Tech Bubble 2.0

Silicon Valley and the tech industry as a whole is going through another cycle of incredible hype. Valuations of companies are wilder than ever. The New York Times wrote an article about this new bubble. Apparently we haven't learned anything from the last tech sector bubble. The only difference to the new bubble, Bubble 2.0 seems to be an appropriate name, is that 2.0 is a bigger and bolder bubble. Read the article: Disruptions: With No Revenue, an Illusion of Value.

Artificial Photo Synthesis

MIT professor Daniel G. Nocera has researched artificial photo synthesis and already 2 years ago presented his approach as a highly distributed and highly personalized solution to the world's energy problem. In short, he wants to replace power stations of all kinds with small inexpensive photo synthesis solutions installed in your home. Here are his talks given 2 years ago: Dan Nocera: Personalized Energy (22min) and Personalized Energy for 1 (x 6 Billion): A Solution to the Global Energy Challenge (78min). The idea itself is not new, already in 1912 (no type here) -- 100 years ago -- it was suggested as a solution to our energy needs.

I am not expert enough to qualify his research, but his speech and vision are impressive. It promises democratic and clean energy, auto-sufficiency, individual independence, risk avoidance, pollution avoidance and sustainability. With such promises it is certainly worth investment, but it frightens the establishment as it would be the end of the day of utility companies and remove our energy dependency.

D. Nocera now works with the Indian Tata conglomerate to bring the research into the commercial market. There is hope after all.

Bitcoin Hacked

Amazing. The dollar is crashing. The Euro is crashing. And now also the Bitcoin is crashing. But the crashes are for different reasons, and the causes the resulted in the Bitcoin crash are easier to fix. Read this article on the events of this month in Bitcoins entitled "Inside the Mega-Hack of Bitcoin: The Inside Story".

What we learn from these events are:

• Bitcoin like any other currency is affected by human emotions and speculations. It goes up and down. Its value rises or drops on rumors, politic events and so forth. To this degree the currency does not reflect value but perceptions. Nothing new about this but the drastic rise in value over the last weeks and the following drop has demonstrated it.
• Bitcoin as a currency is still very young and not yet mature. The key issue currently is that some 90% of all exchange operations are traded on a single exchange. The currency is distributed by design, but currently its exchange is nearly centralized through this near-monopoly of the exchange named Mt. Gox. More companies must come forward and build exchanges so we have a more decentralized and less monopolized exchange infrastructure. This heavily used exchange Mt. Gox was compromised and user login, password and wallet data stolen, misused and later published openly. This is equivalent to a master heist in which a major bank is hacked, online bank account data such as account numbers, user names, and passwords stolen to be used later to login and transfer money. Clearly the exchange Mt. Gox is to blame. They had a poor security set-up.

Let's give it some more time to mature.

The Story of Electronics

It started with The Story of Stuff. Annie Leonard presents her thoughts on the sad story of the production process in a concise, yet cheerful manner. Her upbeat attitude to solve these critical issues make her educational videos nearly fun to watch. Annie Leonard made the Story of Stuff a great story. Over the last four years she has added to it, and made a number of sequels: The Story of Cosmetics, The Story of Bottled Water, etc. And now: The Story of Electronics, 7 minutes worth watching. Here is her site: The Story of Stuff, and here is her YouTube channel. Perfect for us as adults, perfect also to teach teenagers the role of corporations and the outsourcing of cost to other nations. Well done Annie.

Bitcoin

As a Top-10 open source application I ran across Bitcoin, a digital currency. I studied it and found this currency very intriguing. There is no central point (such as an issuing central bank or issuing corporation) and there is nothing (no material goods such as gold) that backs it up. Here are some key links to inform yourself about the working and principles of Bitcoin: home page, Wikipedia, a blog entry on mises.org, and a summary blog on The Monetary Future.

Pros:

• Since there is no central point it is less likely to be manipulated and control is outside the sphere of one powerful organization (like the FED, a central bank, or a corporation).
• There is no inflation, the Bitcoin currency is limited to 21,000,000 units, i.e. BTCs, brought into existence slowly over time.
• It cuts out the middleman (i.e. banks) as individuals can trade directly with each other without the need to go through a banking system or a clearing house. That makes it more efficient, cheaper and reduces dependencies, i.e. risks.
• It is more libertarian as transactions are not monitored by governmental agencies and can be done with anonymity. However, if such a currency were to become popular, it is nearly certain that legislation would be put in place to require individuals to report on such transactions. It would be treated like off-shore banking by governmental agencies.

Cons:

• As a weak point I see stability. Clearly the interchange value to other currencies will fluctuate. That's fine. But what will give it intrinsic stability? Apparently intrinsic stability comes from trust into the currency, but as we know trust levels can fluctuate and even be manipulated (e.g. through the media).
• It is electronic money requiring some sort of electronic device to carry the currency with you. Today this is a laptop. In the future this could be your cell phone and you could carry that to the local store to buy a loaf of bread and pay through a transaction initiated by yourself on your cell phone at the checkout.

Bitcoin can be part of a competing multi-currency infrastructure providing a solution to our monetary problems.

Internet Censorship by Obama

There is already a lot of censorship on the Internet and there will be a lot more. This blog article already gave some prediction about the direction of the Internet and government control over it. We have seen a lot of direct censorship so far. China and UAE are typical examples. These countries filter internet traffic and don't allow pages from certain sites to enter the country. If you try to see photos on the popular Flickr site in Dubai you will get a "Not allowed due to inappropriate content" message sent to you, thanks to the local government. YouTube and Skype are blocked as well in the city of the world's tallest skyscraper. Burma is known to have turned the internet off completely during unrest and times of protests against the government.

Censorship, corporate as well as governmental, also exists in the US. Now Obama is requiring and enforcing reverse censorship, prohibiting information to leave the country. Read all about it this article entitled "Obama enforces trade embargo against open source". In this case the US government disallows the world's leading open source site Sourceforge to deliver content to blacklisted countries named by the US government. So, if you live in Syria and your profession is school teacher and you would like to download some open source educational software from Sourceforge, Sourceforge as required by US regulation must return an "access denied, forebidden" message. As one can see governments and corporations can be very inventive to control the internet or the use and distribution of open source software. More resources in internet censorship: Wikipedia, Wikia and Cship.

We are standing only at the very beginning of control and regulation of the Internet. How does the song go: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.

Orwell Rolls in his Grave

"Orwell rolls in his grave" is a 105-minute video directed by Robert Kane Pappas. This documentary from 2004 highlights the US media system showing the partiality of the media, the conflicts of interests of the media and how media, politics and big business are merging into one power pool. Double-speak is a reality in the media today. News is all managed and steered. It does not inform anymore, it is very close to a propaganda tool controlled by a handful of people. Here is the video (or alternatively here).

What is the next step of media? Control of the internet. Government already has full tracking control on when and where every individual is online and which web sites are visited. The next steps will be that all financial transactions will be tracked and laws released to enforce paying taxes on every penny that is exchanged through interactions on the internet. The final objective is the control of the content, i.e. the news and political views. For this purpose it will be made difficult for small media players and independent individuals to get their voice heard on the internet. This can be implemented via gateway control of the ISPs, access control, deals between big media content providers and ISPs, or plain old censorship. It can be foreseen that any kind of regulation will be given an Orwellian double-speak name like "The Net Neutrality Act", "Global Online Freedom Act" or "Global Internet Openness Act" while in reality it will reduce choices and voices while increasing monitoring and tracking. As reasons we will be given arguments like war on terrorism, spam control, or protection from cyber attacks. In the near future news and content on the internet will be like on TV today: there will be 100s of channels all owned by 5 companies, all presenting the same preselected and prepackaged news that big business and big politicians want you to hear. These are my predictions. Do you agree?

Winning the Oil End Game

There is a thought-provoking video on peak oil on TED. Armory Lovins talk about Winning the Oil End Game. I do not agree with all his points. In my opinion he is too optimistic about the government response to the transition. I also doubt that the government being steered by lobbyists and big business interests has the right intentions. His proposed solution is also heavily dependent on technology, which I also see as a possible weakness or at least a factor of risk. I would prefer simpler solutions more in line with nature. Nonetheless his option is a positive step forward and the video is worth watching. He gives a lot of numbers and presents possible approaches for tackling peak oil. Here is the Winning the Oil End Game talk video. Background data on the presentation can be found on his dedicated web site and his book with the same title. The Winning the Oil End Game book is free and a lot of research has gone into it.

Zeitgeist - Orientation

The video The Zeitgeist Movement: Orientation Presentation was just released. I thought this to be the least emotional of the 3 Zeitgeist videos I have seen. It is more directed to the rational senses. The presentation style is that of a multi-media presentation, well structured, and straight to the point. Some say that the style is adapted from the Crash Course.

I liked it. The video shed more light and details on a possible solution. The focus was on the solution rather than the problem. It suggests actions that we must do as a society more so that immediate actions we must take as individuals. Clearly a lot of personal action items can be deduced if you agree with the proposed social change that is required.

In a nutshell, the suggested direction means handing decision making (based on a scientific process) over to machines and eliminating politicians, advertisement, etc. in the resource-based economy.

I am always very weary when someone wants to give too much power to technology. In my opinion mankind is too arrogant and too frequently using technology against nature. We use technology to turn sea into coast line, we construct skyscrapers on fault lines, we harness nuclear power, etc. Frequently we see with disastrous results what happens when something fails, and something always fails once in a while. Dams break, earthquakes turn buildings into dust and nuclear waste will pollute our planet for 1000s of years. This is what comes to my mind first when someone says "we master technology, let's use more technology". Handing over decision making to technology/computers? The key is that we must use technology in synergy and in imitation of nature and not against nature.

Is the suggested society possible? Will people accept it? According to the Venus Project few people will work, most work will be done by machines and all resource will be free (energy, water, food, housing, etc.). We will live without money. My wife said: "Like in the garden of Eden, just picking the fruits from the trees, no money, no work, just 24 hours of spare time a day". Sounds like everybody would want that. No work and everything is free. But what about the guy who (as an example, say) wants a big private swimming pool and since the resource based economy will provide only public pools is rejected to have one. What will he think about the system? He will hate it. What about the guy who is a power addicted person who needs to dominate other people to feel good, you know, the typical boss-behavior in a company ordering other people around. He will have nobody to control and order around, so he will not be happy. What will he do? Protest?

Clearly for this system to work where one would gain so much (independence, free time, no worries about resources, a fairer allocation of resources) one would also have to give up things: since all will be treated equal to some this will be seen like communism, some will have to give their special rights.

Using technology in conjunction with nature, to nurture nature, that seems very much an admirable goal. Eliminating special interest groups and money seems a good social direction. What I ask myself is not if I would like it. I think I would. What I ask myself is: Is it doable? Is it?

Free Energy

I just started some incredible reading this weekend. I started reading A Practical Guide to Free Energy by Patrick J Kelly. It is like reading a thriller. Exciting and full of possibilities. I am not smart or educated enough to follow most of the presented material. Nonetheless I enjoyed reading this book anyway. I suggest you give it a look too. Even with my limited skills some of the devices using gravity to generate energy look very possible just based on common sense. So I could actually follow these designs. The part about Tesla I found interesting just from a historic perspective. Reading about the pyramid that generates (a tiny bit of) energy was mind boggling. Sounds out of this world. It is so strange, so against main-stream thinking that I am tempted to try to build one myself. And then there is Joe's Cell that allows you to convert a regular car to be powered by nothing more than a strange steel container with conditioned water. What if it is true? Just imagine a world of non-polluting cars.

If you want to be surprised, thrilled and excited read or cross-read this book! Don't get distracted by the simple presentation and its length (more than 1,000 pages).

Technology Revisited

A friend provided me with this link: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net. It's an American perspective. The author argues that technology will not improve the peak oil issue, on the contrary technology makes the situation worse. He basis this opinion on the Jevon's paradox.

He argues that the same holds true for conservation too. If an individual conserves another individual or the banks or corporations will use the saved energy to reap profits, such that the total consumption will not be reduced.

An all encompassing holistic mind-set change towards energy and according legislation is more important than savings through technology or conservations. Individual contributions will just be wiped out by current greed and profit thinking. Nonetheless, the individual conservationist will be better of and better prepared for the day when the oil really ends.

Technology

What do you see as the role of technology in the context of the coming peak oil and economic crisis and transition? Do you see technology overall beneficial? What are pros and cons of tech in this mess?

Zeitgeist Addendum suggests a solution partially based on technology, such as the Venus project. I did not like this futuristic picture of a sci-fi solution too much. Don't get me wrong, I like technology, a lot as a matter of fact. But I also think it is very limited in the context of nature. I also like the concept of simplicity and in many occasions I believe a simple solution will be better than a hi-tech solution. Especially when it comes to farming, gardening and food production. We must get away from hi-tech large scale farming and return to non-GM, no-human-made-pesticide, etc. gardening.

My friends comment that the Internet is a must and absolutely vital in this transition phase to create community, share solutions and propagate information (to compensate for the highly influenced media channels). I vote yes to that too.

Friends also shared with me their opinion that with respect to technology being part of the future, they don't think that the solution is unique. There are technological solutions that could prolong our current way of life such as the loremo or aptera. Is this the right way to go? Or would it be better to make a complete break and develop bicycles and public transportation? Efficiency can actually increase the market for fossil fuels. For example the invention of the electric light bulb increased the market for natural gas because suddenly people other than the rich could afford enough gas to have light at night. Technology of course can play a huge role in the generation of renewable energy. There is room for a great deal of research, for example figuring out how much can sustainably be produced is a very open question which needs to be addressed in order to come up with solutions for organizing civilization. How will this energy be used? The fact that energy is finite has profound implications for political and economic organization. It raises philosophical and ethical questions as well: should people be allowed to become exceedingly rich? If wealth is finite, concentrating wealth among a few people means other people will have to become poor, that is, the trickle down theory fails. Should we restrict population growth? If so how?

"The Limits to Growth" (1979, 2004) was one of the first book to use extensive computer simulations to model the future. The authors lost the debate for funding, though the critiques generally missed the point. The book was dismissed because it's predictive value was bad (models in the 1979 book came up with shortages of critical minerals in the 1990's which did not occur). But the simulations were not meant to predict specific dates, but rather give long term dynamics and create scenarios on which to base policy. The shortages occurring in the models are happening now rather than 15 years ago, the dynamics were correct, the data fed into the models was bad.

The task is enormous. Historically, there are many examples of failure to deal with environmental degradation which lead to catastrophes. Once the last tree had been cut on Easter Island, wars reduced the population by over 90% to a sustainable level. Technology did not help the Vikings who brought European ways of life to Greenland for several centuries. The weather changed (it got colder), the Vikings could not sustain their European ways, but the Inuit survived, though their culture had been dominated for several centuries.

I am a bit disappointed that technology for personal power generation such as solar panels and wind mills is still quite expensive. See this blog article. Like anything else in technology the price can come down significantly if there is enough demand.

What do you think about the best use of technology to assist in smoothening the upcoming peak oil transition?