Ramen by HP? The Wild Possibilities Of Printing Food

The Cornell Creative Machines Lab wants to bring 3-D food printing technology to restaurants and home chefs. Top culinary talents believe this could lead to healthier diets, not just snazzier snacks.

Typically, 3-D printers are discussed in light of the efficiencies they bring to industrial design and fabrication. They will soon help chefs create foods that can’t be made by hand if Cornell Creative Machines Lab, or their peers in the industry, can make them accessible.

The newest 3-D food printer, now being honed at CCML, can produce: tiny space shuttle-shaped scallop nuggets (image above); and cakes or cookies that, when you slice into them, reveal a special message buried within, like a wedding date, initials (image below) or a corporate logo. They can also make a solid hamburger patty, with liquid layers of ketchup and mustard, or a hamburger substitute that’s made from vegan or raw foods.

The CCML food printers require edible inks and electronic blueprints called FabApps. This machine prints food using multiple cartridges, going line by line until the desired shape is extruded. "The electronic blueprint specifies exactly which materials go where--it is essentially a blueprint of the food item," says Hod Lipson, the head of the lab.

Other food printers, including those in prototype and design phases at MIT, could scan QR-code recipes.

With most 3-D food printing concepts today, the inks are the foods themselves in fluid form--think molten chocolate, cheese, or cookie dough. Foods that can’t be readily extruded from a syringe such as meats and vegetables are ground and mixed with other liquids to create novel food-inks.

While printing pyramids of pastry, or hemispheres of ham sounds whimsical, food printing is about more than decorative presentation. It’s a way to create new flavors and forms of food by varying its chemical properties. "It’s a huge 'design space,' and the combination of tastes and textures, geometries and colors that can be achieved is enormous,” says Lipson.

The head of the project at CCML, Jeffrey Ian Lipton, has developed a new printing technique that allows the printer to change the texture of the food being printed. Called stochastic printing or squiggle printing, the food buckles and coils as it comes out of the syringe instead of falling in a straight line. This results in very porous structures whose absorbent quality can be completely controlled.

Using corn masa dough, the lab team along with Chef David Arnold printed a new form of corn chip in the shape of a flower that could be deep fried evenly. "If it were solid you would burn the outside before the inside was fried," says Lipton. "By making it porous we can deep fry the whole thing at the same time. Therefore we can make much larger objects to deep fry."

 

Controlling texture finely means being able to change the texture of a single food material and have it be different in different parts of the shape. A tortilla could be made to go from crispy and dense on the edges to light and airy on the inside. "We can make an object softer, or stringy or absorbent," says Lipton. "You can get things to more evenly steam or deep fry, or hold more juices inside."

The Cornell group on the Fab@Home project has teamed up with the French Culinary Institute to create new foods and different forms of existing foods, with novel materials. Lipton believes that stochastic printing, leveraged with food printing will enable chefs to innovate and create new things that have never existed before faster, essentially allowing rapid prototyping of food.

"Foods that aren’t considered ‘food’ will become food in the future," says Homaro Cantu, executive chef at the Moto Restaurant in Chicago. He is exploring making foods look and taste like something they're not. "The fact is Americans will never give up their cheeseburgers and French fries, so we need to replace them with healthy raw ingredients. The home cook may never have the skill set to actually produce [the healthiest] foods-this is where food printing or what I call food transmogrification can step in and fill the void."

CCML's Lipton is working on finding more food materials whose properties can be altered to make them more delicious. The team’s efforts have caught the attention of many companies.

Essential Dynamics, a tech startup in New York, plans to bring out a commercial version of the 3-D food printer that will retail for $1,000 initially. Its founder Jamil Yosefzai believes that the desire to customize foods will make 3-D food printers an essential part of everyone’s kitchen in due course. “Customization of foods has played an integral role in our 250,000 year history,” says Yosefzai. "As time passes, 3-D food printing we will go from novelty…to utility…to indispensability."

CCML's Lipton added: "People like to play with food. They like to express themselves in food. This allows them to express themselves in not just what the food is made of, but what its shaped like. We can make health food more fun, interesting, and appealing with this technology. What kid wouldn't eat a space shuttle, even one made of peas?"

With Zagat Purchase Google Gets A Massive Foothold In Mobile Market

First, Google moved to acquire Motorola Mobility. Yesterday, it bought the crown jewel of restaurant guides, Zagat. Both deals signal huge mobile ambitions for the search giant.

Zagat, the restaurant (and shopping) reviews stalwart, "famous" for "quotation-mark studded" morsels of criticism, has been acquired by Google. The deal, spearheaded by Marissa Mayer--Google's guru of local--isn't just about the content or the database: it's about mobile internet.

Google's massive growth has required the company to diversify far beyond its engineering and service development roots. And its attempted purchase of Yelp in 2009 was an early indication that the search giant may be entering the content game.

That one failed, leaving Google to throw its money at other home-grown innovations and myriad other acquisitions that increasingly reflected its mobile ambitions.

Late last year, for example, the company launched its Google Ideas think tank, which focuses mainly on geopolitical issues and solving problems in markets where mobile access to the Internet is more pervasive than broadband. Recently, it moved to acquire Motorola Mobility--Larry Page insists it's for the IP portfolio.

It's impossible not to consider the mind-boggling expansion of the smartphone market in all this, too. GPS systems are de rigueur in the automobiles of the middle- and upper-classes. Customers now search for restaurants, stores, and services via smartphone and travelers rely on GPS and geolocation apps to find gas stations and restaurants.

Despite Google Maps' well-designed user interface and multitude of features, in-map review content has been a problem for them: Google's in-house review service is weak and additional reviews are imported from second- or third-tier services. Losing Yelp's reviews negatively impacted the quality of Google's local map offering (at least temporarily).

Meanwhile, Google Maps has a more serious achilles heel: it's not used on many GPS services today. Despite Google offering a GPS app for smartphones, the vast majority of in-vehicle GPS systems use either proprietary or licensed (and non-Google) map systems. Integration of GPS systems with the mobile web--and the sweet, sweet profits from services such as Google's AdMob--has been a priority for quite some time.

In a hopeful moment for Google, TomTom has integrated Google Local, along with Yelp and TripAdvisor data into their high-end GPS systems. TomTom competitors may try to play catch-up and embrace Google Maps tech, making it more of a standard over the next 24 months. GPS users represent a hell of a lot of eyeballs and a hell of a lot of money.

Tom Bohan, director of online menus and restaurant review site MenuPages, tells Fast Company that he thinks the local market should be a major priority for Google. Bohan explained:

"Google probably views Zagat’s ready-made, deep inventory of reviews across multiple business categories as a way to fill that void by assimilating that content into Places. I’m sure their ultimate goal is to dominate the huge $100+ billion local advertising market that’s still largely up for grabs, and they’re hoping the acquisition of Zagat’s content and brand equity will help achieve that goal."

For Zagat, the purchase comes at exactly the right time. The company's model--content hidden behind a paywall--may not work for a review site in 2011. While the paywall model can be successfully applied to newspapers, review sites have been a different story with review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor increasingly upping their game.

An analysis of the Zagat deal by Abrams Research notes that Google will have a plethora of interesting options when it comes to dealing with Zagat's highly curated review model and in working with the endless amounts of raw data that arrive at Zagat's Columbus Circle-area offices. Among other things, Google will have to choose between treating their reviews as a turn-key solution for their Maps and Local services and whether to apply their own algorithms to that motherlode of Zagat raw data.

There are several other concerns that encouraged Google to make this seemingly unorthodox purchase. Despite the massive popularity of Google Maps, MapQuest content is still frequently used on GPS systems... and still has a huge following among older users. MapQuest is owned by AOL, a company that has been aggressively rebranding themselves as a content provider. It's entirely possible, given the radical changes to MapQuest over the past few months, that AOL is even planning a similar review overhaul as well. Rival Microsoft has also shown a great interest in adding as much local content as possible to its Bing Maps service.

Apple And Amazon Break Up E-Books Into Solid-Gold Nuggets

The new reality for authors and publishers: Their books might tank, but thanks to Apple and Amazon, excerpts sold as "quick reads" and "singles" could be smash hits. Call it the Katy Perry-ization of literature.

Try explaining an e-book to a Luddite. How would you describe it? Well, it’s a book--a novel, a biography, some textbook or tome in a digital form. That definition needs a rewrite, now.

This week Apple introduced a collection of new short-form “books,” called Quick Reads, that are like short stories, long articles or packs of recipes, priced at just a fraction of the cost of what users pay for a full volume. Amazon introduced a similar concept back in January 2011 with Kindle Singles--essays, short stories and other quick reads priced from one to three dollars.

Newer, short-form e-books--in Amazon parlance “Singles,” and in Apple parlance “Quick Reads”--are not based on breakthrough technology but a few simple business realizations: Not all passages of a book are in equal demand, and consumers are willing to buy their literature by the meter or the mile.

According to a company spokesperson, the Kindle store currently features 95 titles in its Singles collection including: "The Megabanks Mess" by former TARP administrator Herbert M. Allison ($.99), "Mile 81" by Stephen King ($2.99) and "Assange Agonistes" by journalist Heather Brooke ($1.99).

The new, Apple Quick Reads collection launched with titles like: "Planet Killers" ($.99) about menacing asteroids by The New Yorker’s Tad Friend, "This American Burger" ($4.99) by former New York Times food writer Molly O’Neill, and "Excellence Now" ($5.99) by Tom Peters. In some ways, Apple’s official launch of Quick Reads is an expansion of what started several months ago with cookbooks and children’s volumes in their iBookstore.

In July, Cookstr--a New York City startup that helps high-end cookbook publishers and culinary talents go digital-- began to sell small recipe packs in sizes ranging from 10 recipes, selected by theme, like "Summer Starters" or "BBQ Menu," for 99 cents, to all 250 recipes for about 10 bucks. Cookstr started selling these short form iBooks with a collection from chef Rozanne Gold, the 1-2-3 Collection.

Other recipe sets in the iTunes store include 99-cent cooking titles from Good Housekeeping.

By opening a dedicated Quick Reads section, Apple is showing that short attention span theater, or more generously, high impact content for time-pressed consumers, isn’t just for television. Brevity, they're betting, will appeal to the literate, too.

The growth of mini-books and special sections featuring content like Cookstr’s recipe packs, raises another question: Will publishing be revitalized or cannibalized by the opportunity to sell sections or even chapters of books?

The excerpt-seling model makes less sense, naturally, for novels or non-fiction where the content is composed of a sustained narrative. A VP at digital bookseller Kobo, Michael Tamblyn said, “[This] just isn't how people want to pay for a book. A work of fiction or narrative non-fiction is truly more valuable than the sum of its parts.” Before changing its name to Kobo, Tamblyn’s company was called Shortcovers. It specialized in selling short titles and parts of books, a focus the company abandoned in 2009.

To draw an analogy to the music industry--going from albums (books) to singles (chapters) could makes great sense and lead to better business for some types of authors (artists) and publishers (labels). Who would benefit most?

Lone Pine Publishing is developing what they informally call "chunkable" books about everything from nature and gardening to self-help and, of course, cooking.

Selling books by the passage also represents a real revenue-increasing possibility for textbook publishers. College professors have long combined excerpts from various books into class readers, those photocopied, Kinko’s-bound volumes they hand out at the beginning of the semester. For many years, companies have tried to get academics to do the same thing in digital form--while protecting copyrights--with desktop apps or password-protected website collections.

That way never caught on, says said Liza Daly, owner of a strategy and design agency that helps publishers, Threepress Consulting. She has hope for the excerpt market given the popularity of the iPad, Kindle, and other e-book readers, especially on campuses despite those earlier non-starter attempts.

She also points out that an industry of rights-management companies, like Vitalsource and others, are now poised to work with various publishers to settle on fees and permissions, and get "chunks" of text into readers' e-books, while helping authors and publishers get fairly paid.

What The New Patent Reform Act Means For Innovation

President Obama is expected, without delay, to sign into law the first large-scale reform to U.S. patent laws in 60 years. It brings U.S. law into line with most international practices, and is designed to quash patent trolling, cut red tape, and spur innovation.

Late last night the Senate voted 89-9 to pass the America Invents Act that would radically reshape patent laws, and President Obama is expected to sign it without delay. It's the first such significant bill in 60 years, and it has one key component: It moves the onus from merely "inventing" a patentable idea first to becoming the person who actually files for an innovation first.

If the subtlely of this eludes you, then here's what the big hopes are for the act: By making this structural change about who gets assigned a patent, U.S. law will line up better with international law (which may simplify global-scale IP problems). It may simplify red tape, let the USPTO tackle a massive backlog of patent applications that're snarled in existing red tape, and it could disable a class of patent troll who documents an idea but never applies for a patent until someone else does, replicating their invention.

Whew. Okay, before we explore that in greater depth, some quick backstory.

A patent represents a legal line in the sand that says "I own this" after an inventor innovates a new object, process, or design. Patents are there, in many ways, to protect the rights of the inventor to make a profit from their inventions, and to stop a competitor with better funding (but less original thinking) from quickly taking the idea to market. Current U.S. law works very much like this, with the emphasis on "first to invent" or otherwise demonstrate an innovation, thus "bookmarking" the idea, and giving a window for the inventor to get a creative business plan in action to bring the innovation into reality.

But "first to invent" has some big pitfalls, including the ability of an inventor to totally gut the hopes of someone else with a similar or identical idea, and who then files for a patent--because the original inventor, without necessarily having to make any move toward realizing the innovation, can claim they invented it. A complex legal battle may then ensue, and perhaps the second filer may choose to settle privately, license the idea, or fight the situation in an expensive court case.

This trolling completely destroys the idea that a successful new thing is built on 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration--a troll, perhaps even a rich troll who's made money from previous innovations they've dreamed up (or, more materialistically, bought from someone), can simply keep the legal upper hand by saying they're the real innovator without actually building anything.

In the newly reformed laws under the AI Act, the legal ownership of a patent is conferred on the entity that's the first to file for the innovation. Since this costs money, an inventor has more of an incentive, after having a radical idea, to file a patent and then try to turn it into something that can earn revenue. Whereas the inventor who merely dreams up a neat idea but does nothing with it has less recourse to cry foul at a later date. The idea is to stimulate more geniune innovation, and prevent too much money and time being wasted in court cases that in no way advance the state of technology or the revenue-earning potential of the U.S. Supporters have claimed the reduced red tape and boosted innovation could create up to 200,000 jobs.

IBM, among others, has already responded to the news positively--as one of the biggest, most numerous patenters in action at the moment, it's a key stakeholder. The company notes that it's long been a proponent of reform, and applauds the "common sense" bill and thinks the law places the country in a position to "spur innovation and economic growth." It's worth noting that IBM seems to patent more ideas than anyone else, and thus the law to some extent protects its position against "first to invent" claims, rather than facilitating IBM's own patenting processes (apart from reducing complications).

The bill is also unlikely to impact ongoing disputes between giant firms like Samsung and Apple, or the recent acquisition of Motorola's patent portfolio by Google--in these cases it's not necessarily the vailidity of the patent that's being questioned (though in the Apple case Samsung is trying to devalue Apple's design patent on the iPad by claiming, bizarrely, prior art exists in the form of a movie prop from Kubrick's 2001 movie) but rather that a peer is violating a patent that's been granted to protect a genuine innovation.

Meanwhile, individual inventors and smaller companies are wary of the reform, because their smaller assets may make filing a patent and paying for it a more difficult process, even if they're innovative enough to have come up with a thoroughly novel idea. One can argue that this enables a new angle for venture capitalists to get in to smaller companies, with micro investments on the hope that a novel patent could turn into a serious income-earner, but there are still many detractors to the bill.

Ultimately the AI Act does reform U.S. patent law, and at least will radically shake up the entire system of innovation, IP protection, and IP legal cases--and it may prevent certain classes of patent troll. It may unsettle smaller innovators, and at first it may even spur a flurry of new lawsuits as interested parties see an opportunity to make money from the new rulings. And it won't affect many of the larger-scale extant cases, which will just roll on for years earning lawyers some serious cash.

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

A Cafe Constructed Entirely Of Plywood Ribs

A young group of Polish architects hope to revitalize a downtrodden neighborhood by designing an alluring venue for cultural events.Blobitecture isn’t dead. It’s just crept indoors, transforming rectilinear spaces into rippling, organic forms. Take Zmianatematu, a new café/bar in Łódź, Poland, fitted with ribs of plywood to create a space that resembles a giant wooden dinosaur model. (That’s a good thing.) According to the architects, xm3, the café is a much-needed injection of cutting-edge design into a once prosperous, now blighted neighborhood.

“With a very small budget we created an outstanding space to host the artistic and culture parties for the creative youth of the city,” writes xm3’s Mateusz Wójcicki. Located on a street filled with similar Neoclassical buildings, the café is a showpiece for computer-generated forms, which the twentysomething-year-old architects modeled with Rhino/Grasshopper software and CNC-milled. (The owners assembled the panels on-site.) A similarly constructed bar juts out from one wall to help to delineate the space into separate sitting areas. Xm3 left the rest of the café intentionally raw: The floor is an epoxy mass, the walls and ceiling are roughcast plaster, and bare bulbs hang from the ceiling by black tubing.

If Zmianatematu looks familiar, that’s because it's a riff on an earlier design by Office dA: Banq, in Boston’s old Penny Savings Bank. It may not be entirely original, but so what? As we’ve written before, creativity involves a degree of copying what came before.

Here's Why Nestle Chairman's Attacks On Organic Food Are Wrong

BY FC Expert Blogger Anna LappéFri Sep 9, 2011

This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.

Responding to Peter Brabeck-Letmathe's critique of organic food--that it's too expensive and downright dangerous--author and educator Anna Lappé says that he's wrong, and scared of an organic future.

News flash: the chairman of the board of one of the largest food companies in the world--whose tripling in profits from 2009 to nearly $43 billion in 2010 was generated from selling mainly processed foods produced with inputs from industrial, chemical farms--is “skeptical” of organic food.

Don’t you think someone who made $10.7 million in 2010 from a company whose profit primarily depends on chemical agriculture might have a bias in the matter? Yes, it would be understandable to think Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman of the Board of Nestlé, might. It also might be understandable to want to know what others, those without such a financial interest in the food status quo, think about the viability of non-industrial agriculture. But in the article, like other press that pooh-poohs organic farming, those who disagree--if they’re mentioned at all--are portrayed as marginal or unqualified to speak to the issue.

In the piece in question, the other side is represented by unnamed (and unquoted) “nutrition professors and some food scientists.” No offense to those nutrition professors and food scientists, but what if the reader had had, instead, learned that the viability, efficiency, and safety of industrial agriculture is being questioned not only by professors and some food scientists but by countless agronomists, food security experts, economists, epidemiologists, and public health experts all around the world? What if instead of “nutrition professors and some food scientists,” you heard about the numerous peer-reviewed and meta-studies that contradict Brabeck-Letmathe’s claims.

You’d be more informed, that’s for sure, and you might just begin to see the spin behind Brabeck-Letmathe’s messaging. He has three main talking points to defend fossil fuel-, chemical-, and water-intensive industrial agriculture. Brabeck-Letmathe raises each with strategic discipline: First, he claims that organic farming is a luxury; secondly, that it doesn’t produce food that’s any better for you; and finally (and much worse) that organic food can kill you.

This three-part spin-doctoring should start sounding familiar. I’ve been hearing it reported by uncritical media for more than a decade, dating all the way back to a 20/20 episode with John Stossel in 2000 and to the op-ed pages of one of Canada’s top newspapers, the Globe and Mail. In 2008, Brabeck-Letmathe told the paper, “We cannot feed the world on organic products.” That same year he delivered the same line to the Financial Times. Today, he says: “There’s no way you can support life on earth if you go straight from farm to table.”

Yet, numerous studies on the efficiency and future viability of industrial agriculture—especially in an increasingly resource-constrained and climate-unstable planet—keep proving the opposite is true: we cannot support life on earth unless we shift away from industrial agriculture systems.

Consider that in the United States alone, 27 percent of our nation’s farmland is dependent on fossil water from the Olglalla aquifer and we’re depleting that water at a rate so fast that in a few decades there could be none left.

Or, consider that chemical runoff from industrial farms throughout the Midwest, especially synthetic fertilizer, creates a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico every year that kills off aquatic life on the ocean floor and can grow to the size of New Jersey.

Or, consider that one of the three macronutrients industrial farmers rely on for fertilizer, phosphorus--found in the phosphate-bearing rock mainly in Morocco, China, South Africa, Jordan, and the United States--is increasingly rare. Some experts suggest we’ve already passed peak phosphorus; we will find it increasingly difficult to mine for the stuff. And, every ton that we do secure produces five tons of radioactive waste. Today, the U.S. is home to more than one billion tons of this waste now stored in 70 locations, some towering as high as a 20-story building and some as large as 720 football fields.

Meanwhile, studies have found that ecological farming practices, of which organic agriculture is one, can significantly improve water usage efficiency and eliminate farmers’ dependence on petroleum-based chemicals and synthetic fertilizer ingredients, including phosphorus.

And what to make of Brabeck-Letmathe’s second talking point: “From a nutritional point of view studies show no nutritional difference from bio [or organic] to other foods.”

We certainly need more studies assessing the nutritional differences between food items, but research is already turning up positive results for organic foods. We already know, for instance, that studies of children’s consumption of organic versus conventional foods found those eating organic foods had lower detectable pesticide metabolites. We also know that last year’s President’s Cancer Panel noted that many chemicals used on industrial farms are known or suspected carcinogenic or disrupt our hormone systems, mimicking testosterone or estrogen. The Panel’s recommendation? Stay away from foods raised with pesticides, hormones, or antibiotics. Without calling it by name, the panel was saying: Be safer, go organic.

Finally, Brabeck-Letmathe adds the zinger: Not only is organic food not more nutritious: “it’s more dangerous.” Organic foods in Europe are “often fertilized with livestock manure,” he says, “and people don’t always realize they need to wash it thoroughly.”

More than 10 years ago, Dennis Avery, from the Hudson Institute-funded Center for Global Food Issues, made the same attack on 20/20. Avery warned then that organic produce is likely infested with “nasty strains of bacteria” because it is “fertilized with manure.” A wide-eyed Barbara Walters asked, “I’ve been buying organic food. It is more expensive. But it isn’t dangerous?”

Yes, to the typical consumer--and Fast Company reader or 20/20 viewer--fertilizing crops with manure probably sounds gross. But Brabeck-Letmathe and Avery conveniently neglect to mention a few things: First, while some organic farmers do use manure as fertilizer, they must do so following strict guidelines so that potentially dangerous bacteria--the kind that has Brabeck-Letmathe so worried--are naturally eliminated. Plus, manure is not the only source of fertilizer for organic farmers. In fact, it’s not even the preferred source. Many organic farmers use no manure at all, preferring instead nitrogen-fixing crops like legumes that naturally pull nitrogen from the atmosphere and make it bioavailable in the soil. Often called green manure, the organic farmer integrates these fertility methods with many others.

The thing is: industrial farms also fertilize fields with manure, only without any regulation or oversight. And then, there’s sewage sludge. Industrial farmers can use it; organic ones cannot. (By the way, Avery’s misstatements on 20/20 were eventually retracted by producers online. But I wonder how many people saw the televised episode and how many read the retraction?)

With Brabeck-Letmathe trotting out this tripartite critique of organic food, he concludes by saying that the demand for organic food has hit a peak. “It will stay the same… I don’t think it will grow much more than it is.”

Need I remind you who you’re listening to? The Chairman of the Board of Nestlé, a man who makes millions of dollars a year selling the world on Nestlé products, including everything from Cinnamon Toast Crunch to Butterfinger and Laffy Taffy and increasingly prepared and frozen foods. In other words, someone with a stake in ensuring that few of us turn to real, whole, organic foods or, even, cook for ourselves anymore. (As the U.S. Chairman and CEO of the company said recently, he was “feeling good about its focus on frozen foods” since, “cooking has become a lost art in the United States.”)

Maybe what we hear is a note of Brabeck-Letmathe’s defensiveness? After all, the growth of the movement of food producers allied with consumers who are rejecting short-sighted industrial agriculture, choosing to cook real food, and connecting in direct relationship with farmers means one thing to Nestlé: Loss of market share.

And while Brabeck-Letmathe would like you to believe that demand for organic food is coming just from “elite, wealthier” consumers in the U.S. and E.U.--and, indeed, leveling off--he couldn’t be more wrong. The movement of eaters choosing organic foods and of food producers embracing agroecological practices is not just gaining ground in the U.S. and the E.U., but all around the world, from the foothills of the Himalayas to the plains of Central Brazil and the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. For a man like Brabeck-Letmathe, that must be scary stuff.

This post originally appeared on Civil Eats

Anna Lappé is an author and educator, known for her work as a sustainable food advocate. The co-author or author of three books (including Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It) and the contributing author to nine others, Lappé is a founding principal of the Small Planet Institute and the Small Planet Fund.

Artist Transforms Action Films Into Action Paintings [Videos]

At long last, Hollywood blockbusters even art snobs can get behind.

Here at Co.Design, we love modern art. We also love schlocky action movies (don’t hate). Let’s combine the two, shall we?

Canadian software artist Jeremy Rotsztain takes scenes and sounds from action films--explosions! car chases! shootouts!--and transforms them into abstract-expressionist animations that wouldn’t look out of place on the walls of MoMA. So they’re action paintings, as in they resemble the stuff Jackson Pollock tossed off. But they’re also action paintings, as in they’re made out of action flicks. Rotsztain calls them--wait for it--action paintings.

We think it’s brilliant and not just because this is as close as we’ll get to watching French Connection on the clock. Armchair critics love to rag on the mindlessness of Hollywood’s testosterone-fueled blockbusters. Abstract Expressionism, on the other hand, is dignified, thoughtful, important. But when you get down to it, the AbEx guys had all the subtlety of cock rockers. Just look to Franz Kline’s violent black brushstrokes and Pollock’s aggressively frenetic splatters. They’re practically Rambo on canvas. By mixing the two art forms (yes, action flicks are an art form), Rotsztain reveals the arbitrary distinction between high and low art. It’s okay to love Pollock and Stallone.

With Cargohopper Delivery System, A Dutch City Unclogs Its Streets

Idling delivery trucks are a huge congestion causer in tight downtown areas. In Utrecht, they've eliminated the trucks and replaced them with a solar-powered golf-cart-sized delivery train.

How do you sustain the commercial heart of a city without clogging its arteries? It’s a conundrum for planners everywhere: how to juggle the delivery needs of stores and restaurants, with everyone else’s desire to live without wall-to-wall traffic. And it’s a particular challenge for older cities that were never designed for delivery trucks, and that block streets as goods are loaded and unloaded.

In Europe, many towns restrict deliveries to certain hours, or routes, or charge companies to enter the center, hoping to minimize the disturbance. But Utrecht, Holland’s fourth largest city, has gone further.

Its Cargohopper scheme allows companies to leave their goods at a warehouse six miles outside city limits, and have them delivered using a 52-foot, solar-powered caravan of three boxes pulled by a cab not much bigger than a golf buggy.

The backers of the project, which began in April 2009, point to several advantages. First, the Cargohoppper is better suited to Utrecht’s narrow, cobbled streets than conventional “light vans”, so the city’s roads are more open to other types of traffic.

Second, the Cargohopper is more favorable to the environment. Utrecht-based Hoek Transport, the company behind the scheme, says it saves 5,200 gallons of diesel--and 33 tons of CO2--a year by taking other vehicles off the streets.

And, third, the Cargohopper helps with recycling efforts, taking back cardboard and paper on its return journeys. That, in turn, means retailers have to store less unwanted material in their stores, and helps keep garbage off roadsides.

Hoek says since the system began in April 2009, Cargohopper has delivered 102,500 packages and covered 12,375 miles. Effectively, the cab-and-trailer does the job of five vans, making three trips daily. Although the vehicle may not seem like a particularly dynamic solution, its backers say it is a good example of a public-private partnership providing benefits to all sides.

Utrecht’s city council did not cover any of the startup expenses, and it does not fund the ongoing operations. Hoek funded the initial costs, and designed the logistical system (the retailers effectively foot the ongoing bill). The city did, though, exempt the scheme from delivery window restrictions, and allow Cargohopper drivers to use bus lanes.

“It has been a pure collaboration with the council,” says Jacques van der Linden, Hoek’s managing director. “We invested in the hardware and the equipment, and worked everything out. But without the city’s cooperation, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Such has been Cargohopper’s success that other cities are now looking to invest in similar ideas. Hoek says Amsterdam is about to start running three Cargohoppers, and Haarlem, to the west, will initiate another one. If you live in a large city, you know downtown is often clogged with trucks, double parked as they deliver goods. Those days could be over.

Learning From Your VC Disaster

BY FC Expert Blogger Young Entrepreneur CouncilFri Sep 9, 2011

This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.

As part of our Getting Funded series, we asked members of the Young Entrepreneur Council what the worst VC meeting they had was and what they learned from it. From angry dinners to annoying yawns, here are their answers.

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1. There's Nothing Better Than Your Product Breaking In The Boardroom!

It's inevitable that your product will break or crash five minutes before you talk to a VC. I swear they have apps that ensure it just to test you. The key is to understand your idea and story, bring a short deck of slides, and quickly outline who you are and why you're interesting. Be humble, admit mistakes or weaknesses openly, and ask for feedback. If you do, the meetings will work out fine.

 - Derek Shanahan, Foodtree

2. Nap Time

My worst VC meeting was with a VC that was obviously not interested very early on. He was yawning and almost falling asleep. Honestly I was ready to walk out. I learned to carry a can of RedBull with me, and that this VC missed out on a massive opportunity.

- Ryan Holmes, HootSuite

3. When Disaster Strikes

Right out of college I went to a VC meeting and told them I wanted to be their EIR. They brushed it off and my friend who introduced me to them was really embarrassed by me asking without knowing the firm at all. I learned right away that you MUST build relationships before you ask for things and take introductions from people very seriously.

- Noah Kagan, AppSumo.com

4. Be Prepared!

I met with a VC while I was in San Francisco. I had set it up just as a casual lunch, a get to know you. The VC was very direct and didn't beat around the bush, asking very tough questions that I wasn't prepared to answer, as if it were a funding meeting. I learned to always figure out the other person's expectations before heading into a meeting so that I can prepare accordingly.

- Nathan Lustig, Entrustet

5. Never Take It Personal

We had been negotiating a deal for months (we were in the final stages of diligence). It was a dinner to iron out a few points. The guy started to comment on issues in the company to gain an advantage on some deal points (they were minor). I lost my emotions and ended up blowing the deal. I shouldn't have taken it personal. He wanted better terms. My ego was wrapped up, so I didn't stay cool.

- Craig Fuller , TransCard

6. Can You Hear Me Now?

To be honest, I've been lucky and my meetings thus far haven't really fit in that category yet. I've certainly had mediocre meetings, where I just knew within the first few minutes that my "idea" was just not clicking. Those are usually the least ideal meetings.

- Brian Wong, Kiip

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[Image via Flickr]

The Young Entrepreneur Council (Y.E.C.) is an invite-only nonprofit organization composed of the country's most promising young entrepreneurs. The Y.E.C promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business's development and growth.

Coda Showcases Its Electric Vehicle In A Shiny Mall Store

The luxury electric car maker follows in Tesla's footsteps--with a Los Angeles storefront EV education center. You can't buy a car there, but you can get excited about one.

Electric vehicles aren't yet a common sight in most cities. So for many people, EVs remain a far-off vision of what our automotive future might look like. EV startup Coda is attempting to bring electric cars down to earth with a so-called EV Experience Center in--where else?--a mall.

The center, which opened this week at the Westfield Shopping Mall in Los Angeles, shows off an electric charging station, an interactive educational area, a sign-up station for test drives, and a pre-production Coda EV. But oddly enough, potential customers can't actually buy vehicle in the store. That's because the point of the center is, according to Coda, to "bridge the gap of EV curious consumers and those who are considering purchase." And then, if the startup is lucky, for eager test-drive customers to consider purchasing a Coda EV when it goes on sale later this year.

Coda's five-seater vehicle, which will cost approximately $44,000 when it is released, charges up in six hours and has a range of up to 150 miles--more than enough for daily commuters. The vehicle isn't cheap, but then again, that's probably why Coda chose to put its experience center in an upscale mall.

Coda's strategy of showcasing its wares in a shopping center reminds us of Tesla's first George Blankenship-designed showroom in San Jose, California. Like the Coda center, the Tesla showroom is in an upscale shopping neighborhood (albeit not a mall), among stores like Gucci and Tumi.

The strategy of showing off EVs in the middle of shopping centers is a world away from traditional dealerships, which are often found on bustling streets and highways. But it makes sense; people aren't yet familiar with EVs, so they might not stop on the side of a highway to check one out. They may, however, peek in the window of a friendly showroom (or EV Experience Center) that's between an American Eagle store and a Sunglasses Hut.

A Switch From Coal To Natural Gas Won't Help The Climate: Study

Natural gas might burn much cleaner than coal, but getting it has its problems: leaky pipes. And those leaks spray gasses that are worse for the climate than carbon.

Natural gas is a hot energy commodity right now, with new drilling techniques, low prices, a big domestic 

supply in the U.S., and the support of people like T. Boone Pickens making it increasingly likely that the stuff will displace some of our reliance on coal and oil. But this may not be a good thing. A new study claims that a switch from coal to natural gas won't do much to quell climate change, despite many fewer emissions when you burn it. The culprit: methane leaks.

It's true that burning natural gas releases fewer greenhouse gas emissions than burning coal, but methane--a potent greenhouse gas--sometimes leaks from natural gas operations. According to a computer simulation study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a partial global shift from coal to natural gas would still accelerate climate change through 2050 without methane leaks. If there are significant methane leaks, that acceleration could last until 2140. Preventing problems is a daunting task for a growing industry that has to contend with leaks from pipelines, wellheads, and more.

NCAR's study is just the latest to warn of natural gas's shortcomings. A recent Cornell study also pointed out the methane leak problem--and estimated the total methane loss range of the shale gas industry to range between 3.6% and 7.9%.

And then there is the water contamination issue. In one Wyoming town located near a drilling site, oil compounds were found in 89% of all drinking wells that were tested. Methane and 2-butoxyethanol phosphate (a fire retardant and plasticizer) were also discovered in some of the wells. That doesn't make climate change worse, but it makes it pretty hard to live.

It has long been clear that natural gas is not the panacea to our energy woes. But the latest warnings about methane leaks should remind us that natural gas may not much better than the dirtiest energy sources (like coal) available today.

In Taiwan, A Stunning Bamboo Pavilion With A Potent Environmental Message

Brooklyn studio nARCHITECTS builds a bamboo pavilion to raise awareness about a local forest under siege.

nARCHITECTS, a burgeoning Brooklyn studio and past winner of the MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program (YAP), has sent us images of its latest work: an arched bamboo pavilion designed to raise awareness about a Taiwanese forest under siege.

Forest Pavilion has 11 vaults--each more than twice as tall as a basketball hoop--that soar wildly over a central meeting space in the Da Nong Da Fu Forest and Eco-park, in Hualien province, Taiwan. The territory’s been a battlefield of competing interests. Historically, it belonged to the aboriginal Tawainese Amis tribe. Later, under Japanese rule, it was cultivated for sugarcane. Now the provincial government wants to develop a casino there. The Forest Pavilion was conceived for an arts festival organized to promote preserving the landscape as a forest. “In recognition of the cultural diversity of the region, the pavilion’s vaults, each one presenting a unique ‘gateway’ into the meeting space, sought to formalize this diversity and suggest an opportunity for unity in support of a greater environmental benefit,” the architects say.

There’s something a tad off about constructing one building to effectively protest the construction of another building. But no biggie. The pavilion’s got plenty of environmental cred. It’s made out of bamboo, which, unlike trees, grows fast and can be harvested without harming the plant. nARCHITECTS also tapped the Amis (who design their own structures out of bamboo) to fabricate the pavilion by hand, elaborating on a method that the architects used to build their winning YAP design, a bamboo canopy, in 2004. Principal Eric Bunge explains in an email:

While the Amis typically use dry or smoked bamboo without bending (they use them straight) and lashed together with organic material, we used freshly cut green bamboo, flexible enough to bend, and tied together with stainless steel wire. Our bamboo is inserted into steel pipes, welded to steel plates which are in turn bolted to concrete foundations.

Apparently, the Amis got deeply invested in the project and took to calling it “Y lu duqai a luma”: Amis for “mountain home.” ("One in particular deserves mention," Bunge says. "Mayo, an Amis leader, put his heart and soul into it.") What's more, they contributed their own clever technical solutions. "Instead of prefabricating some of the secondary arches as we had specified, once the vault shapes were roughly defined, they inserted bamboo poles onto the steel foundation pipes and bent them towards each other, joining them to create the required arc," Bunge says.

The Amis have since asked if they can adopt the studio's bamboo construction technique for their own architectural creations. So even if the pavilion doesn’t help dissuade the government from erecting a casino -- and, as these things go, it probably won’t -- at least the Amis got some cool new design ideas out of it.

With Zagat Purchase Google Gets A Massive Foothold In Mobile Market

First, Google moved to acquire Motorola Mobility. Yesterday, it bought the crown jewel of restaurant guides, Zagat. Both deals signal huge mobile ambitions for the search giant.

 

Zagat, the restaurant (and shopping) reviews stalwart, "famous" for "quotation-mark studded" morsels of criticism, has been acquired by Google. The deal, spearheaded by Marissa Mayer--Google's guru of local--isn't just about the content or the database: it's about mobile internet.

Google's massive growth has required the company to diversify far beyond its engineering and service development roots. And its attempted purchase of Yelp in 2009 was an early indication that the search giant may be entering the content game.

That one failed, leaving Google to throw its money at other home-grown innovations and myriad other acquisitions that increasingly reflected its mobile ambitions.

Late last year, for example, the company launched its Google Ideas think tank, which focuses mainly on geopolitical issues and solving problems in markets where mobile access to the Internet is more pervasive than broadband. Recently, it moved to acquire Motorola Mobility--Larry Page insists it's for the IP portfolio.

It's impossible not to consider the mind-boggling expansion of the smartphone market in all this, too. GPS systems are de rigueur in the automobiles of the middle- and upper-classes. Customers now search for restaurants, stores, and services via smartphone and travelers rely on GPS and geolocation apps to find gas stations and restaurants.

Despite Google Maps' well-designed user interface and multitude of features, in-map review content has been a problem for them: Google's in-house review service is weak and additional reviews are imported from second- or third-tier services. Losing Yelp's reviews negatively impacted the quality of Google's local map offering (at least temporarily).

Meanwhile, Google Maps has a more serious achilles heel: it's not used on many GPS services today. Despite Google offering a GPS app for smartphones, the vast majority of in-vehicle GPS systems use either proprietary or licensed (and non-Google) map systems. Integration of GPS systems with the mobile web--and the sweet, sweet profits from services such as Google's AdMob--has been a priority for quite some time.

In a hopeful moment for Google, TomTom has integrated Google Local, along with Yelp and TripAdvisor data into their high-end GPS systems. TomTom competitors may try to play catch-up and embrace Google Maps tech, making it more of a standard over the next 24 months. GPS users represent a hell of a lot of eyeballs and a hell of a lot of money.

Tom Bohan, director of online menus and restaurant review site MenuPages, tells Fast Company that he thinks the local market should be a major priority for Google. Bohan explained:

"Google probably views Zagat’s ready-made, deep inventory of reviews across multiple business categories as a way to fill that void by assimilating that content into Places. I’m sure their ultimate goal is to dominate the huge $100+ billion local advertising market that’s still largely up for grabs, and they’re hoping the acquisition of Zagat’s content and brand equity will help achieve that goal."

For Zagat, the purchase comes at exactly the right time. The company's model--content hidden behind a paywall--may not work for a review site in 2011. While the paywall model can be successfully applied to newspapers, review sites have been a different story with review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor increasingly upping their game.

An analysis of the Zagat deal by Abrams Research notes that Google will have a plethora of interesting options when it comes to dealing with Zagat's highly curated review model and in working with the endless amounts of raw data that arrive at Zagat's Columbus Circle-area offices. Among other things, Google will have to choose between treating their reviews as a turn-key solution for their Maps and Local services and whether to apply their own algorithms to that motherlode of Zagat raw data.

There are several other concerns that encouraged Google to make this seemingly unorthodox purchase. Despite the massive popularity of Google Maps, MapQuest content is still frequently used on GPS systems... and still has a huge following among older users. MapQuest is owned by AOL, a company that has been aggressively rebranding themselves as a content provider. It's entirely possible, given the radical changes to MapQuest over the past few months, that AOL is even planning a similar review overhaul as well. Rival Microsoft has also shown a great interest in adding as much local content as possible to its Bing Maps service.

Mapping The Recession's Absurdity, Using D&D Dice

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Artist James Bills uses polyhedral dice to generate random data for infographics on the financial crisis that are every bit as nonsensical as the recession itself.

You only need to look at one of Co.Design's most popular features to see that society is inundated with information. Artist James Bills has a different take on our info-overloaded culture. He creates art that nods to our desperate need for orderly facts and figures, yet populates his work with his own, random self-generated data.

Using the rolling polyhedral dice that come with role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, Bills creates his own data sets by rolling the 4-, 8-, 10-, 12- or 20-sided die and tallying the results. "I can randomly generate numbers and form data sets of a particular size but still contain an element of chance," Bills tells Co.Design. "The data is just as much of a creation as the drawings."

Although Bills agrees that his work has a sympathetic relationship with data visualization, he sees some fundamental differences: namely, his choice to render his art by hand. "I feel it is important for the drawing process to be evident, for the viewer to sense the amount of time and effort spent, the mind working behind the construction, and that is often lost in computer renderings," he says. "It also enables me to explore material connections to the viewer, such as the associations that come with gilding." (Bills adds gold leaf to some of his drawings, which could create feelings of wealth and luxury.)

Golden Parachutes, his most recent series, plays upon the most puzzling and nonsensical results of the recent recession. The illustrated charts purport to explain a rather abstract concept about the financial collapse--why are some executives receiving massive payouts from their corporations?--but they're designed using Bills's ambiguous data, which he thinks matches corporations' own ridiculous methodology. With some cells of the chart colored in, some left transparent, they seem to tell a story. As Bills puts it: "You can see a system at work, but you can’t easily explain how or why."

Why are we, as a culture, so obsessed with data visualization? Bills thinks it's linked to an oft-repeated notion that the U.S. is failing as a nation, with a system on the verge of collapse. "Graphs, charts and data visualizations are comforting in this climate," he says. "They give a larger, easier-to-understand picture of the world around us and offer a sense that solutions are possible. What may seem complex and chaotic can actually be managed and placed in an orderly package." Of course, when making art, it helps that infographics also have an aesthetic edge, which drew Bills to the format in the first place. "Data visualizations are simply quite beautiful," he says. "Who can resist them?"

A Stadium-Sized Balloon In The Stratosphere Could (Re)Engineer The Climate

First, though, the British government is going to put a normal-sized balloon in the sky to see if spraying water to refract the sun's light can really prevent climate change.

 

Maybe we'll need a Plan B.

If the world does not curtail emissions of greenhouse gasses, scientists see limited options to manage serious climate change. One of them, however, is geo-engineering, the controversial strategy to manipulate ocean, atmospheric, and biological systems to contain rising global temperatures. It is meeting stiff resistance from NGOs and others concerned about potential unknown impacts, but researchers are quietly pushing ahead with preliminary tests to see if such proposals could ever be effective, or even feasible.

One such experiment is set to be launched in the next few months. A test balloon, a precursor to what would be a massive stadium-sized airship stationed nearly 12.5 miles above the Earth (far higher than any jetliner) will demonstrate technology that could pump hundreds of tons of particulates and water each day into the Earth's stratosphere.

If successful, the final version will mimic the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions when sunlight from space is scattered before reaching the surface. The Guardian newspaper reports the U.K. government is backing the test balloon--a much smaller one flying less than 1 kilometer high and spraying only water into the atmosphere--as a way to test geo-engineering technology through the country's Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) Project.

Geo-engineering schemes, from ocean iron fertilization to cloud whitening, remain untested on a large scale. Injecting aerosols into the stratosphere is no different. Organizations such as the ETC Group see even testing these schemes as a dangerous precedent that doesn't address the core problem: drastic cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases.

"This is a huge waste of time and money and shows the U.K. government's disregard for UN processes," Pat Mooney, chair of ETC Group in Canada, told The Guardian. "It is the first step in readying the hardware incept particles into the stratosphere. It has no other purpose, and should not be allowed to go ahead."

NASA has taken the question seriously enough to study how atmospheric particulates affect climate change. Although it has no official stance, a presentation (PDF) by several outside scientists during an atmospheric chemistry meeting at the Goddard Space Flight Center in 2009 details how geo-engineering could play a role in slowing warming. It concludes such as scheme may be possible, but asks a second set of questions: "Is it moral? Will it distract from GHG reduction?" For those, it has no answer.

[Image: Flickr user kaktuslampan]

Reach Michael J. Coren via Twitter or email.

Decade Of Disruption: 9/11-Inspired Innovation

The 9/11 attacks shook up more than the world's psyche, and have led to a raft of new inventions and futuristic tech designed to prevent similar terrorism in the future--from iRobots to full body scanners. These too have an ongoing mission to change our life.

 

Some of the innovations resulting from 9/11 stemmed directly from the terrible events, while others would've happened anyway, just in slower time if their development hadn't been spurred on. Some are unquestionably positive, others have subtle social consequences that may mean they're seen in a negative light. So we'll start with the good, and you can see where your milage varies as the list progresses into more uncomfortable domains.

Robots

When it came to the task of digging through the rubble of the Twin Towers, humans were for one of the first times ever working alongside robots: Packbots made by iRobot under a DARPA research fund, were "literally pulled out of the laboratory and taken to 9/11." The devices were strong, maneuverable and could work in precarious positions, small spaces and among dust and debris that was dangerous to humans without suffering side effects, and their sensors could let human rescuers see better into the debris in the search for victims.

Since then the Packbots and a fleet of similar remote control and semi-autonomous drone robots have been advanced and polished, becoming ever more useful in both military, crime-fighting and disaster situations. iRobot's Packbots, in particular, have since been used in the cleanup of the Gulf oil spill, the cleanup and investigation of the reactor meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan, as well as a "string of bank robberies in the Boston area," an iRobot spokesman tells Fast Company. This tech will only continue to get smarter--enabling both safer and smarter disaster recovery, and possibly military and police actions to prevent future terrorism.

Social Networking And Crowd Journalism

It's hard to remember, but in 2001 the Net wasn't the fully interactive Web 2.0 place it is today. Social media sharing wasn't ubiquitous, digital photography and videography were still the preserve of well-off professionals, and news-breaking via social networks connected to by smartphone was a distant dream. The citizen reporter was less of a phenomenon. Many of the world-changing images of 9/11 came from official news crews, police cameras, and the occasional digitally equipped amateur.

Now we've seen the rise of the smartphone, and digital camera revolutions mean the greater majority of a crowd in almost any developed nation has a camera on them at the moment--it's why the Japanese tsunami and earthquake disaster was accompanied by so many chilling images and videos. Twitter spreads news faster than traditional journalism, and in situations like the Hudson river plane crash it actually breaks news. In recent U.S. natural disasters, social networks have been embraced by officials as a way of efficiently sharing emergency information.

Then there's Meetup, a young company that facilitates in-person group meetings centered on a common shared theme among people who usually meet online. Its founder Scott Heiferman just emailed his staff to relate how the whole idea sprang from the unusually neighborly activity he observed in New York after 9/11. 10 million users later, he notes "It's a wonderful revolution in local community and "Meetups aren't about 9/11, but they may not be happening if it weren't for 9/11".

Better Translation Software

9/11 resulted in a burst of expeditionary military action on behalf of the U.S. and its allies, and war has often been the mother of invention. One unexpected beneficial tech that's sprung from the added billions of dollars of defense spending has been better automatic translation technology, developed to aid soldiers interact with locals on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan--after all, your average soldier may have a smattering of a second languge like Spanish or French, but is less likely to know any Farsi or Pashtu.

Pushing the technology are numerous research funds, including DARPA's Language and Speech Exploitation Resources (LASER) program, which aims to provide soldiers with software and tech to help them interact with people in more obscure languages. Another device, Lockheed Martin's LinGO, is like a customized smartphone that connects troops in the field over secure lines to a bank of translators so real-time human translation can happen. Clever systems like this, along with non-defense efforts by companies like Google, show how we're progressing toward a Star Trek-like universal translator.

Better Skyscraper Design

The inquiry into why the World Trade Center towers collapsed uncovered a few weaknesses in the way such tall buildings were designed and manufactured in terms of both their structure and how to efficiently evacuate people in a disaster.

Now buildings like the 1 World Trade Center building, rising week by week from Ground Zero itself, are designed to be much stronger--with steel floor structures that are designed to resist catastrophic collapse if even one should fail, and better protected and larger evacuation stairways. Innovations in elevator design mean that in a similar disaster, occupants of skyscrapers could take special fast "lifeboat" elevators to the ground to escape.

CT Scanners

Airport hand luggage X-ray scanners are powerful and successful technology--every day they let customs officials prevent potentially dangerous or illegal items onto aircraft. But they're not 100% foolproof, and their falibility comes from their two-dimensional scans as much as weakness on behalf of operators or the security procedures currently in place. That's something GE and L3 Communications want to change, as they've developed smaller versions of the CT 3-D scanning tech used in hospitals, for airport and other checkpoints. Over 1,000 of the machines are in use across the U.S. and the world, delivering scans that tell an official in much more detail about the contents of a carry-on bag--with the ability to spot perhaps disguised weapons that may elude a more traditional 2-D scanner.

Police And Firefighter Radios

One of the failings in 9/11 disaster response plans, and subsequent events like Hurricane Katrina, was that radio communications between emergency forces like police and firefighters were weak, and didn't allow for cross-force coordinated responses. The Department of Justice has since funded technology like that developed by HCS Technologies, like Respond Comm, a system that lets all the different forces communicate with each other in a coordinated way, with much greater network resilience (including self-sustaining communications masts with solar cells and hydrogen fuel cells), and the ability to not only share voice calls but also digital data like building plans.

Wireless Tech For FBI

The FBI of 2001 wasn't the smartphone-touting, crime-scene laser-scanning group you see in TV shows, hampering their ability to use technology in the field to identify potentially suspicious activity and persons. They didn't really have mobile wireless devices like smartphones until a pilot program in 2005. In 2008 the FBI purchased nearly 20,000 BlackBerry phones to let field agents around the world have on-the-go access to no-fly lists, kidnapped and wanted persons data, and even to snap images of suspects which could be compared to databases back at base in real-time. So far has the FBI come in utilizing modern mobile technology that it's even recently released its own iPhone app, ChildID--designed to help parents of lost children share important information with the FBI in charge of the case.

Airport Body Scanners

Airport body scanners are controversial, and indeed Germany has just ruled that they're too unreliable and socially risky to implement right now, but they do offer a degree of protection that is otherwise difficult to attain: They can show a security operative if a traveler is carrying a concealed object that could be used as a weapon, even spotting exotic technologies like ceramic knives that would elude a metal detector.

There are two competing technologies, backscatter X-ray and millimeter wave, and both systems are continually being researched and advanced so that they're better at resolving hidden objects and so that precious personal privacy is preserved: U.K. scientists have worked out how to portray the scanned image in a cartoon-like format.

Military Tech: Lasers, Drones and Exoskeletons

During operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that have their political roots in the 9/11 attacks, U.S. and allied military forces have been field-testing cutting-edge weapons and surveillance systems at an almost unprecedented rate. Every conceivable device from laser weapons to seagull-like surveillance drones, to modified stealth Black Hawk helicopters to exoskeletons to give near-future soldiers superhuman-like powers has been developed and, in many cases, actually used in conflict

Crowd Surveillance and Bio-Monitoring

Surveillance cameras are becoming more ubiquitous in the U.S., following British thinking that cameras can spot suspicious activity before a terrorist attack or other criminal act happens. The technology didn't help the U.K. prevent the recent multi-city riots and looting, but it (along with efforts to crowd-source identify some of the criminals) definitely helped mop up afterwards. Surveillance of crowds can also go wrong, as these stories of questioning and seemingly wrongful detention of "suspicious" people at the Mall of America show.

Other technologies are under development, to give security officials surveilling crowds the ability to automatically detect biologial "markers" for suspicious activity, including the ability to detect someone's facial expression and thus decide if a human officer should intervene. As cameras increase in number, this kind of automated system is only going to become more prevalent.

Future Tech: Dazzle Guns, Remote Control Airliners, Missile Disrupters

How would you feel flying in an airliner that, in the event of a hijack, would lock down cockpit controls and return to land via an unhackable remote-control systems, like Boeing has planned? Or as a passenger aboard a plane where a plainclothes air marshall carried a pulse flash gun that could knock out a threatening passenger in a potential hijack situation? Would you rest easier aboard a long-distance flight knowing that a missile disrupter was protecting your airliner from incoming missile assault from a stolen ground-to-air missile? All of these systems may come online in the near future, owing their existence to the events of 9/11 in some way.

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.