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Mar 11, 2009 05:15 PM | 6
SAN JOSE, CALIF. (March 11, 2009)—What are the emerging technologies that promise to change our world two, five, 10, 20 years from now? And what technologies need to be developed to solve the world’s great problems? More than a thousand self-described hackers and geeks have flocked to the eTech conference here to brainstorm them, and energy is a key theme.
Alex Steffen, the executive editor of Worldchanging, kicked off yesterday's agenda with a stark warning: “If poor people become rich like we have become rich,” warned Steffen, “we will destroy ourselves.”
The Western world became rich largely through unsustainable means—denuding forests, burning carbon stored under the Earth, extracting minerals to put into our electronics—and if the developing world does the same, argued Steffen, worldwide environmental catastrophe will ensue. He talked about “vertical emulation,” in which the poorest people in the world can see the conspicuous consumption of the richest people of the world (think Slumdog Millionaire), and how because of that the rich world needs to lead the change.
And so what change is needed? Nothing less than “every aspect of our society,” he said. We need to change how we build things, how we move things and how we feed people, just for starters. First up: “We need to get off coal and cows.” In addition he laid out a few more steps: Increased political transparency; revealed usage, in which people can monitor their energy use and environmental impact; true cost taxation, which is essentially a financial tax on carbon tied to the price of its true social and environmental costs; a smart infrastructure (for example, the smart grid); and most important, he claimed, the construction of more dense communities.
It’s not far-fetched, he thinks, to totally redesign much of the U.S. for urban living, which uses resources far more efficiently than do car-centric communities. Because of population shifts (for example, down to the Sun Belt), immigration, and the natural churn of cities, 50 percent of the buildings that exist in 2030 will be newly built or will have been replaced since 2010. Moreover, a majority of Americans want to live in a compact community, all things being equal. What dissuades them, he said, was the perceived expense of living close to a city center. Yet if you factor in the increased costs of living in the suburbs or exurbs, it’s no more expensive than living out by the outer edges of a city, he said.
Later in the day, Gavin Starks CEO of AMEE—which declares its aim to be “to map, measure and track all the energy data on Earth”—spoke in more depth about energy usage. It takes 460kg of CO2 equivalent to make a 2.5kg laptop, and it’s that sort of information that should be labeled and made available to every consumer, Starks said. After all, it’s well known that the more people know about how much energy they use, the less they use. “We are moving to an economic age where we need to start obeying the first law of thermodynamics,” he said. “Energy can be transformed, but it can’t be created or destroyed.”
Not all the talks were about energy and the environment. Many were about the future of technology and the media. When Mary Lou Jepsen was working on One Laptop Per Child project, she realized that “more important than lowering cost is lowering power [consumption].” With that insight as her guide, her new company, Pixel Qi, designed a display that can operate in three modes. One is like a standard high-color HDTV (much like currently laptop screens). The innovative mode is a low-power black and white version that emulates e-paper displays (like on the Kindle). It has an ultra-high resolution for reading text, and high reflectivity for use in daylight. The third mode is a combination of these two.
She announced that it will be available later this year as a 10-inch screen for netbooks. “The CPU wars are over,” she declared. “Now is the time for the display wars.”
These days it seems that everyone is consumed with the future of newspapers. Nick Bilton thinks about it like it’s his job. As a member of the New York Times’s R&D group, he figures out new ways to create and deliver news content around the world on every sort of device. He calculated that the average net-connected citizen is exposed to about 100,000 links per day—such a staggering torrent of data that we have become “online nomads trying to find shelter from the blizzard of information.”
Much of what he does is an attempt to simplify the web experience. The group is working on a project with Adobe to automatically reformat a newspaper page to fit the device you’re on—whether it’s your iPhone or your 42” HDTV. It’s not simply a resizing of photos. It’s adding and subtracting content (and ads), and altering the design of the page to make the user experience more intuitive. Further down the line he imagines a system of smart content, where your iPhone knows that you’ve already clicked on a particular story on your laptop, and therefore knows to hide that story from you.
He doesn’t lament the death of newsprint: “Paper is just another device,” he says, and the next generation of readers will be “immediate and opportunistic” consumers of information. Judging by the number of laptops and mobile devices being used by the audience during his talk, that future is already here.
(We're live-Twittering from eTech, so follow us to, well, follow along.)
Photo of Mary Lou Jepsen speaking at eTech by eschipul via Flickr
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6 Comments
Add CommentI didn't see the words "global population control"in the article. Without that, this Earth will not be a fit place to live. If you are starving, the discussion of engery efficiency loses its' punch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid anybody discuss Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors? I think this is the best answer to our requirement of cheap, non-polluting base load energy. Watch http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2008/11/thorium-at-googles-tech-talk.html and you can follow up with more info here: http://www.energyfromthorium.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe developed countries reach their high standard of living mainly through relentless plunder of earth’s natural resources. I said years ago that this cannot be sustainable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow these countries, aware of what is happening and going to happen on this planet, start telling the developing and underdeveloped nations not to follow suit, or else get ready to face the imminent and ugly (if not disastrous) consequences.
No matter how illogical this may appear, the bottom line is the world’s less-than-fortunate and poor are always damned.
(Tan Boon Tee)
First of all I fully agree with denniskogl. The most important change will not be mainly new technologies, but more encouragement of birth control of all kinds, including some new kinds, and encouragement of non-reproductive sexual behaviors and relationships. Replace "Be fruitful and multiply" with "Make love, not babies, and doublely reduce the causes of war."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen we need to change our economic systems to where the rich (individuals and cultures) don't automatically get richer (by money manipulations), and wealth is proportional to social contributions. Our problems started with our animal instincts for greed and too much success as a species, to where we think we're separate from the laws of nature. Since ultimately we 'can't take it with us', we make lots of little copies of our selves so we can pass it on. Over-population led to the need for large-scale social controls, from there to elitism, capitalism, fascism and eventually collapse, as has happened many times in the past. As Richard Heinberg says, "Are we smarter than yeast [in a closed, finite system]?"
For computer technology, we need to move to 'wearable computers" for much less resource consumption. This would include a headset/terminal for every kind of electronic communications, with two screens above the ears (for eventual 3D views) viewed in half-silvered mirrors. We could still see real world views by reducing screen brightness or raising the visor holding the mirrors. A flexible 'hybrid' qwerty-chord keyboard would strap around our stomach, or our knees when sitting. It would be individually programmed for each person's use. And by the way, we'd get rid of GUI formats. With the computing power of modern cell phones (and in other areas), all we need is to accept use of different modes.
The good countries reach their low standard of living sort of through good plunder of earth’s natural happyness. I said two days ago that this can be sustainable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow these dogs, aware of what is going on and going to occur on this world, start tralking to the bad and funny nations to follow tuxedo, or else get ready to foot the imminent and babe (if not fantastic) consequences.
No matter how logical this may disappear, the top line is the world’s better-than-fortunate and good are always blessed.
(Boo-Yash!)
Get rid of commissions in financial firms and you will get back to employees evaluating the true risks to their companies of new business. Then go for energy efficiency.
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