technology
transcendent man
An upcoming documentary, Transcendent Man, details the story of Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity: the idea that machines will gain consciousness as a true AI will be developed. At that point, the machines will either help us reach our potential among the stars or enslave us and torture us for fun
technological salvation won’t be “just around the corner”
Ten years ago, energy expert Amory Lovins predicted that by 2010 hybrid and fuel cell cars would make up between half and 2/3rds of all the vehicles in the US. Today, no fuel-cell are on the U.S. market, hybrids are well under 5% and the efficiency of the US transportation fleet isn‘t much higher in [...]
the history of the internet, before the internet
E.M. Forester’s The Machine Stops is a classic of science fiction. Not because it sounds like a writer pondering the end-state of our technological society but because it does just that from all the way back in 1909. The prescience of Forester was incredible! From Wikipedia: The Machine Stops is a short science fiction story. [...]
Anya Kamenetz on rapidly morphing landscape of higher education
A great interview with Anya Kamenetz outlines some of the ways that higher education is rapidly changing drawing on the concepts in her book, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. I recommend reading the whole interview but one of my main concerns is the cost of higher ed. While the [...]
wind power generation connected via transmission spanning the atlantic
A recent study proposes a solution for one of the biggest problems facing large scale wind power generation, the intermittence of wind leading to a generation profile that’s difficult for utilities to manage. The authors propose wind turbines all along the Atlantic coast of the US connected via transmission to mitigate this problem.
consequences of a solar boom
The most irritating thing about working solar energy sources is the bubble mentality driving most of the investment. One town in Spain has felt the pain of being caught up in such a situation, Soon, Puertollano, home to the Museum of the Mining Industry, had two enormous solar power plants, factories making solar panels and [...]
Google might not be doing any evil…
…but this video provides a disconcerting picture by taking a look at all they control. While I think Google has made our lives significantly easier, I don’t know if it has definitively made our lives better. “Better” is hard to quantify though. What does concern me is that being consistently plugged in to communication and [...]
in case you think there’s an alternative energy
John Michael Greer’s latest blog post has some information for you. Our energy problem and societal decline isn’t occurring only because we are losing net energy rapidly (energy returned on energy invested), global civilization is in rapid decline because all our alternatives to oil are much less energy dense. From the blog post,
my thoughts on the Bloom Box
Over the last few days, I’ve received emails from several friends requesting my thoughts on Bloom Energy. The Bloom Box looks interesting but the piece from 60 Minutes was incredibly misleading. The celebrities, the press releases and all the hype has looked like little more than just posturing for social capital in a competitive silicon [...]
