the U.S.
Among the report’s recommendations are that Congress enact a law and the U.S Treasury issue rules that would strengthen bank screening of politically powerful foreign clients.
The report called on the Treasury to repeal a 2002 exemption given to real estate and escrow agents for anti-money- laundering programs under the Patriot Act, which gave law enforcement greater latitude to investigate terrorism.
Names of Owners
Congress also should pass a law that requires people forming U.S. corporations to disclose the names of the beneficial owners, the report said. Professional groups such as the American Bar Association and National Association of Realtors should issue guidelines involving acceptance of funds from potentially suspect foreign sources, it said.
The report centered on examples from four oil-producing African nations that have been cited for corruption by organizations such as the U.S. State Department and Transparency International, a global group working against corruption.
Aside from Equatorial Guinea, they are Angola, Gabon and Nigeria.
In the case of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the son of the president of Equatorial Guinea, the report said two lawyers helped him bypass anti-money-laundering laws by allowing him to use shell company accounts as conduits for his funds without telling U.S. bankers that Obiang was using the accounts.
‘Set Up Another’
“If a bank later uncovered Mr. Obiang’s use of an account and closed it, the lawyers helped him set up another,” it said.
Many of the professionals in the Obiang case were under no legal obligation to take anti-money-laundering precautions, the report said.
Attorneys Michael Jay Berger and George I. Nagler, both of Beverly Hills, California, invoked their constitutional right against self-incrimination and declined to testify today.
The report said Nagler worked with a colleague in the insurance industry to provide insurance coverage for Obiang’s 32 motorcycles and cars, which included seven Ferraris, five Bentleys, four Rolls-Royces and two Lamborghinis.
The report cited a 2007 U.S. Justice Department memorandum that said it was “investigating suspected criminal conduct” of Obiang, who is the minister of agriculture and forests.
Obiang hasn’t been criminally charged. The subcommittee investigators couldn’t confirm the investigation, the report said. A lawyer for Obiang didn’t return phone calls seeking comment.
Lobbyist Cites Rights
Another witness, Jeffrey C. Birrell, a lobbyist with the Grace Group in McLean, Virginia, also invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination today.
The report said Birrell was hired by the late president of Gabon, Omar Bongo, to help buy six U.S.-built armored vehicles and get government permission to buy six C-130 military cargo aircraft from Saudi Arabia. The aircraft sale never occurred.
Birrell’s attorney, Ian Pitz of Madison, Wisconsin, said in an interview yesterday that the transactions were “undertaken with complete transparency and with required approval from the United States government.”
“We’re not aware of any wrongdoing by any party related to those transactions,” he said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Catherine Dodge in Washington at cdodge1@bloomberg.net; David Voreacos in Newark, New Jersey, at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net.
Apple Takes On Intel
Apple Takes On Intel
Lee Gomes, 02.04.10, 06:00 AM EST
Why chipmakers might not be necessary anymore.
BURLINGAME, CALIF. -- Besides Apple's stock prices and Steve Jobs' reputation for visionary entrepreneurship, something else is riding on the success or failure of the new iPad: The future of the semiconductor industry.
The chip inside the new iPad is a microprocessor called the A4 that was designed in-house by Apple ( AAPL - news - people ), most likely using the expertise it acquired via its 2008 acquisition of PA Semi, a Silicon Valley start-up. Selection of the A4 was described as a blow to both Intel ( INTC - news - people ) and Qualcomm ( QCOM - news - people ), since products from those companies were spurned in the process.
It certainly was that, but it also suggested that semiconductor technology has matured to the point where for many applications, the Intels of the world might not be necessary anymore.
Everyone knows about Moore's Law, which describes the tendency for electronics to regularly double in capacity with no accompanying change in price. What is often forgotten is that Moore's Law isn't some force of nature like gravity, one that occurs independent of human intervention. To the contrary, it is an extraordinarily expensive process, requiring billions of dollars a year in R&D. Spend the money and your chips can keep packing in the extra circuits. Skimp, and they stop improving.
Intel has skillfully taken advantage of this dynamic over the last 20-odd years. It had a dominant position in Pentium-style processors, one that made it billions in profits, which it alone was able to invest to design and manufacture the next generation of even-better products. Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD - news - people ) proved to be a valiant rival to Intel, but it was an expensive fight for AMD. And the fact that Intel has a market cap nearly 20 times that of AMD suggests that investors are unsure if the smaller chipmaker has the staying power to keep at it.
One of the fundamental rules of technology is that things that start out hard and complicated, able to be tackled by only a few people, eventually get easier to do, allowing more people to handle them. Dell ( DELL - news - people ) grew enormously during the 1990s because it figured out the complex art and science involved in running an efficient PC manufacturing process. Once it cracked the code, though, others were able to do the same thing.
Reader Comments
Surely you're not suggesting that Apple has designed its own completely new CPU from scratch? This makes no sense at all! The time and resources required would be considerable. The fact that the i
Currently, only mammoth companies like Google ( GOOG - news - people ) and Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) know how to run big data centers. But that knowledge, too, will one day cease being a black art known only to a few and instead emerge as a straightforward bit of engineering that anyone can master.
It's clear that this "democratization" process is occurring right now in semiconductor design. The iPad is a relatively high-end device, yet Apple believed it didn't need to look outside its own walls for a CPU, and thus could forgo paying any form of "Intel tax." By contrast, the iPhones and iPods tend to use a chip called ARM that Apple, like many other ARM customers, need to license.
Of course, Apple is a very big company and, especially for the sort of high-volume product it hopes the iPad to be, it can afford the sorts of up-front engineering expenses that would make smaller companies reel. But if it can afford to make an in-house chip good enough for the iPad in 2010, might it not also be able to make one good enough for the Macintosh in 2013? And if it can do so by then, why couldn't Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ - news - people ) and Dell also?
To be sure, a walk through recent tech history involved stepping over the cadavers of any number of would-be Intel competitors. They might have been simply ahead of their time. Making chips seems to be getting easy enough that a company best known for marketing and branding is able to take it on.
To read more of Lee Gomes' stories, click here. Contact the writer at lgomes@forbes.com.
Lee Gomes, 02.04.10, 06:00 AM EST
Why chipmakers might not be necessary anymore.
BURLINGAME, CALIF. -- Besides Apple's stock prices and Steve Jobs' reputation for visionary entrepreneurship, something else is riding on the success or failure of the new iPad: The future of the semiconductor industry.
The chip inside the new iPad is a microprocessor called the A4 that was designed in-house by Apple ( AAPL - news - people ), most likely using the expertise it acquired via its 2008 acquisition of PA Semi, a Silicon Valley start-up. Selection of the A4 was described as a blow to both Intel ( INTC - news - people ) and Qualcomm ( QCOM - news - people ), since products from those companies were spurned in the process.
It certainly was that, but it also suggested that semiconductor technology has matured to the point where for many applications, the Intels of the world might not be necessary anymore.
Everyone knows about Moore's Law, which describes the tendency for electronics to regularly double in capacity with no accompanying change in price. What is often forgotten is that Moore's Law isn't some force of nature like gravity, one that occurs independent of human intervention. To the contrary, it is an extraordinarily expensive process, requiring billions of dollars a year in R&D. Spend the money and your chips can keep packing in the extra circuits. Skimp, and they stop improving.
Intel has skillfully taken advantage of this dynamic over the last 20-odd years. It had a dominant position in Pentium-style processors, one that made it billions in profits, which it alone was able to invest to design and manufacture the next generation of even-better products. Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD - news - people ) proved to be a valiant rival to Intel, but it was an expensive fight for AMD. And the fact that Intel has a market cap nearly 20 times that of AMD suggests that investors are unsure if the smaller chipmaker has the staying power to keep at it.
One of the fundamental rules of technology is that things that start out hard and complicated, able to be tackled by only a few people, eventually get easier to do, allowing more people to handle them. Dell ( DELL - news - people ) grew enormously during the 1990s because it figured out the complex art and science involved in running an efficient PC manufacturing process. Once it cracked the code, though, others were able to do the same thing.
Reader Comments
Surely you're not suggesting that Apple has designed its own completely new CPU from scratch? This makes no sense at all! The time and resources required would be considerable. The fact that the i
Currently, only mammoth companies like Google ( GOOG - news - people ) and Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) know how to run big data centers. But that knowledge, too, will one day cease being a black art known only to a few and instead emerge as a straightforward bit of engineering that anyone can master.
It's clear that this "democratization" process is occurring right now in semiconductor design. The iPad is a relatively high-end device, yet Apple believed it didn't need to look outside its own walls for a CPU, and thus could forgo paying any form of "Intel tax." By contrast, the iPhones and iPods tend to use a chip called ARM that Apple, like many other ARM customers, need to license.
Of course, Apple is a very big company and, especially for the sort of high-volume product it hopes the iPad to be, it can afford the sorts of up-front engineering expenses that would make smaller companies reel. But if it can afford to make an in-house chip good enough for the iPad in 2010, might it not also be able to make one good enough for the Macintosh in 2013? And if it can do so by then, why couldn't Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ - news - people ) and Dell also?
To be sure, a walk through recent tech history involved stepping over the cadavers of any number of would-be Intel competitors. They might have been simply ahead of their time. Making chips seems to be getting easy enough that a company best known for marketing and branding is able to take it on.
To read more of Lee Gomes' stories, click here. Contact the writer at lgomes@forbes.com.
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