Technical Thinking By Mark Jones
Is a Tricorder worth $60 billion? A recent press release valued Spock’s Tricorder at $60.3 billion. It didn’t use the term Tricorder, but, after looking at the website and videos from Base Material Resonance Technologies, Tricorder is an apt description of the technology. Aiming their device at something from feet away tells you what it is made of. Aim at a person and it diagnoses cancer. That’s a Tricorder. The valuation leaves me skeptical, as does the technology. I am skeptical but optimistic. I’ve always wanted a Tricorder. A $60.3 billion dollar valuation is attention grabbing. I worked closely with a venture capital group for many years and still follow what’s happening on Sand Hill Road. Lists of unicorns, early-stage companies valued at over a billion dollars, appear regularly. Those lists show lots of AI companies, not one Tricorder company. $60.3 billion is pretty rarified air. It would be in the top 10 of more than 1,300 unicorns world-wide. My excitement waned a bit when I realized I’d misinterpreted the headline. $60.3 billion is intellectual property valuation, not a value based on investment. I’m generally unimpressed with IP valuations. No matter what method is employed, there are endless inputs and assumptions. Mathematical models create the illusion of accuracy. When uncertainties are
propagated, results have huge error bars, frequently as big as the value reported. I also can’t find any studies that follow an invention from the early valuation to a proven business reality. Models that don’t reflect reality are little more than video games. A $60.3 billion valuation and two uses of “Nobel Prize-worthy” in the release shows high confidence in the technology. Some 56 market segments would benefit. The Tricorder is pretty darn useful. Videos and interviews about the technology state it can work across hundreds of feet to detect particular compounds, more than 600 miles to detect fissionable elements. Things that are very dissimilar, like concentrated hydrochloric acid and a loaded gun, can be distinguished. Mimicking McCoy’s Medical Tricorder, more than 200 cancers can be diagnosed. Drug detection, too. And there is a report of cobra detection. The device found an escaped pet cobra by tuning the device to uniquely cobra chemical signatures through the walls of a house. A very recent press release describes positive test results in trial by the U.S. government, detecting target material five stories underground. Detection is with radio waves. I didn’t expect that. They don’t penetrate metal very well. Seems unlikely, but not impossible. The patent
describes the number of protons and neutrons providing the signal. That uniquely determines elements but not compounds. Many compounds can have the same molecular weight, thus the same number of protons and neutrons. It seems there would be a hopeless overlap of signals. Again, this seems unlikely, but not impossible. The section describing detectable perturbations of natural resonances that remain even after samples are removed seems unlikely. Detecting something that used to be there sounds kind of pseudosciency to me. In the end, I can’t definitively say a Tricorder using radio waves to remotely detect particular chemicals is possible or impossible. The pet cobra detection based on cobra specific molecular signals sounds merely improbable. I evaluated many technologies over the years and often heard the comment, “If you put together the right team, anything is possible.” I would suggest, if it were true, have the team swing for the fences. I would suggest they stop spending time on a potent degreaser that was also a delicious party dip or whatever they were pushing. Swing for the fences. Star Trek was the fences. If anything was possible, make a Transporter. If not that, a Tricorder. Transporter was always first, but Tricorder would be a close second — and I’d be thrilled to have either one. DW
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