Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey guys, it's Forward Thinking. I'm Jonathan Strickland, Obama,
Speaker 1: and we are still back. If you listen to the
Speaker 1: previous episode Water on Mars, you know that we were
Speaker 1: on hiatus for a while. We are now back and
Speaker 1: this is the second of two episodes we recorded before
Speaker 1: we were officially on hiatus, but we back in October,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna tell you the future of the past.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, this is this is something that we recorded
Speaker 1: back in October two fifteen. It's all about LiFi and
Speaker 1: uh so some of the references maybe a tad dated
Speaker 1: because we were recording a few months ago, but we
Speaker 1: wanted to release it because we were really proud of it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a good episode, and we've got
Speaker 1: lots of new episodes coming up in the next year,
Speaker 1: so we wanted to get back onto on track, get
Speaker 1: things going. And I hope you enjoy this now classic
Speaker 1: new episode of Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks at the future and
Speaker 1: says there's a light over at the Frankenstein Place. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, so guys, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about something, uh a year ago or so.
Speaker 1: We're recording this in October two thousand and fifteen, but
Speaker 1: about a year ago September, we talked about a problem
Speaker 1: that's happening, and it's happening across the developed world places
Speaker 1: where the Internet has reached real penetration. And that problem
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the devices we use rely
Speaker 1: on radio signals to communicate with the infrastructure that connects
Speaker 1: to the Internet backbone. The spectrum crunch exactly, the spectrum crunch.
Speaker 1: That's a real issue. And the issue is not something
Speaker 1: where like you have an a limit that amount of
Speaker 1: radio in the entire world and it's all gonna go away.
Speaker 1: It's very much a a kind of a congestion. Think
Speaker 1: of it like a traffic jam in a particular region. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For the same reason that they ask you to put
Speaker 1: your phone on airplane mode when you're in an airplane,
Speaker 1: is this thing that we're talking about, because signal interference
Speaker 1: can become a very serious issue in that case. Well,
Speaker 1: not only just signal interference, but if you've got too
Speaker 1: many Like have you ever been in let's say a
Speaker 1: really crowded coffee shop and you want to connect to
Speaker 1: the WiFi there, but you occasionally find that you're being
Speaker 1: bumped off the WiFi or things are really slowing down
Speaker 1: and clogging up. Often it's because whatever WiFi router the
Speaker 1: coffee shop is using has a lower capacity than what
Speaker 1: is being demanded of it. So, in other words, there
Speaker 1: are the devices we use have a limited ability to
Speaker 1: deal with the demand that we are placing upon them,
Speaker 1: and it's getting worse by the day because not only
Speaker 1: are we getting more smartphones and tablets and smart watches
Speaker 1: and all this other stuff that's using those radio waves,
Speaker 1: were also entering the era of the Internet of Things,
Speaker 1: which is requiring even more stuff to connect to the
Speaker 1: Your fridge in your car, tires and your cube, connect
Speaker 1: to the internet, your cuff links, your dog's color, your hatchet. Yes,
Speaker 1: our mystical acts is um not WiFi enabled, but we're
Speaker 1: getting an upgrade, sobe is on the internet. Joe failed
Speaker 1: to solve me again, that would essentially it would just
Speaker 1: be a message like that for me all the time.
Speaker 1: Jonathan has has low spatial awareness. H so uh. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing here is that this problem is not going
Speaker 1: to go away. It's not gonna it's not gonna get
Speaker 1: any easier. In fact, there are places like here in
Speaker 1: the United States that have recently declared broadband access as
Speaker 1: being a necessity not a luxury. There was a White
Speaker 1: House report that came out earlier in that's specifically called
Speaker 1: out broadband access as a necessity, and they defined broadband
Speaker 1: as I think twenty five megabits per second are faster,
Speaker 1: mean saying like electricity, right, yeah, yeah, Well because because
Speaker 1: knowledge and interconnectivity is critical in this our modern world. Yes,
Speaker 1: we we rely on it for communication, we rely on
Speaker 1: it for commerce. So we have this this problem, and
Speaker 1: we have this, uh more, this increasing urgency to find
Speaker 1: a way of dealing with it. Um And there are
Speaker 1: other issues with WiFi. Besides the fact that they you
Speaker 1: can have a capacity crunch in any given time and place,
Speaker 1: depending upon demand. Another is that they're not always that
Speaker 1: efficient to use these radio waves. In fact, that's all
Speaker 1: they do, and so you're dedicating them to this one purpose.
Speaker 1: And I think the um the percentage I saw was
Speaker 1: that they are essentially five percent efficient in the amount
Speaker 1: of energy you're using them and the amount of actual
Speaker 1: work they're doing. Yeah, energy you're pouring into these things
Speaker 1: is just being bled away. Also, like you were saying, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you've got the problem with interference. You know. That's why
Speaker 1: you aren't allowed to use devices in on airplanes unless
Speaker 1: you've switched it to WiFi. You can't use the cellular data. Um,
Speaker 1: you can't use them in places like hospitals where it
Speaker 1: might interfere with medical equipment. That's another issue. I've got
Speaker 1: a complaint. When I wrap my computer up in aluminum foil,
Speaker 1: it can't get a WiFi signal, right, But they also
Speaker 1: can't I can't see what you're doing anymore, right, So
Speaker 1: that is the important part. That's we call it our
Speaker 1: essay protection case. And you can't see what you're doing
Speaker 1: anymore either, so your fragile sanity. He's trying to come
Speaker 1: up with some transparent aluminum foil. I've got a movie
Speaker 1: for you to watch. Uh So another issue, and I
Speaker 1: didn't even put this in our notes, but another one
Speaker 1: needs to be addressed is the notion of security. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there's the you've always heard. I'm sure you guys
Speaker 1: out there have heard that things like like open WiFi
Speaker 1: networks are risky because you never know who else is
Speaker 1: on that network and who might be intercepting your data? Right, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: Earlier you were like, you go to a coffee shop
Speaker 1: and use their WiFi. I'm like, no, you don't. Well,
Speaker 1: it depends on the coffee shop too, right, I mean
Speaker 1: it depends on It depends on multiple things, like is
Speaker 1: the is the WiFi protected in the coffee shop. Even
Speaker 1: if it is, there's still the chance it's unsecured. But
Speaker 1: if it's secured, the password is coffee, right, or or
Speaker 1: one to three coffee or something along those lines. But
Speaker 1: you know, even with all those things, Uh, if you're
Speaker 1: not doing your banking or whatever, maybe you're not too
Speaker 1: concerned about it. But one potential solution to all of
Speaker 1: these problems is to replace the radio part of this communication,
Speaker 1: the the communication between devices and the infrastructure that connects
Speaker 1: to the Internet backbone, with something besides radio. So a
Speaker 1: guy standing up on a table in the room holding
Speaker 1: flags up, uh, well, similar in that the communication would
Speaker 1: depend upon light. And if we wanted to use flags,
Speaker 1: then obviously light as necessary because I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've tried to communicate via semaphore and pitch darkness with
Speaker 1: unlit flags not terribly productive. What if the flags are
Speaker 1: glow in the dark, that's different then you've got but
Speaker 1: there's some blurring issues too. I guess the flags probably
Speaker 1: would mean it would take a long time to download
Speaker 1: a file. So what's something that we're talking about like
Speaker 1: the bond modem days, So what's something that would be
Speaker 1: a little bit faster than a guy holding up flag signals?
Speaker 1: Actual light, I mean actually using light in place of
Speaker 1: radio waves, like pulses of light kind of yeah, like
Speaker 1: like changing the amplitude of light, so the intensity of light, uh,
Speaker 1: in order to communicate, which is not the unusual. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean we we've been doing it for a very
Speaker 1: very long time. But we're talking about something that would
Speaker 1: have to move a little bit faster than for example, uh, beacons, right, yes,
Speaker 1: like the old days where you know the you're you,
Speaker 1: you are a messenger and you see that there are
Speaker 1: invaders coming in at the northern border of the country
Speaker 1: you live in, so you light the beacon to alert
Speaker 1: everybody else. It's that's seen in the Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings where they like the beacon to U to call
Speaker 1: the who are the writers of rowan? Yes, don't test me, buddy,
Speaker 1: I was actually just playing the Shadows of mortor game,
Speaker 1: and the Orcs use beacons in that came a boy,
Speaker 1: are they irritating anyway? Uh? Greeks and Romans were using
Speaker 1: mirrored plates to send messages using light. They would flash
Speaker 1: light in in a series of flashes to indicate one
Speaker 1: thing or another. Uh. There's the famous story in American
Speaker 1: history during the Revolutionary War in which the Old North
Speaker 1: Church in Boston was used to alert messengers to the
Speaker 1: troop movements of British troops. The whole one if by
Speaker 1: land too, if by sea, referred to in Longfellow's poem
Speaker 1: Paul Revere's Ride, which may or may not be apocryphal.
Speaker 1: There's some arguments historically speaking about what exactly happened. Essentially,
Speaker 1: people say that yes, lights were used. Whether or not
Speaker 1: was the Old North Church is still the matter of
Speaker 1: some debate. But at any rate, we've been using lights
Speaker 1: like this for ages. Yeah, and that that is definitely
Speaker 1: encoding data in light. But right, it's pretty limited that
Speaker 1: The fancy word which Jonathan just mentioned earlier actually is semaphore,
Speaker 1: which just means an object that can be placed in
Speaker 1: different positions or conditions to convey different messages, like like
Speaker 1: flag signals. Yeah, if you think about it, you could
Speaker 1: even have set up a semaphour type of signaling system
Speaker 1: with office mates where you just have a quietly like
Speaker 1: a little cabal who all know that the placement of
Speaker 1: certain office equipment or or or a coutrement in certain locations,
Speaker 1: on certain desks conveys a meaning. And from your blank stairs,
Speaker 1: I can tell neither of you are in it. Never mind,
Speaker 1: I didn't say anything. So. By the early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: the United States was experimenting with a technology called helio graphs.
Speaker 1: These were solar telegraphs. They actually used sunlight and mirrors
Speaker 1: to try and send messages from signal towers. That sounds
Speaker 1: like some steam punk stuff, It does, doesn't It also
Speaker 1: reminds me of a Terry Pratchett novel in which there
Speaker 1: was a whole system set up that was competing with
Speaker 1: mail on discworld. But at any rate, they would use
Speaker 1: morse code and flash out messages to one another and
Speaker 1: send messages down the line of signal towers to get
Speaker 1: the message to where it needs to go. Then there
Speaker 1: was a guy, you may have heard of him, Alexander
Speaker 1: Graham Bell. Yeah, uh so, he and see the guy
Speaker 1: who invented Graham crackers. Uh, it was close friend to
Speaker 1: the Kellogg's. No, he invented a device called the photo
Speaker 1: phone in and it used a vibrating mirror to encode
Speaker 1: voice transmissions on a beam of light. And then you
Speaker 1: would have a selenium photo cell that could pick up
Speaker 1: that light and convert it back into sound. And it
Speaker 1: only worked in sun light. You had to have some
Speaker 1: light blasting down on this thing in order for you
Speaker 1: to get enough light to send the message. But it
Speaker 1: was really neat, and he invented this just four years
Speaker 1: after he patented the telephone. He had so much hope
Speaker 1: for this thing. Supposedly he wanted to name one of
Speaker 1: his daughters after it. He was so fond of it.
Speaker 1: Uh that wanted to name her Photo Photophone. Yeah, didn't
Speaker 1: didn't work out good thing for her. Um, maybe he
Speaker 1: could have named her photo Phoenicia. Pretty Yeah, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but but but it was really really cool. Uh it was.
Speaker 1: It was the series of mirrors and lenses that would
Speaker 1: dire act a beam of sunlight. And yeah, they tried
Speaker 1: it with kerosene lamp light, but it didn't work well enough.
Speaker 1: Uh so so it would direct a beam of sunlight
Speaker 1: to a mirror attached to the mouthpiece that you spoke into,
Speaker 1: which would the mirror would then bounce the light off
Speaker 1: through more lenses and onto a receiver. So when you spoke,
Speaker 1: the mirror would vibrate, thus changing the intensity of the
Speaker 1: light that was hitting the receiver. And yeah, it worked.
Speaker 1: It worked real well, very clear uh sound effects coming through.
Speaker 1: But it also would pick up noises like a like
Speaker 1: like clouds passing across the sun right because you have
Speaker 1: an interruption in the signal. So so if you've ever
Speaker 1: been wondering what that sounds like, it's probably something akin
Speaker 1: to weird static, I would imagine. But now I really
Speaker 1: want to know. This is getting cooler and cooler. Well,
Speaker 1: it keeps getting cooler. By the nineteen fifties, we have
Speaker 1: researchers who are looking into using light through cabling systems
Speaker 1: to create new communication technologies. So to get around this
Speaker 1: problem of only being able to use sunlight or some
Speaker 1: other visible light within uh the area to communicate, they
Speaker 1: wanted to be able to pass light through cabling, essentially
Speaker 1: creating very reflective cables that could pass a light signal
Speaker 1: down them. We're talking about the birth of fiber optics here,
Speaker 1: and in April nineteen seven we had the first optic
Speaker 1: telephone cable put into service. It was owned by General
Speaker 1: Telephone and Electronics. Soon afterwards, other telephone companies were installing
Speaker 1: fiber optic cables and those are really the backbone of
Speaker 1: our telecommunications infrastructure at this point. Like we think of
Speaker 1: copper as a as a signal carrier quite often, but
Speaker 1: really fiber optics are that's that's the true backbone for
Speaker 1: most of the telecommunications around the world. Now, all that's cool,
Speaker 1: but what if we were able to go back to
Speaker 1: Bell's idea of using visible light to communicate? So, in
Speaker 1: other words, what if we were to use light to
Speaker 1: transmit data through the air and not through cables, So
Speaker 1: not a system that you hook up to your computer
Speaker 1: with a physical cord, but rather light, ambient light in
Speaker 1: your environment being able to communicate data. And then that
Speaker 1: would mean we could open up the entire spectrum of
Speaker 1: visible light for communication. Is that possible? I mean, that
Speaker 1: sounds very interesting. One of the things that I often
Speaker 1: think about is all of the data that's passing through
Speaker 1: and around us all the time. Yeah, everywhere you go,
Speaker 1: there are signals bounding around. I mean they're you're walking
Speaker 1: through the range of WiFi routers, but there are also
Speaker 1: cell towers, radio broadcast towers. Yes, stuff is going through
Speaker 1: you all the time, and it's very bizarre to think,
Speaker 1: what if you could see all of that? Right, And
Speaker 1: then of course there are people who believe that they
Speaker 1: are their health is affected by these things, not that
Speaker 1: we've seen any real medical evidence to support such things,
Speaker 1: but there are people who truly believe, Yeah, who won't
Speaker 1: be around WiFi routers at all, Yeah, because they say
Speaker 1: that it it impacts their health in a negative way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really doesn't. These things very much are in the
Speaker 1: kind of between the microwave and the radio frequency on
Speaker 1: the spectrum the electromagnetic spectrum, and they're they're very safe there.
Speaker 1: There's a very very low probability, uh, that that they
Speaker 1: are in any way affecting anyone's health, especially from a
Speaker 1: distance of more than like two centimeters. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's non ionizing radiation. It's just not that part of
Speaker 1: the spectrum that's going to knock molecules loose and up
Speaker 1: set your DNA. What it could possibly do is maybe
Speaker 1: heat up your skin possibly. Yeah, there there can be
Speaker 1: electromagnetic interference that can cause other issues, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that. And I think I think the World Health
Speaker 1: Organization has listed it as a potential carcinogen now that
Speaker 1: so you can say that. But another thing to note
Speaker 1: would be that the sun is a known carcinogen, absolutely accurate.
Speaker 1: If you're okay going out in the sun, you should
Speaker 1: probably be okay getting around a WiFi router every now
Speaker 1: and then. You might not want to sleep with your
Speaker 1: head resting on one every day. But yeah, well, the
Speaker 1: only reason I even brought it up, and I was
Speaker 1: hesitant to bring it up because pills so comfy. Because
Speaker 1: I am very skeptical of the thought that WiFi and
Speaker 1: other radio frequency communication can have a a physical effect
Speaker 1: on people, uh, particularly at the intensities of our you know,
Speaker 1: our WiFi routers things of that nature. I'm very skeptical
Speaker 1: of that. However, the reason, one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: brought it up is because it was one of the
Speaker 1: benefits that was being touted by LiFi using light instead
Speaker 1: of radio signals to transmit this data at this last
Speaker 1: segment between the backbone of the Internet and whatever device
Speaker 1: you want to use. That well, One of the many
Speaker 1: benefits is that you and complain about the wireless signals
Speaker 1: hurting you because it's using visible light. If if if
Speaker 1: that hurts you, then just being in a room with
Speaker 1: a lamp would hurt you. But at any rate, let's
Speaker 1: talk about what. So one of the benefits is that
Speaker 1: it counteracts something that is probably not a problem. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and that was actually my very reaction that you just had.
Speaker 1: But really, let's talk about Life I. So super cool idea.
Speaker 1: You know, it's an offshoot of a broader category called
Speaker 1: optical wireless Communications or o w C, which does not
Speaker 1: necessarily have to deal with a visible light. It could
Speaker 1: be anything in the light spectrum, so they could also
Speaker 1: involve infrared or ultra violet, something along those lines. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there is another branch, a smaller one, called visible
Speaker 1: light Communications or v l C, and Life I would
Speaker 1: be part of that. The term was coined by Harold
Speaker 1: has who is a professor and also has worked with
Speaker 1: um a company called Pure Life I to develop a system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's their chief science officer. Yeah. Uh, and so this
Speaker 1: is all about using light within the visible spectrum, and
Speaker 1: the reason being that he's concentrated on that is that
Speaker 1: other types of light, like infrared, can be harmful to
Speaker 1: your eyes, and ultra violet, as we know, can cause
Speaker 1: things like skin cancer if you have too much exposure
Speaker 1: to ultra violet. Uh. So he presented a TED talk
Speaker 1: on this subject, and in that talk he called it
Speaker 1: d light, which I thought was delightful. I put it
Speaker 1: in the notes and I had to say it too,
Speaker 1: uh and he wanted He used a system that was
Speaker 1: called orthogonal frequency division multiplexing or o f d M,
Speaker 1: which sounds pretty fancy, but honestly, it gets really simple.
Speaker 1: It's all about amplifying the signal from an l e
Speaker 1: ED light source, and you do that by varying the
Speaker 1: electric current that's flowing through the l e ED And
Speaker 1: that's all you need to do is just vary that current.
Speaker 1: By varying the current, you've you change the amplification of
Speaker 1: that light. If you have a receiver that can pick
Speaker 1: up these minute, subtle variations, then they can then decode
Speaker 1: that as the information that you had intended to send.
Speaker 1: So you could do this like you could send a
Speaker 1: movie this way. You could have a lightbulb that has
Speaker 1: a little microprocessor attached to it and it is pulling
Speaker 1: the signal from whatever feed is coming into your home
Speaker 1: from the Internet. So let's say that you've got the
Speaker 1: internet backbone, you've got fiber optic. Let's say that runs
Speaker 1: to your house. From there, you would have a system
Speaker 1: that would take that signal converted into the language that
Speaker 1: would be picked up by this microprocessor in a light bulb.
Speaker 1: The light bulb would then flash at the frequency the
Speaker 1: amplitude changes according to whatever data was being sent, but
Speaker 1: do so so rapidly that your human eyes would be
Speaker 1: incapable of detecting it. So we just looked like the
Speaker 1: light bulbs on. It wouldn't look like the lightbulbs. It
Speaker 1: wasn't Yeah, it wouldn't be a disco. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: like a ghostly light bulb. Now, it would be very subtle,
Speaker 1: to the point where, because of it it's such a
Speaker 1: high frequency, it would just seem like a steady light
Speaker 1: source to us. And meanwhile, any devices outfitted with a
Speaker 1: sensor that could pick up these subtle variations in light
Speaker 1: amplitude would be able to accept that information. So with
Speaker 1: the movie example, you could have a home theater where
Speaker 1: you've got very dim lights on and you've got a
Speaker 1: receiver of some sort that can take it has that
Speaker 1: that sensor on it that can detect the changes in light.
Speaker 1: It's connected to your entertainment system, and you are beaming
Speaker 1: the film you're watching through light. There's no physical connection
Speaker 1: to the entertainment system. There's no radio connection. There no
Speaker 1: radio waves going on at all. It's just light beaming
Speaker 1: that information down, which is pretty awesome, and it can
Speaker 1: do it pretty effectively. At the TED talk he demonstrated this.
Speaker 1: He had an a desk lamp set up that had
Speaker 1: a light bulb with one of these microprocessors attached to it,
Speaker 1: and the lamp was hooked up through a system that
Speaker 1: fed it the data it needed and was set on
Speaker 1: the table. And the table had a little hole drilled
Speaker 1: into it and through that hole light would go through
Speaker 1: that little hole, and on the underside of the table
Speaker 1: was a sensor that was then connected to a projector.
Speaker 1: So he turned on the lamp and the lamp sent
Speaker 1: information to the sensor that started a video, a high
Speaker 1: definition video playing behind him as he gave his talk,
Speaker 1: And then he demonstrated by interrupting the light source. In
Speaker 1: other words, he stuck his hand over the whole and
Speaker 1: it interrupted the data stream, so the video paused. It
Speaker 1: was as if your wireless had dropped. And if you've
Speaker 1: ever had that experience where suddenly, uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: starts to buffer or it's going through like trying to
Speaker 1: search for a signal, same sort of thing. He moved
Speaker 1: his hand and it started up again. So it was
Speaker 1: an example of yes, this is live. This is a
Speaker 1: live feed of information from a lightbulb to a computer
Speaker 1: system and showing you how that information can be transferred
Speaker 1: just using light. Pretty awesome. Now, the reason you used
Speaker 1: L E. D S was specifically because L E Ed's
Speaker 1: work on their semiconductors and you can easily control them
Speaker 1: by varying that electric frequent are the electric current that
Speaker 1: goes to the semiconductors, so you can make minute changes
Speaker 1: very very quickly. And this is different from other types
Speaker 1: of light bulbs. Oh yeah, you cannot do this with
Speaker 1: an incandescent bulb, right, because incandescent bulbs what they do
Speaker 1: is you have they're essentially resistors. Right, You have this
Speaker 1: filament that resists the flow of electricity. As a result,
Speaker 1: it heats up. Eventually, it heats up to a temperature
Speaker 1: that allows it to incandesse or to glow up. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it needs that time, So that would be a rave that. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you try to use it incandescent bulbs, yes, it
Speaker 1: would not be able to transmit at near the speed
Speaker 1: of an l AED bulb. And then, of course if
Speaker 1: you wanted to do this with fluorescent lights, you might
Speaker 1: as well do the guy with the flags on the table. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same thing, because fluorescent lights, they use a gas that
Speaker 1: gets excited by electricity that then amixites another gas that
Speaker 1: then emits photons. Yeah, and those photons are usually in
Speaker 1: the ultra violet range, so you have to actually have,
Speaker 1: you know, put a a um, a substance on the
Speaker 1: inside of the fluorescent bulbs that will fluoresce in the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum once it's hit by ultra violet photons. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a weird chain reaction. Yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like a it's like a bucket brigade for for people
Speaker 1: who fight fires. So when they first started showing this
Speaker 1: off back in the TED Talk, it was pretty much
Speaker 1: at a speed of around ten megabits per second, which
Speaker 1: is that's okay, I mean it's not it's no longer
Speaker 1: what broadband is considered here in the U S No.
Speaker 1: I just for for an example of how that compares
Speaker 1: to say, my WiFi on my computer from about a
Speaker 1: minute and a half ago. I'm currently registering download speeds
Speaker 1: about forty three negabets per second and upload speeds of
Speaker 1: about fourteen per second, so much faster. But those that
Speaker 1: was just the starting off point, and the hass himself
Speaker 1: is working on systems that are much more advanced than that,
Speaker 1: including ones that would be using not LEDs but lasers,
Speaker 1: low powered lasers. So it's not like they're going to
Speaker 1: blind you. You know, It's not like you're going to
Speaker 1: be have a bunch of laser pointers going crazy in
Speaker 1: your house. It would be hard to sell something that
Speaker 1: blinded people. Yeah, if it as long as I hold on,
Speaker 1: what if it blinds somebody else instead of you? Right,
Speaker 1: if it's the blind o Tron two thousand, like it's
Speaker 1: specifically marketed to blind people at any rate, these lasers
Speaker 1: are not of that nature and gave a sad story
Speaker 1: fast well. But the neat thing about the laser system
Speaker 1: is that it might be able to achieve a throughput
Speaker 1: of around a hundred gigabits per second, which is in
Speaker 1: mainly fast, right, And when we say fast, obviously once
Speaker 1: again we don't necessarily mean that the data is moving
Speaker 1: at a faster speed, more like more data can move
Speaker 1: through that pathway. At the same time, it's it's not
Speaker 1: how fast the cars on the highway are driving, but
Speaker 1: how many lanes there are. Ye. So in this case,
Speaker 1: a hundred gigabits per second means that you would be
Speaker 1: able to have really high quality video, for example, beaming
Speaker 1: through at this with no buffering necessary. It would be
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal. So so that process it's still in or
Speaker 1: that technology rather is still in development. Yes, the led
Speaker 1: s i've heard are closer to around UH one between
Speaker 1: one and ten gigabits per second at their current level,
Speaker 1: which still I mean one gigabit per second. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Google fiber speeds around there, right, ten gigabits per second,
Speaker 1: it's ten times what's considered ultra fast UH download speeds
Speaker 1: according to the current state of the art here in
Speaker 1: the United States. UM and his ted talk has actually
Speaker 1: said that one of the reasons they looked at this
Speaker 1: is really that radio frequency capacity crunch. That was a
Speaker 1: real big reason to look at it. We're adding more
Speaker 1: and more devices, and we're having more issues with local
Speaker 1: access points getting bogged down with traffic. So what if
Speaker 1: we were able to relieve some of that traffic by
Speaker 1: switching to this light method. And he pointed out that
Speaker 1: with the visible light spectrum you have about ten thousand
Speaker 1: times more capacity than within the entire radio band spectrum.
Speaker 1: Keeping in mind that lots of the radio band spectrum
Speaker 1: are already they're already earmarked for other things that we
Speaker 1: can't touch, right, right, they're regulated by governments of various
Speaker 1: countries to say that like, oh, we we're setting this
Speaker 1: aside for this type of official communication, and this aside
Speaker 1: for television, in this aside for the right terrestrial radio
Speaker 1: or radar or whatever you know. So there there are
Speaker 1: certain sections that you just can't do anything with because
Speaker 1: they're already dedicated for other uses. This would allow us
Speaker 1: to use a band of quency in the electromagnetic spectrum
Speaker 1: that is unregulated and has ten thousand times more capacity
Speaker 1: crently unregulated. Yes, if we were to start using it,
Speaker 1: you could be sure that sooner or later regulation would
Speaker 1: probably have to follow just to make certain that you
Speaker 1: didn't have a bunch of competing communications. Uh, systems in
Speaker 1: a similar place that we're just going to cause confusion. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: for example, imagine that you're in a mall and the
Speaker 1: lights are all outfitted with this stuff, but they have
Speaker 1: been installed over various different times and are all working
Speaker 1: on different um different proprietary approaches, and meanwhile your device
Speaker 1: is going crazy because it's receiving all these different signals simultaneously.
Speaker 1: It's would be like everyone's yelling at the same time.
Speaker 1: Another neat thing is that this would eliminate the possibility
Speaker 1: of someone snooping in on your WiFi as long as
Speaker 1: they're not in the same room. You are inca right
Speaker 1: because light doesn't go through walls, right, as long as
Speaker 1: you're not, like you know, in a big glass cube,
Speaker 1: or people could just walk up and hold of a
Speaker 1: device outside of your your giant glass cube. Uh, then
Speaker 1: you'd be fine. You you wouldn't have you know. It
Speaker 1: would allow for some secure communications protocols that could be
Speaker 1: really useful in lots of different places. I mean imagine
Speaker 1: just from business standpoint, imagine having a business, um like
Speaker 1: an office outfitted with this stuff, so that way proprietary
Speaker 1: secrets would remain more secure. If someone got access to
Speaker 1: that then you would know they have access to your people,
Speaker 1: not to your technology or the access to your space.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, or that you've been posting things on Google docs,
Speaker 1: right yeah, if they they found it through some other
Speaker 1: like some other loophole but not within your your actual
Speaker 1: like wireless system. Um and you could, uh, you could
Speaker 1: even use this to transmit information if you have other
Speaker 1: lights active in the area. When he was demonstrating it
Speaker 1: as ted talk, Hause showed that this lamp was on
Speaker 1: a lit stage. It wasn't as if they turn all
Speaker 1: the lights off in lamp. Still the lamp worked. They
Speaker 1: had ambient light from other lighting sources. But because the
Speaker 1: sensor is really just looking for those those subtle modulations,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter whether the light sources you have, assuming
Speaker 1: they're not also modulating at a super high frequency. That
Speaker 1: could throw in some interference, especially at the same frequency
Speaker 1: of light that your sources at, because theoretically you could
Speaker 1: set the receiver to only look at a certain frequency
Speaker 1: of light and ignore everything else, in which case that
Speaker 1: would really, you know, free you up quite a bit.
Speaker 1: In fact, it would allow you to have multiple devices
Speaker 1: all getting information from a single source as long as
Speaker 1: that single source had multiple l ed s that could
Speaker 1: all use slightly different frequencies, which is a pretty interesting
Speaker 1: in my opinion. H and he said that you could
Speaker 1: even turn down the lights low enough so that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be perceptible to humans, like it would be at
Speaker 1: a low enough level where it would seem as if
Speaker 1: the lights are off, but would still admit enough light
Speaker 1: for a sensitive receiver to pick up those modulations. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you don't always have to have the
Speaker 1: lights on full blast in order for you to get
Speaker 1: the data from your light bulb to your computer or whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining this as the premise to a movie
Speaker 1: about the electronics source that drives people crazy and so
Speaker 1: like the signal, but instead of radio frequencies, it's light YEA,
Speaker 1: or or the premise behind Chuck where he sees a
Speaker 1: series of images and that somehow imprints all of the N, S,
Speaker 1: A and C I A secrets into his brain. Not
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, No, no, no, the television series Chuck, which
Speaker 1: I just started rewatching, which is the only reason why
Speaker 1: it was fresh in my mind. Um, But that that
Speaker 1: I thought was pretty interesting was that, you know, again,
Speaker 1: you can play around with the levels of human perception
Speaker 1: so that you can still transmit this information without having
Speaker 1: to have all your lights on UH like full blast
Speaker 1: UM and then like I said, pure Life. I that's
Speaker 1: the one of the companies working on this, and one
Speaker 1: that has works with UH is working on systems that
Speaker 1: could be deployed in the real world, and they're also
Speaker 1: looking at how do you make this practical, how do
Speaker 1: you make it in a way where if you were
Speaker 1: on the move between one area serviced by LiFi into another,
Speaker 1: you can have a seamless um experience because you know,
Speaker 1: like the way we use cell phones, if you're using
Speaker 1: a cell phone, if you're on the phone and you're
Speaker 1: traveling and you move from one cell tower service area
Speaker 1: into another's, there's a handshake that goes on that has
Speaker 1: a handoff from one cell tower to the other, which
Speaker 1: allows you to continue your continue your phone call. If
Speaker 1: we didn't have this technology, once you left that first
Speaker 1: broadcast area, you're you would drop a call, you would
Speaker 1: not be able to continue that conversation. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: that everyone has had the experience of driving through an
Speaker 1: area that's kind of slightly between two different cell towers
Speaker 1: and and therefore you miss a little bit of a
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe your call drops off in the middle.
Speaker 1: But yeah. So they're working on creating technology that will
Speaker 1: that will let that be justice seamless with their with
Speaker 1: their life Eye products, and they demonstrated one of these
Speaker 1: products called live Flame at the Mobile World Congress in March,
Speaker 1: which was in China somewhere I forget where, but uh,
Speaker 1: it's on the market supposedly has been shipped to a
Speaker 1: few commercial buyers already and I and I think the
Speaker 1: numbers that I've read for that particular version of live
Speaker 1: Flame are are that it has a ten megabit per
Speaker 1: second uplink and down link. That's still pretty impressive, especially,
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine that you could have this on two
Speaker 1: devices and allow those two devices to communicate securely without
Speaker 1: using radio frequencies. So, in other words, let's say that
Speaker 1: we're sitting at this table and I wanted to send
Speaker 1: a large file to Joe but didn't want to go
Speaker 1: over the WiFi. If both of our computers had cameras
Speaker 1: and lights attached to them so that I could beam
Speaker 1: that directly to Joe, you know, it would just looked
Speaker 1: like the little led on my my computer was just lit.
Speaker 1: To us, it would just seem like it was on
Speaker 1: and that's it, but it would actually be beaming that
Speaker 1: information with those very tiny modulations. That's another reason why
Speaker 1: people have been touting life I as a good example,
Speaker 1: a good replacement for WiFi in certain applications, because it
Speaker 1: will allow for that secure communication assuming that whomever is
Speaker 1: wanting to spy on you is not within line of sight.
Speaker 1: If they could get line of sight to a point
Speaker 1: where they could also have a receiver getting that light,
Speaker 1: then obviously they could intercept that information as well. But
Speaker 1: I mean just a second here, I would think that
Speaker 1: you could just as easily encrypt an optical light signal
Speaker 1: and the visible spectrum as you could encrypt a radio signal. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, have an encryption so that the data
Speaker 1: is meaningless unless you have the key. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't see any reason why encryption would be dependent
Speaker 1: on the spectrum. Now, you absolutely could do that. You
Speaker 1: absolutely could do that. It's just the question of whether
Speaker 1: or not you would have the direct access to the
Speaker 1: encrypted data because again, like we've said before, encryption gives
Speaker 1: you a certain level of security, but there is no
Speaker 1: such things so far as perfect encryption. If someone is
Speaker 1: determined enough and has an access to enough processors, even
Speaker 1: just using brute force, they can eventually break encryption. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean assuming that, assuming the person doesn't have a
Speaker 1: quantum computer or something. Well, I mean, I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: this in the use of things like high level government
Speaker 1: officials who need to be able to send an information
Speaker 1: secretly to one another, where you're you know, that's a
Speaker 1: case where you're talking about there's enough of an incentive
Speaker 1: to go through the trouble of trying to break that encryption. Now,
Speaker 1: if it's me sending you a file of a bunch
Speaker 1: of actors from Miami connection, it's probably not going to
Speaker 1: be as big a deal. That interesting. Yeah, uh so,
Speaker 1: um forward thinking not that interesting. It's one of the
Speaker 1: many slogans that we ultimately de and not to use
Speaker 1: for this show. Uh. We also we also want to
Speaker 1: point out that this this life I technology would really
Speaker 1: be more about replacing that WiFi point of connection, right,
Speaker 1: It's not about turning the Internet into just light. Right.
Speaker 1: The the backbone of the Internet would remain. The backbone
Speaker 1: of the Internet infrastructure would not change because partially because
Speaker 1: of the range of this kind of thing like it's
Speaker 1: it's really only going to go about three ms before
Speaker 1: it starts becoming less than effective. Yeah, and it's really
Speaker 1: it's about ten feet. Yeah, that the thank you. It's
Speaker 1: really also just good for one way communication for most applications,
Speaker 1: especially if you're thinking about like in your home, and
Speaker 1: let's say that you want to use Life I instead
Speaker 1: of WiFi. Well, unless you have all of your devices
Speaker 1: with bright lights that can communicate back up through the receivers,
Speaker 1: and you have receivers all over your home, this is
Speaker 1: not that know, that's not that useful. Like if you
Speaker 1: move out from one room to another room, you would
Speaker 1: have to have these receivers in every room. It's not
Speaker 1: like WiFi where you could in theory, set up a
Speaker 1: router in one part of your house and it serves
Speaker 1: the whole house. Right, So, like, for example, I live
Speaker 1: in a house that has multiple floors. It's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like in a flat style. Ironically it's flat but
Speaker 1: has multiple floors. Anyway, I put it in the middle
Speaker 1: level of this of my house, and I get service
Speaker 1: both in the bottom floor and the top floor. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't work that way with life I would have to
Speaker 1: have the light bulbs and receivers in all those rooms.
Speaker 1: In order to have two way communication, you must have
Speaker 1: a good router, right, I have a hard time getting
Speaker 1: a signal in the next room. Well. Also, my the
Speaker 1: way my house is designed, it's like it's almost like
Speaker 1: a chimney, and that it has a stairway, an open
Speaker 1: stairway that goes all the way from the bottom all
Speaker 1: the way to the top. So it's not like there
Speaker 1: are doorways or anything. You you pretty much have a
Speaker 1: big chamber that's that's divided by floors. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a really quite a It seems to be a
Speaker 1: pretty decent router. I do get fine service in whatever
Speaker 1: rooms I happen to be in, but uh, Life I
Speaker 1: would be different for that. It would be really good
Speaker 1: for one way communication where you want to beam something
Speaker 1: like movies or pictures, sound files, that kind of stuff. So, um,
Speaker 1: if you look at the pure life I page, for example,
Speaker 1: they say, well, one of the places where we're seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of WiFi crunch is in consumption. The fact
Speaker 1: that people want to use their Internet connections to watch
Speaker 1: stuff like Netflix, or they want to use it to
Speaker 1: uh to watch YouTube. You know, these things that require
Speaker 1: a lot of data throughput video games, stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it might be better to use Life I to
Speaker 1: take some of that, uh that load off of the
Speaker 1: wireless spectrum. But you would still use WiFi in your
Speaker 1: devices to communicate back up through the the Internet, So
Speaker 1: it would be kind of a tag team. And part
Speaker 1: of that is because you know, you mentioned you know,
Speaker 1: up link for this down link. In most data plans,
Speaker 1: you'll see that your down link data, your data rate
Speaker 1: tends to be much higher down link than uplink. And
Speaker 1: it's because largely that most of us end up consuming
Speaker 1: more than we upload. Uh. The people in this room
Speaker 1: kind of an exception because we do lots of audio
Speaker 1: and video, But for most people, they're consuming more than
Speaker 1: their generating, so to them, they're more they're more interested
Speaker 1: in getting a very fast rate getting the stuff to
Speaker 1: their computers than to upload because most of the time
Speaker 1: they're uploading relatively small files. Um so this would not
Speaker 1: be that big of a difference between those kind of
Speaker 1: plans and Life Life I. Uh So that's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: But another potential use of LiFi that Hass pointed out
Speaker 1: actually in his TED talk was imagine that you have
Speaker 1: a system where all the headlights and cars have this
Speaker 1: technology outfitted them, and the traffic signals do too, and
Speaker 1: then you could have cars and even their brake lights
Speaker 1: could have this too. All the cars could communicate with
Speaker 1: one another. They could also communicate with the traffic system.
Speaker 1: You could have a real time, interactive dynamic traffic system
Speaker 1: that responds to changing conditions based upon the communication that's
Speaker 1: going through when people are driving. Now, granted, this would
Speaker 1: require headlights to be on in order for this to work. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you didn't have your headlines on, then you're not
Speaker 1: transmitting any information. You could receive it, but you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to transmit it. So we're saying that the
Speaker 1: incredible feature involves a lot of cars all having their
Speaker 1: headlights on all the time, but never getting stuck at
Speaker 1: stop lights when nobody is going the other way. Possibly,
Speaker 1: possibly at least we would have a robust dynamic traffic
Speaker 1: system at night, at the very least, like if it's
Speaker 1: not during the day, they would at least be at night,
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. It's an interesting idea, and
Speaker 1: it was one that I had to think about for
Speaker 1: a while because I was trying to, you know, what
Speaker 1: applications would I see this being a PRAC to call
Speaker 1: for and when it comes down to my smartphone, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that would be that practical because I could
Speaker 1: I could again watch stuff on my phone, I could
Speaker 1: pull stuff down well, as long as you were very
Speaker 1: carefully standing in a place where you were receiving the
Speaker 1: light transmission, because if you moved, if you like, shifted
Speaker 1: so that your head was blocking right and I would
Speaker 1: block the signal. Yeah. That so this definitely has its limitations.
Speaker 1: So I think it's really important to note that right
Speaker 1: to take that into account saying all right, light is
Speaker 1: not going to completely replace WiFi and all applications everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's not practical, but there's some that makes sense. For example, underwater,
Speaker 1: if you want to do uh like a scientific survey
Speaker 1: of an area and you're using multiple underwater rovers, then
Speaker 1: you need a way to communicate with those, and light
Speaker 1: might be better than radio because radio signals attenuate underwater.
Speaker 1: It's why we don't use radar. We use sonar underwater,
Speaker 1: not radar. But light would be very useful in that case.
Speaker 1: You could use this uh amplification modulation to communicate between
Speaker 1: various vehicles or tools to be able to do more
Speaker 1: effective surveys underwater, all sorts of different applications there. So
Speaker 1: it maybe that when we have our underwater hotels that
Speaker 1: we talked about many many moons ago, this is how
Speaker 1: we end up communicating with each other. Um, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna hold my breath. I see what you
Speaker 1: did there, Jonathan, I'm almost ashamed of that. And getting
Speaker 1: back to the idea of using light instead of radio
Speaker 1: frequencies in environments where radio frequencies might not be safe,
Speaker 1: so hospitals or potentially planes, although there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who argue that the whole plane thing is is
Speaker 1: greatly exaggerated, or in areas where electromagnetic interference could potentially
Speaker 1: cause a catastrophic event, like a petrochemical manufacturing plant, where
Speaker 1: if you had electro magnetic interference in part of the system,
Speaker 1: it could cause an explosion. UM, light is harmless in
Speaker 1: that scenario, you could use light instead to transmit information
Speaker 1: and get around that electromagnetic frequency interference and uh, and
Speaker 1: so it could be really useful in those applications. UM,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we're going to see that, because
Speaker 1: I mean, at least for airplanes, obviously it would require
Speaker 1: that people have devices that are compatible with this technology. Um.
Speaker 1: And unless it becomes so widespread that everything comes with it,
Speaker 1: it may that may never happen, but it might end
Speaker 1: up being something that is used to transmit information directly
Speaker 1: to an entertainment system that's embedded in the plane itself.
Speaker 1: That's a possibility. UM. So I thought that was all
Speaker 1: very interesting, and you know, it's a neat idea. It's
Speaker 1: a neat way to get around this radio frequency spectrum crunch,
Speaker 1: at least in specific applications. And obviously it's this kind
Speaker 1: of thinking that is required for us to continue on
Speaker 1: this path of UM evolution as we add more and
Speaker 1: more demands to this internet infrastructure we've built. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to see whether or not it picks up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. I been interested in in reading about it
Speaker 1: over the past year, and it's recently popped up again
Speaker 1: as as people have uh kind of rediscovered it or
Speaker 1: some people have discovered it for the first time. And um,
Speaker 1: I would love to see a demonstration of this personally,
Speaker 1: like an actual demonstration. I'm so. I kicked myself that
Speaker 1: there was apparently a demonstration of a smartphone outfitted with
Speaker 1: a receiver that would allow it to take in this
Speaker 1: information at C E HAS two thousand and fourteen. You
Speaker 1: were there. I was there, and I didn't know about it.
Speaker 1: I'm kicking myself. There's so much it's c ES. It's
Speaker 1: not like you can see every single thing on the ship.
Speaker 1: There are upwards of a dozen booths at C E
Speaker 1: S every couple of square feet. Yeah. No, C E
Speaker 1: S has a lot stuff, a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 1: But this would have been one of those things that
Speaker 1: I wish I had known about going into it, because
Speaker 1: it would have been I clearly would have covered it.
Speaker 1: This would have been a great story for forward thinking.
Speaker 1: But here's hoping that I might see something similar to
Speaker 1: that next C E S. So hope springs eternal. But
Speaker 1: this was really fun to kind of talk about this technology.
Speaker 1: We don't often focus on a specific tech like this.
Speaker 1: We tend to look at more broad topics, but this
Speaker 1: was kind of fun to look at a specific implementation.
Speaker 1: If you guys have anything futuristic that you want us
Speaker 1: to talk about, whether it's a specific type of technology
Speaker 1: or it's just an idea, you know, what will X
Speaker 1: be like in the future, You need to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us. Let us know we love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. Our email addresses f w Thinking at how
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