By Shelly Palmer

Are the "new" terrorists going to be Terminator-like? The U.S. government seems to think so in a new report suggesting al-Qaida's newest bombs are people with surgically implanted explosives.

The U.S. government says they have credible intelligence that al-Qaida’s newest bombs are people with surgically implanted explosives or explosive components. This is the logical extension of the current arms race. They use metal weapons, we install metal detectors, they escalate the race by using non-metallic weapons, we create better scanners … now, we have pretty good scanners and sniffers, so they will surgically implant the explosives. It makes perfect sense. But something else is happening here.

When I read this report, I couldn’t’ help but think of the first viable artificial life forms created by man – computer viruses. Yep, you read it right. The first self-replicating, non-biological life created by us (human beings) was a malevolent computer virus. And, although there are now plenty of benevolent computer viruses in use, the vast majority of artificial life on this planet is malevolent in the extreme. There are something like two million species of active computer viruses floating around the Internet.

Which brings me to this week’s thought experiment. We are already cyborgs. According to Wikipedia, a cyborg is a “being” with both biological and artificial (e.g. electronic, mechanical or robotic) parts. Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline coined the term in 1960 in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space.

Looking at a typical connected person in 2011, you can clearly see that we augment our biological abilities with digital tools. From search engines to cloud-computing services to GPS to communications tools like text, voice and video, our handheld devices empower us in ways that we could hardly imagine just a few years ago. And, while all of these tools are external, they combine in a symbiotic way to make us cyborgs.

If you read some Ray Kurzweil, and buy into any of his evolutionary theory, you know that nanotechnology is just a few years away from being commercialized. It and other technologies are advancing at an escalating rate. When fully deployed and woven into the fabric of our everyday lives, these tools will enhance our abilities and evolve us into whatever is next. In his book, “The Singularity is Near,” Ray predicts that we will become one with machines by 2029 and that there will be a race of MachineHumans or HumanMachines. His math and his logic are compelling. You may not agree with his timing (many learned scientists don’t) but you cannot deny his conclusions. No matter how you calculate it, the human race is extremely close to merging with our technology.

What fascinates me is that it’s al-Qaida, not Big Brother or the NSA or Skynet, is going to take the first steps implanting technology in humans for interaction with the outside world. (We’ve been implanting pacemakers and other medical devices to keep us alive for years, but those devices have worked in a closed system.) It looks like history is repeating itself. The first HumanMachines, the very first cyber-symbiont is going to be a human being with explosives surgically implanted in them — a malevolent life form – just like the first artificial life form.

I’m not sure if this is a coincidence, or an indictment of human beings as a species. I am sure that if the singularity is near, we had better do a better job of thinking this through. Why couldn’t the first cyber-symbiont be a combination of electronic computer components to help us see better or think faster or give us better access to facts? Why does it have to be a weapon? To me, the question is more terrifying than the terrorist.

Shelly Palmer is the host of NBC Universal’s Live Digital with Shelly Palmer, a weekly half-hour television show about living and working in a digital world. He is Fox 5 New York’s On-air Tech Expert and the host of Fox Television’s monthly show Shelly Palmer Digital Living. He also hosts United Stations Radio Network’s, Shelly Palmer Digital Living Daily. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group, LLC an industry-leading advisory and business development firm and a member of the Executive Committee of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards).

By Timothy Walker

The "New York Times" on an iPad.

The daily newspaper has been a fixture of American life for over 300 years now – the first newspaper, the “Boston News-Letter,” published its first issue on April 24, 1704. Many of us grew up watching our parents read the paper at the breakfast table on Sunday mornings while we looked at the comics section. Some of us then moved on to reading it ourselves, perhaps subscribing to it, even occasionally delivering it for extra cash. Newspapers were ubiquitous: headlines, coupons, the weather, movie listings, Letters to the Editor, “Dear Abby.” There was even a time in the not-so-distant past when medium-sized cities like Dayton often had two or more daily newspapers (the “Journal Herald,” anyone?) competing for subscribers and advertisers.

But the iPad is here now and times have changed.

It’s an old story that the leap into this new digital age has not been a comfortable one for the newspaper industry. While nearly all newspapers now have websites featuring online editions of their daily publications, many of those old grey eminences are steadily losing money and have experienced difficulty establishing their value to a younger readership. Circulation and advertising revenues have dropped as more and more potential subscribers get their news either from online sources, through Twitter and other social networks, or by watching any one of several 24-hour news channels.

For example, in a story that has become all too common in recent years, the 174-year-old “Ann Arbor News” printed its last edition in July 2009. Hit hard by the recession, declining circulation and the migration of readers to digital media, the paper was replaced by AnnArbor.com, a free website that planned to publish print editions only on Thursdays and Sundays.

So how do daily newspapers, trapped in a business model that seems doomed to failure in a growing online economy, make more money?

For some, the answer is by encouraging readers to pay to read their web-based content. Enter the paywall, which blocks access to a webpage with a screen requiring payment. “The Financial Times” was the first newspaper to use one, starting the trend by charging subscribers for access to stories in 2002.
Many daily newspapers have tried to use paywalls since then, with varying degrees of success.

With nearly one million loyal paying readers, the “Wall Street Journal” has more online subscribers than any other newspaper. Anyone with a browser can go to WSJ.com for free and read the headlines, but many of the full articles are accessible only to subscribers of the newspaper’s online edition. Click on a story headline on the newspaper’s website, and chances are you’ll be able to read only the first few lines of the story before being asked to enter your subscriber password so that you can finish the article. The “Wall Street Journal” earns nearly $60 million per year from subscribers to its digital edition.

The “New York Times” has announced it will be erecting a modified paywall at some point in 2011. A visitor to NYTimes.com will be able to access only a limited number of articles for free each month – in order to view more, the reader will have to pay a flat fee for unlimited access, probably around $10 per month. Subscribers to the free newspaper, even those who only take the mammoth Sunday edition, will receive full access to the site without any additional charge. Executives of the “New York Times” company said that they “wanted to create a system that would have little effect on the millions of occasional visitors to the site,” while still trying to make money off of the loyalty of more devoted readers.

What they were trying to do was create a business model that would avoid the disastrous paywall experiment of the “Times of London.” In June 2010, the “Times of London” and the “Sunday Times” erected a paywall which prevented readers from accessing any material at all unless they were subscribers. As anyone might guess, online readership nearly vanished, with a 62% drop in online unique visitors and a whopping 90% drop in unique page views, from 41 million in May 2010 to four million in September 2010.

“Newsday” had a similar experience when they erected their own $5 per week paywall in late 2010. Three months into the experiment, after spending nearly $4 million to redesign the online edition and add the paywall, “Newsday” found itself with a grand total of 35 subscribers.

The jury is obviously still out regarding the success of paywalls in the newspaper industry. In his book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” “Wired” Editor Chris Anderson echoes Stewart Brand’s assertion that “information wants to be free” and claims that all internet users below a certain age expect – perhaps demand – to receive their information for free. The trick for the daily newspapers who want to survive in the digital world may well be convincing these younger readers, who still want access to information about their changing times, that they may well be forced to pay for it.

Reach DCP freelance writer Timothy Walker at timwalker@daytoncitypaper.com.

By Timothy Walker

the Sony PRS-505 eBook Reader

Constant readers, ones rarely seen without a book or a newspaper in hand, certainly aren’t going anywhere. You see them on the bus, in the cafeteria, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. I myself am involved in a lifelong love affair with books, and although I do a larger percentage of my reading on a computer these days, no electronic device will ever be able to replace the feel of a book in my hands. I’m certainly not alone in this opinion but, as the song almost goes, “the times, they are ‘e-changing.’”

E-book readers are everywhere you look these days and the changes this new craze has brought to the literary marketplace are rocking the publishing industry to its very foundations. Sources estimate that nearly 7 million electronic reading devices of various kinds were sold worldwide over the past year, and the owners of these devices now consume, on average, 41% of their books in digital form. Forrester Research predicts that e-book sales for 2011 will surpass $1 billion for the first time, up from $323 million in 2008. In the final week of December 2010, the top six books on USA Today’s “Best-Selling Books” list sold more electronic than print editions and, altogether, 19 out of the top 50 had higher e-book than print sales for that week.

People are reading e-books on their iPads and Galaxy Tabs, on the Kindle and Kobo apps that are now available for their BlackBerries; obviously, lovers of the written word have more options than ever for getting their lit fix, as long as their battery life holds out. Amazon’s Kindle store lists more than 390,000 individual titles for sale and Google’s recently introduced eBookstore claims to have over 3 million titles available for download. By comparison, the largest Borders superstores in the country stock roughly 141,000 titles, according to company figures.

If you didn’t get one for Christmas, a little research will help you to choose an e-book reader that’s right for your needs and your budget. Amazon.com’s Kindle 3 is currently the most popular e-book reader on the market. It retails for $189 on their website, holds up to 3,500 books and you can read for a month on a single battery charge. The Kindle’s screen uses E Ink Pearl technology and is amazingly readable, even in direct sunlight. The main challenger to the Kindle’s market dominance is the NookColor from Barnes & Noble, which retails for $249, but has a full-color touchscreen, supports many more files and has double the internal memory. You can also browse the web and play music on it. The Kobo and the Pandigital Novel are two other popular e-book readers, although neither one comes close to the popularity of the Kindle or NookColor.

Browsing through bookstores is a favorite pastime of many readers, but browsing an online bookstore is a markedly less satisfying experience. Just as an experiment, I went searching for some e-books by a writer I chose at random: Harlan Ellison, author of over 73 books and 1,800 short stories in his 40-year career. You may remember him as the author of the short story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” in which a massive computer destroys the human race.

Google’s eBookstore currently offers exactly one of Ellison’s books for sale; “Paingod and Other Delusions,” a collection of short stories originally published in 1965. Amazon’s Kindle Store is markedly better, offering 28 different Ellison titles for sale, including some from this century. Prices for these e-books are generally around $7.99 a piece. The Barnes & Noble website offers 30 different titles for sale at the same prices. The Kobo website has 29 titles. Any of these e-books can be purchased directly from your e-book reader, and then downloaded directly from the websites via WiFi.

If you prefer an actual physical library of books in your house as opposed to a stack of memory cards, the Borders location at the Dayton Mall, when contacted, had one Ellison book currently in stock, a trade paperback collection of writings on film entitled “Harlan Ellison’s Watching,” selling for $12.95. If you’re willing to wait, you could always order Ellison’s titles online from Amazon.com and have them delivered right to your home address. There are over 50 of his various books available there, but – well, you’re just so behind the times.

(The Dayton Metro Library system, by the way, also has copies of 14 different Ellison titles that you can check out and read. For free. And they don’t even need to be plugged in. I’m just saying.) Are these newfangled electronic devices really a necessary purchase for the average person who just loves to read? Are books really dying? Critics once predicted that television would bring about the end of the cinema. Now the offspring of those naysayers are saying we’re seeing the death of the printed word. I disagree. E-book sales only accounted for about 10% of total book sales last year. Constant readers still love their books and it will take a lot more than a Kindle to take them away from us. I know this: when those e-police finally come for mine, they’d better be prepared to pry them out of my cold, ink-stained fingers.

Reach DCP freelance writer Timothy Walker at contactus@daytoncitypaper.com