Discussion on:

Four industries about to be transformed by the Internet

I have had MRI scans done under the old system [using film] and the new EMR way of digital images. Under the old way, it took about 2 weeks for the doctor to get the images, which were about the size of a desk, and about 2 more weeks for the doc to flip through them all and then evaluate what he saw. With digital images, the doc get the images within about 10 minutes and can review them using his, or some other, computer in about another 10 minutes. Now, I can get the MRI appointment and the doctor appointment in the same day. Yes, EMR is an improvement.

Education should be at the top of the list. With ever shrinking public funds, increasing costs, increasing class sizes, and dismal performance, education as we know it will virtually cease to exist. Almost every state (except NY) and every district are offering some form of distance learning and there are even providers that are offering "guarantees" that the student will pass the course or you don't have to pay. There is a lot more evidence to support my claim, all you have to do is read the handwriting on the wall.

There is already a great deal of pressure toward grade inflation in for-profit colleges (what's grade inflation? It's when you give a D student a B grade because they complain that they're paying for the course and they can take their dollars somewhere else - or give faculty who depend on ratings for their evaluation a D because the student slept through the classes). Offering money-back guarantees to anyone who doesn't pass seems like a great way to give the company a major motive for grade inflation. Oooh, Lookie, no one failed!

Face it, most teachers aren't that good. Why not let everyone have a good teacher and convert the mediocre ones into TAs?

And as for grade inflation, you don't think it is already going on at all levels of public education?

Challenge to anyone who thinks they can teach insufferable brats. Step up.

We're getting what we ask for though. Because my child, or your child, are never wrong. Always perfect. I don't care if she learns, just as long as she gets her name in the rinky-dink local paper for honor roll.

As I said, we get what we ask for.

Back in prehistory, I was never overly worried about getting in trouble at school. What DID worry me was what happened when my parents found out I'd gotten in trouble in school. If they went to see the teacher at all, it was not to berate them form injuring my tender psyche, it was to apologize for my misdeeds.

My sister and brother-in-law were teachers their entire working life (they're recently retired). They trace the decline in education directly to the change in how parents address problems in school. Fix this and you'll fix "education".

Grade inflation is rampant now. The only way to stop the practice is independent testing.

Heh. You don't think grade inflation doesn't exist at the State supported higher ed institutions? Think again. Harvard has some of the worst grade inflation of any institution in the US.

Not to dispute your claim of rampant grade inflaction there...

It is also embarrassing that the FCC Chairman is only now talking about raising the funds to pay for an IP oriented 911 Emergency system in the US. Currently, and even though they raise over $9 Billion in revenue in 911 access fees from our cell/tele phone account, they still don't have to money to evolve from analog to digital. Well, companies like Guardian Watch are working hard to change that without Congress! Heck, just it has been since 1996 that HIPPA was passed and over 4 years of the HITECH that was supposed to transform healthcare! - NOT

Government - especially local government. We should be able to vote online. Local government elections involve filling in the ballot form then...POSTING it - and not as your FB status but in an actual postal box. WTF can be bothered!

They are the last. Why should they spend money on something that will make consumers happy, as the consumer has no choice and so there is no need to have them be anything but - there. If you don't like how the government does something, move! That is their standard thinking, by their actions...

I do just about all financial stuff online. And have been doing so for years.
Except for paying my municipal taxes.
Once a year I have to drag myself to the local bank and ask them to print me a couple of cheques, just so I can pay my taxes.
And the municipal council has now hired some "webmaster" to make them a pretty website, at apparently an exorbitant cost.
Yes, I can hardly wait for (municipal) elections to be done online!
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elgin quebec ?

We have that system in UK, last time a local vote came around I voted online. Days later it was announced on news that servers crashed....maybe mine got counted, maybe it didn't, at least with a paper vote in person there is a physical item. I know vote rigging is rife especially in US with paper votes, but mark me if you make it solely online it'll be even easier to rig it. If people can hack the pentagon for kicks imagine the desire to vote rig.

Current voting systems are too easily hacked/rigged/defrauded, let alone voting over the net. And voting over the net would be too easily traced and the anonymity of the votes lost; then you'd get thugs coming after people they disagree with.

I think we'd be better off more frequent voting over more issues that, currently, city councils and county/parish commissions and state legislators and such, well, run amok. (In Switzerland they vote about every other week-end... or so I was told a while back.)

Most current precincts are too big as it is, with a couple thousand voters in at least some places. It would be much better as a more local thing, where about 150 voters in the same neighborhood (or part of a building in the worst over-crowded parts of the country), would debate the issues and candidates and then cast their votes. Smaller precincts would also be amenable to more compact districts and less gerrymandering.

If you can't be bothered to participate in self-government at the minimal level of posting a ballot form, then you don't deserve a say in what happens. C'mon, dude.

One of the most notable changes that occurred with the introduction of the laser printer was that companies could now publish their own sales and marketing materials. This pretty well wiped out the small printing houses and sacked a lot of copy writers and editors. Net result? Huge volumes of terribly written, error filled brochures.

If you read the dedication pages of most novels, you will find the author thanking or even raving over their Editor at the publishing house. Hopefully, some clever Editors will find a way to eEdit for all of the writers hoping to ePublish the Great World Wide Novel.

1) Not paying $30 or $20 or X - if its one I want to see, I'll see it on the big screen. If it's a crap movie, I'll see it on DVD. Or wait until it hits the $5 pile at Walmart. Big movies need a big screen, big sound and a big popcorn. The house is for re-runs LOL
2) Not touching that one
3) Seems to work for books, but not for magazines - If I drop my $5 magazine in the shitter, no big deal. $400 iPhone, $800iPad - yes, big deal. My wife reads a ton on her iPhone. I'm still not interested in squinting at a bitty screen or sitting long hours with a hot laptop battery warming one leg. I think a lot of this small screen "revolution" stuff comes from young'ns that don't need reading glasses yet. Wait - your day is coming.
4) We'll see. Your first two examples (eBay/PayPal) like to chisel the crap out of you with xaction fees. Lots of people are fleeing eBay because the rules hose the seller and allow the buyer to rip you if they are so inclined. Many will not trust PayPal with more than basic info. They can also freeze your local assets for just about any reason they like. Handy - yes, but it's a dim alley to walk because you know theres a lot of BS in the background. A small business (yes, have one) takes a hit on all the mentioned items because thats where the banks and financial giants like to get their lb of flesh. 3%ish xaction fees eat up your income pretty fast, more on low margin items. I'm forced to use PayPal for credit card xactions because any terminal fees would wipe out any monthly profits.

Re (2): I agree that reading near water with anything electronic just does not make sense. But I also not think that iReading is not the way to go. eReaders, like Kindle, that use e-paper, make much more sense. First, its more like Real Paper (doh!); second, no 'leg warming'; third, a reasonable size screen; and last (but not least) - adjustable fonts for the more... experienced... eye! And color (and hence) magazines are coming to e-paper within the next few years.

Daily financial transactions, both small and big, belong at the top of the hit list for ICT driven industrial changes. One only has to look at the amazing success of the M-PESA mobile-money transfer service in Kenya to see how perfect the fit is between mobile online access (w/cloud computing) and the areas where credit cards are the current vehicle for the transaction. Both credit cards, and the repeatedly failed "digital wallet" experiments will melt away as true and competitive mobile-money transfer services get a foothold in Europe, North America and elsewhere.

Are we back in 1995? All of those industries have already been transformed by the Internet and there is nothing new in this article.

GPS guidance has created Precision Agriculture (http://www.aces.edu/anr/precisionag) and more farmers are beginning to manage the business of feeding America (and the world) on-line.
Entertainment, Healthcare, Publishing and Financial services are important areas for the Internet to improve but not a single of these can make significant advances on an empty stomach.

Once my car can communicate with the net, it can self diagnose problems, schedule maintenance, route around traffic and be atuned to road conditions so I can focus on other important things (like streaming audio from my phone). How far away is the first in-dash "google maps" GPS system? And integrate my GasBuddy and Groupon while you're there.

I have OnStar and every month the on board computer communicates with OnStar uploading the latest dianostic data and sends me an email detailing the health of each system. I think what you're referring to though is to be able to have it do all this in real time, i.e notify you of road closers ahead of your route, etc.

Plus, even without the Onstar diagnostics, the car (2010 Cobalt) already has available in real-time via the dash:
-- Estimated range on remaining fuel in tank;
-- Current air pressure in all 4 tires;
-- Estimated remaining "life" in the oil since last oil change;
-- Coolant temperature *and* inlet air temperature
-- Average miles-per-gallon to date
-- Instantaneous miles-per-gallon fuel consumption

And will flash an alert when one of those readings indicates a problem occurs -- i.e. when we had a tire start going flat, it popped up a message on the dashboard.

don't forget that onstar continues to track your every move even if you stop paying for the service. Onstar makes as much sense as the verizon navigator service.

I concur with Rick. How about OCR type scanner that picks up speed limit signs and then transmit to the transmission. There are myriad ideas that are limited by internet availability. Here in New Zealand we don't have Wi-Fi everywhere as in some major cities in the US. The ability to listen to my favorite internet radio station in the car would be good too.

Ford focus has a system which shows the last two warning road signs on the dash

In Europe, most sat nav is GSM enabled and has live traffic data so you can route around jams, roadworks etc, including cellphone apps

Bluetooth connectivity is pretty standard now too, so you can listen to whatever internet radio you like in your car

When you have all these features you should also have the ability to take over the controls within half a second. Imagine if your car slows you down because of the speed limit (OCR scan of the sign) and then someone behind you crashes into you because they don't have a crash avoidance camera installed in their car; this crash is your fault as you slowed down without warning!

In every US state I've ever lived, the car that rear-ends the other car is at fault, regardless of why the front car stopped. In theory you are supposed to stay far enough back that you can avoid rear-ending someone who slams on the brakes for no reason, even at highway speeds.

So, you're on a main road, stop, yield, and turn right up a hill. There's a big fat median curb and curb to the right. The car that started up the hill in front of you from out of the bank/ATM lot stops and the driver and passenger leap out, letting it roll down the hill into you. It turns out that the owner had just stopped at the ATM to get fuel money, these 2 yokels stole the car, and it did, indeed, run out of fuel. Who is at fault?

It would become obvious from any report that the car was stolen, either police or owner, in that instance all "normal" rules for RTA's (Road Traffic Accidents) become void. There is no way for a driver following "normal" driving behaviour and traffic patterns to anticipate those driving a stolen car.

Any insurance company that made the victim of such incidents liable would get such a bad press most of their customers would leave for fear of the unknowable accident, and costs they would incur as a result.

It smacks too much of Prohibition-type ideas of "we're going to regulate your moral behavior".

And aside from the possible example cited of being rear-ended by someone whose car isn't equipped with a throttle-regulating device, there's the other problem of needing to be able to speed up temporarily in order to pass another vehicle... say, for example, when you're behind a car or semi that's *just* enough below the speed limit that you'd like to pass them & continue on your way.

The other problem with the OCR scanner is being able to see the speed limit sign. It may not be a big problem on a 2-lane city street, assuming no one's parked in front of the sign. But when you're on a multi-lane street -- or especially on a high-speed highway -- your OCR's lens can easily be obscured by another vehicle (especially, say, by a tractor-trailer). Not to mention having a hefty enough system to be able to lock onto the sign at higher speeds, undo any blurriness due to speed, & ignore any other text (bumper stickers, other highway signs, license plates, etc.). Of course, you also don't need the Internet for that, since you're just scanning the signs posted on the side of the road, which might reduce the complexity as well.

Now, if you wanted to have an OCR scanner that would read the speed limit signs, & then would flash a warning on your dashboard when your speed exceeds the posted limit by a particular threshold, that's different. Or, they could add wireless transmitters to the speed-limit signs (transmitting just the speed limit value), then your car could pick up the signal & either display it on your dash or flash up a warning if you exceed it by a certain threshold.

The "idiot highway" people at Ill-Begotten Monstrosities, Lockheed Martin (and others) would go for "street signs" which send out short-range broadcasts of their info, and receive and record over the net, info about each vehicle, just as another means to insure that individual human beings have less liberty and privacy.

Easy to miss speed limit signs, as previous poster said, and if broadcast, easier for vehicle to identify. Would probably need to be buried in the tarmac and detected as you roll over, otherwise you might get false signals from side roads.

In UK, we have LED signs that flash if you are exceeding the speed limit. In France they have gone one better; the sign says "You are travelling at 47(or whatever) km/h" - and if under the limit, it then does a smiley face.

Every hire car in europe has that.

I've got one. It's not in the dashboard, but on the plus side it's my phone and it'll double as a pedestrian or public transport guide. Google Navigator running on a bog-standard Android phone.

I believe (not 100%) that the McLaren F1 roadcar had one of (if not the 1st) systems to self diagnose and report to homebase, I think the sales package also came with international breakdown cover that essentially meant if your car said "HELP" they flew out a mechanic to fix it, even if you took it abroad (but it was something like ??800,000 to buy, with an engine the size of a SMART car).

In the UK shopping for your groceries online has become a way of life for a large chunk of the population with Tesco leading the way for nearly a decade... So why is this not available in the States (at least the one I live in)?

The first supermarket that kicks this into action will make a killing...

I don't know why it does not take off. But different chains have tried offering delivery and then quit again very soon. I believe Pink Dot still delivers all over LA. I suppose most areas of the country are too sparsely populated to make it cost effective for the deliverers.

Just had a look - it does seem to be a 'light' version - canned goods have five items - so nowhere close to the full store listings. it does appear to be more of a restaurant with some grocery items thrown in. Perhaps it works for that niche market in LA.

With fuel not even close (yet) to the $10 a gallon in the UK and labour costs so much less I have to wonder why it hasn't caught on. Perhaps the average American is still caught up with turning the ignition key as opposed to tapping the keyboard...