Vox talks about long-term energy storage, which could theoretically smooth out energy supply and demand fluctuations over periods of days or months rather than hours as today’s batteries do. Some of the ideas include thermal storage, flow batteries, electrolysis combined with fuel cells, and pumping water underground at high pressure.
I have an idea that maybe others have already thought of, but I haven’t seen it proposed (or implemented) in exactly the form i am thinking of. With all the newfound concern over “fake news”, misinformation, and disinformation, alongside good-old-fashioned government and corporate propaganda (which to its consternation is having some trouble competing with the former), I don’t see why news stories couldn’t be rated or certified as reliable by independent third parties. That is, you could pull up a news story from any of a number of outlets and see that it has the stamp of approval of a particular organization, say the Associated Press or the United Nations. Sites like Politifact and Snopes sort of do this now, but they aren’t rating individual stories. Any organization could create its own rating system, but at least people could choose a rating system they trusted and then either filter their search results or simply have the ratings they are interested in displayed, perhaps in a browser plug-in. It wouldn’t be perfect because it would give people way of filtering so they only hear what they want to hear, but at least we would be doing this explicitly rather than having hidden, amoral, profit-seeking algorithms decide behind the scenes what we see or don’t see.
There are some startups trying to move modular construction ahead quickly. Here is a news article on one called Katerra, which unfortunately is suffering some problems.
Here’s a technology to build 3D (digital) models of what is happening on construction sites over time using data from cameras mounted on workers’ helmets. If you have a 3D model of what is supposed to be built ahead of time, you can imagine this providing the chance to compare what is being built to what was planned, giving you the ability to catch and correct mistakes in real time.
Most frightening stories:
Most hopeful stories:
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
The construction industry has languished in terms of productivity growth for decades. But there are ideas, some of which are mentioned in this white paper from UK firm Balfour Beatty. Many are organized around the idea of prefabricating as many components as possible offset, then bringing them in for assembly. Another way of looking at it is that construction is basically a form of (inefficient, risky and very site-specific) manufacturing, and can try to learn some lessons from other manufacturing industries.
…we know this is an industry that lives on thin margins, is plagued by time and cost overruns and inherently operates in one of the higher risk environments of any sector – risk in terms of cost, time and, above all, human safety. But do we also think of this as an industry with one of the largest opportunities of any sector to transform its model? Can we think of many industries where the size of the prize is to shift 25% of current output to a solution that radically improves speed, quality and safety – all while creating (not destroying) jobs?
Today a new generation of industrialised construction methods, including offsite and modular building techniques, are increasingly being recognised as the best way for the UK construction industry to boost productivity and plug skills shortages. And moving to these methods drives better outcomes for all stakeholders: for the customer, reducing onsite construction times and waste; for the construction supply chain, by improving quality, repeatability (and
therefore output) of infrastructure; for the workforce above all, by raising safety performance and securing long-term employment.
Bill Gates reviews Capitalism without Capital, a new book about “intangible” products and services.
They start by defining intangible assets as “something you can’t touch.” It sounds obvious, but it’s an important distinction because intangible industries work differently than tangible industries. Products you can’t touch have a very different set of dynamics in terms of competition and risk and how you value the companies that make them…
What the book reinforced for me is that lawmakers need to adjust their economic policymaking to reflect these new realities. For example, the tools many countries use to measure intangible assets are behind the times, so they’re getting an incomplete picture of the economy. The U.S. didn’t include software in GDP calculations until 1999. Even today, GDP doesn’t count investment in things like market research, branding, and training—intangible assets that companies are spending huge amounts of money on.
Measurement isn’t the only area where we’re falling behind—there are a number of big questions that lots of countries should be debating right now. Are trademark and patent laws too strict or too generous? Does competition policy need to be updated? How, if at all, should taxation policies change? What is the best way to stimulate an economy in a world where capitalism happens without the capital? We need really smart thinkers and brilliant economists digging into all of these questions. Capitalism Without Capital is the first book I’ve seen that tackles them in depth, and I think it should be required reading for policymakers.
Recently I was reading something suggesting that countries should keep a balance sheet, which keeps track of stocks, in addition to GDP, which is more like an income statement keeping track of flows. This seems right to me. Spending on education and training adds to the stock of human capital at some rate, but efficiency may vary and the stock is also being depleted at the same time. Drawing down natural capital increases income on the short term but comes at the expense of the long term. Research and development are a little different because they affect the pace of progress, or at least improve the odds of the gamble.
Here is one proposal to boost productivity growth from a professor at Columbia – basically tighter protections on patent use coupled with more flexible arrangements to share and lease them between parties. It sounds okay, but I have a couple questions.
First, the author sees this as an antidote to “forced technology transfer” from developed to developing companies. If I understand correctly, this is when a factory in a developing country (let’s say China) agrees to manufacture for a developed country firm, but insists they share the legal rights to the technology they are manufacturing, allowing them to possibly cut the inventor/designer out in the future. I get that this benefits the developing country, possibly at some expense to the incentive to come up with further inventions in the developed country. Maybe – but I’d like to see the evidence. Perhaps when the inventor is ready to trade his or her knowledge in exchange for cheap labor and lax regulation, he or she is ready to reap some rewards on the last invention and move on to the next one. I don’t know whether my theory or the author’s theory is more correct, but I have no evidence for either one right now so if I had any hand in policy making I would want to see the evidence for both.
Second, and this is related, the author equates technology with knowledge. That might make sense in certain industries, for example drugs and chemicals. In many other industries, as much or more knowledge exists in the minds of experienced human beings than exists in a written-down form. Many forms of engineering are an example, because engineering by definition is using existing knowledge and experience to solve new problems without completely obvious solutions. If it takes decades of education/training/experience to get an individual to this point, even with the available written-down knowledge, there is not a whole lot of risk if that written-down knowledge leaks out. There is probably also very little value in patenting or otherwise protecting it, and much to be gained by making it freely available.
Most frightening stories:
Most hopeful stories:
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
You can snap a picture of a plant or animal, and Google Lens can often tell you exactly what it is.