$75,000: The Magic Number for Your Salary

Noble price winner & psychologist Daniel Kahneman just got some interesting results in his new study. After surveying almost 450,000 americans, Deaton and Kahneman suggested that there are two forms of happiness: day-to-day contentment (emotional well-being) and overall “life assessment” (broader satisfaction with one’s place in the world).  He showed that as people earn more money, their day-to-day happiness rises. Until you hit $75,000 (per year). After that it's just more stuff, with no gain in happiness. Still, ultra wealthy people report overall higher life satisfaction than wealthy people. As Deaton pointed out: "Giving people more income beyond 75K is not going to do much for their daily mood … but it is going to make them feel they have a better life" (Associated Press, 2010).

While the full paper is still in preparation, this study swept headline news of major economical magazines and high-impact journals. One thing that there is Kahneman name on it. Another - that they really surveyed massive group of people - almost half a million americans. Still, I have some doubts about it mainly for cultural and socio-economic differences. While America is a prototype of capitalist, western country, I doubt that $75,000 will be "magical" enough for daily happiness in UK (especially in London area, £48,000/year would be considered "very" average). However, that's quite a lot of money in Poland for example (223,000 PLN/year would be around 18,500PLN/month - you can do quite a lot for that). Hell, within USA itself I would expect high fluctuations between states. So $75,000 figure might be hard to apply straightforwardly to other countries without considering some wider context. 

Still, it clearly confirms very old intuition - that having more money is generally good for you ;-)

[photo credit: Andrew Magill]

Your weekend trip to the Moon just got a big step closer.

It's all started in 2005 by Richard Branson, owner of Virgin, who started his new venture Virgin Galactic. The goal was to offer sub-orbital flights for $200,000 (£128,000) per person. 

Virgin got hundreds of pre-booking on their space flights, 5 years passed, and now they are almost ready. Their SpaceShip Two (Photo 1) will go just above the defined boundary of space - 110 km (when the boundary is 100 km) and the flights are going to start between 2011/2012. Virgin actually is finishing building first commercial Spaceport (Photo 2) in New Mexico. 

To fly into suborbit, you need to get there, get your 3 days space training, and everything looks like from science-fiction movie (Photo 3). Then you get your 30 minute flight with around 5 minutes weightlessness and seeing piece of Earth from space. Thats it.

It's cool, and looks awesome. But the real transformation is beyond this. On Wednesday Boeing signed a memorandum with Space Adventures that they will be offering orbital commercial space flight by 2015. 

To remind you:

1. Boeing is the largest global airplane manufacturer,

2. Space Adventures is the only company that offers flights to International Space Station for very rich and famous tourists - with price repeatedly being $40 million.

And this is something which makes Branson and his Virgin Galactic looks like a child's play.

Instead of flying just above atmosphere (suborbit), you will actually go into near space. And it will least much longer. Even spaceship will look uh... clunky, but like a professional spacecraft module (Photo 5). In the nearest future Boeing is planning to organize visits to near space stations. In the further future Boeing is planning (and already signing agreements with collaborators) to build their own space station for touristic purposes. 

Yes, what you read about in science-fiction novels just got a very real start. And probably available to you within your lifetime, if you have enough money. Cost of Boeing trip for 2015 is not yet know, but it is estimated to be competitive to Virgin Galactic.

It's good news not only because of recreational aspectes but also for the potential future  space developments. Commercial space trips mean that scientific research and near space developments will have a new surge. Many companies will sign up to offer space training for people, and it's a question of time when space walks will be available in the package. Not mentioning that sending new satelites, building new space stations and generally expanding our technological capacities into near space will be significantly improved. And in the time when NASA budget is draining quickly - these are good news. 

Then the next step will be the Moon - and I've already done advert for it (see first image) ;-)

[photo credit: Virgin Galactic (1,2,3), NASA (4), New York Times (5)]

[Moon Advert created by Geek On Acid ® with logo from BA, LOT, KLM & Boeing]

Geek On Future: Shopping Bill From 2030

Here is the future receipt from Tesco I will get in 2030 - inspired by my weekend reading of Wired and reflection on my shopping list.

Click on the link above for better quality PDF or on image below for medium quality view.

[Photo & File by Geek on Acid ®]

Piracy and Spotify Are The Beginning Of New Transition

Last week it emerged that people downloading music illegally spend £33 more than legal file sharers on buying music legitimately. So if you are a pirate, you are usually spending more money on music from legal sources than those people who don't download illegal torrents.

Intuitively that makes sense - when you have an opportunity to try out the product, it's more likely that you will buy it - and it must apply to music as well.

But let's dig it a bit more. 

In the beginning man created a vinyl. And it was good. The quality of soft vinyl brought analogue music to the commercial market. Then there was a tape. It changed the market and it was cheap. While you couldn't copy the vinyl, you were easily able to copy the tape, but at the cost of quality. Walkman made the physical music media mobile. It was a great era of physical media. And it was good.

Then, there was a CD and it was more expensive, but the quality was ultimately much higher than tape. And after some time, people started ripping CD's. Tape and vinyl slowly ceased into oblivion. That's how the digital era began. 

Then the iPod and iTunes made the entire music library mobile and accessible immediately. Many people abandoned physical for digital, because they could have everything here and now, synchronised with their portable players. 

But digital music was almost as expensive as the physical media, and people said that it was not good, so they kept ripping those CD's and downloading music illegally. Torrents became standard. The music market profits sinked down to ever-low levels. The music quality was compromised by portability, ripping algorithms and cheap, but instant hi-fi sets. In a hi-end market, the hard vinyl made an exclusive come back, bringing expensive but high-quality analogue medium back in market. But the mainstream was digital, low-end and pirate.

But another transition was on it's way. Spotify. The idea was simple - lets give people all the music available online for free, but once in a while they will listen to 30 second advert. And if they like it, let them pay £5 per month for the advert-free version, with an option to backup some songs on their hard drive to listen offline. And finally - for £10 per month, they will have all the above plus they will be able to get those track on their smartphone or portable player, and backup much more tracks offline.

And so it worked, and people liked it. 

And thats where we are and the new revolution is emerging in the digital world. Spotify is a first step towards new media model, where you rent or stream the content, but you do not own it. This instant, legal, cheap and ownership-free model is ultimately the way we will consume music, TV shows and movies. While Apple understood it, and pursues such idea with it's new release of Apple TV. BBC's iPlayer, Spotify or Netflix are already taking over the market. It will take some time before big broadcasters will realise that this is the future, but we are getting there. 

Ultimately, the TV model will change entirely to streaming. Retail stores will disappear, as user will be able to stream content for free and immediately buy it online with extras and higher quality, either in digital (Spotify, iTunes) or physical (Amazon) format if their prefer. With the increase in digital sale, more hardware will be offered for free as a part of subscription, like it is with mobile phone contracts, or BT, Sky and Virgin Media in UK. This is the beginning of new digital transition.