The World's First Zero-Emission Supercomputer at the Thor Data Center near Reykjavik Draws Its Power from Renewable Resources

It does not sit in London, Tokyo, Beijing or New York. It is not humming along deep inside a corporate skyscraper.

No, one of the world's newest supercomputers -- and apparently among the world's greenest -- was recently fired up inside a low-slung grey building with red trim on a windswept plain outside Reykjavik, Iceland.

Iceland? As the global Internet build-out advances at a furious pace, the recently dedicated Thor Data Center in Hafnarfjordur is the world's newest example of an emerging trend in mega-computing.

Instead of locating powerful supercomputers near the companies or institutions that use them, why not build these machines -- then ship big data to them at the speed of light -- wherever on Planet Earth makes the wisest economic or environmental sense?

World's First Zero-Emissions Supercomputer

Power Costs Far Lower Than Europe

As a result, the cost of power to run the Thor Data Center is significantly lower than it would be in continental Europe. The latest figures show that electricity in Iceland, which costs about .05 Euros per kilowatt hour, is about 20 percent cheaper on average than power from the European Union's 27 other nations.

That is a huge number -- 20 percent. Today's newest data centers and supercomputers, even those running the most power-efficient, latest-generation enterprise processors, still inevitably slurp large amounts of electricity. So even tiny cuts in power costs can translate into big money.

"This really gives us a one-of-a-kind opportunity," said Kolbeinn Einarsson, the head of business development for Advania, the Icelandic IT company that built the Thor Data Center in conjunction with the National High Performance Computing organizations of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland.

Chilly Icelandic Climate a Plus

Einarsson says that power costs in Iceland are predictable and stable, unlike those in many other parts of the world. And Iceland's chilly but despite the country's name, not frigid -- temperatures make cooling a data center even more appealing.

Reykjavik's warmest month is June, when the average daily high temperature is just 60 degrees Fahrenheit (16 Celsius), and the low is 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 Celsius). Reykjavik's coldest months are December and January, when the average daily low is a tolerable 28 (-2 Celsius).

Three Undersea Fiber Optic Cables Move Terabytes of Data

But how difficult is it to move huge quantities of data into and out of Iceland, a remote island nation in the far north Atlantic just below the Arctic Circle?

Iceland is less remote than it might at first seem.

Three undersea fiber-optic cables currently tie Iceland with Scotland, Norway and Nova Scotia, Canada -- and provide bandwidth of about 9 terabytes per second. That is the equivalent of moving, in the snap of a finger, the entire printed collection of the U.S. Library of Congress.

Richard Curran calls that data pipe "essentially unlimited" for today's purposes. Curran, an Intel product marketing director, was on hand in April to figuratively throw the switch and help dedicate the world's first zero-emissions supercomputer. However, additional submarine cables will likely be laid over the next year, which would more than double that capacity, and allow data to flow to Iceland directly from the U.S. and the European mainland at blinding speed.

"This is a fantastic business to be in, since our society is accelerating its demands for computing power, and also increasing demands for clean power," said Advania's Einarsson.

Though they do not operate in Iceland, Google and Facebook, which run some of the world's biggest data centers, are among companies riding this trend. Both companies have built, or are expanding, massive data centers in the Pacific Northwest, where nearby hydropower keeps electricity costs among the lowest in America.

Today in Reykjavik, the Thor Data Center is crunching data for 17 separate research projects in physics, chemistry, materials science, genetics, economics and biotech.

And the work is reportedly happening at lower cost, and with lower environmental impact, than likely anywhere else on Earth.

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Research Findings Challenge the Conventional Wisdom about PC Touchscreens

Touch made smartphones easy to use. Touch turned tablet computers from a novelty into a multi-billion-dollar market. But touch on a laptop? That's a touchy subject -- if you listen to conventional wisdom.

Tapping away on a vertical screen all day could be "painful," causing users to develop aching "gorilla arms," some experts warn. Even the late Steve Jobs once said Apple had no plans to add touch to its laptops: "Touchscreens don't want to be vertical," he said at the MacBook launch in 2010. "It's ergonomically terrible."

Yet conventional wisdom didn't stop Gary Richman and his team at Intel's PC client solutions division from diving deeper into the concept of bringing touch to laptops.

"A Gut Reaction"

"I just thought that touch on a notebook might be kind of cool," Richman said. "It was a gut reaction on my part."

That feeling grew as the team grew to understand that Microsoft's focus for its upcoming Windows 8 operating system was "touch first, touch first."

"People were getting more and more accustomed to touch on phones and on tablets, yet here everyone was saying 'we all know' that touch on a vertical plane didn't make sense," Richman said.

So he enlisted team member Daria Loi -- a user experience manager -- to test the "no touch on laptops" rule in the real world.

"We felt that if we don't explore this and challenge the conventional wisdom, years from now notebooks will end up being your grandfather's PC," Richman said.

Testing the No-Touch Rule

Loi set up focus groups in Chicago and Milan in her native Italy. The focus group members were ordinary computer users from all walks of life. They were given regular laptops that had been outfitted with touchscreens and a simulation of the touch interface of the Windows 8 "Metro" OS.

A Hit with Focus Groups

"Wow, this is easy!" said "Pamela" from Chicago. "It's almost reading your mind," she said of the touch interface. "You think of it and you do it. Just touch it."

Another tester, "Betty," said, "I like the scrolling because you can just kind of flick your hand and go quicker."

Loi recalled that one user, an older man, said he had never used a touch interface before.

"He was telling me how long it had taken him to learn how to use a mouse and a trackpad," Loi said. "It had been a very frustrating experience for him to learn how to use these devices. 'This is so easy,' he said. 'I'm amazed at how quickly I'm learning.'"

"Simpatico!"

In her studies, Loi said people approached the touchscreen in a variety of ways. They didn't try to touch a "vertical" screen, but instead adjusted the laptop screen so that it was at a comfortable angle. They often held the screen with two hands, using their thumbs to touch buttons on the bottom and sides of a screen. It was almost as if the laptop was a giant cell phone.

One woman in the Milan focus group said that interacting with the notebook via touch was "simpatico."

"I found this very telling," Loi said, noting that "simpatico" is a term used in Italy to describe a level of affinity between people, not between person and technology."

In practice, it meant that touch had turned a boring, run-of-the-mill laptop from a "work" device to a "play" device that encouraged people to interact with it in a variety of ways.

What about the dreaded "gorilla arms?" When asked about fatigue, no one said that was a problem.

"I believe it's actually healthier for your wrist," said "Heidi" from Chicago. Pointing at the touchscreen she said, "Here you are moving other muscles. I think that's good for the body."

Worth the Higher Price, Testers Say

Though touch was rated overwhelmingly positive, Loi noted that didn't mean the participants were ready to ditch all other forms of interaction. Most of the testers preferred to enter text on a keyboard, for example.

One last point: When informed that a touchscreen would add to the price of a laptop, most of the testers said they'd be willing to pay "substantially" more for the feature.

One Chinese tester said that he would love to be the first in his office to have a touch Ultrabook, saying it would make him look tech-savvy and cutting edge.

Changing Intel's Plans

Encouraged by the results, Loi went back to the field and ran the study in Brazil and China -- each with familiar results; the majority of focus group participants loved touch on a laptop.

Intel's Mooly Eden referenced the study in his keynote address at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

"People naturally use touch to swipe, expand and manipulate pictures and images directly on screen," said Eden, now president and general manager of Intel Israel. "And, so, touchscreen Ultrabooks will begin showing up in the market this year."

Armed with these new findings, Intel is now stressing that touch can actually be a competitive advantage on Ultrabook devices -- and the industry is listening.

Erik Reid, general manager of Intel's mobile client platforms said, "This research was very valuable to Intel's larger business objectives. It enabled us to talk to OEMs about a new compelling usage for Ultrabooks."

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A Young, Internet-Savvy Population and Government Investment In Educational Technology Boost Economic Prospects

Turkey was Europe's fastest-growing economy last year, expanding by more than 8 percent for the second consecutive year. Although that brisk pace is projected to slow this year, by about 3 percent, the government has ambitions to become one of the world's top 10 economies by 2023 when the Republic of Turkey will celebrate its centennial. To get there, the government is betting big on technology to educate the country's youth. Today, 65 percent of the population is younger than 24, and the nation's leaders see this as a competitive advantage that will drive Turkey's growth.

"Turkey is a very young society, where adoption of new things can be quicker than other societies," said Anastasia Ashman, an author and Berkeley, Calif.-native who moved to Istanbul in 2003 and recently returned to the U.S. "One early adopter can get a group or whole family into a new thing almost overnight," she said, adding that this behavior is driving quick adoption of computers, smartphones and Facebook.

The average Internet user in Turkey spends more than 32 hours online each month. The nation ranks as the third-most Internet-engaged country in Europe according to ComScore, after the U.K. and the Netherlands. "In fact, Turkey has the 12th-highest Internet usage in the world with more than 27 million users," said Aydin Burak, Intel manager for Turkey.

Those users have a voracious appetite for Internet content, consuming an average of 3,706 Web pages per month, more than any other country in Europe, according to 2011 ComScore data. Many of those pages are on Facebook, which accounts for more than 28 percent of the entire time Turkey's populace is online -- more than threefold the time spent on either Google or Microsoft sites.

People in Turkey "picked up Facebook to connect with others, to be part of the crowd and not miss out or get left behind," Ashman said, adding that's where they were seeing news and photos of what their friends and family did the night before." Facebook, she added, was the reason some people got their first PC. "Grandparents had to get on to Facebook because they value very deeply what's happening, and like staying up on things," she said. "Facebook keeps their finger on the pulse."

Although Facebook dominates, it's the not the only popular social platform in Turkey, which ComScore ranks as the world's fourth-most socially engaged nation. There are more than 7 million Twitter users in Turkey, including President Abdullah Gül who has nearly 2 million followers.

Facebook may be driving first-time PC purchases, but today the typical family in Turkey has multiple computers, according to Stefania Lorenz director of research at IDC. "The main use is for education, gaming, entertainment and social with more tech-savvy people moving to smartphones," she said.

"Awareness of new devices is very high and being connected is highly valued," said Ashman. She says that in the past few years, people have become more tolerant of others checking their smartphone or grabbing their laptop while in family or a social setting. "People used to complain, but not anymore," Ashman said. "They see the value in devices and are eager to get tips from people on how to get more out of their technologies."

Lorenz said that more than 70 percent of the PCs sold in Turkey are notebook computers. "Netbooks are still in place, but dropping from the amount sold in 2010, and tablets are not yet that popular," she said.

Turkey's growing middle class is finding technology to be more affordable and more essential in their daily lives. According to data from Intel, people living in Eastern Europe paid the equivalent of nearly 48 weeks of work for a new PC in 1995. In 2010, that dropped to 5 weeks and a new PC in 2014 is expected to cost just more than the equivalent of 2 weeks of work. With more people able to afford a PC in Turkey, sales have grown from 1 million units in 2003 to 5.5 million units in 2011, and Aydin expects to see 13.8 million units sell in 2015.

Familiar multinational brands such as HP, Asus, LG and Lenovo are popular in Turkey, but people also buy from local PC makers such as Kesfer, Achi and Expherf. Aydin said that most people purchase PCs directly from small channel stores, but that more are turning to relatively new electronics stores that include Electromart and Technolia.

The government's big bet on educational technology for Turkey's 18 million students gets underway this year. The so-called "Fatih" project is a 4-year program with a goal of training tens of thousands of teachers in schools across the county, equipping educators with laptops and providing tablet computers for students plus cloud computing infrastructure and interactive whiteboards for classrooms. The education initiative could bring 15 million tablet computers to the country, according to one forecast from Invest in Turkey.

Aydin believes Turkey's people -- the world's 17th largest population -- and its location at the crossroads between Europe and Asia will help turn it into a top 10 global economy.

"Our young population plus a growing middle class are keeping us in a favorable position, and our government policies are helping," he said. "But we will have to diversify our economy and diverge from depending too much on Europe."

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Apple iPhone and Google Android 'Jobs at Intel' Mobile Apps Allow Job Seekers to Search Employment Opportunities Worldwide Using Smartphones

Intel expects that the mobile apps will make discovering opportunities at Intel more convenient, which is crucial in the tech industry where competition for talent is fierce. "There's such a war for talent that almost everyone we want to hire is probably employed right now," said Keith Molesworth, global staffing channels manager for Intel. "We want to be available for them everywhere on every platform they use."

Early in the development process, Intel looked at mobile apps used by other employers for job search and recruiting. Though offerings from technology companies that compete directly for the same employee talent were scant, several other corporations, including AT&T, PepsiCo and Sodexo, became important reference points.

"When we started developing the apps, there weren't any direct talent competitors, but we saw companies that were at the forefront and we wanted to be there as well," Molesworth said. Having a mobile application will soon "become an expectation," he said. "This is going to become standard."

Maintaining a leadership position in the tech industry is important to recruiting top talent, but greater awareness of job opportunities can also change legacy perceptions about the chipmaker, according to Molesworth.

"People think of Intel as a hardware company, but we're one of the larger software employers in the country," he said.

With the first generation now launched, the "Jobs at Intel" app will soon be coming to the iPad, and future versions may allow applicants to apply for jobs from a mobile device.

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Chip Designer Searches for Meaning at a 13th Century Landmark

He continued exploring the town of 12,000, visiting local churches and cemeteries, Ivybridge Community College and nearby Dartmoor National Park.

Milstrey, a lead uncore architect on the third-generation Intel Core processor, takes great pride in his contributions to the microprocessor though they are somewhat overshadowed by other features of the chip such as the 22-nanometer Tri-Gate transistors and integrated graphics engine.

"I focused on adding PCIe Gen 3 logic to the CPU," he said.

The third-generation chips are the first from Intel to integrate Peripheral Component Interconnect Express or PCIe. The addition, which allows faster data transfer than previous generations, was a key aspect of the uncore development. Uncore refers to microprocessor functions that are not in the core, but are essential for core performance.

Although Ivy Bridge and other internal Intel codenames derive from geographic locations in North America, Milstrey was eager to discover an Ivy Bridge-Ivybridge connection in England. Such a connection eluded him until he came upon a bus stop sign that read, "The four corners of the 'Ivy Bridge' originally laid in the parishes of Harford, Ugborough, Ermington and Cornwood."

"There are four big elements of the new processor, too," he said. "The Intel architecture cores, the graphics cores, memory accesses and I/O accesses for which the uncore provides a logical bridge."

Milstrey says that PCIe Gen 3 may not be the most remarkable aspect of the new Intel technology, but it will always be the most memorable and meaningful to him.

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Computing Features are Trickling Down to So-Called Value Smartphones and Sales Are Expected to Reach 300 Million Units in 2012

Deloitte predicts that more than 300 million low-priced, or so-called "dumber" smartphones will be sold in 2012. That could reach up to 500 million units by 2015, according to Strategy Analytics.

There's "an opportunity to really put a truer, higher-fidelity computing experience into the hands of first-time users," said Jackson, who sees value smartphones getting quality cameras and video capabilities for creating and consuming content. "These features don't exist in robust fashion today," he added.

Jackson believes that although those who can bring quality, low-cost smartphones first and fastest will be well positioned, he warns that profit margins will get squeezed, potentially impeding success for smaller smartphone makers.

In the U.S., wireless carriers are selling into the value segment with new LTE, or so-called 4G-ready smartphones. Verizon Wireless is selling a LG Lucid smartphone for $79.99 after rebate and with a 2-year agreement. AT&T is poised to release the Nokia Lumia 900 running Windows Phone.

In addition to first-time smartphone buyers in the U.S., Jackson sees emerging markets presenting big sales opportunities for value-segment smartphones. "It's an order of magnitude big," he said.

"We're still at the beginning of seeing what it will take for the broader and perhaps more established ecosystem to enable those next billion smartphones," Jackson said.

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Consumer Tests Reveal Users Want Single Device with a Keyboard that Opens, Closes and Is Touch Enabled

Recent user testing shows that people want touch as part of their laptop computing experience. These research findings from Intel counter longstanding notions about touch-enabled displays on clamshell computers.

Touch on vertical screens, such as laptops, has been thought to result in so-called "gorilla arm," a term engineers have coined to describe what happens when people use touch interfaces for lengthy periods.

"Touchscreen on the display is ergonomically terrible for longer interactions," Avi Greengart of Current Analysis said to Wired in 2010. In user testing conducted by Intel in Brazil, China, Italy and the United States, however, people embraced touch on laptop displays.

"People told me that touch on the laptop was intuitive, fun, immersive and freed them from the mouse and trackpad, especially when they discovered actions like flicking the screen to scroll up or down and navigate between tasks," said Daria Loi, a user experience manager at Intel.

In testing Loi found that people spent 77 percent of the time touching the laptop screen while running through a variety of tasks such as surfing the Web, watching online video, viewing and editing photos and adjusting the laptop's setting.

"Many people found touch on a laptop screen intuitive," she said.

For tests with consumers, Loi used an off-the-shelf touchscreen laptop running a simulated Windows 8 Metro-style operating system and applications such as PowerPoint. Although the prototype was not fully optimized with a touch operating system, many users said the touch experience transformed the notebook from a work to a play device.

"One person even compared the addition of touch as like having a laptop with an extra gear," she said.

Loi says that the study results debunked another industry concern. "Many thought that hinges holding screens in place wouldn't withstand the forcible pokes and pinches for very long," she said. "But we saw people very gently touching, even caressing the screen."

In her testing, she observed people tilting back the laptop screen and using their thumbs to touch both sides of the screen, similar to how people hold a tablet or smartphone. She also noticed a range of additional informal postures, such as resting one elbow on the table or armrest while touching the screen with the other hand or fluidly switching between right and left hand to navigate via touch.

Loi said that participants strongly expressed that they did not want the keyboard to go away. "Many gave practical or emotional reasons for liking the physical keyboard, such as the way it feels or sounds when pressing down on the different keys. Most participants did not like interacting with the virtual keyboard, even when touch was their favorite input modality."

Strong Desires, High Expectations for Touch

Multi-touch screens are prevalent today on tablet and smartphone devices, and they're even available on desktop computers. But Loi said that with the advent of Windows 8, Microsoft's touch-optimized operating system, she wanted to know if people really did or did not want touch on their laptop.

Loi noted that in her testing people didn't see touch on a vertical surface as a challenge or novelty. "Instead," she said, "they described touch as something that enriched their experience, and something they believed would inevitably come to laptops."

To participants who said they'd like to have touch and the keyboard on one device, Loi asked if they would consider replacing their laptop with a powerful tablet and wireless keyboard. "People said, 'no way, the tablet has its purpose but I still need a laptop. I just want you to add touch,'" Loi said.

Testing occurred before Loi's team revealed the first touchscreen Ultrabook systems this year at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and CeBIT in Germany.

"While Windows 8 will help convince consumers to buy a touch-enabled laptop, it will come down to software and apps that use touch in a real way -- a way that feels natural and simplifies the interaction," said Josh Smith, a reviewer at Notebooks.com.

Hundreds of millions of people have become accustomed to responsive touch experiences they're getting on smartphones and tablets. Smith said this has created high expectations for fast and smooth experiences on any touchscreen device. He points to recent Microsoft research aimed at improving average touchscreen reaction time of a 100-millisecond delay down to 1 millisecond over the next decade.

"I think that once this delay issue is overcome, we will see a better user experience and faster adoption," Smith said.

"If I did this study 8 or 10 years ago, I don't think I'd get the same results," Loi said. "In the past few years, people have been exposed to touch through new personal devices and public interactions with ATMs or airport check-in machines. Overall, touchscreens are increasingly becoming smoother and more responsive than ever before. The user interfaces are now optimized for touch."

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Centralized E-Voting Process that Almost Instantly Records the Ballots of Brazil's 140 Million Voters has Drawn Interest from Election Officials in Other Countries, Including the U.S.

"I know in the United States it's different," said Giuseppe Janino, secretary of technology for Brazil's Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE), or in English, Superior Electoral Court. "I realize with so many states it's difficult to find a way to have a central, single system."

In Brazil, the move to its present-day method was in response to an outcry from angry and frustrated citizens, according to Janino.

"We had to do something to make the process reliable," he said. "It took 1 or 2 weeks to show results and outcomes were in doubt through the manual process. It was slow, had a lot of errors -- the electoral process was totally untrustworthy."

Reflecting on similar complaints registered about the 2000 U.S. general election, Janino noted the improbability of his country suffering through a controversy like when George W. Bush and Al Gore battled over hanging chad on Florida ballots.

"That wouldn't have happened in Brazil because we eliminate the human interaction at all voting sections," he said. The election secretary added that the absence of paper ballots eliminates the tedious task of recounts, done by hand in the past.

The TSE also hasn't seen cases of mechanical malfunctions that surface from time to time in the U.S., including the DS200 optical ballot scanner used in Florida, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin. Among other "substantial anomalies," the scanner is prone to freezes and misreads ballots, according to a recent U.S. Elections Assistance Commission report. The device built by Election Systems & Software was not decertified by the EAC, but the Omaha-based manufacturer is working to remediate the problems.

Brazil's Nuts and Bolts

Brazil's machines, or urnas, are designed by the government and manufactured by Sao Paulo-based Diebold Procom, a subsidiary of Ohio-based Diebold Inc. that has had the TSE contract since 1999.

Roughly the size of a small toaster oven, the voting machines have a screen activated by a built-in numerical keypad. Voters punch numbers that correspond to the measures or candidates, the latter often displayed with a headshot. Votes are transmitted via a secure satellite network. Battery life is 9-10 hours, which comes in handy at polling places lacking electrical power. A 2-week delivery by vehicle, boat and on foot is typical for locations hundreds of miles into the Amazon, "no easy task," Janino said, as about 15 percent of voters live in rural areas, including rainforest that blankets more than half of Brazil.

The voting machine, which weighs 8.8 pounds, is designed so that even people who do not read or those speaking different languages can successfully make their selections. The visually impaired have an option to hear their votes cast through headphones. Voters can identify themselves with only three fingerprints, a feature piloted in 2008 with 60,000 voters and has since grown significantly.

"We are currently in Phase 2 of the biometric identification program and have around 10 million voters who can identify themselves through their fingerprints in this year's municipal elections," Janino said. "By 2018 we will have 100 percent of the voters biometrically registered."

Although the government has not seen any evidence of fraud since e-voting was first employed, Janino and his department aren't resting on laurels. Hackers are being hired to do their worst to the latest generation of voting system.

"In 2009 we invited hackers to try to get into the system and no one could, so in advance of the next election in October we're inviting more hackers to try again," Janino said. "But they won't be successful."

Mixed Global Acceptance

Brazil began weaning itself off paper ballots with the 1996 municipal election. One-third of the sections, or what the United States calls precincts, blazed the paperless trail that year. Reports of citizens having trouble adjusting to the new equipment were minimal, according to the TSE. Another third made the transition with the 1998 general election, and when the remainder came on board with the 2000 municipal balloting, top vote-getting candidates weren't the only winners.

"That made Brazil the first country to hold a completely automated election," Janino said.

The second was India. When 380 million Indians cast votes on more than 1 million machines in May 2004, their country's election wasn't the first to be all-electronic, but it was the world's biggest. India, the globe's largest democracy, has used e-voting machines exclusively for national and local elections.

Belgium and the Philippines also use technology in either the voting or counting process for all of their national elections. Countries at various stages of piloting or partially using forms of electronic balloting include the United States, Estonia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Norway, Pakistan and Russia, according to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems.

Some countries are moving in the opposite direction. Germany banned e-voting in 2009 after a court ruled that the automated process used for the previous 10 years was unconstitutional. Citing issues over adequate privacy and security safeguards, the Netherlands in 2008 decertified its e-voting machines and moved back to paper balloting. Machines still tabulate results, but the sentiment, as stated by the government, is "as long as there is no good alternative, Netherlands agrees with pencil and paper."

Janino shrugs his shoulders when he hears such things. "There are countries that use paper, and people trust that process even if it is manual and slow," he said.

For countries open to the idea of computerized elections, Brazil is happy to share its knowledge, success and even hardware. Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Mexico have signed agreements to rent the TSE's voting machines for their own elections.

America also has knocked on Brazil's door -- not for equipment, but know-how.

"Delegations from the U.S. have come to Brazil," Janino said. "We help them learn about our process, how we implement, what our experiences have been and advise them to find a way to have a central system."

The latest American delegation to visit was from California, the state with the most registered voters and the greatest number of delegates up for grabs in its June 5 presidential primary.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen, whose job includes serving as California's chief elections officer, has looked closely at electronic voting since 2007 when she commissioned a complete review of software, hardware, source code and documents of voting systems used throughout the state. With the resulting independent scientific analysis as her guide, Bowen supported a system that, as she described, "offers the best of both worlds."

"I chose to favor the transparency of voter-marked paper ballots, which can readily be recounted, coupled with the accuracy and speed of the computer to do the tedious work of counting multiple races," Bowen said.

On all the voting systems she recertified following the audit, Bowen placed tighter use conditions on the components of voting systems that the researchers found were the most fundamentally flawed and vulnerable to security breaches. Those concerns are a big reason the secretary of state doesn't see California being fully automated anytime soon.

"Because of proven technological insecurities and highly publicized government-hacking successes, I don't see any big push toward all-electronic voting in the near future," Bowen said. "Right now, with proprietary closed-source voting systems, entire institutions have to hope that unethical people don't get their hands on source code or software. Our democracy is not built on trust alone; there are checks and balances, and course corrections after lessons are learned."

While an automated election model mirroring Brazil's doesn't seem to be on the horizon for California, all of its 58 county election offices are required by law to provide at least one electronic ballot-marking machine in every polling place. Although generally used by voters with disabilities, the machine may be used by any registrant.

The U.S. agency charged with testing, certifying and overseeing voting systems across the country takes no position on the electronic vs. manual debate.

"The EAC does not endorse any particular type of voting system and state participation in EAC's program is voluntary," said agency spokesman Bryan Whitener. "States determine the type of voting system they use according to individual state laws and procedures."

The EAC, which was created in the wake of the 2000 presidential election turmoil, is established by the Help America Vote Act that sets functional standards for voting systems used in federal elections. These standards will be followed for the third time when America votes for a president in November, be it by human or machine.

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