14/04/2012 Click

rebuilding her life. -- Tina. Now From smart lighting to home-grown

homes and offices. This week on Click we visit the living,

breathing, thinking cities of the future. We stare into hi-tech eye

tech. There is the smart cycling jacket with built-in indicators and

a website to solve the world's problems. At last. That's in

Webscape. Welcome to Click. We talk a lot on this programme about

bringing your home to life with amazing technology. This week we

find out what would happen if the buildings themselves could come to

life. Imagine a home that had eyes and ears and could sense what is

going on inside it. Or a digesting system that could make fuel for

your car. They are not as sci-fi as you might think. By 2052 thirds of

the world's population will live in cities. That is an awful lot of

people. The cities will have to change radically to take the strain.

I think the urban environment is going to become increasingly

networked. Everything that we see around us, every object, every

chair, every table is going to be filled with a sensor technology.

Buildings already know how many people are in them to control

climate. If a lot of what is happening in sustainable

architecture today is based on the idea of a biomimicry, the signs

that upbeat nature. This building in Barcelona has got a light

sensitive skin that I just and inflates to protect those inside

and help moderate the temperature. -- adjusts. Greenalls teeming with

natural life to make sustainable development and create a healthier

environment. Like this development at Stockwell Street. We have got

3,000 square metres, we are going to have aquaponics up there, we

will have food up there. It will be very important for biodiversity.

these projects are happening today in cities all over the world. There

is a growing group of Scientists and architects who believe we have

not touched the surface. Philip Beesley envisions responsive a

buildings. We are making clouds of material come up were together in

very delicate ways. When we compress them together, we can see

them working together as rooms, walls, that breathe. These

intelligent buildings will know what is going on inside them, the

furniture might recognise individual bottoms are changing for

that particular person. Even responding to mood for the perfect

amount of recline. Scientists like Dr Rachel Armstrong believes that

one day cities will not be built at all, but grown using biological

materials. It sounds far-fetched, but her research in synthetic

biology has produced protocells, engineered to behave like organic

cells. It is not actually alive, they do not have DNA. We cannot say

they can reproduce. But they can divide. They do so by accident.

They live in this very twilight zone between not being in that, but

they are not what we would call alive. -- inert. They could be

combined with traditional building materials like paints and carbon.

Cleaning up the atmosphere and creating a reinforced shell around

a building. It is still a long way from industrial scale manufacture,

but the concept is being tested beneath a Venice, where protocells

are helping to prevent the city from sinking. We designed a smart

chemistry that would move away from the light-filled canals and

waterways, the city of Venice stands on wood piles. There a

second chemistry will kick in and take carbon dioxide and minerals

out of the water and turn it into a limestone structure. This becomes a

secretion technology. It forms an artificial limestone reef

underneath the city. That stops thieves -- buildings sinking down.

In California Scientists are working on leaving walls filled

with algae that also make fuel for your car. All buildings are heat

sources. When you think of an organism or a plant, you create

heat and buy products. That is what living architecture is. When you

see an empty building and do not know what it could be, it could be

a building that you are running your car or on. These fantastic

ideas are still a long way from being part of daily life. Perhaps

not as far as you might think. are in the middle of a science

fiction present with of these new technologies curating extraordinary

things we have never before experienced. -- creating. Bacteria

could produce by a gas which is methane. It could produce a light.

Algae can take light energy, they can take carbon-dioxide, they can

make a whole range of fuels. We will be able to make useful

substances to help us reduce energy consumption. To create resources

that we can actually use. If there is a way to cover all of the

highways, you could create archways of algae that would absorb all the

emissions of the vehicles and they would grow the fuel to run the

because underneath them. What we can imagine with different forms of

infrastructure, they could become mobile and no magic through robotic

technology into the sky, into the air. -- nomadic. Well, I do not

know about organically mobile cities. It would make finding your

front door after a night up on the town even harder than it is today.

With grave trajectories like we have, the cities of the future will

have to be much more than dumb bricks and mortar if they are going

to cope. Next, the lights... Facebook's 1 bn dollars is a grant

application has resulted in a backlash by users, some of them

have accused it of selling out to a company that is known to harvest

user data. It has attracted 30 million users since it began 18

months ago. Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to develop Instagram as a

separate brand. Sony has forecast a record annual loss of $6.4 billion.

As a result, it is cutting 10,000 jobs worldwide. This followed

Yahoo's decision to cut 2000 jobs. Apple has released a Trojan Call

Flasjback. The Apple Mac infection exposes computers being controlled

remotely by hackers. It is thought to have infected more than 500,000

Macs already. More than 50% of all robberies in major American cities

involved the theft of a mobile phone. As a result, the US Federal

Communications Commission has announced the creation of a shared

database of mobile phone id. Carriers have supported the move

and will block the activation of stolen or lost devices. New laws

will make it a federal crime to tamper with fine ideas. Panasonic

has begun testing a robot capable of, wait for it, shampooing a human

head. This was at Nishinomiya City. The robot washers the hair with its

24 robot figures. The company intends to install the robot in

Here is such a neat piece of technology that has come away. -- a

new piece. We looked at wearable technology last week. Cyclists

among you would be interested in these. Yeah fanlights I he, you are

Twilight is their -- you will find a light is there. A vibration

switch turns the lights on. It gives you a chance to get around

the corner with both hands on the handlebar. These are only available

in the UK. The rest of Europe by autumn. There are �130. Not much

more than the normal breed the ball rain jacket. It is controlled from

a battery pack. Now, wearable and personal tech is not just confined

to clothing. In the movies, everyone is walking around with

these heads up displays which a superimposing extra used for

information out what they're looking at. If you fancy that, you

can wait until we get chips implanted into our heads, or we can

have a look at these next batch of hi-tech eye tech. Many years ago,

this was what she needed to experience a terminator star heads

up display. That is way too heavy. We no longer require the strength

of a machine from the future. Apps like Layar, relay information about

the world. Flipper uses advertising Lobos. -- logos. Even smart phones

can be is cumbersome if you want to do anything that requires more than

one hand. Assuming that you are good enough to concentrate on

anything but surviving as you hurtle down the hill. Skiers can

get goggles fitted with GPS and senses to showed speed on a micro

energy display. Even though I'm getting extra data I'm losing vital

information. With the goggles on I cannot see the Crown directly in

front of my skis. The screen is sharp. Instead of saying something

directly across my vision, it is at the bottom. Every time I check my

stats, I take my eyes of the real world. Some of the blame should go

to a low-tech eyes. The human eye cannot focus at two different

distances at the same time. This biological fact affects their

displays -- headset. The real object is much further away than

that. Innovega is an American out it which specialises in wearable

displays. They developed Acorn's -- contact lens. Users can focus on

two things at once. It lets light going to the middle of the pupils.

Your rates now receives each image in focus at the same time. -- your

retina. It will be available to the public in 2014. In normal contact

lenses you're looking out to be what with a prescription. It will

sharpen your focus. Imagine adding an element, to the contact lens

that gives you another focal plane. Normally, for example with a camera,

you will focus on something distant were a particular spot. By wearing

our contact lens you easily have this multi- focus or dual focus.

You are doing something that humans do not normally do. The lenses are

yet to be approved for public use, and we could not test them

personally. Assuming a brain scan the cipher, two points of focus,

this could be it can change. Microsoft researchers are working

to make these devices perform, not just as a visual aid, but as they

help monitor. Receding and broadcasting information

specifically about blood glucose levels. There is a small antenna

that sits under the periphery of the contact lens that communicates

with a mobile device nearby. This is akin to what you see with radio

frequency ID tabs. A very small scaled-down version of that. Very

small Chemical senses that see inside the contact lens. If sending

data from the eyes does not sound futuristic enough, try a head-up

display that leads the wearer control their surroundings without

charge or gesture. This is a blink interface, on a very posh remote-

control glasses. The can simply where these glasses which it detect

your personal blink, when you in testily blink, it changes. That

will be detected by a photoreflector. Simple if you work

at MIT. A photoreflector measures changes in light. These are

standing at sci-fi scenarios require one thing, information to

why the late. Google has been working on it too. They unveiled

their project class concept to be her last week. It may be moving

from sites fiction into science fact. For some people it might be

information overload. Do you remember doing algebra at

school? I used to love algebra. Maybe you did not. I'm talking

about stuff like if 8,000 divided by two to the power of x=4, what is

next? What good would be stimulated in life? Kate Russell has been

pondering peace. She think she found a universal aunts of. Every

now and then someone comes up with an idea that changes the world,

that's what Julius Sterling Guy Fox do. They gather the greatest

thinkers of that time to brainstorm global problems with technology.

They have been compared weepy TET lectures. X is a solution. A

solution to an insurmountable problem. Like climate change or

cancer. One that affects the world. Julius Sterling Guy Fox meetings

brings together sight tests to discuss global problems using

moonshots. This is to describe the fanciful ideas between sci-fi and

reality. If you like your sights more down-to-earth, I discovered

his YouTube Janell while researching Schrodinger's cat. Net

physics takes complex theories and attempts to unravel them for the

less scientific mind with his motion animation. -- Minette

physics. The internet knows no boundaries. That is not quite true.

Language can still be a barrier for communicating with your social

connections across the globe. The multi- life .com --

themultilife.com, uses a putting translation tool and speech

synthesiser. -- a built in. As well as chatting with overseas France,

these platform will help those with impaired vision to get the most out

of the social wed. It does not do anything fancy other than the

translations. It does not have to. Just signed up, set your mother

tongue and everything else happens on autopilot. It takes a few

seconds for a beast speech plug-in to start playing, but it is a great

way to speak with France some other countries. -- France. The battle of

the music streaming apse continue with two of the best known players

now available for your black area. These are is a popular choice. They

recently announced that they are running out services to to Rada

countries later this year. You can download the at three Blackberry

App World, there is great sharing facilities with BDM integration.

150 countries around the world to go. Notably they are not the mayor

and Japan. They are already saturated and not offer good market

growth. If you prefer Spotify, they made it available for a black

'Queen Mary II' to them about page. -- Blackberry. Check the website

for more. -- Web page. They launched their play but and this

week allowing you to integrate music into your blog. -- play

button. If you want something even more exciting to do with your

iPhone, Max pain shooting game goes mad bar this way, released on ils

with enjoy it uses in the cross hairs towards the end of the month.