Electronic Paper Makes Reading a More Diverse & Flexible Experience

Researchers at MIT have been working for years now on a wide range of variations on the changeable visual text formats that might replace many of the backlit screens we now use to read and interact with electronic documents. ‘Electronic paper’ refers to a number of these technologies, able to reproduce encrypted files in visual text form, as if they were computer monitors, some touted as having “the look and feel” of real paper.

The benefits of this advance are various:

1. paper is an ancient technology whose ease of use is difficult to match, one of the pillars of civilization;
2. electronic paper may help eliminate the strain on forest environments that comes from increasing consumption of paper worldwide;
3. the texture of paper makes viewing a document less challenging to the eyes;
4. adding touch-response makes it possible to read “on-screen” with the feeling of flipping pages, visually and physically;
5. advances in storage capacity mean being able to store huge amounts of readable text and images in a very small space

The potential for streamlined storage and portability of large amounts of reading material is one of the most important functions of the e-paper phenomenon. The ability to not only store thousands of books, or hundreds of magazines with full-color imagery, or to view video or even browse the world wide web, from a paper-thin device, makes exploiting the resources of the information age a far more comfortable experience for the everyday commuter, or news reader.

At MIT’s Electronic Paper project, the fundamental challenge regarding e-paper is stated as follows:

Books with printed pages are unique in that they embody the simultaneous, high-resolution display of hundreds of pages of information. The representation of information on a large number of physical pages, which may be physically turned and written on, constitutes a highly preferred means of information interaction.

A key element in the quest for a less massive, but more flexible format for text reading, i.e. electronic paper, follows: “An obvious disadvantage of the printed page, however, is its immutability once typeset.” This is a major issue when relating to informaton that is not necessarily transcendent or in itself immutable, and commercial applications, as well as everyday news and information uses for paper, make it attractive to create an alternative that is precisely mutable, or rather, programmable, modifiable, able to be updated when the information itself has changed.

MIT’s Technology Review explains the hardware that makes e-paper work, in devices like Amazon.com’s ‘Kindle’ reader:

At the front of the screen is a layer of transparent electrodes. Below it are millions of microcapsules containing positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles, and below them is a layer of nearly a million more electrodes. A negative charge on one of these bottom electrodes pushes black particles to the top, and a positive charge does the same with the white ones. Each microcapsule acts as a pixel that can thus be made to appear black, white, or gray.

The gist is to achieve ease of use, visual stability, paper-like quality, and high-resolution text imaging, in a device that allows for interactive navigability and mass storage. Amazon.com has added a wireless download functionality that is designed to promote spontaneous purchase and on-the-spot access to e-paper-ready e-books sold through its store.

In October 2005, Sentido.tv reported that Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, “told a London audience that the static format of paper would be replaced by paper-thin digital wireless devices which would be constantly downloading huge amounts of information from the internet. He predicted we would all be connected all the time, within 10 years.” Electronic paper provides some brave new frontiers for niche media to grow their markets exponentially, with new editorial methods and distribution mechanisms never before possible.

If e-paper and wireless internet meet in the coming process of hyper-convergence of media, we will find that text is at once ‘liberated’ and ‘filtered’, and we will need to implement mechanisms that ensure consumers have as much access, on a permanent and private basis, to information as with the standard purchase of a book, which sits comfortably in one’s home, in one’s private space.

This issue of privacy is vital to the entire question of electronic information, because of the fact that a press that is free to produce and distribute according to its own editorial choices tends to produce far more reliable information and helps protect the rights of individuals. A lack of privacy in the media sphere, by contrast, would have a chilling effect on what sorts of content some major media outlets would be willing to provide.

The standard for e-paper should also be maximum possible user-enabled modification (a standard that is the rule in paper publishing: readers can write, cross out, highlight, rewrite and reproduce section by section, by hand, and at will, what is meaningful to them, by their own standards, and without paying a licensing fee). The problem of technical specifications as minimum requirements for accessing information continues to be a nuisance in computing and web-browsing, but would be far more severe if there is a massive migration of text publishing from printed pages to e-paper.

Customization is essential to the long-term success of e-paper as a new, beneficial medium for authors, publishers, web-content providers, bloggers and readers alike. E-paper essentially constitutes an event horizon after which information may be fundamentally changed and questions of accessibility, credibility and longevity (conservation of format and re-accessibility), become central to the question of informational freedoms.

• MIT: “Electronic Paper project”
• E Ink Corporation: “Lower Power, Electronic Paper Displays” [commercial site]
• MIT Technology Review: “Amazon Kindle: The online giant hopes it’s created the ipod of digital books”
• eMedia Wire: “Self Published Book Achieves Top 1 Percent Sales Rank at Amazon.com’s Kindle Book Store”
  
• Washington Square News: “New shiny Amazon Kindle doesn’t replace my old book” [opinion]
• Sentido.tv: “GATES ANNOUNCES PLANS TO REPLACE PAPER WITH SILICON”

Man Facing Leukemia Invents Nanotech Cancer Treatment

When John Kanzius found himself facing aggressive and debilitating chemotherapy treatment for advanced leukemia, seeing the effect the treatment had on fellow patients, he decided to find a better way. Kanzius had worked for decades with radio technology, and understood that radio waves could pass harmlessly through the body. He also knew they could heat metal even at low frequencies.

He decided to try to find a way to embed metal into the malignant cells, so they could be targeted by simple radio waves, leaving the surrounding tissue healthy and intact. An obvious part of the problem would be obtaining and directing metal particles small enough to fit into cancer cells. The biggest challenge, however, would be finding a way to inject a large enough number to have the desired effect, without inadvertently loading healthy cells with the targeting conductive particles.

The Los Angeles Times reported of Kanzius:

Awake in bed one night in 2003, as the clock ticked past 2, Kanzius pulled himself from beneath the covers, leaving his sleeping wife, Marianne. He staggered down a flight of stairs, grabbed some copper wires, boxes, antennas and Marianne’s pie pans, and began building a machine.

For months, Kanzius tinkered, using the pie pans to create an electronic circuit, often waking Marianne with his clanging. By day, he sent her out with supply lists: mineral mixtures, metals, wires.

His early-morning experiments would lead him to one of the nation’s top cancer researcher centers, and earn the support of a Nobel Prize winner.

After his cancer appeared to go into remission, he was re-diagnosed with a more aggressive form of cancer, and given less than one year to live. Further aggressive treatments put the disease into remission, and two years later, Kanzius continued research into building his tumor-burning machine. He had tested crude versions of the device on hot-dogs and other meats, and found that the burning was targetted. For human tissue, it would need to be far more precise.

He obtained a patent for his machine, and began to seek help in manufacturing the device. He would need nanoparticles that could be made to attach to cancer cells only, reliably. His doctor put him in touch with Dr. Steven A. Curley, an oncologist specializing in more invasive radio-frequency cancer treatments.

Curley was able to obtain state of the art nanoparticles (1/75,000th to 1/100,000th the width of a human hair) from Richard Smalley, a Nobel-prize winning chemist experienced in nanoparticles, also suffering from cancer, and took them to Kanzius to test whether they would heat enough to yield the desired targetted burn effect. They did.

Smalley was astonished by the news when it reached him, and asked colleagues at Rice University to team with Curley and Kanzius and make the treatment a reality. Shortly before succumbing to his cancer, Smalley urged Curley to promise he would continue the work, reportedly saying “Nothing has the potential to help people, to help patients, more than this.”

As research progressed, it was discovered that Kanzius’ system may also be effective in separating hydrogen atoms from water, making it a good candidate for the basis of a technology to extract hydrogen from salt water for use as a fuel.

The nanoparticle radio-frequency cancer treatment Kanzius developed is now progressing through the various stages of research it must pass before it can be tested in human beings. But Kanzius’ innovative thinking, daring and commitment to his vision have made it likely the system will become a standard option for treatment of some hard-to-combat cancers, in the coming decade.

• LA Times: “Sending his cancer a signal”
• Wikipedia: “John Kanzius”

Hyper-convergence: the Coming State of Media Arts & Services

HOW TV, INTERNET, TELECOMMUNICATIONS, RFID & COMMERCIAL SERVICES WILL CONVERGE TO CREATE NEW SOCIAL SPHERE, SECURITY RISKS

For some time, we have heard speculation that the user-centered logic of the Internet medium will persuade old-guard media powers to embrace the model, and we will see a convergence of online, print, radio and televisual media, in one integrated system. Media integration will likely go far beyond that, so security has to be the watchword as technology invades personal space and our attempts at a ‘pursuit of happiness’.

At present, the movement favoring net neutrality —or equal access to online content— may be the segment of media markets and public consciousness most aware of the issue and its implications for the nature and quality of information and information access. Net neutrality is the premise that connection providers should not be permitted to take any actions that influence users’ access to online information or content providers’ access to the public.

Cable companies and ISPs are seeking the power to charge for a stratified web-traffic format, where those who pay a special fee will be granted higher degrees of bandwidth not available to any other content providers or customers, even though they already charge for connection and connection speed at both ends of the service. This is what convergence should not be, if it is to benefit consumers and favor the free press.

Hyper-convergence is a term that seeks to explain the integration of a broad array of services and personal information management tools into the multimedia web. It refers to the blurring of the barriers between online activity and real-world effects, which will present major security concerns.

New technologies can make hyper-convergence into a landmark moment for consumers and can increase access for many to events, information and resources that might otherwise be more difficult to access. But they can also increase in dramatic ways the risk to which we subject sensitive personal data.

RFID —Radio Frequency IDentification— is one of the most controversial and well-debated new technologies whose implementation could both expand the scope of hyper-convergence in powerful ways and also subject the individual to unnecessary and ill-advised long-term risk of identity-theft or fraud.

RFID-enabled smart chips can help integrate products, services, personal information and personal space, into a fluid information environment, but plans to implement global networks of “broadcasting” or “active” RFID chips means that one may all-too-quickly let slip sensitive personal information, without technological standards catching up to the severe exigencies of this new security risk.

Biometric data is another, related problem area. Touted as a security enhancement measure, the implementation of even narrowly-construed, isolated biometric readings, poses a major, lifelong personal security risk for the individual.

Unlike a Social Security number, a signature, an account number or a credit card, an iris pattern, a fingerprint, one’s genome, blood-type and facial structure —all of which various biometric security scanning systems propose to read or sample for ID purposes—, cannot be changed. And if they could be, it would present a major security risk for the system attempting to enhance its security by such means, because of the presumption that the use of such information is inherently safer.

Permitting one’s private biological data to propagate across an online network, or into state-run databanks, or databanks run by multinational firms, is to surrender a part of one’s identity, for all time, to the idiosyncracies and shortcomings of the system, at which one must take into serious consideration the supposed value of a potential commercial or procedural convenience.

But services and media are combining, and that makes sense. The logic of synthesis shows that connecting ideas, fields of study, geographical locations, cultural oddities, people and access to information, increases understanding and breeds a more fluid social reality. TV, Internet, mail, messaging, voice communication and purchasing processes, will increasingly combine to blur the line between virtual and lived-in physical space.

The challenge will be building systems that allow the individual to maintain all existing freedoms and natural barriers against fraud and identity theft, while facilitating access to that ever broader range of media and services.

Green Investment Boom Gets Traction: Fund Promises $10 Billion for Clean Energy

The private investment fund Ceres, a group of institutional investors, has promised to devote $10 billion to investment in clean energy sources. The news comes as 3 of the world’s major oil companies call for coordinated policy on how to face climate change, constrain emissions, and a couple of months after 150 global corporations asked for a major boost in subsidized research into transitioning to clean energy technologies.

The Financial Times reports “A group of nearly 50 institutional investors has pledged to invest at least $10bn (£5.1bn) in environmental technologies and to incorporate ‘green’ standards in investment decisions”. The fund’s president, Mindy Lubber, said during the press conference at UN Headquarters in New York, “This action plan reflects the many investment opportunities that exist today to put a dent in global warming pollution, build profits and benefit the global economy”.

The cost of the climate change burden is increasingly on the minds of corporate leaders, financiers and investors, and the glittering potential of economic windfall in pioneering the green economy is catching the eyes of investors and political leaders. Bio-ethanol, a crop-based fuel source, considered cleaner than fossil fuels, and having the benefit of being a renewable fuel source, has shown tremendous potential for financial growth.

The Daily Green reported yesterday that:

Today, Deer & Co. reported $5.2 billion in first-quarter profits, 55% higher than expected, because it is providing farm equipment to farms that are making record investments.

Monsanto, the maker of genetically modified corn and soy seeds, saw its stock jump nearly 200% in a year, as its sales grew 36%.

Mosaic, the world’s largest phosphate fertilizer producer, saw its profit quadruple.

Chemical giant DuPont saw its corn sales volume increase 52% recently, and expects double-digit earnings growth in 2008.

The value of the U.S. farm economy is expected to hit a record in 2008, $144.1 billion, 38% above the 10-year average.

There are serious drawbacks to increasing reliance on ethanol: burning organic materials or extracts also emits carbon, albeit in lower doses; food prices have been soaring across the world as a result of shifting agricultural production to meet demand for bio-fuels; land-use policy may not keep pace with the rush to exploit the economic boom ethanol presents; worldwide, arable land and water for irrigation are already severely strained, not able to meet food production needs in a sustainable way.

So it is of paramount importance that new funding is being offered for new research into potential alternative methods of truly “clean” energy, meaning fuel sources or electricity production methods that require no combustion and emit no harmful toxins or heat-trapping gases into the environment.

In July 2006, Sentido.tv [a project of Hot Spring's publisher], reported that:

The global wind-generation resource has been estimated at 72 terawatts, 40 times the entire global demand for 2000. Eliminating peat bogs and other highly vulnerable ecosystems from that resource potential will cut into the global capacity, but at 40 times demand, or 20 times or even at 10 times, there is clearly room to work with.

Finding the right combination of resources, in terms of cost-effective construction and maintenance, infrastructure development and ugrading, and stabilizing the role of consumers in both production and usage (solar and wind energy permit fitted individual homes to become production mechanisms expanding grid potential), will allow for the creation of a far more efficient and by extension, economically viable and sustainable energy market. This could be extended to a global scale, if investment accurately discerns and follows opportunity.

• Financial Times: “Oil groups urge clarity on tackling emissions [inset: Green energy to get $10 billion boost]“
• Guardian: “Investment fund giants demand 90% reduction in carbon emissions”
• Daily Green: “Want Real Economic Stimulus? Jump-Start the Green Collar Economy”
• Quipu Economic Forum: “The 12-year Sea Change, the Green Economy”
• Ceres: “Investors and Environmentalists for Sustainable Prosperity”
• Quipu [from EPI]: “Why Ethanol Production Will Drive World Food Prices Even Higher in 2008″
• Sentido.tv: “WORKING OUT THE KINKS IN RENEWABLE ENERGY’S GREATEST PROMISE”
• Ceres: “Climate Investment OpEd by Ceres President Mindy Lubber in Pensions & Investments magazine on 9/19/05″

Dawn of the Anthropocene Epoch

HUMAN BEINGS HAVE BECOME SO INFLUENTIAL IN NATURAL PROCESSES THAT SCIENTISTS NOW WORRY NATURE HAS LOST VITAL RESILIENCE MEASURES

At a meeting of European scientists, in Stockholm, Sweden, the man who coined the term ‘anthropocene’ to describe the new geological epoch in which human influence dominates natural processes, announced that the term has gained acceptance in a growing number of fields. The real import of the term, and of its increasing relevance to what science is showing about the effects of human civilization on the environment, globally, is that ecological information is increasingly vital to implementing human ambitions in a responsible and sustainable way.

Paul J. Crutzen, of the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, wrote in the year 2000 that:

The name Holocene (”Recent Whole’) for the post-glacial geological epoch of the past ten to twelve thousand years seems to have been proposed for the first time by Sir Charles Lyell in 1833, and adopted by the International Geological Congress in Bologna in 1885 (1). During the Holocene mankind’s activities gradually grew into a significant geological, morphological force, as recognised early on by a number of scientists. Thus, G.P. Marsh already in 1864 published a book with the title ‘Man and Nature’, more recently reprinted as ‘The Earth as Modified by Human Action- (2). Stoppani in 1873 rated mankind’s activities as a ‘new telluric force which in power and universality may be compared to the greater forces of earth” [quoted from Clark (3)]. Stoppani already spoke of the anthropozoic era. Mankind has now inhabited or visited almost all places on Earth; he has even set foot on the moon.

The Financial Times, of London, is reporting “The EuroScience forum in Stockholm heard on Thursday that climate change was the most obvious of a complex range of man-made effects that is rapidly changing the physics, chemistry and biology of the planet.” Other effects will have a lot to do with crop resilience, soil fertility, elasticity of habitats vital for species on which our sustenance environment —the realm of ecosystems and resource production that feeds our species and its habits— depends.

The dawn of the Anthropocene epoch in geological history brings with it numerous challenges and opportunities. In terms of transitioning sweeping economic models and trends to sustainable methods, there is a vast opportunity to expand the potential output of the global economy, but meeting the challenges that create this opportunity will require massive amounts of ingenuity and investment.

A group of 21 leading scientists and researchers has published its study of the geological timescale topic in the GSA Journal, concluding that the fundamental shift to a human-altered geological environment occurred at the beginning of the 19th century. What is now occurring, however, is that awareness of the potentially severe impact of 200 years of rampant industrial expansion, resource exploitation, urban construction and terrain remodeling appears to have reached a tipping point, after which science cannot ignore the human element in the natural world, i.e. ecological impact.

That study specifically notes that human activity has led to fundamental alterations in sediment layering, soil quality, geological patterning, the biological habitat and its flora and fauna, as well as the obvious impact on the breathable atmosphere. Specifically:

From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present day, global human population has climbed rapidly from under a billion to its current 6.5 billion (Fig. 1), and it continues to rise. The exploitation of coal, oil, and gas in particular has enabled planet-wide industrialization, construction, and mass transport, the ensuing changes encompassing a wide variety of phenomena, summarized as follows. [...]

Humans have caused a dramatic increase in erosion and the denudation of the continents, both directly, through agriculture and construction, and indirectly, by damming most major rivers, that now exceeds natural sediment production by an order of magnitude [...]

Carbon dioxide levels (379 ppm in 2005) are over a third higher than in pre-industrial times and at any time in the past 0.9 million years [...]

The projected temperature rise will certainly cause changes in habitat beyond environmental tolerance for many taxa (Thomas et al., 2004). The effects will be more severe than in past glacial-interglacial transitions because, with the anthropogenic fragmentation of natural ecosystems, ‘escape’ routes are fewer.

Resilience mechanisms are eroded, and the natural environment is less able to adapt suitably to changes within its sometimes competing ecosystems. The study also cites evidence of increasing levels of species extinction, and the growing likelihood of a major wave of mass extinction, directly related to human activity.

“Scientists are building computer models that give a view of the whole ‘earth system’ in the Anthropocene era. These are beginning to show the hot spots or Achilles’ heels in Earth’s defenses against catastrophic change, said John Schellnhuber, director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change at the University of East Anglia”, also according to the Financial Times.

If we are to continue expanding our technological abilities, our industrial production, our standard of living, and the integration of human society across the planet (with the fuel demand and resource-stress this implies), then there will need to be a major change in the way in which policy-makers, private enterprise, consumers and markets generally, conceive of the human effect in the natural environment.

That change in consciousness will allow for a new approach to funding and producing major technological innovations that will make it far easier to gracefully slip away from reliance on carbon-based combustible fuels. That will, however, be only one thread in the fabric of advances needed to help human industrial civilization outpace its own capacity for mass resource depletion.

• Geological Society of America: “Are we now living in the Anthropocene”
• Financial Times / MSNBC: “Scientists warn of a new Anthropocene age”
• About.com Geology: “Introducing the Anthropocene”
• Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie: “Anthropocene” [article that coined the term]
• Resilience 2008: “Resilience, Adaptation & Transformation in Turbulent Times” [Conf., Stockholm 14-17 April]
• Albaeco, Sustainability School: “Masking Environmental Feedbacks”

Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

BOOK REVIEW & INTRODUCTION TO ONGOING HOT SPRING DISCUSSION

Ecologist and researcher Lester Brown, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, has issued the 3rd installment of his ‘Plan B’ books —Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (2008)—, which lay out the most vital research underlying and the most optimal means of meeting the need to transition to a sustainable economy that not only works in harmony with natural system, but also helps to reverse the excesses of the existing industrial model.

The alterations to the Earth’s climate that are resulting from centuries of burning fossil fuels, rich in carbon and which release unnatural amounts of carbon-dioxide into the environment, are presenting current and future costs that have not been integrated into pricing models:

When Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, released his ground-breaking study in late 2006 on the future costs of climate change, he talked about a massive market failure. He was referring to the failure of the market to incorporate the climate change costs of burning fossil fuels. The costs, he said, would be measured in the trillions of dollars. The difference between the market prices for fossil fuels and the prices that also incorporate their environmental costs to society are huge.

The roots of our current dilemma lie in the enormous growth of the human enterprise over the last century. Since 1900, the world economy has expanded 20-fold and world population has increased fourfold. Although there were places in 1900 where local demand exceeded the capacity of natural systems, this was not a global issue. There was some deforestation, but overpumping of water was virtually unheard of, overfishing was rare, and carbon emissions were so low that there was noserious effect on climate. The indirect costs of these early excesses were negligible.

Now with the economy as large as it is, the indirect costs of burning coal—the costs of air pollution, acid rain, devastated ecosystems, and climate change—can exceed the direct costs, those of mining the coal and transporting it to the power plant. As a result of neglecting to account for these indirect costs, themarket is undervaluing many goods and services, creating economic distortions.

As economic decisionmakers—whether consumers, corporate planners, government policymakers, or investment bankers—we all depend on the market for information to guide us. In order for markets to work and economic actors to make sound decisions, the markets must give us good information, including the full cost of the products we buy. But the market is giving us bad information, and as a result we are making bad decisions—so bad that they are threatening civilization.

The market is in many ways an incredible institution. It allocates resources with an efficiency that no central planning body can match and it easily balances supply and demand. The market has some fundamental weaknesses, however. It does not incorporate into prices the indirect costs of producing goods. It does not value nature’s services properly. And it does not respect the sustainable yield thresholds of natural systems. It also favors the near term over the long term, showing little concern forfuture generations. 

A major factor in the challenge now facing human civilization is how exactly to continue to exploit the benefits of a market model, while we make sweeping industrial transitions away from fossil fuels, and ‘program’ the market to learn to account for these vital, and incomparably valuable, considerations. Lester Brown’s latest book is, as is custom with his work, a relentless and committed examination of the problem in its most vital detail, coupled with real solutions and a strategy for overcoming the global challenge of moving to a climate-safe economy.

• Earth Policy Institute: Eco-Economy Updates (plus data & translation links)
• Earth Policy Institute: Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures
• Earth Policy Institute: The Earth Policy Reader
• Sentido.tv: Informes de Eco-economía, en español
• Sentido.tv: Lester Brown presents Plan B 2.0 at Google (video)

Raindrops New Source of Low-Intensity Clean Energy

A new study has shown that raindrops can be used to produce electricity. The key is the mechanical energy of the raindrops, meaning the energy contained in their motion and in the way that force is diffused when striking a given type of surface.In this case the surface is PVDF (polyvinylidene diflouride) plastic, which is able to release a charge when temporarily “deformed” by mechanical activity, such as being struck by a moving object. A sheet of PVDF just 25 micrometers thick (1,000 = 1 milimeter) receives the impact of raindrops, and the effect is the release of energy, which can be harvested and turned into electricity.

Romain Guigon, from the research institute CEA Leti-Minatec in Grenoble, France, says the research shows that “even in the most unfavorable conditions, the mechanical energy of the raindrops… is high enough to power low-consumption devices”, but the study does not specify how well circuitry retains a minimum charge sufficient for regular functioning.

While circuitry is a vital issue related to this potential technological advance, it may also be worth looking at what uses there might be for such tools as the PVDF sheets that gather energy to the system’s electrodes. Careful adjustment of the study’s initial presumptions could lead to powerful new supplementary energy applications, saving battery life or eliminating the need for ecologically unfriendly battery systems altogether.

• Discovery: “It’s Raining Energy. Hallelujah!”

The 12-year Sea Change, the Green Economy: How Do We Get There?

Quipu Economic Forum :: Between the years 2008 and 2020, we are likely to see a still unimaginably sweeping shift away from fossil fuels and high-contamination modes of powering our economy. The transition will have a political component, but will be driven mostly by cost concerns, resource scarcity, and public demand for cleaner air and responsible climate policy, a demand which is not ideological in nature.

The long-term overhaul of the global economy, to bring it in line with what would be a responsible climate policy, will be more gradual, and has for some time now been taking its first halting steps toward acquiring momentum. But wealthy countries, ostensibly the most dependent on carbon-based fuels, also enjoy the conditions that permit broader flexibility in fuel resourcing, namely an economic cushion and variety in the marketplace.

It is often necessary to assess economic trends in emotional terms, or to use a new catch-phrase in social awareness and economic undercurrent analysis, to locate the ‘tipping point’, after which momentum becomes reality. This idea is attractive to those who want the market to ’set’ the rules, i.e., design-in public consciousness and cost-considerations based on ‘what the market will bear’.

This last idea is often used to justify the notion that a commonly talked-about direction is the inevitable direction: not for reasons of a grand conspiracy nor because one company will profit from its point of view taking hold, but because if the known ideas dovetail with real economic momentum, then investors find some measure of stability. Instead of blaming the ‘perfect storm’ of unforeseen events for a given failure, they believe they’ll be able to cite something like a ‘perfect groupthink’, with a delightfully positive outcome.

The problem is: groupthink as is well known is not a grand scheme brought into being by the best and brightest minds to achieve the most good for the largest number of people or interests; it is a way in which deferring to incomplete ideas bandied about in an echo-chamber leads to poor decision-making, hands bound, intellectual traps and the failure of policy to meet the moment.

So, how do we meet the moment? What tools can we apply to the problem in order to bang out a solution? Obviously, we are talking about a complex array of problems, with an even more complex array of causes, and we need to adjust to a new cosmology in which we think openly about the possibility that this ‘complex array’ will not only condition us, but is also what will be required of us, going forward.

We need to integrate into daily activities a complex array of daring attempts at streamlining and building efficiency; we need to develop new information systems that give us not only access to new and evolving knowledge about our environment, but also a means of reacting at the right time to the right signs of trouble; we need to make sense of what seems to have no bearing on our personal experience, so that we don’t take the ill-fated route of so much of human history, and decide we can build a good history on the frail foundations of our own personal experience.

It may take a village, it may take a movement, it may take sudden bursts of popular awareness, or it may simply be a question of letting people —who are already very much concerned that we handle our ecological responsibilities with care— be heard.

On 30 November, the AP and the Washington Post reported that officials from 150 global corporations, worth more than $4 trillion in market capital, have signed a petition urging strong action to mandate emissions cuts and reduce global carbon emissions by at least 50% by 2050. Change is coming to our economic structures, likely through the evolution of techniques, and not ideology; our best hope is to take the change seriously, early, and to act to be in the best possible position by 2020.

Any suggestions?

Hyper-convergence of Media & Services Necessitates New Paradigm for Securing Personal Data

Crisis Policy Forum :: The potential for broad-scope “electronic agents” —preprogrammed service aggregators and self-organizing databases with proactive marketing capability—, aiding in everyday information-related activities, will require a new security standard to prevent identity theft, which could become one of the gravest threats to economic performance and individual liberty.

Digital IDs will have to be maintained through unbreakable private information management systems, entirely parallel to and separate from the information actually sent, which will behave as a single identifying set of characteristics for a given internet user, when ID is called for.

Individuals will be able to use a complex array of mental-reference data, unique to personal knowledge, to block hackers’ access to the actual management system itself, which will allow users to take instant corrective-protective action in case of hacked or apparently compromised online IDs.

The main purpose of this service would be to achieve security of personal data by securely matching real personal data with an official, singular digital ID, containing none of the real ID data. Thus, there would exist an impenetrable barrier (semantic separation) between sensitive personal ID data and the malicious intent of those who may seek to misuse it.

Microwave Engine Applies Theory of Relativity, for Locomotion

ELECTROMAGNETIC DRIVE COULD MAKE WINGS, WHEELS, COMBUSTION OBSOLETE

Sentido.tv :: A new breakthrough in propulsion technology may enable a fuel-free engine with no moving parts to use microwaves to push satellites through space and automobiles on earth. The science is complicated and controversial, but appears to be sound and takes advantage of Einstein’s landmark theory of relativity to turn contained microwaves into a propulsion system, in the form of a non-mechanical engine.

The electromagnetic drive (emdrive) system is revolutionary because it enables human technology to interact with the physical environment in ways previously only dreamed in science fiction. Observers have referred to it as a Star-Trek-style “warp drive”, though for now it is far less powerful.

It depends on relativity specifically, because the microwaves inside sealed and specially shaped drive capsules “propel” the engine not by pushing againt the air or the road, or the rarefied material of outer space, but exhibiting more force against one end of the interior of the drive capsule, playing on the separation between the “frame of reference” within which it functions and that of the air or space outside.

At present, the amount of thrust generated by the emdrive system is minuscule, about 300 millinewtons, not nearly enough to make an automobile go on the ground. New breakthroughs in superconduction could multiply that figure by millions of times, bringing the thrust to 30,000 newtons per kilowatt, “enough to lift a large car”, according to the New Scientist.

If the emdrive system can be magnified to such levels of performance, automobiles could be made to hover, no longer needing wheels, and aircraft could be held aloft, while liquid-hydrogen-powered turbines provide forward thrust, eliminating wings, blades and atmospheric contamination. [Full Story]

RFID Technology, Privacy & Individual Liberties

The field of Radio-Frequency IDentification is rapidly expanding, with new applications being proposed for security, commercial distribution, and tracking of goods, information and individuals, on a constant basis. The US government has proposed requiring that all new passports carry RFID chips, either for efficiency, ease of use or for security, though none of these is clearly enhanced without a massive technological upgrade, across the world.

Standard RFID chips are “passive” at present, meaning they do not carry a power supply and “emit” information only when contacted and activated by a chip-reading device, at which point they emit a low-intensity radio signal readable at only a few feet or a few meters at most. The obvious security risk is that contact with the document itself (in the case of passports or ID cards) would not, in theory, be necessary, leaving hackers with a golden opportunity to get at information that would normally be readable only by direct contact, human eyesight or ink-pattern scanning technology (such as bar-codes).

So there is a serious question about whether RFID might actually increase the security risk inherent in personal identity documents, or put specific groups in jeopardy, if it can be discerned that their common RFID technology is detectable, no matter how secure. For instance, there are x number of Americans in that establishment, or people who have paid for such and such a special security pass. This is a serious concern and obviously must be resolved before the technology can be safely implemented for use by the general public.

But there are other privacy-related concerns as well: for instance, the same businesses that use RFID to track their inventory could adjust or enhance the technology to be able to interact with other objects in your home. For some people, this may be seen as beneficial, but the potential for aggregating mass amounts of intimate information about an individuals habits, possessions, and spending, poses new problems for how to secure that data and ensure against any potential misuse.

If RFID has any sort of viable (read: secure and with no negative impact on individual liberty or privacy) application, then it is likely that whole new sorts of information securing and management systems will need to be developed that give consumers enhanced control of all data related to themselves and their personal activities, that might filter its way out onto the world wide web, in one way or another, and the laws requiring protection of personal data are likely to become far more demanding and severe.

• Sentido.tv: “RFID TECHNOLOGY WILL BRING PERSONAL SPACE, TASTES UNDER CONSTANT SCRUTINY BY ANONYMOUS WATCHERS”
• Wired: “Microchips Everywhere: a Future Vision”
• Sentido.tv: “DATA SHADOWS & IMPROBABLE CONSENT”

Spaceblooms: Is Future of Farming in Outer Space?

Space flora or “xflora”, a category of synthetic biochemical organism, engineered to exist in floating colonies in space, combines nano-technology with and biotechnology. While it sounds near impossible, the concept is to create organisms that can feed from their environment, even where that environment would be deadly (for chill, high radiation or lack of nutrients) to Earthborne organisms, and that can be harvested freely as future “off-Earth” human colonies or transports may require.

One of the most obvious applications would be the potential for such vegetation to greatly extend the viable length of space journeys, providing a “native” farming option for astronauts, and a potential means of adaptation to life in zero-gravity, zero-atmosphere space.

NASA is reportedly working on potential test projects for space flora, and specifically the application of such technologies to creating an environment on Mars where human beings could take shelter and use space-age subsistence farming to keep a research colony going.

An astonishing array of ambitions accompany this field of research, including the hope of being able to implant nanotechnology into the cells of individual plants, to enable them to find light more efficiently, and to promote blooming on cue, and the ability to manipulate up or down the crop density for a given spacebloom.

The future-set web report Spacebloom: a Field Guide to Cosmic Xflora relays from the 23rd century the (currently future) history of space flora and off-Earth self-sustaining farming. The site’s “intro” section speaks of a 150 year period of massive innovation and quips that “The roots of this knowledge explosion can be traced to the middle of the 21st century, when, after many decades of empty rhetoric and grandiose posturing, a worldwide focus on equal access to all levels of education was realized.”

The key to the story, be it theory or practice, is that the field of spacebloom research has been opened, at NASA and by curious seekers, and it will be fed by the imagination of many. The goal of achieving self-propagating, self-reproducing synthetic organisms that can both harvest nourishment from and provide nourishment efficiently in outer space, takes us far beyond the scope of current thought in the realm of agriculture, with possible lessons, potential hazards, and many tempting possibilities, even for the realm of agricultural practice on Earth.

• Mutable Matter: “Salad Machines in Space”
• Spacebloom.net: “Spacebloom: A Field Guide to Cosmic Xflora”

Announcing Hot Spring! The new brainstorming forum from the THINK innovation initiative

HUNTING THE PARADIGM SHIFT THROUGH DEBATE & RESEARCH

Hot Spring is a new debate and discussion forum, aimed at providing users with the flexibility to pool their resources, spout outlandish ideas, and test the ability of readers to suspend their disbelief long enough to contemplate new directions in science, technology and communications.

The project is aimed at anyone with a mind for getting beyond the obvious and embracing the subtleties of truly innovative thought, and our ultimate goal will be to create a deep-running current of talent and criticism that will lead to opportunities for the implementation of complex technological solutions and genuine conditional compensation for those who contribute materially to their development.

A major component of the Hot Spring model is the aim of reaching a point of awareness of the coming paradigm shift in a given field, through brainstorming, debate and research intensity, to go beyond the current prevailing views and find the moment of transition beyond which research, problem-solving and production take on new forms not previously possible.

Intellectual property is important to us, so we aim to provide coverage for the intellectual property of each through licensing for the full discussion, research and development, on a group basis. We aim to work out new concepts for common copyright management or for flexible individual licensing that provides benefits to contributors and to the whole.

Please add any suggestions, if you are a likely contributor concerned about this issue…