the same or hopefully reducing it. using fewer resources to produce the same amount of food. >> host: the commercial use of drones is something that the faa is looking into making rules about right now, correct? >> guest: as right now but even now below a certain height ceiling is perfectly legal so they fly up less than 1000 feet in hover overs fielding can come back with information that says there is actually where the soil is dry. here is actually where there is polite or something that needs to be addressed. the idea is to get a much finer picture and apply your resources much more carefully. >> host: we will keep going to the breakthrough technologies of 2014 but it want to bring in callers as we discussed this issue with brian bergstein of m.i.t. technology review. let's go to roger waiting in naperville illinois on our line for independents. roger, good morning. roger are you with us?

roger mika stepped away. we will will go door independent line, nick is waiting in oakland california. good morning. >> caller: hi. i was noticing in technologies you mentioned wind and solar. i've been puzzled for some time why tidal energy hasn't been exploited. it's available and most of the people in the united states live within 25 miles of the coast. it's an obvious of energy and easy to use. >> guest: it's a great question. the answer is unfortunately like in a promising sounding alternative energy that has to be economical and tidal energy is useful and could be promising but it's not yet economical. it's just not going to generate enough power to be worth

installing the installations and doing what you need to do to harness the power. that's actually what's interesting about this item on our list about smart wind and solar power. the knock against solar and wind is that it is too not cost competitive with coal or natural gas power. what's interesting about this item is that the utility in colorado in particular is xl energy and they have outfitted every single wind turbine in a vast windshield with sensors that are registering in great detail just how much energy is coming out of any turbine at a given time and combining that with a detailed forecasts of the weather. so what they know is just how often the wind is going to blow in how strongly and how much power they can reasonably expect to generate from a wind farm. .. traditionally, the operator oa

is a utility relying on the power for the wind farm but would have to fire a backup plan. blowingthe wind stops is what that's for. that raises the essential net cost of wind power. if you never have to fire up or you can fire up the backup power less often, wind effectively becomes less cheap. it is an economics question. that's the kind of test and whichtidal power and other beatable semi-alternatives do not yet measure up. host: on the subject of agricultural drones --

a question on twitter -- guest: that's a great question. we have thought a lot about this. i don't see anything yet. we ask ourselves this question a lot because there is a real interesting and dynamic private spaceflight business emerging. it's not only for tourism but obviously to bring -- to supply the rockets that nasa needs to bring supplies and people to the space stations. there are companies that want to mine asteroids. just last week, one of the companies that was talking about mining asteroids seemingly scaled-back its ambitions. instead of mining asteroids for all kinds of things that you

cannot find on earth reveille, now the latest business plan is that they would mine asteroids for water that would be useful in fuel permissions deeper into space. all of a sudden, that becomes more speculative and further out. there really is not anything breakthrough, i would say, i >> guest: there is nothing breaking through in space flight. space-x is fantastic but is not changing the game dramatically. >> host: roger on the subject of smart phones is a critic. he said do people believe they don't have a backway in? get real. wilson from kentucky on the line for republicans. you are on the air. >> caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call.

what is going on with the research for high super conductivity and the other is the pmes fuel cell system. that seems to be very important with respect to, you know, getting on the hydrogen energy system. can you comment on either one? >> guest: no, both of those are outside of my realm of expertise so i would be guessing. talking about hydro gen related

to fuel hasn't progressed. i would say there is not anything exciting in that realm for us. but as far as the specifics >> host: agile robots is listed as one of the breakthrough technologies. tell us about what. >> guest: robotics is at an inflection point and maybe that is not the right term but it is this idea in technology that there has been some breakthrough that is going to allow this big jump ahead. we are familiar with robots in certain contest. they have been on assembly lines in factories for a long time and

we see robots do certain things or tasks like they will vacuum the floor. agile robots stand up and walk and can balance themselves. they have been able to stand up but it has been balanced. why it is important is that you can have robots be far more adapt at navigating the environment we are in. they can go upstairs and clamor

on rocks and care things long distance. so instead of being an arm that swivels around in a factory line they can go into places that are too dangerous for humans. after the fukushima cleanup in japan there were situations that were too dangerous. but if you could send in a robot and look around and move things around it is hugely important. other kinds of disaster efforts as well. but this advancef is pushing the

technology along quickly. we think the next few years are going to see huge developments in robots with great amount of agility. >> host: we have about 25 minutes left with our guest as we focus on the 2014 breakthroughs. joe is in las vegas, nevada. i am interested in the mapping of the brain and the pinal gland. do you think anything about that? >> guest: i have heard of it. i am not sure it plays any role. this project looks at the entire

brain. there are a few mapping projects in this. anything whether it is, you know, a certain brain region or treating mental illness or brain disorders -- we are on the verge of a great amount of improvement in understanding the brain. any project that involves the brain is a map. and we have had an imperfect and rough one. that level of breaking the cortex was done in the early 20th century.

you are getting to the level where you can map down to the individual neurons. everybody's brain is different and the map is different in every person and that is what makes you you. once you get to that level of detail you can do all kinds of research that was never possible before. you can target and measure the performance or energy from individual neurons. you can get a finer picture of how regions of the brain react.

we had questions about this for years. >> host: smart wind and solar power rift and chips and agriculture and drones and brain mapping. let us know which one you want to chat about. steve is in scottsdale, arizona on the republican line. >> caller: good morning. i was wondering about a technology that could save millions in gas if they attach

this to car lights. you know when a car pulls up and it turns green? it will turn red and 50-100 cars have to stop to let the one car out when i know we have the technology where if they had censors it would let the cars go through the light first and then let it turn green and let the one car out. if they implemented that it would save billions. >> technology for a future edition? >> guest: it is true. if you look around and see how much energy is wasted you will see it every. transportation is such a huge -- i cannot remember the figure but a huge part of the carbon footprint and wasted money.

the pressure reader in the street to determine a car there is a dumb censors but if you could get car to car communication -- one of the reason google's self-driving car is interesting because they could all coordinate like i will

stop for you and we are using more energy. google's self-driving car is a distraction and i think you will be driving our own car for a long time. >> reporter: -- >> host: brian is here from the ap technology editor. jd redding on our twitter paged asked if you could comment on micromanufacturing and 3-d printing. >> guest: it is an exciting field. 3-d printing is here and has gotten a lot of attention. ge and air bus, instead of

taking a block and milling away and creating waste, they are using technologies like this to build up a part for an airplane layer by layer putting material only where you want it. you can create involve material that wasn't possible and same structural integrity but less weight. on the other side we have home 3-d printers that allow you to make things if you want. with those you are limited in your material. mainly to plastic. it comes from the nozzle and solidifies in the model you are trying to make. but in this issue, we are walking about microscale 3-d printing and talking about researchers doing fascinating

work to use the printing with a greater variety of materials. not just plastic but living cells, battery components and using multiple materials in one sort of session of 3-d printing. if you wanted an artificial organ we are seeing it is possible to say build that artificial organ with a 3-d printer combining the tissue necessarily to make the organ and the blood vessels to course through it in order to make the organ work. that is a really dramatic and

exciting use of 3-d printing. the part about battery electrodes. imagine a hearing aid and if the battery could be laid down and electronics could be slimmer with the function of the electronics built inside. >> caller: will is on the phone from albany, oregon, independents line. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. my question is whether or not the technologies are adding to the human being and helping the human mind or heart or whether it helps us to be more compassi compassionate beings. they may not be technological.

but they may not be what we need. easier isn't necessarily better and too much automation is dangerous. dangerous to our economy and our sense of who we are in our labor. so we need -- i think of myself as somewhat unsure about this. not all breakthroughs are necessarily good. so on our list we are saying the breakthroughs are important and we are trying to separate the

value of them being good. we are unsure but we are o optomist. so if you name the world's problem, clean energy, even though technology is a cause of the problems but one way or another technology will have to be a solution. we are going to live in a world of 9 billion people by 2050. if we are going to feed them and give them the standard of living they want technology is going to have to be part of the answer. people live day to day and meal

to meal in many parts of the world so if technologies make their life easier it will open their heart and do things you are talking about. i think it is a great question but i don't think technology is the end all be all answer but i think it can help us on the path you are describing. >> host: we have about ten minutes. john is in brooklyn, new york on the line for democrats. >> caller: good morning. my question is concerning these technological breakthroughs. right now it appears from what you are saying these breakthroughs are going to be s esoteric to the companies and people that make these. but who do you think long-term the knowledge of the

breakthroughs become part of the educational system for a large group of people have the opportunity to expand and have the education to know about the technologies so our employment is more spread out throughout the country and maybe for the society as a whole people can start deciding how to help the society and become part of our educational system for the betterment of the future. >> good question. i don't know how to take that one on. i feel like some of the technologies are not necessarily esota esoteric. you can by the drones, the smart phone and the rift but it doesn't answer the question about improving education or sort of having this economic

impact. we trying to come up a list of things that are not super far out and spelooking back there a things that didn't make it. we tried to play it safe but there are enough things on the list that are happening. the work with the 3-d printing it is possible to see a demonstration at labs and princeton.

>> host: gene wants to know about mobile collaboration and whether it might help soldiers on the battlefield? >> guest: that is a good question. we looked at the typical white coller working on the go. many of us work in offices where the work consist of putting a document together and writing something and putting it out in the world and putting something on the body website. you produce something and work is colllabrative. we think of excel and power point that were created for people sitting at desktop computers but more and more of us work on the go and happens with teams that are virtual and people are in multiple places and not sitting in the same office, people work from home

more often. so there is a new class of software that is making it possible to work this way more effectively. so instead of shuttling a word attachment around you can work in real-time on a body of text that exist on your phone as you work on it. it doesn't have to be saved and everybody's contribution is brought together in real time. it is a civilizationally crucial new technology? no. but it is important. so much of the economy happens with this work and there is a much better way to get it done greasing the wheels and making life easier and more productive for people. as far as soldiers i would bet

there is a way soldiers in the field could use something like this. so much is about connecting soldiers and leads to a network so anything that let's people share information in real-time and contribute what they are seeing or get a read out -- that could be huge. the military does a lot of that to some extent. >> host: steve is in colorado on our line for independents. steve, good morning. >> caller: good morning. great show, guys. i love the subject. i was talking to my grandson about the rift and he was trying to explain it. i wonder if you could expand on that and what the difference is between the video things we have

now. i will hang up and listen to your comment. >> guest: sure. virtual reality is the broader name for the technology here really. we didn't call it that on had list because it isn't new. virtual reality came out in the '90s. i remember going to a video arcade and putting on this head s set. it is possible to dawn a headset in architec settings.

so when the technology was bulky and didn't work out well but now we have the rift that is hitting the market and sony is putting out its own version and this is priced where you plug it into a consul and it will allow you to have virtual reality. you will be surrounded by this 3-d and the when you look down you feel like you are where you are. people are already excited about

this. but overtime you could see virtual reality being a new entertainment medium. a movie could be paid like this and instead of playing a game i see this experience. i would not mind being able to slip on a rift and see montrose in the winter and imagine mys f myself. very realistic scenes of places you are interested in. >> host: a twitter question from boring file clerk. which of the new technologies

are likely to hit the consumer market in the next five years? >> the rift is coming out soon and the black phone. the ultraprivate smart phone is out and so are similar phones and services. >> host: and a quick call from mississippi on the line for republicans. make it quick. >> caller: why don't they have technology besides x-rays to find cancers? we have been doing x-rays for the century now. we should get other technology. >> guest: there are better forms of scanning. one thing is that scanning at high resolution to look for

cancer isn't productive. you see things that are pre-cancerous but are not going to turn out to be cancer so you cause problems and follow-up cost. high resolution scanning isn't necessarily what we need when it comes to cancer. >> host: we will end it there. thank you so much for joining. mit technology review. on the next washington journal we will talk about the united states response to the group isis with clinton watts who is with the homeland security policy institute. and we will continue a look at political campaigning leading up the elections. our guest is rob and linda will discuss how campaigns manage a crisis. "washington journal" is live every day at 7 a.m. eastern.

>> coming up, booktv features books on american astronauts and space travel. jay barbree, "neil armstrong: a life of flight" and then we talk about the first woman in space, sally ride. and then we talk about space exploreation. this year marks the 45th anniversary of the moon landing. next on after wards, jay barbree discusses his book about neil armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. he is interviewed by the associate director for collections at the national air and space museum.

i am here to talk to jay barbree who is the author of "neil armstrong: a life of flight." i am very familiar with jay because he was a voice on the radio and a face on tv during my years as a space buff in the 1960s so it is nice to talk to you. why did you decide to write this book? >> neal and i talked about it for 20 years. we were pretty close friends for half a century and i did a book with alan shepherd called moon shot which did well and was on the "the new york times" bestsellers list and he did the introduction to that. he wanted a story of his life of flight. he felt like anything he did any of the other astromots could do. he wanted them to get equal

credit. he was that type of guy. he never thought of himself as special. when he passed away, we already worked one chapter out and i decided to go ahead because, you know, do the book because people looked at me and made sense. i looked around and all of the people from apollo are gone. and we have to realize that over half the people on the planet today were not here when he walked on the moon. anyone less than 45 years old, because the 45th anniversary is coming up next week. they were saying to me jay if you don't do it who is going to do it. it is called a great book and saying it ads to his legacy. we tried to get this done for the history. we had a heavy library sale and

that has been gray. we were trying to get neal's story had the library and hopefully we took a shot at it and did good. >> host: there was jim hanson's book "first man". >> guest: that is his official biography. this isn't a biography. it is a recreation of his story on direct obverivation and researched. that is what it is. it isn't -- i hate biographies. >> host: but you have done two that are sort of quasi-biography. in terms of how you started this book -- was it because of the

friendship with neil armstrong? when did you meet him? >> guest: i met him in 1962 coming in with the second group of astronauts. there were a couple personal things in 1964. one morning he came in to cocoa beach and my wife was in the hospital and he looked at me and says who shot your dog? and i told him, well, you know, i told him about it. we got to talking about it. he d he didn't talk much. most people didn't know he had a daughter let alone lost one.

that was out at the now named neil armstrong research center. we just got to a point where we were trusted friends is what i would like to say. people say you were neal's best friend but though i wasn't. i don't know who in the heck his best friend was. we were friends and trusted friends and we worked together. when the challenger blew up he was called to do the investigation. i broke it two days later and the first person called when i got off the air was neal and he said what do you know that you didn't tell him? i said i told him everything. we worked together on that and a couple times we were going to get started on this book but never did. we did other stories and a coup couple offers he thought about

and turned down. as i said, somebody had to do it. and you know i wanted to take a whack at it. hopefully it turned out okay. >> host: so tell me a little bit about the background of you meeting him. obviously you were a reporter for nbc for a lot of years. >> guest: the press' impression of neal was he was like a wet blanket. he stayed in the back and didn't say much. he wasn't outgoing. i just knew him like i knew you. it wasn't special until the morning in howard johnsons where we talked about loosing two children.

i was covering the launches since april of '58. i didn't set out to do it put i wound up covering every flight my american astronauts. there have been 166 of them. if you look on the cover of the inside of the book you will see a picture of me on the air when neal crossed the moon. you can see neal stepping off on to the surface of the moon. i knew him well by then and he told things that were not in that book. i will not break that confide e confidence. we had a working agreement. being a reporter, if i say to

you and i sit down and talk, the discussion isn't off the record, then everything is open. but with neal we had that friendship to protect and work together. before i would use anything i would say i want to use this and this. and we never had a situation where that didn't take place. and he fully trusted me and told me things as i say i cannot talk about today even but i was lucky i got a lot of reports from neal behind the scenes. and when he was investigating the challenger accident as a vice chairman he and i talked a couple times a week and i kept him up to date on what i had and no body knew that. we worked together. he came, for example, nbc decided to give me a dinner after being with them 50 years

and they said you can invite anybody because the wheels are coming down from nbc in new york and finally they called and said you can invite three astronauts. so i invited neal and john glen and they were in the book and went through jungle training together and that is where their friendship started. alan shepherd was dead so i could not invite him. i invited edgar mitchell and all three came. neal didn't go anywhere but he came down and he and john earlier asked me to come up to cleveland and key note what they call the 500 club in space. their 50th and