Typing Telepathically

Few months ago Facebook announced its plan to bring brain computer interfacing to the average consumer. Facebook is not alone in this, Neuralink and Kernel also shares the same ambition. But this is the first time when such a project has been officially confirmed, which brought excitement as well as skepticism from the neuroscientists. Remember such interfaces are already being used by locked-in patients to communicate their thoughts. Facebook aims to ultimately merge the digital world online with the real world offline and the human mind. If communication by telepathy could be realized, the phenomenal amount of information the brain produces (1 terabyte per second) would be transmitted much more efficiently (speech achieves only 100 bytes per second). To achieve this Facebook is planning to capture all information the brain sends to our speech centres and relay it to the outside world. Facebook is emphasizing that this does not mean reading all thoughts but only the ones you choose to say. Initially Facebook is endeavoring to enable humans to click and type with their brain at a speed of 100 words per minute and ultimately they want to enable communication where one person thinks in a language and sends out the message by thought to a recipient’s skin, and the recipient is able to feel the message in an entirely different language. They want it to a tool for the people who cannot read or write but can think and feel. 

There have been previous attempts in building these technologies to accomplish things such as providing a cure for mental illness and enabling soldiers injured in the war to regain their memories. However Facebook's aim is a one which is ubiquitous and if achieved the current devices such as smartphone or wrist watch used for communicating on social media will no longer be needed as thought will suffice to connect the participants all the time.

Although, neuroscientists are questioning if the idea is practically possible. They believe that the types of brain scanners available, itself limit the technology. The best user-friendly scanner available is an EEG (electroencephalogram). Although EEG is useful if one wanted an overall picture of electrical activity in the brain, it does not possess the sensitivity to detect signals associated with specific thoughts. But for increased sensitivity you have to place the electrodes directly into the brain’s speech centers, the risk of infection is too tremendous. The skepticism arises because the announcement has been pretty vague about how Facebook is going to direct neural activity from optical techniques as state of the art is nowhere near that. Its really a challenging task for Facebook to get this highly detailed information non-invasively. And with Facebook which had unscrupulous past behavior lend weight to such concerns

Independent monitoring, and transparency around the building and testing of brain-interface technology needs to be incorporated by Facebook, if it wants skepticism around its proposal to abate. Facebook has started to work on it. It will set up an independent Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) panel to supervise the project. Although the skin-hearing research would be absent of these kinds of institutional review boards. As their is government bodies funding involved hence Facebook is already working with institutional review boards

5G in India

Government of India has set aside Rs. 500 crores for research on the latest Telecom standard, along with setting up a high-level panel to develop a roadmap for operationalizing 5G Telecom services in India by 2020. The government has included the two ministries of Telecom, Information and Technology, and Science and Technology in this panel. This decision is coming at a time when various Telecom operators are struggling to improve the 4G services in India. Although it is appreciable that Government of India is trying to move with the same pace as the rest of the world in this sector in an effort to promote Digital India, but it seems highly unlikely that India would able to reach this target by 2020. Although if everything goes according to the plan it would effectively make wireless communication superfast by enabling higher data speed. According to the press release of the Indian government it is aiming at “a globally competitive product development and manufacturing ecosystem targeting 50% of the Indian market and 10% of global market over next five to seven years”. A consultation paper is already released by TRAI (The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) in August last year on framing regulations and standards for the roll out of 5G networks and IoT (Internet of Things).

The Telecom sector has seen a new mobile generation roughly every 10 years since the first 1G system was introduced in 1981. After 2G started to roll out in 1992, while for 3G it was year 2001. Although most Telecom firms claim that they can provide speeds up to 21.1 Mbps on their 3G networks, but this value falls when sharing among users. Other than that their is a "fair usage policy" followed by most of the firms wherein speed drops after reaching a specified download limit. Technically, 4G should have data speeds capable of reaching 100 megabytes per second while on the move, and 1 GB per second when stationary. 5G promises to give a downloading speed up to 10 gigabits per second. Another defining feature of 5G will be that unlike 4G, 5G network will offer the ability to handle a variety of devices and traffic type.

Regardless of the fact that universal 5G standards have not been agreed upon yet, some countries are aiming to launch 5G services as early as 2018. KT Corp of the South Korea has reportedly completed successful trials of the 5G system and are planning to launch it by February 2018. Japan is also planning its roll out by 2020, and so is United States. Telia and Ericsson are planning to launch 5G services in Sweden and Estonia by 2018. 

There has been a boom in mobile data usage in the last five years with 74% increase in 2015 alone taking the overall global figure to around 3.7 exabytes (one Exabyte is 1 followed by 18 zeroes) per month. The expectation of having a high-speed data connection at all times is corroborated the growth of streaming services and people's growing use of apps. Hence eventually 5G will step up. 5G means the opportunity for properly connected smart cities, remote surgery, driverless cars and the IoT. According to a study, the global 5G value chain will generate $3.5 trillion in output and support 22 million jobs in 2035. It also said that the total contribution of 5G to the global GDP would be equivalent to a country the size of India. Therefore 5G is an eventuality technically as well as economically. India was late to catch up with the 2G and 3G revolutions, but recent developments suggests India does not want that to happen again. 

But the Indian Telecom industry is unsure of India's readiness for the 5G technology. TRAI has decided the spectrum 3300-3400 Mhz and 3400-3600 Mhz bands to be used for 5G. But the industry doesn't want the spectrum auction before 2019 indicating that the ecosystem around the technology is far from being developed. Although it would generate a lot of revenue for the government but it would require the bleeding Telecom industry to invest more. 4G is still budding, its speed in India is  much slower compared to other countries, including Pakistan and Sri Lanka and 5G is not an overlay network it has to work in tandem with 4G. Although Bharti Airtel has taken some steps in implementing the 5G technology hence it would be interesting to see how things turn around. Remember no one is yet able to put a figure to the cost which will be involved in the roll-out of 5G.

International Telecommunications Union (ITU) regulates the use of frequency bands. Data is transmitted through radio waves and these waves are split into bands or ranges of different frequencies. Different bands are reserved for different type of communication like aeronautical and maritime navigation signals, television broadcasts and mobile data. Currently ITU is working on harmonising the frequency spectrum for the 5G technology.

India's Internet Revolution

Aided by the plummeting smart phone prices and data charges India now has 355 million Internet users which amounts to about 27% of the population of 1.3 billion people of the country. The figures released by the Mary Meeker's annual Internet trends report, shows that India is now the next major target market for tech businesses. This year her report had a lot of focus on India. 55 of the 355 pages report were solely dedicated to the state of Internet and mobile access in India. It points out how the growing market with intense competition is ultimately benefitting the consumer. India’s Internet users continue to grow, and it now stands at 355 million Internet users, which puts India number two in the market just after China.

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 Mary Meeker is an American venture capitalist and former Wall Street securities analyst. Currently she is a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Her annual Internet trends report is considered one of the most authoritative reports on the Internet economy and ecosystem around the world. Her report is much awaited as it gives an overview of the entire industry. She was once described as the "best at spotting big-picture trends" before they became big or even trends by the Fortune Magazine. She was also listed as the 77th most powerful women in the world in 2014 by Forbes

It's been a known fact for quite a while now that India's Internet revolution will be driven by the mobile phones as most of the first time Internet users are coming online via their smartphone in the country. The mobile web traffic is 80% in India, well above the global average. The Mary Meeker's Internet trends 2017 report also confirmed that India’s smartphone shipments continue to grow 15 per cent year-on-year after including the first quarter this year. Report also shows that Indians spend 45 per cent of their time on mobile phones, seven times more than they do on T.V. With phones getting cheaper and better, Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo made gains along with the Indian players like Lava, Micromax, and Jio with their low cost 4G feature phones. As the report stated it's not a “shift to mobile” as much as “the addition of mobile”, because desktop usage hasn't declined much.  

Thanks to the entry of Jio, Telecom companies like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea which maintain over 60% of the market share, were forced to cut their data rates. Google chrome, owning 32% of the market share is beaten by China's UC Web, which has 50 per cent market share. In the top 10 list of India’s top downloaded Android apps is WhatsApp, which is number one followed by Facebook Messenger and only two Indian apps, JioTV and HotStar. The Mary Meeker report also talks about the Aadhaar trends data, notes that over 82 per cent of the population is covered under this scheme. It also talks about digital payments how it is rapidly ramping up users, thanks to offline and online commerce. The report also suggests that Jio has been a driving factor in India's rapidly expanding Internet usage. 

However the report also notes that India’s Internet penetration is still at 27 per cent, which means that India still needs a lot of structural reforms to even cross the 50 per cent mark in Internet penetration. While it's true that overall prices of the smart phone and the data charges have declined, still majority of the 1.3 billion population cannot afford it. India's growing youth and its pace of job creation is out of sync. Gender disparity and female participation in the workforce stands at an abysmal 27 per cent, nearly half of the global average of about 50 per cent. This affects consumption patterns. On the infrastructure front a lot is yet to be done. On a scale of 1-8, India ranks at 4.03 below the average as per World Bank's infrastructure rankings for Asia. Hence, continue economic reforms if it wants to extend the full benefits of the digital economy to its growing population.

LiFi: The Future Of Internet

Li-Fi technology is a ground-breaking light-based communication technology, which makes use of light waves instead of radio technology to deliver data achieving speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the labs. This technology has potential to change everything about the way we use the Internet.

So let's get to know more about this seemingly impossible technological marvel.

First of all, What is this LiFi?

Light Fidelity or Li-Fi is a Visible Light Communications (VLC) system running wireless communications travelling at very high speeds.Li-Fi uses common household LED (light emitting diodes) light bulbs to enable data transfer, boasting speeds of up to 224 gigabits per second.

The term Li-Fi was coined by University of Edinburgh Professor Harald Haas during a TED Talk in 2011. Haas envisioned light bulbs that could act as wireless routers.Subsequently, in 2012 after four years of research, Haas set up company pureLiFi with the aim 'to be the world leader in Visible Light Communications technology'.

So, How does it works?

Li-Fi and Wi-Fi are quite similar as both transmit data electromagnetically. However, Wi-Fi uses radio waves while Li-Fi runs on visible light.As we now know, Li-Fi is a Visible Light Communications (VLC) system. This means that it accommodates a photo-detector to receive light signals and a signal processing element to convert the data into 'stream-able' content.

An LED light bulb is a semi-conductor light source meaning that the constant current of electricity supplied to an LED light bulb can be dipped and dimmed, up and down at extremely high speeds, without being visible to the human eye.For example, data is fed into an LED light bulb (with signal processing technology), it then sends data (embedded in its beam) at rapid speeds to the photo-detector (photodiode).

The tiny changes in the rapid dimming of LED bulbs is then converted by the 'receiver' into electrical signal.The signal is then converted back into a binary data stream that we would recognise as web, video and audio applications that run on internet enables devices.

Will it make WiFi obsolete?

While some may think that Li-Fi with its 224 gigabits per second leaves Wi-Fi in the dust, Li-Fi's exclusive use of visible light could halt a mass uptake. Li-Fi signals cannot pass through walls, so in order to enjoy full connectivity, capable LED bulbs will need to be placed throughout the home.

 Not to mention, Li-Fi requires the light bulb is on at all times to provide connectivity, meaning that the lights will need to be on during the day.Additionally, where there is a lack of light bulbs, there is a lack of Li-Fi internet so Li-Fi does take a hit when it comes to public Wi-Fi networks.

In an announcement yesterday, an extension of standard Wi-Fi is coming and it's called Wi-Fi HaLow.This new project claims to double the range of connectivity while using less power. Due to this, Wi-Fi HaLow is reportedly perfect for battery powered devices such as smartwatches, smartphones and lends itself to Internet of Things devices such as sensors and smart applications. 

But it's not all doom and gloom! Due to its impressive speeds, Li-Fi could make a huge impact on the internet of things too, with data transferred at much higher levels with even more devices able to connect to one another.

Expect to hear a lot more about this revolutionary technology in coming months. There's hardly any time left before this technology becomes mainstream and can be seen everywhere.

China's Cashless Revolution

So often we have heard that little things can make a big difference, but what’s happening in China with the QR codes suggests that they can bring a revolution too. With mobile payments involving QR codes amounting to US$ 5.5 trillion, more than half of the China’s GDP and 50 times greater than that of the US, these little two-dimensional images made up of series of black and white squares are the x-factor in bringing the digital payments boom in China. But then again QR codes, short for Quick Response, never really took off in countries like US and France. There these barcodes are more common in social media apps like Snapchat, Facebook and Spotify.

Originally when these QR codes were created in 1994, by Denso Wave, a Toyota subsidiary they were only used to aid the manufacturing process as they helped in tracking vehicles and components. But after the creation of the barcodes they became a lesser popular choice, as barcodes offered better speed of scanning, higher accuracy, multiple functionalities and needed smaller printing area. But with these came some negative factors too, and by this time QR codes also developed with improved storage capacities and functionalities.

 A QR code is detected by a 2-dimensional digital image sensor and then digitally analyzed by a programmed sensor. The processor locates three small squares at corners of the QR code image to normalize the image for size, orientation and angle of viewing. The small dots in QR code are then converted to binary numbers and validated with an error-correcting algorithm. The encoded data can be interpreted as one of the four primary modes – numeric, alphanumeric, byte/binary and Kanji. Other forms of data can also be displayed with the appropriate extensions. Initially when this QR code technology came around it could hold only four characters and now can hold 1852 characters – enough for a few pages of information.

In China today QR codes is a part of everyday life. They are using an app called WeChat, to call cabs, make payments, text friends and other functions. WeChat’s founder, Allen Zhang is obsessed with them and frequently extols their virtues. According to a Journal “More than 95% of China’s 731 million online population access the internet via their smartphones and half made offline, in-store mobile payments in 2016”. QR code’s success in China is mainly due to large internet service provider companies like Tencent and Alibaba to bring mobile-payment capability to every vendor. The technology is easy and simple to use and transaction can be completed in any place with mobile phone signal coverage. China is turning itself into Codeconomy.

Restaurants have pinned barcode tags to the chests of waiters, waitresses and chefs so that customers can leave a tip if they are satisfied with the service. For renting a bike, anyone can just scan the code attached with it and the it’ll unlock automatically. Similarly umbrellas and batteries are rented too. This technology is also been used to identify lost pets, senior citizens and post and reply to job boards.

Simplicity of use is also one of its major drawbacks too. A scammer has to just replace the original QR with the one of his own and thanks to several do-it-yourself websites, which essentially enables anybody to create these QR’s. There have been several occurrences where scanning a malicious code lead the user into a trap set by criminals. It can lead to installation of viruses which are designed to steal money and personal information. Business owners have no choice, if they will not use these QR’s they’ll lose out on revenue. To regulate the proliferation of these types of crimes an industry standard for QR code specifications was released this July by a consortium of digital payment companies. The consortium, EMVCo, which includes biggest players in market payments like Express, Visa, MasterCard, and UnionPay. China’s love for QR code is eventually paying them well, but still a lot of efforts are needed to increase their digital payments base.

Best thing Internet offered me!

So, people especially my parents always taunt me by asking "You just always stick to your mobile! What it offers you so irresistible that your last seen on WhatsApp is 4AM?" As every teenager, I have no answers for this question. I just stand still keeping my head low, just like an innocent culprit.

After much brainstorming and taunts, I tried to reach within myself in search for the answer, and guess what I found nothing except 5-6 people and lots of disappointment. I think almost all of us will have these findings with them!

There is nothing to be worried or being ashamed or depressed of as such... I won't make this one-way post... I will share my personal experiences to contrast positives and negatives...  So let's start with positives...

1. Some friends with whom I share almost everything.
2. A great family in form of WordPress. People from all ages participate in there we all are like a family there inspired and motivated to help and take care of each other.
3. Awesome platforms for showcasing skills and getting paid for what you are good at. Being a freelancer was never so easy and rewarding.
4. Getting recommendations and meeting great people online through Seminars and Internships.
5. Studying online, preparing for exams, taking up courses to sharpen skills and to revisit concepts.
6. Keeping track of family and friends. Communicating with family far away through video chats and online chat engines.
7. Getting to know almost everything from all around the world in a summarized manner.
8. A great source of entertainment, be it video or audio streaming...

Negatives, yes parents see these only. I must agree with them there are quite a lot of these.

1. Fake or temporary friends.
2. Temporary carvings and unjustified love.
3. A source of great violence and depression.
4. Forgery and theft are complementary services.
5. More depressing and bad material as compared to good and legit one.
6. Almost 90% material is unjustified and not true.
7. Time isn't that valuable if you stick onto the internet.
8. One can easily be fooled around and can be pursued to give personal details.
9. Emotional instability amongst youths.
10. Formation of riot groups and dark web.
11. Cyber crimes and harassment cases... and the list never ends

On summarising, one can argue n of negative points but for me, I can just say that till now my online experience is mixed one. I have seen hardships but at the same time, people were there to back me... So for me, it's like an open bag offering both good and bad, one can take what he/she wants.