Driving Faster into the Future with Supercomputers
“Titan will be used for a variety of important research projects, including the development of more commercially viable biofuels, cleaner burning engines, safer nuclear energy, and more efficient solar power.” So states a recent press release from Cray announcing the creation of a new supercomputer capable of between 10 and 20 quadrillion calculations per second. [...]
The State of the Future: 13 Years From Now
The think tank known as The Millenium Project has recently published a new report, "The State of the World 2011." One particular paragraph caught my attention because it reinforces a concept (accelerating change) I've been espousing for some time: "The coming biological revolution may change civilization more profoundly than did the industrial or information revolutions." [...]
Solar’s Bright Green Future
Yesterday, I explained the power of exponential growth using this analogy of a lilly pond. Today, I’d like to consider a real world application where society might witness such growth: solar energy. Many people are pessimistic that because solar energy only creates one-tenth of one percent of our electrical output today that it will always [...]
The Greener Pastures of Unlearning
In yet another example of turning a problem into an opportunity, developers in New Jersey have used fallow land to install a large solar farm on Rutger's Livingston campus. To date, the solar farm has reduced the university's electricity bill by $235,000 and, better yet, earned it $1.4 million in clean energy credits. Related Post [...]
Cool It With the New Questions
One of my preferred unlearning strategies is to ask a new question. To this end, I recently came across this interesting interview with Nathan Myhrvold. When the topic came to global climate change, he posed this interesting question: Can we cool earth off? He went on to add: The answer to that, surprisingly, is yes. And [...]
Power to the People
I’m in Eugene, Oregon today to give the keynote presentation at the conference celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Eugene Water and Electricity Board. The gist of my message is that as impressive as progress has been in the past century it will pale in comparison to what is coming in the next two decades. [...]