X-Message-Number: 29232
Subject: Futurism
References: <20070304100002.75754.qmail@rho.pair.com>
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Sun, 04 Mar 2007 11:16:56 -0500

Generally I avoid reading Cryonet and I avoid replying when I see
stuff on it, but...

"Mark Plus" <markplus@hotmail.com> writes:
[And I note, writes from a Hotmail account, so perhaps it is no wonder
that he doesn't know technology is advancing...]
>
> Charles Platt writes,
>
>>As soon as the price of oil becomes a real disincentive, there will be no 
>>shortage of substitutes. Desperation is a great fuel for innovation.
>
> What "substitutes" do you have in mind, Charles? The corn-into-ethanol 
> fiasco that doesn't make sense therrmodynamically, and that threatens to put 
> poor Mexicans on involuntary caloric restriction as their corn crop heads 
> north? Or the effort to churn up Canada's oil sands region into some science 
> fictional Forbidden Zone?

Nuclear power is already substantially more economically efficient
than fossil fuel use. At less than 2.5 cents per killowatt-hour
including the cost of vitrifying the waste, it is just fine right now,
and even kills far fewer people than conventional power
generation. (Find out some time how many people die outright in coal
mining and how much radiation burning coal puts out, not to mention
the mercury contamination.)

A decent sized nuclear plant produces about few cubic meters or so of
high level waste to vitrify a year -- hardly a big issue if people are
sane about things -- and the "hottest" stuff by definition will burn
itself out in less than 1000 years, which isn't so bad either. John
McCarthy's sustainability pages note that, right now, we already know
how to get at enough Uranium to last us for many millions of years
with reasonable economic growth, and the planet has enough that is
theoretically available to last us for some billions of years --
probably until the sun goes red giant in fact.

Photovoltaics are also clearly about to be quite practical. 30 years
ago cells cost something like $600 per watt in *non*-inflation
adjusted dollars. The price has been on a nice exponential downward
curve ever since -- right now SunPower claims their manufacturing cost
on their 21% efficient cells is something like 1 to 2 dollars per
watt, and it is falling fast. Their retail price is much higher
because right now the market will bear that and why not, but the
market shortage right now is mostly because only about 10-20 thousand
metric tons of electronic grade monocrystalline Si get made a
year. The scaleup to the needed 10-20 million tons a year will,
doubtless, lower the cost even further (not even as difficult as the
scaleup in Al production a century ago), as will straightforward
developments in manufacturing automation -- I think solar panels are
quite clearly going to be quite economical (without any subsidy at
all) within ten years, just from economies of scale. There are also
quite straightforward improvements in anti-glare coatings for case
glass and the cells that will boost efficiency further, lowering cost
more.

So we have at least two technologies readily available, one already
quite practical, that would happily get us through the future even if
we had no serious technological innovation. Predicting energy
shortages right now is pulling a "Vannevar".

More seriously, though, I think Mr. Plus has a very weird view of the
future. There have been all these "where is the future" postings from
him. Where is the future, Mr. Plus? If you can't see it is moving in
at breakneck speed, you're totally out of it.

There are teenagers getting in trouble these days for sending digital
photographs of themselves giving blow jobs to each other from their
camera equipped cellphones to their friends' internet connected
personal computers. Consider what a weird idea ANY COMPONENT OF THAT
would have been to someone in 1980, let alone in 1960. Indeed, most of
it would have seemed really bizarre to people in 1993 if they weren't
reading certain mailing lists. Where is the future, Mr. Plus? You're
living in it.

We've sequenced the human genome -- repeatedly if you count all the
SNP and other work -- and we're in striking distance of equipment that
will sequence any genome for peanuts in a few days. I have friends
that find new biological subsystems just by doing statistical data
mining of the existing genome information. We move organelles around
inside cells under study with laser tweezers. A few days ago I scanned
a graphite surface with an STM, not as serious cutting-edge science
but as a learning exercise, viewing with my own eyes images of the
atoms my elementary school teachers said would never be seen by any
microscope. People's cars have satellite navigation systems, people
carry around months of music (as measured by how long it would take to
play all of it) in tiny boxes in their pockets. Soldiers on the
battlefield in Iraq chat with their loved ones back home, and send
images back and forth in near real time (and would in real time if the
infrastructure near the battlefield was more like that in the first
world). There are autonomous vehicles that can now drive hundreds of
miles through the desert successfully, and soon there will be ones
that can drive across urban environments in traffic. A famous computer
scientist was lost at sea a few weeks ago and his friends convinced a
satellite company to re-direct a spacecraft to image the area.

"Where is the future?" Where the heck have you been?

You're totally out of touch if you think the future isn't here just
because your flying car hasn't arrived. Flying cars and Fuller domes
aren't the way to measure progress.  Clearly you're surrounded by more
change than people can cope with, and it is only accelerating, and
you're asking "where is the future". Well open your eyes
already. Mirrored single piece overalls from Hugo Gernsback magazine
covers are not the way to tell you are "in the future". People
carrying their laptop computers into coffee shops and pirating full
length movies over wireless broadband via peer-to-peer networks while
sipping their tea is more relevant. The fact that the cheapest cars on
the market come with power windows and cost less (inflation adjusted)
than ever before and are mostly built by robots is much more important
than whether they're "Dymaxion Cars".

And while you're acclimating to the future, get a Gmail account, okay?
No one sane uses hotmail. And if you're using a Windows box, get a
Mac. Maybe you'll be less depressed then.


Perry

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29232