22/04/2017 Click

This week: how to stay at your phone and change the world. Strawberries

in a massive box. And fancy working in an enormous train station?

I don't know if you have noticed, but there seems to have been the lot

of election talk of late. This week, Click is taking a trip to Paris,

where this weekend, the French take to the polls in the first round of

their presidential election. And, curiously, from a technology point

of view, the way we vote seems if anything to be going backwards. In

the last election, France did allow online voting for those living

overseas. But not this time. For both the presidential elections and

the legislative elections in June it is back to pen and paper. And that

is due to the fear of cyber attacks, which the French nationals cyber

Security agency says are an extremely high risk. Queues of

people, paper voting... Surely there has to be a better way. Well, we

asked ABC News beat's political editor, Jonathan Blake, to have a

look. Ancient institutions and modern technology. The two do not

always go together. As elections are held worldwide throughout 2017 that

could radically reshape the political landscape, most people

will cast their vote in the same way it has been done for decades, using

a pencil and paper to put across in a box. In the UK, election turnout

has fallen steadily. Those campaigning for online voting say

the system is stuck in the past, and it is time to digitise our

democracy. It would make politicians pay attention more to the groups

that would be an franchise by this method of voting. So those groups

would be young people, because they are the ones who engage most online.

And groups like people with disabilities or with vision

impairments, of whom there are two million in this country, voters

abroad, and the Armed Forces, if they have this accessibility to

boating, politicians will have to listen to them. One company is

working on a way to make voting more convenient, and they say, more

secure, with an app that lets you register and vote by selfie. Uses

facial biometrics and combine that with some sort of government

document, whether it is a passport or driver 's licence, to create a

digital identity which the voter is in control of. So this is a

demonstration version of the app which Smartmatic have made. We will

start registering, first of all. It is asking me to take a selfie. Panik

stages to add photo ID. We will go with drivers license because I have

that handy. Once the idea is matched to your face, the Apple confirms you

are registered to vote. And we are voting for Rush Field Borough

Council, which is not a real place. It is asking me to take a photo, so

I hold up a camera and phone will take a selfie automatically. So here

there is a list of candidates, the same you would see on the ballot

paper. I don't need to tell you who are voting for, so I won't, I will

pick one at random. And that's it. It says you have cast your vote

successfully and it has given me a unique receipt number which I can

either copy or centre myself by e-mail. You are asking people to

take a photo of their face, capture an image of the photo

identification. How secure is that information. Where does it go? The

digital identity you create is unique to you and it stays on your

device, on your personal mobile phone or tablet. Whatever you use to

take it. It doesn't get stored anywhere. You are in control of it

at all times and you are in control of what pieces of information you

use to create that idea, and who you share it with. When it comes to

security, we apply a non-standard, additional layers of security, in

terms of really strongly encrypting the vote on your device, to add that

additional layer of protection. But concerns about cyber security mean

countries once embracing the use of technology in democracy are having

second thoughts. In the Netherlands, where the voting system has been

computerised since 2008, this year they are counting votes by hand. But

the country that has earned a reputation as the electronic voting

capital of the world is sticking to its guns. Estonia is almost the

sensitive about its digital identity. Here in Estonia, everyone

from the age of 15 carries a government issued photo ID card.

Using this an accompanying PIN numbers you can access your bank,

phone company, energy firm, and a lot of official information. You can

see this man's name, address, date of birth, where he went to school,

health records, everything down to what car he drives. In Estonia,

voting is just another thing you can do online. Download software, user

ID card and pin to make a selection, and vote from the comfort of your

home or wherever is convenient. Around one in three voters now cast

online, but officials admit it has not boosted turnout. The internet

voter is a transformed paper voter. Having a novelty, a convenient

method of voting, is not enough to bring people from the no voting zone

back to voting, or to voting. Of course, you need other incentives.

You need policy, you need reason to vote. I think it is interesting, but

it needs proper security, and right now the measures are not good

enough, in my opinion. Using the smart idea we have, it is easy and

quick access to everywhere. I have used it, and I think it is very

useful and it is very convenient. So I don't have to go somewhere to

queue. Other countries seem reluctant to follow Estonia's lead.

A British minister responsible for elections told me the government is

looking only at taking very small steps. They have identification

cards, and they keep the systems. It is a very different space to what we

have in the UK where they don't have a privacy agenda about protecting

individual citizens' rights, and protecting their own data. People

are happy to do their banking online, shopping online. Why not use

technology to enable people to vote more easily? Going forwards, we have

got to make sure that while we embrace technology and we embrace

things like online registration, online voting is a situation where

if we believe the current paper and pen method is the best way forward,

than actually it means that each individual's vote is counted

equally, one voter, one vote. As technology advances, calls to

digitise democracy will continue, but so will concerns about cyber

security. So the pencil and paper may well always have its place. That

was Jonathan Blake, and world technology may not be applied to

voting at these French elections, it has certainly been causing a stir in

other ways. Keen to draw attention to his campaign, a far left

candidate took to the stage this week, addressing a crowd of 6000 at

a rally in Dijon. But at the same time appeared at six other rallies

across the world. They call it a hologram, we call it smoke and

mirrors. It is not the first time politicians have used this tech to

further their agenda. India's PM Narendra Modi used it during his

campaign, and the Turkish President, Erdogan, used his avatar to appear

at a meeting he couldn't make in person. A political journalist,

sought Melenchon's first meeting. It was a meeting in France, he was out

Lyon, with Marine Le Pen, and there was at the same time a big meeting

with Macron, in Lyon, as well. So he knew that he was not the top

politician. So it was a matter for him to be... To stand out. Yes. Now,

we have seen the Peppers ghost allusion before on Click, and even

allowing me to get down with Psy in Korea. But addressing Melenchon

allowed him to address six venues simultaneously. The trick was to

arrange film lighting, which is pretty much identical to this, on a

trust, a picture frame trust, very similar, and angling and lighting

the stages. All around the destinations you are broadcasting

to. The camera in front of the stage filmed a wide shot, and the signal

was broadcast over satellite 25 French cities, and Reunion Island,

off the coast of Madagascar. Do you feel that this is the way that

elections will be fought in the future, with holograms and

technology and showmanship? No, I don't think so. I think it is really

a true for Melenchon. The media were already there to see and to speak

about it. I don't think that it is the way of making politics for the

future days. What will this tech really help connect voters to

politicians, or is this transparent projection just a gimmicky barrier

that gets in the way? Egalite, oui! Welcome one at all to the church of

Facebook, this is F8, the company's development conference which this

year is being held in San Jose. I am here to find out what Mark

Zuckerberg things we will want in the years and decades to come. I

will start with the stuff that is happening right away for. Facebook,

you will know that have notice, is locked in a battle over augmented

reality tools like this. You can have a second coffee mug so it looks

like you are not having Breakfast alone. Facebook also launched

Spaces, a place to interact with avatars of your friends in virtual

reality when you can't look up in real life. The company is also

releasing these curious little cameras for capturing real-life

scenes, in full, high-quality 360. The innovation here is that ability

for the camera to record footage which has depth. It allows what is

known as six degrees of freedom. I can lead in -- lenient and Kia

around, even though the camera which took the footage I am seeing hasn't

actually moved anywhere. In the past, you were frozen in the middle

of a world, as if you were seeing a painting on the ceiling. We wanted

you to actually be able to lenient and actually see the depth. At here

is a need little trek. The depth perception also means you can add a

kind of green screen effect without needing a green screen. Once you

have that information, it is really built on the fact that you have

captured the depth. You not only know the colour of that flower, you

know how far it is a way, and you know how far the ground behind it is

a way, and you can just subtract the ground away and replace it with

grass, instead of Rocks Orbach. F8 is also about thinking what made it

coming much further down the line. This little helicopter is another

one of Facebook's attempts to bring connectivity too difficult to reach

places. It is tethered to the ground, but once in the air it can

beam internet to an area below, perfect for helping people in

disaster zones. They have made it in conjunction with the San Francisco

-based start-up. The idea is to basically build instant

infrastructure. So it is an aircraft on a tether, where fibre and power

run-up essentially the strongest your Mac longest extension cord you

have ever seen, so in an earthquake or a cyclone, you can set up in the

sky and instantly provide internet to all the people who need relief,

and can't be reached because of disaster. And then, just when we

thought the new ideas were over, things got weird. What if you could

type directly from your brain? Even something as simple as a yes/ no

brain click would fundamentally change our capability. It is many

years off. They may never be able to do it. But this is the plan.

Hardware and software that would allow you to post to Facebook

without moving a muscle. So that's it for another year, and as they

pack up, we are all left pondering the question, do I really want to

plug Facebook into my brain? Now, back to Paris. And how would

you feel about renting your car to a complete stranger? Well, believe it

or not, here, there is an app that lets you do just that. Drivey has

been operating for six years. Over 40,000 car owners have chosen to

list their cars on the platform, mainly in France, Germany, and

Spain, racking up 1-and-a-half million days of rentals. The alp

gives me a list of vehicles available in the designated area.

And then I can slow through pictures and details of each car. -- app. It

is basically a B for your car. -- Airbnb. Here in the start-up, it has

all the signs of a start-up. And how they convince people to learn their

cars to others? Because I am British, maybe, but I think it is a

crazy idea to hire my car to other people. Giving Norn would partake in

this because of the risk and damage? We knew from the start that it would

sound like a crazy 80 two rent your car to most people. But the question

is if some people would agree it was a good idea and efficient, and these

are the people we target. Give it is a reason why sharing services do

very well. I think that special because it has the fact that

businesses go well in the law is enforced, with still a Mediterranean

culture. British and Americans are more scared about lending their

cars. I heard that you teach kids about stranger danger in Britain.

And that is something we don't know in France. And maybe less trusted

people you don't know and less willingness to share time or things

with other people. You have been to London, then, clearly. Can you find

a lost car? We can geo- locate cars and see where the car is going and

how it is behaving. You can use the accelerometer to sit there are in

fact. -- impacts. The development is an autonomous cars are playing to

our favour, because the amount of darker and control over the way that

it is driven is going to increase until it is autonomous, and then

whoever is in the car is no longer a problem, except for sandwich crumbs

or something like that. In their early stages, start-ups like Drivy

famously used desks anywhere they could find them. And very soon, a

lot of those desks could be here. In the biggest start-up incubator I

have ever seen. Goodness me! And that is because when it opens in

June, this 90-year-old Paris train station will become the world's

biggest start-up incubator. The director spoke to me earlier. What I

like are these future Pods APA. What are those? These are our meeting

rooms. -- -- pods up here. Massive walls, pens they are, you can put

things up on the walls? I hope so. If you are a start-up, you need to

write on the glass. Station F is full of big numbers. Privately

funded, it cost 250 million euros. It has 34,000 square metres of floor

space. It is as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall. It will seat 3000

entrepreneurs, and that is just in the middle section. We have not even

got to that bit yet. So this is the start-up zone. Oh my goodness, that

is insane. And filling it with building dust like this makes it

look awesome. And below us, we actually have showers and lockers if

an entrepreneur was to stay all night, he can. What you mean if

somebody was to stay all night? That is part of an entrepreneur! It may

seem like overkill, it does to me, but Roxanne is confident that France

can not only compete for start-up interest with the likes of the US

and the UK, but in these uncertain times, it actually has an advantage.

We've actually seen the impact of Brexit, we have seen the impact of

Donald Trump in the US, and silicon valley prices of its currency --

have been skyrocketing. A lot of countries that would have looked at

UK are now looking at France and other places in the EU. France is

currently second, behind the UK, in terms of both money raised in the

darker, AI, and other deep tech in the last two years. -- data. And

also in the size of its workforce. So it might not need a massive leap.

Everybody gets a locker? Everybody gets a locker. I like this under

lighting. Do you think in France, there are more regulations, more red

tape, more official stuff that you how to cut through? I do think that

administratively, it is a place that has potentially more complexity than

elsewhere. It depends on what ecosystem you are comparing two will

stop them may promote seen here in France is that things change. When a

new administration comes in every three years, we are changing things

that we have put into place. And start-ups cannot keep up. Every

years they have a completely different tax credit or scheme, so

there needs and that is stable and that they can count on. Not that red

tape is was a problem here. One start-up in a northern suburb has

really been given permission to place three of its pods around the

city. So, what on earth is Agricool that makes the shipping container so

desirable? It is a strawberry farm! You probably know that fruit sold in

city supermarkets has usually been on a long journey over several days

to get there. And that means it has to be picked before it is right and

is not as sweet or nutritious as it would be if it was left on the

plant. This is a way of keeping fruit on the plant in cities until

the very last minute. There you go, for walls of strawberries bedding

under LED lights. These are the sources of water in a closed loop

system. Here are your nutrients, and over here, a box of bumblebees. Did

you know you could order bumblebees by the box? I didn't. That is where

they live, and that is where the pollination occurs. Agricool is

currently experimenting with different colours of light and

different mixes of nutrients in order to get the very best

strawberries. Inside, we are creating a real paradise. Based on

their, the CO2 level, the best light. It is 125,000 times more

productive. Using 90% less water. No pesticides, and only renewable

energy. The two founders, sons of farmers, have noticed how tomatoes

and strawberries that have been transported over long distances are

tougher in order to survive the journey. They try to find the best

pieces, they can last longer, that have lighter skins than the fruit

usually does. More skin and less fruit inside. It affects the case.

Just to be clear, the shipping containers won't move. They will be

permanent fixtures in cities. And with a minutely controlled climate,

a new batch of strawberries can be grown in another room weeks -- every

11 weeks. Giving people in the city the case to the country all year

round. If you dig about the amount of agricultural land that has been

swallowed up across the planet every day, this could be the future of

buying. -- if you think about. That is it from Paris for the moment.

There seems to be a lot going on here. We had to come back soon. But

check us out on Twitter. -- have to.