Sergio Parra

Inventions are, on many occasions, projects that remain in the drawer or the meeting room because no one bets on them. Because no one understands that they are truly interesting inventions..

The paradigmatic example of this was the invention of suitcases with built-in wheels which, despite having many decades behind it, did not become a popular invention until the 1990s.

Northwest Airlines

In the 1990s, a Northwest Airlines pilot, Robert Plath, invented the successful Rollaboard model, which incorporated wheels and also a rigid, folding handle. It was an epidemic. Suddenly, everyone replaced their old suitcases with these new ones.

However, the invention was not new: it had simply appeared at the right time. In 1972, for example, Bernard Sadow had already launched a suitcase with wheels, although it did not include a handle, but instead had it hanging from a leather strap that, in practice, made the suitcase tend to move sideways.

But a century earlier, in 1887, there already seems to be a patent for a similar suitcase. And in a newspaper article from 1951, John Allay May explains his attempts to make and sell a suitcase with wheels since 1932, as transcribed Robert J. Shiller in his book Economic narratives:

And they laughed. I was getting very serious. But they laughed, all of them. When I explained to any organization a future application of the wheel theory, they expressed themselves as if it produced a soporific boredom (why not make the most of the wheel? Why haven't we equipped people with wheels? (... ) I estimate that I have presented this concept to 1,500 people and 125 organizations. My wife got tired of listening to me in 1937. The only man who took me seriously was an inventor who lived for a time in my neighborhood. The problem is that no one cared. took seriously.

In Xataka Science

Kleiber's Law or that more innovative people live in cities than in the countryside

No one really knows why the wheeled suitcase finally fell apart. Maybe it was something in the design. Or the rigid handle. But Shiller suspects the secret is glamour.:

In previous attempts, rolling suitcases were seen as a somewhat ridiculous contraption. Its 1991 press ads linked the Rollaboard narrative to airlines, which in 1990 were considered more glamorous than now. (…) The epidemic of wheeled suitcases was fueled when pilot crews and cabin crew widely adopted the Rollaboard model. Passengers saw distinguished-looking aviation professionals walking through airports with their innovative suitcases.

After all, ideas are more part of an ecosystem than a brain: if the ecosystem is not there, the idea not only takes longer to flourish, but to take root and begin to be in common use, which ultimately intervenes not in the propagation of the idea, but in its mere conception. For this reason, precisely, More innovative people live in cities than in the countryside.

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The suitcase with wheels or how inventions only flourish when there is context

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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The growth cycle of a exponential technology (Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, the cloud, advanced robotics, autonomous vehicles...) can be divided into six phases and all six begin with the letter "D".

Understanding them can help us see what phase each of the exponential technologies is in and the radical changes they are about to bring about throughout this century.

The six D's

1. Digitization: takes place when technology moves from using atoms to using bits, from matter to long strings of zeros and ones. This allows speeding up thanks to the Moore's Law (power and/or speed doubles every year, and/or cost is halved) and Rose's Law (in the case of quantum computing).
2. Disappointment: in the first steps of exponential growth, the jumps are short and, given the publicity that has been given to the new technology, people begin to become disappointed and think that it was not that big of a deal or that it will never be like what happens in the movies. Science fiction. For example, we had already accepted that we would not have flying cars flying over cities, but that's going to change soon.
3. Disruption: the real impact on society takes place, suddenly and profoundly modifying products, markets, services and economic sectors. A good example of this has been the mobile phone, which has transformed the world so much that even is lifting Africa out of poverty.
4. Demonetization: Money disappears from the equation, which is why many Google services are free. The marginal cost is also reduced to almost zero, like what happened to photography when it went digital.
5. Dematerialization: products disappear from the market; For example, Wikipedia has dematerialized encyclopedias, the smartphone has dematerialized GPS devices, iTunes the record store, Netflix the video store...
6. Democratization: occurs when all social strata can access the service or product. The richest person in the world can buy the most powerful smartphone on the market, but so can middle and even lower class people. The massive open online courses or MOOCs have democratized education.

In Xataka Science

Books that inspire us: 'The future goes faster than you think' by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

An easy-to-use interface also marks a turning point in a technology (for example, when we go from complex computers to Windows, and later to iOS and Android. All of which will eventually make us live a science fiction life in very few years. A striking example of this is the so-called affective technology either affective computing, which will allow our technology to tune in to our mood (first of all) but also influence it to make us feel better.

An example of what will happen when you get home after a difficult day at work and let yourself be guided by affective technology can be seen in the following video, taken from The future goes faster than you think of Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler:

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These are the 6 phases that an exponential technology goes through and that predict a fascinating 21st century

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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We have already become accustomed to accepting that, daily, the victims of COVID-19 number in the hundreds. What in other areas would only be a scandal if there were a dozen victims, or even one or two victims, here we are not so moved, or at least not proportionally.

This happens. basically, for two psychological effects: “singularity effect” and “psychic numbing.”

Singularity and numbness

The great atrocities they do not generate proportional reactions to motivate action, but individual stories reach deeper levels of our emotions and push us to act with greater urgency and investment of means.

Therefore, people donate a lot more money to help an identifiable victim (for example, a child or family) than an unidentifiable victim, especially if we talk about a very large number of victims.

In Xataka Science

We only understand groups of 150 people (I)

The authors of this recent study, from August 2020, confirmed this bias by carrying out text analysis of the New York Times and other sources that publish the loss of life, analyzing the affect and emotion of the text (sentimental analysis) in the readers. Concluding, in sum, that: the more they die, the less we care.

In other words: our ability to feel sympathy for people in need seems limited, and this form of compassion fatigue can lead to apathy and inaction, consistent with what is repeatedly seen in response to many large-scale human and environmental catastrophes. scale.

Or as the Nobel Prize in Medicine summarized Albert Szent-Gyorgi:

It moves me deeply to see a man suffering and I would risk my life for him. Then he spoke impersonally about the possible pulverization of our great cities, with one hundred million dead. I am incapable of multiplying the suffering of one man by a hundred million.

This tendency to conceptualize humanity as a few individuals is because we do not have enough mental capacity to process so many people. Our brain was forged in a past world where we were part of tribes of just 100 or 150 individuals. Spending mental energy on more individuals was a waste.

For that reason, too, we tend to think of the authors of inventions or literary works as unique geniuses and not as much as factor ecosystems (which also involve hundreds or thousands of other brains). Or that the debauchery of cities like Amsterdam is due to policies created by human beings and not interconnected coincidences, like the discovery of something tiny in the guts of herrings and that Amsterdam was built on a quagmire:

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We are more moved by the loss of an individual life than by the loss of thousands of lives.

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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So many things have happened, but above all they are going to happen, typical of a science fiction novel that one wonders if science fiction is starting to get boring compared to reality.
We are not just witnessing the crests of a hypertechnological tsunami that will change the world in a few years in ways incomprehensible to us: It is a hyperacceleration to which a convergence is added.

That's what it's about, among other things, The future is moving faster than you think: How technological convergence is transforming businesses, the economy and our lives, of Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

Hyperacceleration and convergence

This new book by the optimistic duo Diamandis and Kotler constitutes a kind of third installment that began with Abundance and with BOLD. It is not essential to have read them to start with this one, but a little context is always good.

In Xataka Science

At least 25 companies are already dedicating themselves to developing flying cars

Like the previous works, we are looking at an approximation of the different solutions with which technology can expand the limits of what is possible and, thus, transform the world. Here, however, the authors apply these ideas and examine what happens when the path of an accelerating technology converges with the direction that other technology is taking that is also accelerating.

For example, what happens when artificial intelligence and, for example, augmented reality converge? These convergences have surprisingly profound effects on commerce, advertising, entertainment and education, among others.

The future is moving faster than you think: How technological convergence is transforming businesses, the economy, and our lives (No collection)

Today on Amazon for €20.85

However, these ideas are unintuitive because our brain evolved in a local, linear environment. Local in the sense that most of the things we interacted with were less than a day's walk away. Linear in the sense that the pace of change was exceptionally slow.

This new book by Diamandis and Kotler, therefore, tries to operate as a kind of telescope, microscope and even stethoscope to try to scrutinize what is happening in the world of technology, and what will probably be cooked. Something that, without a doubt, seems to be revolutionary and good for everyone. For this reason, the book has also been a source of inspiration for some entries such as At least 25 companies are already dedicating themselves to developing flying cars.

What will happen when artificial intelligence, robotics, digital biology and sensors join 3D printing, blockchain and multi-gigabit global connection speeds? How will these convergences transform today's traditional industries? How will it affect the way we educate our children, govern our nations, and care for our planet?

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Books that inspire us: 'The future goes faster than you think' by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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Once we have passed a certain chronological threshold, we all begin to think that aerohighways lined with flying cars like the Delorean of Back to the Future 2 It would be one of many technologies that look good on the screen but simply cannot be transferred to the real world.

However, if not at least as shown in the film, yes in a certain way, it may be soon our skies will be full of flying cars.

billion

As of mid-2019, more than $1 billion were already being invested in a minimum of 25 flying car companies, such as Zee Aero, Opener and Kitty Hawk.

A dozen vehicles were already carrying out test flights, as explained Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler in his book The future goes faster than you think:

They come in all shapes and sizes, from motorcycles perched on oversized fans to human-sized quadcopter drones to miniature space capsule-like planes.

One of the most interesting projects is that of Uner air. If a helicopter has a cost per kilometer of $5.55, Uber Air wants to reduce it to $3.56. But the long-term goal is to reach a price of 27 cents per kilometer, that is, cheaper than driving a land car. His interest is focused on the so-called eVTOL, electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles.

For an eVTOL to enter the flying car program, it must be capable of transporting a pilot and four passengers at a speed of 240 km/h for three hours of uninterrupted service. Uber already has five suppliers that have committed to delivering eVTOL vehicles that meet these requirements.

In Xataka

This car transforms into an airplane and vice versa: it has already successfully completed its inaugural test flight

The most commercially viable efficient aircraft is the Celera 500L. At the moment it is in the prototype phase, but it has already carried out more than 30 successful test flights. Maybe, if we're a little optimistic, Back to the Future 2 could be right around the corner.

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At least 25 companies are already dedicating themselves to developing flying cars

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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The other day we reported as one of the most widely distributed newspapers in Spain suggested that Reiki helped combat COVID-19. Various media We have managed to remove such atrocities.

But one wonders, then, how such an important media outlet can publish things like that (not to mention some of its Cons, the horoscope section...). In the background, It is part of its natural process as a means of communication. A process that all media in history go through: basically, from best to worst.

Five phases

Any new means of communication ends up going through the following phases:

1. Negative forecasts by analysts or even by the inventor of the medium himself. With the advent of the telephone, it was said that it would end intimacy. That the radio made no sense. That cinema would not interest anyone. That there would not be enough demand for personal computers.
2. A progressive assimilation at the social level. People start using these media and discover that they are interesting.
3. A distribution of enormous cultural and material benefits in society. The media enlightens people, even some sectors of the social mass. For example, radio, in its origins, was based on programs that educated the people.
4. A progressive commercialization of the environment. Advertising, competition, and profit motive arrive, and content creators begin to be tempted and influenced by these factors.
5. A progressive devaluation of the environment in terms of cultural and material benefits in order to maximize commodification. The medium is no longer useful for what it was designed for, but rather to obtain more economic benefits (although without exaggerating too much so that the mark of compatibility that allows us to continue contracting advertising does not completely disappear).

In the end, @The vanguard has withdrawn his embarrassing article about the #reiki in view of #COVID19. Thanks to @damn_science and @SergioParra_ @xatakaciencia for warning. Now we hope that the diary of @Jordi__Juan post something serious about the topic
My tweet: https://t.co/0Z3EOrOF91 pic.twitter.com/K8N4vGakLz

— Luis Santamaría del Río (@vaiconDios) January 21, 2021

These phases took place, for example, with the first major media: Gutenberg's printing press, year 1450

It also happened with the Telegraph, which has been compared as a kind of victorian internet. This device was invented by Samuel Finley Breese Morse, American, in 1832.

The same thing happened with the newspaper: the first ones had few pages and were very expensive, so they were only aimed at educated and rich people. Someone devised a new form of business that consisted of lowering the price by partially covering the costs of writing, printing and distribution by inserting advertising, which forced the addition of more pages (so that the advertising could be better distributed).

As more people bought newspapers, advertising profits increased, so editors soon realized that inserting sensational or morbid news increased sales, that is, profits, which, in turn, forced to put up more pages of superfluous news.

Or publish sensational and shocking news, although false, like those that the media magnate began to introduce William Randolph Hearst.

In Xataka Science

The media takes advantage of our amygdala to stoke fears that no longer make sense.

And, of course, the same has also happened with the publishing industry.

And now it's starting to happen, too, with some digital media (some platforms become vulgarized and other less vulgarized ones appear that will also end up becoming vulgarized). Even the blogs, born as a tool for the empowerment of society, finally 99.9% of them barely reached a tiny audience, because the masses prefer hooky news, clickbaits, the bad stuff of Perez Hilton, the viral, the meme, the "and you won't believe what happened next."

They are only commercial (or political) forces, blind and random, that reach with their tentacles to any medium. It is something like an unstoppable natural process. The following science fiction story may help you better imagine the process:

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The media goes through the same phases (from best to worst)

was originally published in

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by
Sergio Parra

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That if the Earth is flat, that if the vaccine is to inoculate us with a microchip, that if WiFi causes cancer, that the Earth is flat... all these anti-scientific beliefs are not essentially ignorance (we are all quite ignorant about it).

The most important thing is the call confirmation bias, which was coined by the English psychologist Peter Cathcart Wason after writing an experiment in this regard published in 1960.

Everyday religions

We believe the things that the people who are part of our "tribe" believe because we do not seek truth as much as social acceptance. Unlike many other animal species, for humans there is no greater punishment than being rejected or excluded from the group.

In Xataka Science

Smoking or non-smoking? This is how confirmation bias works

Furthermore, people treat facts as more relevant when the facts tend to support their opinions. When the facts are against your opinions, you don't necessarily deny the facts, but you assume that those facts are less relevant or worthy of being considered on a moral level.

This conclusion was based on a series of new interviews, as well as a meta-analysis of the research that has been published on the topic, and which was presented at a symposium as part of the annual convention of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology in San Antonio.

In Xataka Science

We copy others much more than we think and that is why it is dangerous to live in bubbles

The results suggest that simply focusing on evidence and data is not enough to change someone's opinion on a particular issue. We are tough as hell. Other things persuade us.

This is what it also points out Matthew Hornsey (University of Queensland), which describe how 'think like a lawyer', in the sense that people carefully select the pieces of information they should pay attention to 'in order to reach conclusions that they want to be true'. As it abounds in it Derren Brown in his book ÉOnce upon a time... an alternative history of happiness:

Likewise, we act under this influence whenever we focus on the annoying habits of someone we don't like, rather than on the pleasant ones. The confirmation tendency provides us daily with all the necessary evidence to stick to the script and so that our life continues along the same lines and seems true.

Of course, it also influences that we are ignoring science, and we do not understand the epistemological foundations on which scientific knowledge is based. In the following video I explain what liberal science is and why it is not based on consensus as we popularly understand it:

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People who reject scientific claims do so not so much out of ignorance as out of confirmation bias.

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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Today's weaving of threads has already reached diameters of a few microns (wool, cotton, synthetic polymers, etc.), but scientists at the University of Manchester have gone further by developing the world's finest weave, surpassing the finest Egyptian linen .

This has been possible thanks to the development of a form of weaving molecular threads into two-dimensional layers.

10,000 times a human hair

To understand how fine this thread is, let's think about the number of threads in a fabric per inch (about 2.5 centimeters). If Egyptian linen has about 1,500 threads, This new fabric reaches about 50 million.

Each layer of molecular tissue is only 4 nanometers thick; that is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. For the moment, that is. the largest piece of fabric made is only 1 mm in length.

To develop this fabric, metal atoms and negatively charged ions were used to interlock small molecular building blocks made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur atoms. The woven building blocks were eventually joined together like pieces of a jigsaw to form individual sheets of molecular strands woven into a fabric just 4 millionths of a millimeter thick (4 nanometers).

In Xataka Science

The future of clothing: a fabric that cools when we are hot and warms when we are cold

As explained David Leigh, main author of this development that has been published in a study in Nature:

This is the first example of a layered molecularly woven fabric. Weaving molecular strands offers a new way to alter the properties of plastics and other materials. The number of strands and strand crossings was measured by bright X-rays on the building blocks. The strands bend the path of X-rays through the material by a specific amount, allowing researchers to measure how many strands there are per inch. The measurement shows that the material has a thread count of 40-60 million threads per inch. In comparison, the finest Egyptian linen has a thread count of around 1,500.

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This is the finest fabric in the world and has been created by weaving threads of individual molecules into threads.

was originally published in

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by
Sergio Parra

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"Experts in this complementary therapy (Reiki) recognized by the WHO argue that it can help minimize the effects of the disease," shamelessly publish the newspaper The vanguard.

And also that it can help combat COVID-19.

Pseudoscience in media

"Reiki is a complementary therapy recognized by the World Health Organization, which helps alleviate stress, anguish, anxiety and physical pain," it is stated from a mass media outlet that, presumably, is intended to inform its readers.

"Reiki increases our immune system and that is why it helps a lot to minimize the effects caused by Covid-19." Neither.

All this is false. Neither Reiki is recognized by the WHO (It only states that there are people who use it, but does not say anything about its effectiveness or usefulness, and even includes it in the set of faith-based treatments), nor has it been shown to have any effect on health.

In Xataka Science

If an intellectual embraces pseudoscience or nonsense, he is not an intellectual (and even less should he be a politician).

For a national newspaper to make such statements is comparable to stating that extraterrestrials exist and visit us often, or that the Earth is flat.

It is grotesque that at this point there are still media outlets that publish this content and do not immediately become part of a kind of blacklist of unreliable media. Because it is not the first time that this newspaper, La Vanguardia, splash up to the knee in the quagmire of pseudosciences, as Pere Estupinyà already denounced.

In Xataka Science

Four very simple reasons not to trust any pseudoscience

Reiki, feng shui, ayurveda or traditional Chinese medicine are, as a whole, a scam. Even a simple nine year old girl He demonstrated it with a simple experiment. But the media we should trust publishes such lies for the simple fact that they sell, or to respect each other's beliefs.

As a politician who once proposed to build a landing strip for ufos simply because many people said they were seeing them, as I explain below:

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No, Reiki cannot help you in any way against COVID-19 because it is a scam.

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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We all know that, psychologically, time shortens like a blink or stretches like a piece of gum depending on whether we are having a good time or a bad time, respectively.

But there is another way to officially violate the natural passage of time: it is what he did On February 14, 2019, a certain Julian O'Shea, which took advantage of the time zones that cluster along the international date line.

Time zones

The international date line It is an imaginary terrestrial surface line drawn over the Pacific Ocean and close to the 180° meridian. For the convenience of some countries whose territory it crosses, the legal or local time and date in them may be that corresponding to the other hemisphere. Moving from one side of the line to the other involves changing the date, exactly one day.

Therefore, Julian lived only one calendar day of 49 hours long thanks to time changes.

To achieve this, he began his journey in Apia, Samoa, and from there he traveled to Auckland (New Zealand), Sydney (Australia) and Honolulu (Hawaii), ending in Pago Pago (American Samoa).

In Xataka Science

The lost hour in Spain due to a whim of the dictator Francisco Franco

Thanks to this, Julian equaled the record of Mariusz Majewski, from Poland, who on March 13, 2017 also completed a 24-hour day in 49 hours.

When crossing the international date line from east to west (from America to Asia across the Pacific Ocean) the date must be advanced one day on all clocks, that is, one day is lost. On the other hand, if a traveler crosses said line from west to east, the date must be moved back one day (gaining one day). It was based on this idea Julio Verne to write his famous novel Around the world in eighty days.

In Xataka

Why destroying time zones is actually a very good idea

Due to the number of territories it governs beyond Europe, by the way, France is the country with the most time zones: 12 (13 during one time of year).

Of course, all this is nothing more than a convention. However, it is still very different from the conventions and models on which science in general depends: the world is so complex that we need to simplify it in order to manage some of its areas. Models allow us to orient ourselves, make predictions, and know how something works at a certain level, as you can see in the following video:

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The longest day of a person was 49 hours long and took place entirely on Earth

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Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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