21/11/2015 Click - Short Edition

In about ten minutes we'll have this week's edition of Newswatch.

How would you like to earn money just by doing this?

Dan Simmons has been given exclusive access to a new global currency

project which is backed by some big investors and which means that

You can simply make money by walking.

My footstep goes up, I make more money.

It's a big change in life. Do you believe it? Yes.

So we had that crazy idea that since we are walking so much,

And since we didn't find anyone who actually does that, we decided to

create an app that allows anyone to generate money by simply walking.

It is a crazy idea from two crazy guys.

Last year's project, a $7 US bee stick that acts like a computer,

went from one school in Nairobi, to now being used in 87 countries.

Now they have schmoozed $10 million from Japanese investors to create

Unlike bitcoins, the bitwalking dollar won't be mine

It will be generated by human movement.

Like today's wristbands and fitness trackers, the go app counts

the steps you take, shows how many bitwalking dollars you make and

By now you have probably had the same thought is me.

It uses GPS tracking, motion type and speed sensing,

and it caps most of what humans can reasonably do, limiting earnings to

But you will be able to buy extra bitwalking dollars to make that big

And depending who you buy from, that could make a huge impact.

Malawi stands on the verge of a food crisis.

The average rural income is $1.50 a day.

And the President's platitudes were swiftly followed up by a 10% tax

Nobody is suggesting that bitwalking will sort this out any time soon.

A growing but still small number own smartphones here.

But for those few it could make a difference.

Salim walks two hours a day to teach technology in the local school.

We take walking is as simple as nature.

But this time it will change my life because as I will be walking

Creating a new currency is a careful balancing act.

If the money behind it runs out, it falls over.

But bitwalking will start in just a few countries.

It has a big partner in Japanese electronics giant Murata,

whose staff actually do this exercise every morning.

They are also making a bitwalking bracelet to do away

And there is evidence you do not too much cash to get people on board.

Japan's largest convenience store, Lawson,

has a scheme that pays workers $50 a year to keep fit and eat well.

Like this scheme, bitwalking dollars will only be

initially be able to spent in one store, an online one which

Crucially, giving employers, sports brands, health insurance

companies, or anyone who has an interest in getting us moving,

to join this scheme and accept the dollars will be the real test.

But let's not forget the wealth of information a project

Retailers want to get to know us personally more than ever.

Details about our daily routines, well, that could be

And one of the main reasons that bitwalking may actually succeed.

Concerns around privacy and security are being taken seriously.

Whether a currency that can be endlessly

printed by walking can succeed will make this an interesting experiment,

as it launches this weekend across several countries, including

Dan, please tell me you did what all the way from Japan to Malawi

No! OK.

But I have to wonder what really is in it for the backers,

for the people pouring loads of money into this?

It is about being part of something that will probably be

The project is about environmental beliefs, it is about social equity,

A lot of the companies thought to be backing this scheme who will come on

board, will be insurance companies, will be sports companies.

They'll want to be associated with something like this.

And it will be in their interest because we will maybe buy more

Well, if we're walking we're going to need more trainers, right?

The other thing that strikes me is that

at the moment bitwalking dollars can only be spent on the online store.

This thing lives or dies by which companies are willing to give

It is whether people want what is on the store and whether there is

enough of these products to satisfy demand, depending

on how quickly people start earning these bitwalking dollars.

These are the early days of a new currency, a new idea.

We're not sure it's going to get off the ground or not.

If it does, great, if it doesn't, that will be an Achilles heel.

100 years ago this week, Albert Einstein unveiled his general

theory of relativity, one of the most ground-breaking, space

He studied and later returned to work here at ETH, Zurich, the Swiss

And I have come to see some of the records of the man

These are Albert Einstein's marks when he was an undergraduate here.

And what is most amusing is in the third year in practical physics,

I think the theory is actually not that it wasn't very good at physics,

it was actually that he didn't bother turning up.

So what are the theories of special and general relativity?

Well, I would love to put them in a nutshell for you, but to do

so I would need to accelerate them close to the speed of light.

Maybe it is enough to say that they have shaped our understanding

of the universe, of black holes, of the Big Bang.

And Einstein did not stop at relativity.

His further thinking gave birth to the idea of quantum physics.

And that is a very weird world indeed, where

things can be two things at once, or be in two places at the same time.

But he himself found the whole area far too weird.

So I wonder what he would have made of what is in this lab?

It's a laser table with a quantum computer in the middle of it.

The laser pushes the atom and it changes the shape of the atom.

These are our tools for controlling the information in the atom.

Believe it or not, it's a very basic one.

Now quantum computers deal with data in a very different

Instead of using bits that are either zero

or one, these things deal with quantum bits, q-bits, that are both

What kind of problems would a quantum computer

be able to deal with that a classical computer can't?

One of the standout problems is in cryptography,

which relies on big numbers that you can't process in a computer.

Some algorithms in a quantum computer can break

into these numbers in a way that a classical computer could never do.

They're calcium atoms that can each be in two shapes at the same time.

A chain of these can in theory solve a problem extremely quickly by

considering all possible solutions at the same time and then jumping to

Now I say in theory, because this whole field is still

How close are we to having quantum computers that

This lab here operates a quantum transistor, maybe many times.

We need maybe a million quantum transistors to get

We will need to shrink this down quite a bit.

What would Einstein have made of this?

He did not like the basic laws of quantum mechanics.

Here in this lab we have got the basic laws of quantum mechanics

So I think it may have set him at ease or it may have made him

That is more than enough quantum for this, the short version

Much more great stuff in the full version, which you can