In One Century

[Bruce LaDuke]

The progress we've made in a single century is staggering. As the speed of progress escalates, let's talk generally about the progress over the next 50 years and the challenges our communities will face.

[e. lee henderson]

Does anyone think it's possible for the usa to accomplish the goals Obama proposes in energy usage and economic changes? How many people on this site recycle? Are participants driving hybrids? Are people tearing up their credit cards, or is everyone here smart enough to only pay 2% on their money, or even better, no interest? I'm curious to see what those in this group are doing to effect the next 50 years as individuals. Major changes now will determine much of what happens in the next 50 years.

In my profession I see the results of irresponsible choices twisting and turning the lives of people in all walks of life, and all economic areas.

Continually curious.

Lee

[Bruce LaDuke]

Alternative energy technologies that are emerging will likely start to scale up substantially soon. E.g., ultra-efficient solar cells that collect solar radiation in the dark, solar balloons, personal vertical wind turbines, portable nuclear power, etc. If we go to electric cars globally, I think the price of copper will explode. As I understand it, there just isn't enough copper to supply the world with electric cars and demand will outstrip supply. So I'm in a bit of a quandry on that one, but I do think that will be the direction the world will likely go and I will probably just invest in copper (smile).

I couldn't find the reference, but one of best alternative energy solutions I've seen for communities was done in Germany. They used wind power to fill a reservoir and then used the reservoir itself as a steady 'battery' of power for the community. I'd really like to influence something like that locally.

Oddly enough, I get better gas mileage in driving very slowly than I would in buying a hybrid and I really believe most folks would see the same results. That was a bit suprising to me when I did the comparison because I'd always thought of hybrids as ultra fuel-efficient.

And my family stopped borrowing money entirely about 10 years ago. That has proven to be one of the best decisions we've ever made.

Bruce

[Mark Hall]

Bruce,

I've been working with Rick Smyre on something along this line called, Creative Molecular Economy. We are moving from the informational economy to a molecular economy while quickly leaving behind the industrial economy. The number of weak signals and future trends support the accelerating rate of change.

Here's a short email dialogue I've been having with Rick about web gadgets and smartphone technology. Here's what I recently wrote.

A week or so ago I either emailed or mentioned the Yahoo Pipes capability.

What I thought would be interesting is using this tool and searching all the Verver Wireless community publishing sites to provide a news aggregator that would allow the user to preselect or put in keywords for results. My thought is using the index from Verver Wireless website and program a Yahoo Pipe to search all the news services, filter the information and the report it to your Smartphone.

One reason I like this type of technology is it could be adapted for community transformation. potentially a clearing house or bulletin board for a local community or area, especially where local residents could posts notices about events, etc. This could help with advertising volunteer activities.

Do you know anyone that has this skill and capability? I could see using this on the Community Transformer website or at least advertise this gadget?

Here's another email dialogue along the same lines.

Ran across this article from Wired about gadgets. Now they just need to incorporate text to speech conversion and now I have a audio book player.

With around six million iPhone owners out there already, plus an unknown number of iPod Touch users, the potential market for e-books is huge. This really could be the tipping point when electronic books go mainstream.

Mark

[Mark Hall]

What books have you read recently that have generated the hmm..... or aha.... moment?

Here are a couple of my favorites that have helped me think about the future and start making connections between topics and concepts.
- It's Alive, The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business, by Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis
- Linked, How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life, by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
- Dialogue, and the Art of Thinking Together, A Pioneering Approach to Communication in Business and in Life, by William Isaacs
- The World Is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman

Preparing for tomorrow today

Mark

[Mark Hall]

Our community over 2 years ago stretched out our thinking to 2026 and what that might mean in our rural area. Although many have a hard time transitioning from the strategic planning model, i.e., identify the goal and lay out the steps to get there, to a adaptive planning process where we consider the trends that will impact in the years ahead and change our thinking so we can make further connections, we were successful in creating and implementing a 5 step process to help our community start down this road.

I would encourage you to review our progress and some of the outcomes, a final report is to be published very soon, for the Visioning 2026 Project. The notes from the different dialogue and focus group sessions provide some insight on future impacts.

One of the "seeds" that was planted concerned a riverwalk project along our name sake, North Fork of the Elkhorn River. This project has generated a lot of interest by different community leaders and citizens. Please read more about the NorthFork Riverwalk Development Project.

Another interesting project has been seeded from this visioning project is the trend of 3D virtual simulation, namely Second Life and the impact this will have on our community and business culture. A local resident and Visioning 2026 team member presented at the 2008 World Futures Society Conference in Washington DC. His topic was "Interlocking Networks in Second Life" as part of a forum called, "Growing Your Community for Constant Change". Read more about "Area Resident Presents at the World Futures Society in Washington DC".

We would appreciate any comments you might have.

Visioning to Impact the Future

Mark

[e. lee henderson]

Mark, thanks so much for sharing your latest reads. I just finished one called "Eat, Pray and Love" It was delightful. Lexus and the Olive Tree was my first Friedman find. Longitudes and Attitudes rides with me in my car these days. I just ordered those you suggested, and can't wait for them to arrive.

This group is an oasis to a thirsty mind. It's encouraging to find people who actually read and think :o)

Our area has a major wind turbine project in the works.

How slow is slow Mark?

Having fun,

Lee

[Bruce LaDuke]

Mark,

I created a forum topic for 'technologies,' since that's probably going to be a fairly robust discussion. I pasted in your post above on that forum to get the discussion started and responded there as well.

[e. lee henderson]

Bruce, how slow is slow driving?

Bruce LaDuke said:

Alternative energy technologies that are emerging will likely start to scale up substantially soon. E.g., ultra-efficient solar cells that collect solar radiation in the dark, solar balloons, personal vertical wind turbines, portable nuclear power, etc. If we go to electric cars globally, I think the price of copper will explode. As I understand it, there just isn't enough copper to supply the world with electric cars and demand will outstrip supply. So I'm in a bit of a quandry on that one, but I do think that will be the direction the world will likely go and I will probably just invest in copper (smile).

I couldn't find the reference, but one of best alternative energy solutions I've seen for communities was done in Germany. They used wind power to fill a reservoir and then used the reservoir itself as a steady 'battery' of power for the community. I'd really like to influence something like that locally.

Oddly enough, I get better gas mileage in driving very slowly than I would in buying a hybrid and I really believe most folks would see the same results. That was a bit suprising to me when I did the comparison because I'd always thought of hybrids as ultra fuel-efficient.

And my family stopped borrowing money entirely about 10 years ago. That has proven to be one of the best decisions we've ever made.

Bruce

[Bruce LaDuke]

Lee,

That's a bit of a tricky question to answer because the growth is exponential or near-exponential. Nanotechnology, which is where most of these energy breakthroughs are coming from, is rising exponentially both in startups and number of patents. Also, the price of alternative energy is going down because of technology improvements (not really because of demand from the high price of oil, though I'm sure that also helps). This is all simultaneously helping to speed up growth.

That all said, the total percentage of U.S. energy in alternative energy right now is somewhere around 8 percent from all combined renewable energy sources (not sure of the exact number). So we are really looking at the early stages of its application.

If I were to give it a bit of a wild guess, I'd say we'd reach 25% of total energy consumption from renewables in the U.S. in about 12 years (2020), 50% in 17 years (2025), and 75% in 20 years (2028)....growing on an exponential curve. That's probably much more aggressive than most estimates, but I think we're likely to see one or two evolutions of nanotech in that same timeframe, probably merging it more tightly with biotechnology and substantially increasing it's capabilities. I'm also thinking it will be a simultaneous exponential growth curve both for the use of nanotech materials and specific energy solutions and these will compliment each other. I see us in a 'slow and unsure' start right now. Once we leave that stage and we really start throwing money at it, we'll start to move very fast.

That is, of course, highly dependent on things like the political climate, economy, or backlashes from safety issues that emerge from use of nanotech. Also, if we move toward electric cars (which is likely), I think we copper demand will skyrocket and that will create issues somewhere down the road. I'm also roughly factoring in that many of the recent discoveries will make it to market in 5 to 10 years, and these on their own are pretty staggering.

Just my guesses on this...I'd be very interested how others see this.

Bruce

e. lee henderson said:

Bruce, how slow is slow driving?

[Barbara Lawrence]

Hi,
I believe individuals change as they learn and out of necessity. It is very possible to accomplish a sustainable future oriented energy and economic framework. Look at how much changed in the past 50 and 100 years. In my opinion, the greatest challenges are connected to entrenched systems and traditional thinking. Solar and wind energy have been researched an popular at various times in the past century. We also had cars getting 40 mpg in 1982.

I am glad to say that I use less, drive less, do not use credit cards anymore, and recycle. Many of my babyboomer cohorts seem to be making similar changes. I am glad to see some communities, as well as individuals, looking to the future.

Barbara

e. lee henderson said:

Does anyone think it's possible for the usa to accomplish the goals Obama proposes in energy usage and economic changes? How many people on this site recycle? Are participants driving hybrids? Are people tearing up their credit cards, or is everyone here smart enough to only pay 2% on their money, or even better, no interest? I'm curious to see what those in this group are doing to effect the next 50 years as individuals. Major changes now will determine much of what happens in the next 50 years.

In my profession I see the results of irresponsible choices twisting and turning the lives of people in all walks of life, and all economic areas.

Continually curious.

Lee

[chris thomson]

I think it depends what you mean by "progress". I suspect that there are many quite different understandings of the concept. For example, to some it means material progress, while to others it might mean spiritual progress. And I fully accept that even these two terms are open to many interpretations. So, I am not sure whether the speed of progress is escalating until I know what you mean by progress!

I attach an article that discusses this central question at some length

Best wishes

Chris

Chris

[Jay Forrest]

e. lee henderson said:

In my profession I see the results of irresponsible choices twisting and turning the lives of people in all walks of life, and all economic areas.

Continually curious.

Lee

Dan Ariely's new book Predictably Irrational provides interesting insights into predictable patterns of irrationality and irresponsibility. Ariely approaches the topic from the perspective of a behavioral economist and cites tons of research in an entertaining way. An easy, but productive read. At the end of each chapter he suggests methods for avoiding irrationality when you sense it is creeping into your psyche!