high tech married to sustainability and biomimesis is the future - also called clean tech. this is probably going to be the largest employer in the next 50 years. as shown in this video - multiple clean techs are coming online now. i wish permaculture was talked about within the rubric of clean tech - very few people are talking about the need for systemic change in agriculture...
can we manage human tech enabled populations the way a forest self-organizes for perfect sustainability and symbiosis? we are starting down that road now!
the doe is setting up research groups (starting at argonne national labs) to develop energy storage technologies that are five times as powerful and five times as cheap as what currently exists. they are putting up $120 million for this initiative and are talking it up (comparing it to the manhattan project). the money put up seems a bit limited - given that the manhattan project spent over $ 25 billion in today's money. but it's clear that battery tech is getting more attention. this is critical as the world begins a system change to renewables.
an exceptional documentary about the coming power of the solar energy revolution. herman scheer is a true revolutionary - far sighted and persistant enough to take on dirty energy vested interests. solar energy, today, is comparable in cost to conventional sources - however, system change takes time. i expect at least 20 years for significant penetration of solar - of course, the process will be quicker in europe. it would be interesting to see if desertec gets built - it does sound good on paper. applied materials also must be a great company to invest in - they seem to have a monopoly on the equipment that is used to make solar panels and cells. the most interesting point this video makes is that solar tech transitions the energy industry from resources to pure tech plays - and this puts it on an exponential curve - expect solar to get cheaper and more powerful at an accelerating pace.
i am also very keen to see how solar deployment is handled in the developing world. both india and china have huge investments in solar tech - given the scale of environmental degradation in both countries - they should be moving faster than europe - but their political and infrastructure systems are not as evolved - i hope i am wrong.
staples is rolling out 3d printing services in select countries in europe and will scale up to other countries quickly after that. i believe this is the start of a new revolution. some thinkers are already talking about "cloud manufacturing" where distributed 3d printers will enable point of consumption manufacturing for designs downloaded by customers from the cloud. i see china manufacturing going away within 15 years as printers become faster and capable of using multiple materials. costs will also start to come down dramatically. 3d printers are today where computers were in the 70s - but now, the progression is going to be far more dramatic...
here is a video demonstration of the mcor printers that staples will offer their services on:
note how slow they currently are. this should change dramatically within 5 years...
i believe regenerative medicine is the future of healthcare along with genomics. the department of health and human services has a bold vision for 2025 where tissue regeneration will be possible in vivo and in vitro. people will grow older without aging - or rather we will redefine aging
i like the idea of bottom up tech development onlining the massive creative potential of common people. 3d printers - in 10 to 15 years - will be compact fab labs and will facilitate this revolution in creativity. i also like the way prof. gershenfeld describes the progression of moore's law from bits to atoms - i.e. from the virtual to the real world of objects. individualized local customization will soon be the norm.
google has hired a key official from the NHTSA to help navigate the regulatory environment for it's driverless car project. this is a critical step and signals how serious the company is about its quest. already media reports have narrowed their time estimates to a commercially available driverless car from 10 years to 5. multiple car companies including volvo, bmw and nissan are also working on similar technology. the chinese are serious as well and plan to start testing their version of this technology as early as next year...
i find dharmendra modha's presentations have precision and clarity. he forecasts a full human brain simulation by 2018. by the 2020s, i'm sure many applications will begin to come online - firstly, natural language processing will make the data -> information -> knowledge -> wisdom transformations relatively easy. i guess by 2025, humankind will be ready to make a great leap forward...
google is set to release semantic search on it's search engine. of course, i am not able to get a firm release date for this technology but bing already uses a version of it. this is like empowering each person with his/her own research firm. much time will be saved as search becomes more and more intelligent. our own learning will get onto a whole new accelerated geometry. will wikipedia become irrelevant - i guess it will have to morph itself into new kinds of knowledge flows. also look at wolfram alpha and the siri project which are also ways to get computers to respond to natural language.
a simple explication of the semantic web to put google and microsoft's efforts in context. in short, relationality builds context and thus meaning (semantics):
key term - "internet of things" - where everything is connected to the web and hence to everything else - we all will become part of a single system/organism - transparency will lead to convenience...
another video that helps build an understanding of the coming semantic web from the bottom up is as follows:
take aways - 1. the importance of ontologies in creating semantics i.e. the data organization of web 3.0, 2. tim berners-lee's sentiment - "if the semantic web is something i can imagine today, then we have failed" - the shape of the semantic web is hard to conceptualize today...
this talk follows lawrence lessig's publication of "free culture". he makes an important distinction between read only (purely commercial) and read/write (sharing) cultures and the consequences for creativity and human progress.
these are progressive ideas and can be applied to every aspect of our lives. ending protective restrictive copyright based commercial thinking will unlock enormous value and creativity. in order to transform the human condition we must hasten the diffusion of beneficial technology by establishing a sharing culture. zero-sum thinking is rooted is resource based economies and diminishing returns. a networked world with positive externalities and expanded returns from "long-tail" contributions and mass adoptions requires a "win-win" methodology that breaks free of ancient and invalid ideological positions.
cultural innovations are essential to architecting our post-scarcity (abundance baseed) society.
an excellent review of new trajectories in computing technology. key developments include new materials (carbon based), nanotech and cognitive processing...
inspiring talk. who can take these amazing technological achievements to application and scale. who will lead - governments, corporations, philanthropists or open source networks....
by far the best talk i've come across on emergent energy trends and energy security. he talks about peak-oil - on the demand side - i.e. the availability of cheaper renewables ("oil will be unappealing at lower prices before it becomes unavailable at higher ones"). he also builds on various convergence logic - that exponential technologies - manufacturing, materials, information, etc. will lead to multiplicative effects in energy efficiency.
it's great to come across this sage voice in the american energy establishment. abundant energy will transform the human condition - i just hope we can minimize the pain of transition in paradigm (centralized to distributed and fossil to renewable) and technology (convergent, emergent).
amory lovins also uses interesting language i have not come across before. he talks about "fee-bates" or fees on fossil based energy use to subsidize cleaner methods. he also refers to fossil fuels as "elite" sources that are localized and scarce.
i hope international cooperation will facilitate fast diffusion of renewable technology. is there an open source movement for clean energy production and utilization?
[do look up www.rmi.org. this is the web presence for mr. lovins' rocky mountain institute. they have a knowledge centre which is a treasure trove of white papers on energy]
i like jeremy rifkin. he has another talk about a coming empathic civilization that is worth watching. it seems that europe is truly committed to moving beyond fossil fuel addiction. america is at least 10 years behind in application - though less so in actual technology development. i also think china and india are worth watching vis-a-vis this issue. these two countries have the most at stake in the short term. moreover, they have growing segments that are not as beholden to oil infrastructure as the west is.
but what do the next 10 years - during which the oil economy winds down - look like. will economic crises around the world intensify. when will the efficiency of solar come up to a level where it's mass application is feasible. all thinkers and commentators seem to point to a ten year horizon to an inflexion point.
but while the timeline to the end of oil is debatable - the fact that fossil fuels are on their way out is not. i just hope and pray that vested interests take a long term view and begin the painful switchovers now. we need to begin building the road to abundance.
emergent aesthetics at the intersection of art, science and technology. check out "nervous system". a lot of new beauty is coming online. also check out the work of bathseba grossman at www.bathsheba.com.
the interesting feature about this new art and manufacturing is that "complexity is free" and one is limited only by one's imagination - not by the craft required to instantiate...
this is by far the best video about 3d printing on the web - gives a good review of current capabilities as well as a framework for the evolution of this technology in the future. this will democratize manufacturing the same way internet democratizes information. are we moving towards a world where objects are free? i am beginning to envision a post-scarcity society...
the ramifications of driverless cars are far-reaching - safety, efficiency, cost.....could self-driving cars become a public utility? they can transform mass-transit. but whatever other barriers may exist to their early adoption (car companies, insurance companies, lawyers, etc) the technological kind do not. i cannot wait for the convenience of a driverless car.
is this panglossian or does this point us to where our future might be? i believe ray kurzweil's ideas about the accelerating pace of change. will humanity's grand challenges be solved by 2025? what greater challenges will emerge once we are there?
for one, these questions are better than those posed by the pessimists. where will society go post-oil seems uninteresting given the rapid development in solar technologies.
i am excited about possible futures given the rapid pace of technological evolution and am starting this vlog to document what excites me about the new and improved. i would also like lively debate and discussion to come out of this document. tell what you think, what you like and what you have found...
