Tag Archives: technological progress

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

This is an idea where computers manage the economy perfectly so we can all live lives of leisure.

The most ardent advocate for FALC, Aaron Bastani, a London-based media executive and writer, has written a new book on the topic. In it, he advances a curious, passionate argument, with a dire assessment of the present and a messianic vision for the future. Bastani believes that we are already living through a potentially epochal transformation of the economy, as epochal as the establishment of agriculture and the introduction of engines and electricity. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced computing might be about to eliminate the need for human labor in no small part, Bastani claims.

The Atlantic

This article doesn’t quite tell you what it is. Without reading the book, I imagine the idea might be that you invest in the right technologies to grow the economy while minimizing ecological harm, then reinvest some of the gains in an optimal way while paying an equitable dividend to everyone in the world. Maybe at some point, you work things out so that money is no longer necessary to keep the system in balance. That’s my guess as to what is in this book – maybe I should read the book and find out.

the latest on fusion power

According to the Washington Post, there are looming breakthroughs in fusion.

But the technical challenges of essentially creating an artificial mini-star have been daunting. Scientists have made fusion happen with various approaches, but more energy was expended in those experiments than was released. The turning point will come when more energy is produced than goes in.

The roadblocks have started to fall away in recent years, thanks to the use of supercomputers to model and optimize the design of fusion systems, and to a new generation of superconductors that increase the magnetic fields that contain the artificial star, thereby dramatically decreasing the required size of fusion devices. Advanced manufacturing techniques for specialized fusion materials have also been developed.

Washington Post

The title of the article is “The fusion energy dream is inching toward planet-saving reality”. Would this “save the planet”. Well, if it were clean, cheap, and safe, it could move us closer to that world of abundance some envision. The problem with fission has been that the infrastructure required to make it safe has been so big, complicated, and costly, that by the time it can be put into place it is already obsolete by a decade or more. And then there is the weaponization problem which has prevented widespread use in poor countries.

Let’s assume it will be clean, cheap, and safe. It could solve our carbon emission problems, air pollution problems, and generally free up a lot of resources for other things, making us quite a bit richer. Whole industries would be created and destroyed, which we could expect to cause some political and financial turmoil. It wouldn’t solve our land use, biodiversity, or water pollution problems.

hydrogen as a jet fuel

I was curious if aircraft could be fueled feasibly by hydrogen in the future. Okay, I know this has been tried in the past – “Oh, the humanity!” – but, there must be advances in technology since then. 10 minutes of research reveals that battery-powered aircraft are now a going concern, although they tend to be unmanned or at least small. Current fuel cell technology sounds like it has pretty similar limits to batteries. On a larger scale, there is serious research on the potential of liquid hydrogen as a commercial aviation fuel. It sounds feasible but would require major changes in long-lived infrastructure systems around the world. But let’s say you happened to have lots of electricity and water in abundance. Maybe you are in a coastal location and have invested in nuclear power, or you just happen to have lots of geothermal, hydroelectric, or whatever kind of power. You have also invested in desalination and you have created a major transportation hub. You might then be in a position to create liquid hydrogen and/or fuel cells at a cost-effective price. This could be climate friendly as burning hydrogen, in theory at least, creates only water vapor as a product, and fusing hydrogen with atmospheric oxygen creates the same – liquid water or water vapor. Hydrogen is dangerous, but so is jet fuel and so are the materials in modern batteries, so hopefully technology will eventually come to our aid and get the risk and environmental impact down to a similar or lower level than these other options.

more news from the yeast vats

This article in Scientific American is about using fungus to generate everything from building materials to human organs to meat to substitutes to plastics.

Mycelium’s fast-growing fibers produce materials used for packaging, clothing, food and construction—everything from leather to plant-based steak to scaffolding for growing organs. Mycelium, when harnessed as a technology, helps replace plastics that are rapidly accumulating in the environment.

Mycelium also provides a cruelty-free way to create meatlike structures with a much smaller environmental footprint than traditional livestock, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the use of food crops for feed and land use conversion. All these benefits come with little environmental cost: the process of growing mycelium results in limited waste (mostly compostable) and requires minimal energy consumption.

DARQ

Accenture has a report on 2019 technology trends, which they call “post-digital”. Post-digital doesn’t mean digital technology is gone, it just means we are kind of over it and it is now the new minimum level of technology that other technologies build on. They also focus on something they call DARQ: “distributed ledger technology (DLT), artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR) and quantum computing.” I had to look up distributed ledger technology – this is basically the same thing as blockchain.

I was curious what they think is going on with quantum computing. They don’t have a lot to say actually, but if you dig into the full report there are a couple paragraphs.

And while quantum computing is the furthest from full maturity and impractical as a current investment for most companies, advances in quantum research are bringing costs down significantly. The number of qubits (the quantum equivalent of a bit in a traditional computer) in leading chips is accelerating: it took 19 years to get from a chip with two qubits to a chip with 17, which IBM achieved in 2017; later that year, IBM bested its own record with 50 qubits, and by 2018, Google had unveiled a chip with 72.9,10 In concert with these advances, Microsoft, Rigetti Computing, 1QBit, and other leaders in quantum research are increasingly making their quantum systems available for experimentation via APIs and software development kits (SDKs, or QDKs).11 These offerings give companies a way to develop and test quantum solutions for specific enterprise use cases today.

Volkswagen has used quantum computing to test traffic flow optimization, as well as to simulate the chemical structure of batteries, hoping to accelerate battery development…

January 2019 in Review

After blogging pretty consistently daily for years, I’ve finally slowed this blog down to every other day due to the realities of work and family. Maybe I’ll get back to daily in a couple years. In the meantime, I’m going to pare my “month in review” posts to highlight three items, because it wouldn’t really make sense to do a Top 9 out of 15.

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • Writing in 1984, Isaac Asimov thought we would be approaching world peace, living lives of leisure, children would love school, and we would be mining the moon and manufacturing things in orbital factories by now.

Most hopeful story:

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • Some in the U.S. Senate and military take UFOs seriously.

 

Asimov’s predictions for 2019

In 1984, Isaac Asimov made a series of predictions about the year 2019.

  • Assumption: No nuclear wars will occur before 2019, which would render all the predictions below moot.
  • Verdict: So far, so good!
  • Prediction: Industry will become increasingly automated, and computers will “penetrate the home”.
  • Verdict: Check!
  • Prediction: Automation will cause some jobs to disappear while others will appear, with a net gain overall. ” The jobs that will appear will, inevitably, involve the design, the manufacture, the installation, the maintenance and repair of computers and robots, and an understanding of whole new industries that these “intelligent” machines will make possible. “
  • Verdict: Some jobs are disappearing and others appearing almost exactly as he predicted, but the jury is still out on the net gain.
  • Prediction: “Schools will undoubtedly still exist, but a good schoolteacher can do no better than to inspire curiosity which an interested student can then satisfy at home at the console of his computer outlet. There will be an opportunity finally for every youngster, and indeed, every person, to learn what he or she wants to learn. in his or her own time, at his or her own speed, in his or her own way. Education will become fun because it will bubble up from within and not be forced in from without.
  • Verdict: This is almost certainly as it should be, but the education system has been slow to adapt.
  • Prediction: “it may well be that the nations will be getting along well enough to allow the planet to live under the faint semblance of a world government by co-operation, even though no one may admit its existence.”
  • Verdict: Again, this is as it should be but not as it is. There are episodes of cooperation, but at the moment this seems to be rowing upstream against a strong current of nationalism and isolationism.
  • Prediction: “more and more human beings will find themselves living a life rich in leisure. This does not mean leisure to do nothing, but leisure to do something one wants to do; to be free to engage in scientific research. in literature and the arts, to pursue out-of-the-way interests and fascinating hobbies of all kinds.”
  • Verdict: This may be true for some, but certainly not for the majority. It could happen if we chose to share the wealth more and/or to live more simply. But again, this is not the direction things are going.
  • Prediction: an international space station
  • Verdict: Check
  • Prediction: moon mining and orbital factories
  • Verdict: This still seems pretty far away, although there are advances in new types of rockets and satellites that could be baby steps in this direction.

more lists from 2018 – science, technology, risks

Here are a couple more lists from 2018.

“5 biggest scientific breakthroughs” from The Week:

  • cloning monkeys
  • new evidence for (past?) microbial life on Mars
  • ability to walk restored to paraplegics
  • gene therapy successes to treat muscular dystrophy (so far, in dogs)
  • witnessing the birth of a new planet

From Bill Gates:

  • “we are also going to be focusing more on improving the quality of life… For example, software will be able to notice when you’re feeling down, connect you with your friends, give you personalized tips for sleeping and eating better, and help you use your time more efficiently.”
  • research breakthroughs on Alzheimer’s disease
  • some setbacks on polio eradication, but also promising new vaccination approaches
  • He is a skeptic on battery storage for solar and wind power, and a proponent of nuclear, where he is concerned the U.S. has lost its leadership position. “TerraPower, the company I started 10 years ago, uses an approach called a traveling wave reactor that is safe, prevents proliferation, and produces very little waste.”
  • He’s afraid of a big epidemic. Well, who isn’t if they’ve been paying attention?
  • breakthroughs and ethical concerns in gene editing
  • balance between privacy and innovation
  • technology in education