Building the Green Economy, Quipu Economic Forum, Renewable Resources, Zero-combustion paradigm
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7 January 2010 :: by J.E. Robertson
The Sandia National Laboratories have achieved a landmark breakthrough in solar-voltaic power-generation technology. The snowflake-like “solar glitter” uses 100 times less material to produce the same amount of electricity as today’s standard 6-inch square solar cells. This achievement of ultra-miniaturization now has the potential to move solar-voltaic power generation to the forefront of the clean energy revolution, and help speed the transition away from carbon-based combustible fuels.
The super-reduced size of these snowflake solar cells means they can be used to create more dependable power-generation solar arrays. Asreported by Inhabitat (‘green design will save the world’), when a large solar cell fails, it has a serious impact on the overall productivity of the solar array, already limited by the space it takes up, while these tiny snowflake cells, just 14 to 20 micrometers thick and 0.25 to 1 millimeter in diameter, can fit so much more productivity into the same space, the failure of one flake will have negligible overall impact on output.
The uniquely small size of these powerful electricity-producing cells also means they can deployed in creative new ways that add to the efficiency of their role in power generation. They can be woven into fabrics, spread across tents, added to consumer electronics and to clothing, and could help to make rechargeable devices recharge constantly, so they never need to be plugged in.
According to PhysOrg:
The solar particles, fabricated of crystalline silicon, hold the potential for a variety of new applications. They are expected eventually to be less expensive and have greater efficiencies than current photovoltaic collectors that are pieced together with 6-inch- square solar wafers.
The cells are fabricated using microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) techniques common to today’s electronic foundries.
Among the serious productivity gains inherent in the snowflake solar cell design, they can be harvested from existing industrial-production silicon wafers. What’s more, if one unit is corrupted in production, the rest can still be harvested, finished and deployed, unlike with the larger standard wafers produced from silicon bricks.
Another potential application would be to embed the solar flakes into innovative design materials used to clad the outside of buildings, allowing for structures made of glass or steel, but also stone or brick, to act as solar power generation facilities. There is also great potential for these ultra-miniaturized solar flakes to act as solar-voltaic reception units lining the edges of organic solar concentrators, specially dyed windows that channel light energy to solar cells at the edges.
According to the Sandia National Labs press report:
Other unique features are available because the cells are so small. “The shade tolerance of our units to overhead obstructions is better than conventional PV panels,” said Nielson, “because portions of our units not in shade will keep sending out electricity where a partially shaded conventional panel may turn off entirely.”
Because flexible substrates can be easily fabricated, high-efficiency PV for ubiquitous solar power becomes more feasible, said [Sandia researcher Murat] Okandan.
The cells may also have applications other than solar power generation. The technology could be used to help enhance remote sensing equipment, to better measure weather patterns, environmental trends, including complex ecosystem degradation, and possibly for remote motion tracking and pattern sensing.
Discussion Forum, Quipu Economic Forum
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7 January 2010 :: by J.E. Robertson
That too many people, including policy-makers and media figures “are out of their intellectual depth and easily manipulated” by the bewildering complexity of the financial-political feedback-loop is almost irrefutable, and I agree with comments in this debate it’s “a symptom of the limitations of our neural architecture”. But I don’t know if we should take the question of neural architecture in the biological sense. There’s a cultural and practical response that needs to be considered at least as strongly.
We are also dealing with the limitations of our neural architecture as a global civilization. We are just beginning to understand the implications of what it means to be fully committed members of a global civilization, in which shared values and our common humanity, are driving forces that outstrip historical prejudices and rivalries.
Media technologies have rapidly developed into a kind of planetary neural net, but we are not adequately adept at parsing information or ensuring that needed practical information gets to where it needs to go. So cynics can easily make the case that an informed citizenry is now all but impossible, because information overload as so eroded the value of information as such.
But, we must remember: we are evolved to deal with complexity. As Buckminster Fuller so ably argues in the collection of lectures compiled as Utopia or Oblivion, the human brain is the most powerful ‘anti-entropy machine’ we know of, highly adapted to lend order to universe ruled by entropy and to synthesize astonishingly complex informational subsets.
In short, we can adapt our hyper-literal industrial mindset, so tightly bound by the false dualities stagnation-progress, backward-forward, unproductive-productive, valueless-valued, irrelevant-measurable, to the more difficult, more useful, more far-reaching intellectual project of dynamic evolutionary systems.
Complexity is not beyond us; it’s the challenge we face, just now with more human-generated meta-complexity than ever before.
I think the problem of an overfed, overfunded Congress is central to the practical problem solving that needs to be done, but I think we can make great strides if we get large numbers of people thinking about the practical problem solving, and how it can be done.
A few points:
- Predatory lending must be treated as a serious offense: lenders should never be rewarded for creating business relationships that fail utterly and ruin lives.
- Tax credits related to lending should be oriented toward markets and activities that help build community-level sustainable businesses and quality of life increases.
- Mark-to-market refinancing has to be an option, in part to de-incentivize banks’ pushing the inflation of real estate profits to increase profit projections.
- Bankruptcy negotiations have to restore balance between lender and borrower; recent “innovations” in bankruptcy laws have shifted power to banks, put consumers at steep disadvantage, helped to drive crisis.
- Money borrowed from federal government cannot simply be used as buffer against banks’ reserve shortfalls; lending must lead to lending.
- Restoration of something like Glass-Steagall protections, to keep wealth-focused investment banking from marginalizing small-investor consumer banking.
These are just a few of the practical approaches that we need to be thinking about, however little the average citizen’s understanding of these topics may be. These are concrete steps citizens can pressure Congress to act on.
Building the Green Economy, Discussion Forum
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7 January 2010 :: by J.E. Robertson
The field of ecological research and reporting is a part of the basic human urge to engage the world through reason and a quest for understanding. It is not about seizing control of society’s urges and services and limiting the freedom of anyone, but rather about making sure we have the information we need to make the best choices, then advocating for those choices, when inertia and custom stand in the way of better health — for individuals and in the manner in which human individuals respond to their social and natural environments.
Ecology is the study of what surrounds, what encompasses our everyday activities, it is economics that looks to a broader picture that includes all of the resources and services on which the more limited “economy” depends for its very existence. There is a mischaracterization of ecological science as a vague and ideologically motivated quest to control or rein in corporate enterprise or human behavior generally, and that unjust mischaracterization is a distortion promoted by interests that seek to avoid having to acknowledge or live up to any greater responsibility to the social or natural environment — even where those responsibilities are already written into existing law.
In short, ecology is a study of the balance that might or might not exist among natural systems, and so by definition it must take into account human behavior. Efforts to impede the expansion and the dissemination of the facts brought to light through ecological science are attempts to work against the human interest inherent in finding ways to interact sustainably with the natural systems that provide humanity with a climate and a landscape favorable to civilization, and in concert with which civilization has been built.
If we lose touch with that problem of how to balance ecological sustainability with human need and ambition, then we risk forfeiting any future benefit from our present activities to the unwinding of complex and often delicate natural systems that provide the Earth with a certain natural systemic cohesion that allows civilization to exist at all. If we are not good stewards of the natural resources we seek to exploit, the costs of exploitation will be more than we, in our small corner of the natural calculus of energy distribution, can afford.
Arguments against ecological science often tout the notion that “nature finds a way” or “nature is too big to be destroyed by human activity”. This is true, of course; nature will go on. But whether it goes on in a way that allows us to keep exploiting natural resources —which include clean water, stable climate systems, and temperature ranges useful to agriculture, storm protection and construction— as we need to, as a species, is another matter altogether.
Nature’s going on, it’s post-industrial phase, might not be conducive to human civilization as we know it. It might, in fact, require sacrifices on a scale we cannot imagine, with entire river systems disappearing, whole regions giving way to comprehensive desertification, and the acceleration of what is already the 6th great mass extinction known to human science.
The way nature survives might present in human terms the collapse of the global food supply, water shortages on a scale never before seen, wars over water, grain, forest and even air resources, and the migration of tens or even hundreds of millions of people whose biological needs respect no political borders. Each of these scenarios has already begun to unfold on the microcosmic scale, and efforts to prevent their contagion to the global level are among the most complex ongoing negotiations in which governments are now engaged.
Climate destabilization is a process that has been seen before in the Earth’s long history. In the past, the destabilization of global climate systems has been brought about by meteor impact, volcanic eruptions, and other cataclismic events. It is thought that slow-growing systemic phenomena —like over-consumption of plant-life by mega-fauna or the chemical differentiation of oceanic waters due to geological activity, over time— have also played a role in altering global climate patterns.
But in the last 300 years, no single factor has played a greater role in altering fundamental elements of balance and resilience —like the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) or ozone (O3) in the atmosphere or the natural elasticity of river systems and the vast ecosystems dependent on them— than human industry. This has been demonstrated by the most advanced scientific measures of chemical composition and variation available in today’s technologies, and it is for that reason that ecological science continually points the way toward more responsible, more sustainable resource-exploitation models.
There is no reason for high-profit businesses, like the multinational petroleum extraction and distribution firms, to take an adversarial posture toward such science, because like all science, ecology helps point the way to what will become the most useful and profitable activities under a new energy-exploitation paradigm. If those firms pay attention, they can capitalize on the work of ecological scientists by building a future that works better, is more efficient and in which high-profit enterprise does not promote the degradation of basic natural services and systems or the cost fallout involved in combatting the effects of climate-destabilizing behavior.
Hyper-convergence paradigm
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16 October 2009 :: by J.E. Robertson
Google Voice, an ingenious use of web-based voice communications service, allows users to combine a range of phone numbers under one standard, permanent Google phone number. Any linked phone number can be removed or replaced, and the service is free. All domestic calls inside the US are free, and sms is free. The service even converts voicemail to readable transcripts in an online inbox.
This last feature could mark a shift in the way voice communications interact with the Internet broadly. If indeed Google does achieve something of a paradigm shift by offering not only voice-to-text, and the ability to concentrate a range of numbers in one convenient inbox, but way for voice and text to interact comfortably, voice communication could take an increasingly important role in online activity, even where text and work-output is the aim.
The real potential for Google Voice will depend on every individual’s use of the technology, naturally, but it may also depend on how well Google integrates such services into its Wave platform. Google Wave is a bold reinvention of online messaging and word processing, merging the two into a real-time viral-capable content propagation platform.
More on page 536
Hyper-convergence paradigm
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16 October 2009 :: by J.E. Robertson
The Amazon Kindle 2 is ideally sized for one-handed reading. In this category, it beats the traditional book, because it’s single pane is more ergonomic for the purpose of reading with one hand and seeing the text clearly at a consistent angle, than struggling to balance a side-bound traditional book.
In this sense, it is comfortable for holding, but anyone could argue that the traditional book is more rewarding from a sensory perspective, with flipping pages, constant subtle movements that stimulate the eye and hold the reader’s attention, near zero glare and good and reliable contrast.
Comparing the Kindle 2 to the Kindle DX, however, brings a new set of metrics into the discussion. The Kindle 2 has a much smaller screen, which makes it less paper-like and more like a digital device. On its own, with no case or cover, the Kindle 2 is, from this reviewer’s point of view, the most comfortable digital text reading experience I have had.
More on page 579
Hyper-convergence paradigm
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12 October 2009 :: by J.E. Robertson
An attractive woman, 34-ish, drives a compact station-wagon, late model, over a still-cobblestone side street in the center of Madrid. She advances slowly, toward a red light, and talks on her cell phone. She seems equally concentrated on both activities. Driving an automobile is a potentially dangerous activity, in which one’s own life or the lives of others may be at risk, while a casual conversation is not so much that. Yet she seemed to give equal weight, her body, her manner, seemed to give equal weight to both activities.
Blackberry and Facebook come to mind: email in your pocket and the recorded, manifest social network. Microtechnology and software, combining to give us a boom in communications, are driving us to distraction with the lust to shore up and broaden our social networks. There may be something about this behavior that is inherently tied to how we, as human beings, socialize, and survive.
We are a social, talkative species. We rely on invisible social networks to shape our built environment, to feed us, to give us meaning. Most of us do not take part in the designing or building of roads, bridges, railways, skyscrapers, megafarms, or vehicles of any kind. And most of the people who do possess only a portion of the total knowledge required to successfully achieve such constructions. Most of us do not know how food or energy gets to the places where we consume it, and few of those who play a role know much more than those who don’t about the rest of the process. No individual can make a modern city bus, withut help of some kind, much less an airplane or an ocean-liner.
More on page 573
Hyper-convergence paradigm, Quipu Economic Forum
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8 October 2009 :: by admin
DVR is an increasingly popular consumer-oriented technology which simultaneously liberates viewers from strict TV viewing schedules and also imposes new constraints on recording freedoms (including sharing). DVR is a concession by content providers, advertisers and infrastructure (connectivity) providers, to the advantages of digital technology, and to the common individual demand for more freedom to control when information (content) is accessed. And the technology is framing a new logistics of consumer access and corporate control.
When DVR allows one to rewind only that which is being viewed (because the program in question was not pre-recorded), then cuts off the rewind and saved material if the channel is switched, deliberately or accidentally, the viewer experiences this feature of DVR technology as punitive. The viewer is punished for not correctly interfacing with the efficiency-oriented technology, which is provided by entities that prefer the programming be viewed in the allotted time-slot and not recorded or viewed later.
This type of control flies in the face of what consumers expect to get from such digitally enhanced technologies. There are competing views on the salient function of digital content delivery: that it is designed to liberate content, and thus the end-user’s access to informatioon, or to control it, and thus dictate or pre-determine the end-user’s freedom of access.
More on page 561
Hyper-convergence paradigm
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8 October 2009 :: by J.E. Robertson
Apple’s long-awaited tablet computer, likely to run a version of Mac OS X and to merge the touchscreen stylings of the iPhone and iPod Touch with the full functionality of the MacBook line, is expected to be aimed at revolutionizing the way print media deliver text to readers. If true, the device would again put Apple at the cutting edge of a field where Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and others, are trying to set the standards for e-book distribution and licensing.
After a summer of hullaballoo and expectation, and the hopes that the device would be introduced along with the new iPods at a September event, it now looks like the Apple tablet will be introduced sometime in early 2010. Reports suggest Steve Jobs has “reset” the tablet project multiple times, out of concern the projects presented were not offering consumers a distinct enough field of uses to warrant an entirely new field of computing and device manufacture.
Now, Gizmodo reports it has confirmed that Apple has initiated negotiations with major print publishers, including not only McGraw-Hill —a major publisher of educational materials—, but also The New York Times and others, with the aim of securing content distribution rights and format collaboration to deliver textual content to readers via iTunes.
More on page 570
Crisis Policy Forum, Discussion Forum, Food Supply Security, Human Health, Quipu Economic Forum, Water Scarcity
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8 October 2009 :: by admin
Clean, safe drinking water is scarce for over 3 billion people across the world. At least 1 billion literally never have access to clean, safe drinking water, putting them at constant risk of severe thirst-related ill health effects, infectious diseases or toxic contamination. Over 100 countries face either sporadic or chronic crisis-level problems related to clean water scarcity.
As the Innocentive project reports:
Yet, over half of the world’s population is at risk for water shortages, with far-reaching effects. Lack of adequate clean water has serious health implications, including the prevalence of water-borne diseases such as cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A and E, and diarrhea. Globally, diarrhea is the leading cause of illness and death and 88% of those deaths are due to inadequate sanitation and availability of clean water. Water shortages also foment civil unrest and often lead to violence and regional conflicts, as we have seen in Darfur, Somalia, Chad, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, among others. Lack of water perpetuates poverty, increases the risk of political instability, and affects global prosperity.
More on page 569
Food Supply Security, Human Health, Quipu Economic Forum, Water Scarcity
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8 October 2009 :: by admin
Water resource depletion leads not only to chronic scarcity of clean, safe drinking water for increasing numbers of people, but means arable land is harder to cultivate and to maintain. Persistent drought and accelerated desertification (the expansion of deserts into the farmed and/or built environment) are results of water resource depletion.
But the most insidious and threatening long term effect is the erosion of the overall human food supply. With climate destabilization accelerating, arable land increasingly hard to come by, and grain harvests collapsing, the global food supply is under serious threat. Long term political stability, and the defensibility of political borders, is linked to a sustainable food supply.
As Lester Brown notes, in his report “Rethinking Food Production for a World of Eight Billion“:
Farmers are faced with shrinking supplies of irrigation water, a diminishing response to additional fertilizer use, rising temperatures from global warming, the loss of cropland to nonfarm uses, rising fuel costs, and a dwindling backlog of yield-raising technologies. At the same time, they also face fast-growing demand for farm products from the annual addition of 79 million people a year, the desire of some 3 billion people to consume more livestock products, and the millions of motorists turning to crop-based fuels to supplement tightening supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel. Farmers and agronomists are now being thoroughly challenged.
More on page 568
