Farming, Tinting and Licenses

Out of curiosity, I asked a few people to share what, for them, were the most interesting current technology/computer developments. Here are the surprising and disparate results!

Farming technology, or ag-tech, is a "thing!" 

I am always intrigued by not just the newest developments in technology, but the ones that broke the world at times in the past. Agriculture is one of those areas that changed forever and in ways that resonated worldwide, and might even be considered to have sparked social upheaval of monumental proportions. Not once, but multiple times.

The first major adjustment in ag was in the Neolithic period, when mankind shifted from a hunter-gatherer, nomadic life to agricultural communities that identified a place as "home." Crops like wheat and barley; animals for milk, meat, wool, hides and labor; and land people considered "theirs" became the norm. And according to Wikipedia: "The surplus food production that ensued fueled population growth and laid the cornerstone for nascent civilizations. Irrigation technology was developed independently by a number of different cultures, with the earliest known examples dated to the 6th millennium BCE in Khuzistan in the south-west of present-day Iran." Life as human beings had known it shifted dramatically.

Between that period and the 1800s there were any number of innovations, but in the late 19th century to early 20th another major shift in life resulted from the Industrial Revolution. Machines. No longer did human beings have to plant seeds by hand or plow using their own sweat and muscles or those even of a horse or ox. Now a machine could perform the labor, and they could gather and prepare the harvest. Small villages dotting the countryside and permanent or migrant labor on a farmer's fields no longer being the norm, people moved into cities and took their labor to factories and mills, and even there machines had changed the face of production. The world had turned.

Now, agriculture has put not just a toe but an entire boot into the field reinforced with GPS and sensors, robotics, data for decision-making and targeted irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs. 

Technology not only can plant and harvest - unassisted even by a manned plow or thresher - but sensors can determine if watering is needed and where; drones can get aerial imagery and detect ailing crops or pest infestation; machines can independently from seed to harvest perform the majority of tasks involved with planting, monitoring and harvesting with minimum physical labor from the farmer.

Bio-technologies can perfect plant genetics for best results in particular climates and for the purpose of the food, and experiments with things like vertical growing have enabled larger harvest from relatively small footprints for growing.

As did the agricultural revolution of the 1800's, this change in how, where, and why farmers go to work will no doubt have profound effects on not just farm life itself, but on the people who work downstream of what we will, going forward, think of as "farming." As the days of an individual milking one cow at a time gave way to mechanical milkers where one person could be milking 20 or more cows at a time (depending on the number of stalls in a given milking parlor), the idea that it took a small army of people to operate a farm will surely morph into the notion that one person can supervising a massive farm. The life that results from this "new agriculture is an utterly new frontier.

Tinting car windows can change simple daily behavior. Though it's not something we worry too much about in Central New York, cars getting too hot, inside and cabin and inside the engine block, are actual considerations for those who drive a lot or have people, pets, or perishable items they're transporting to consider.

This might be less of an issue going forward thanks to some new processes that can block UV rays ad the sun's heat using high-quality tints that can block up to 80% of the sun's heat! These tints filter infrared (IR) radiation, which carries the majority of the heat, simply blocking the sunlight from reaching the car's interior. Ceramic and carbon tints can reduce the need for air conditioning, thus reducing the energy usage, and maintain a comfortable temperature for longer periods of time.

Another method of controlling the car's interior temperature is via the use of high-performance films, like the 3M Crystalline film. The film can remain virtually clear (see-through) while blocking the heat and UV rays - thus remaining "legal" for use in windshields, where dark tint is not permitted in most locations, for simple reasons of safety. 

This final technological development isn't brand new, and your tech columnist has griped about this trend in the past, but it continues to expand and present issues, particularly for those of us who enjoyed the growth and expansion of software, its uses and sophistication.

More and more, you simply do not "own" your software. While it was always the case that a new version of a program installed on your computer would inevitably come around, and its proliferation in use among friends and more importantly, clients and co-workers, would often dictate that you "upgrade," in the "bad old days" you purchased a copy of a program, it was provided for you on a CD, and it was yours. You could use it as long as the installation on a particular computer worked. 

If you upgraded your "tower" or your laptop, eventually the operating system might reject a certain version of a given program as simply not being usable with the current version of that system software, and eventually you'd have to get a new release of the specific program to stay current.

What's now the case is that, by the "terms of service," you typically do not own the software, you have purchased a license, as agreed to the in EULA (end-user license agreement), and can use it as long as the term of the license and/or as long as you pay a one-time or recurring fee, so long as that release is current. 

Many programs these days won't work if you're off-line and a license can't be validated, so you can't even use old or even subscription-based software by remaining offline as you try to produce a document, or edit a photo, or even play a game. 

And granted, most of the time we're happy to get a newer version of a program because it is true, the developers are constantly working to improve and expand their product. But there are times, too, when what you want is a simple function you know how to perform and can reliably produce with even an old and out-dated version of software, without incurring new or higher costs.

But like the old Bakelite phones once in your home courtesy of the phone company - and remaining the property of the phone company - software now is licensed to you, the user, and the property of the developer. You don't have to physically return it, but you do have to pay your "phone bill" to keep it working.