With climate change, I believe a lot of formerly reliable power grids will become less so in the future. Investments in distributed power generation and local storage will likely lead to a higher quality of life outcome for more people.
I heartily agree. Climate change isn't about a gentle 2 degree rise in temperatures. It is about 2 degrees over the whole damn planet being a LOT of energy and it isn't distributed evenly. This means more extreme weather events - both cold and hot - than we have been historically used to.
Electrical distribution will have to get better to keep expected reliability. Or if you are cynical about the prospects of that actually occurring, you cover your own needs.
Ford has found value “sweet spots” with the $39k electric F-150 and the $19k, 30mpg Maverick. They are both very reasonable vehicle choices that almost any household could make use of.
Interesting point of view, from my European view they seem like totally frivolous vanity items that are not only bad taste but actively destroy the planet. We're in the middle of a climate and resource crisis, and you could easily make two cars out of one F150 raw material (except maybe for the battery). They weight a lot which damages the road more, they are also very dangerous for pedestrians.
Why isn't everyone looking forward a more reasonable future with cars sized after one's real needs, not damaging aspirations? I know the car industry wants cars big, but consumers should activate a little bit their brains too and think a bit about the bigger picture.
My university had a strict anti-cheating policy in the CS program. It was written very broadly. As a disadvantaged student, first in my family to attend college, I needed to graduate more than anything else in the world. The policy forbade discussing assignments or solutions with other students. The end result is I was terrified of socializing with any other CS students. I wonder how much I missed out on due to sheer terror and high stakes.
At the time I thought they were mean and strict. And I thought they were forcing us to do too much work. But now I realize these were really great teachers and being pushed is exactly what I needed at that time.
The standards have to change, and they may be “less” by some measures, but many people can still have a wonderful existence. Maybe you have to eat more vegetables and less cheeseburgers. Maybe you can’t drive your Suburban seven days a week to Starbucks. Maybe life will slow down and people will enjoy a higher quality of life with family and friends.
Maybe we upload our consciousness to computers and live in a simulated world that takes far less energy than our current one and is heaven for everybody. But I think the bigger question is less for whom? Right now it seems like it'll disproportionately affect the poor in the developing world who are least able to transition and whose populations are least responsible for climate impacts from historical growth. I wouldn't mind personally driving less (actually, haven't owned a car in a decade and walk most places), but I think in the end the people who will be punished are the poor who will have higher AC prices during summers, gas prices to go to work, etc.
I definitely think the commercial application of wing-in-ground / wing-in-sea is the most interesting. Plowing through water takes a ton of energy. Reducing the energy input it takes to stay in the air sounds wonderful.
The thing I like about ground-effect over-sea vehicles is that, unlike hydrofoils, they're not majorly reliant on very fast blades chopping through whatever comes across their path in the topmost layer of the ocean, where life tends to dwell.
As a species, we really need to start considering our maritime-based cousins a bit better. The last few decades have been hellish for them, noise and all.
It depends on your requirements. This is the description from the Nemesis, a cost-is-no-concern ultra-yatch:
> The NEMESIS ONE will be the World’s Fastest Luxury Foiling Sailing Yacht, able to break the 50 knots speed barrier, while flying on computer controlled hydrofoils. [1]
So a breakthrough fantasy hydrofoil is trying to reach 50 knots. I suspect that, looking at significant figures & complexity of build, for anyone wanting to be able to get to 75 knots (88 mph) there'd be nearly no one justifying hydrofoils. Even at a reduced speed like 45 knots, I suspect the control problems & additional drag of running a foil start to be pretty unruly & inefficient, and that wing-in-ground very quickly gains appeal for simplicity & efficiency both.
Once we start thinking about wing-in-ground, with denser air, it makes even more sense to start looking at ideas we explored earlier in aviation, like lifting bodies, where we can reap yet more efficiency.
The best counter-example to myself I can come up with is the VT Halter Marine Mk Mod 2 High Speed Assault Craft[2], specs unknown. But I tend to think of hydrofoils as more like the 180t Sea Slice[3], powered by two 3840 hp diesel engines, capable of 30 knots. My eyes & intuition all tells me flying is more effective at speed, and that we have a lot of efficiency we could be gaining from wing-in-ground/sea.
Involved in the industry since 1980, I am intrigued looking back how we just reinvent the same things but with different distractions - I'm thinking of things like the "natural language" program Savvy from Excalibur Technologies running on an Apple II with a CPM card back in 1982 (which I cannot even find referenced online), then the whole computer world got thoroughly distracted with the graphical user interface for a few decades (macOS, Windows) but with applications that hardly even matched the capability of Savvy. Savvy and programs with that level of functionality simply disappeared. Then the world got distracted with smart phones (iOS, Android), with apps really nothing more than portals through to large datacenter applications still with capabilities that hardly matched the capability of Savvy. I guess in a few decades we'll be distracted with Ray Kurzweil-esque red blood cell sized computers swimming in our blood (still with capabilities that will hardly match the capabilities of Savvy). It's as if humans really do not want functionality and capability as much as we want accessibility?
Pipes (the tobacco kind, not the Unix kind) used to be a lot more popular back then.
Edit: Dr. Dobb's review at https://archive.org/details/1985-03-dr-dobbs-journal/page/11... . Says SAVVY PC was written in MMS Forth "this despite John Dvorak's statment in his InfoWorld column, "Inside Track," that no decent program was ever written in Forth". :)
I was co-owner of an Apple dealership in Wellington, New Zealand. We used and sold Savvy, which was touted as a "natural language processor" - seemed to be a database with a natural language query system that was dumb as could be to begin with but rapidly gained in intelligence the more it was used. After the Mac was released the spotlight went off Savvy and a lot of my old customers told me their product was purchased back (recalled?) by Excaliber. There are references here that it may have ended up at Sandia Labs. Did it become a national security item? Does that happen?
Yes and no. Big wins include the fact that smoking isn't everywhere the way it used to be, gay marriage and rights, more freedom for women, and generally lower costs for essential - albeit with some serious downsides for those involved in making and distributing them.
Losses include much less economic headroom for everyone who isn't upper middle class or higher, with a fair percentage of the population falling out at the low end, much more homelessness, and a cutthroat nickel and dime everything neoliberal culture in business. So while computers and cars are cheaper, health care and college expenses are much higher.
There was still some lingering benign paternalism in business in the 80s and especially the 70s, but that's much rarer now.
And serious stressors like climate catastrophe are much more imminent.
> So while computers and cars are cheaper, health care and college expenses are much higher.
Technology, transportation, and food are cheaper.
Unfortunately major essentials such as housing, health care, and education are drastically more expensive.
Outside of cartels and rent-seekers, I can't imagine people saying "you know, we really need to make housing, health care, and education unaffordable for more people."
It's particularly disappointing that technology doesn't seem to have reduced the cost of health care or education - the cartels seem to have won by restricting supply and exploiting indirect payment systems.
That’s a good summary. One nit: are cars really cheaper now? I don’t get that impression. They are definitely more reliable, though, and last much longer.
all i see is diminishing returns, marketing and fantasies.
4MB used to make people believe they'd do everything for life, accounting, programming, graphics whatever. It was infinite joy with only 320x200 points.
Now you sell a 4k capable pocket datacenter running on 5W and people are barely satisfied for a year.
Imagine never having sweets in your life, then the first time you having a peppermint your life would be changed.
Now imagine a long life where you had all the sweets you could ever eat available all the time. Your attitude to them is going to be far different.
In addition, back in the 90s computers were going to attract 'computer people' and the rest would ignore them. Now they are just a fact of life, even for the disinterested.
TBF the pocket datacenter does way more than a vintage does though. However I do agree there is an inflation of customer expectation since the 90s.
Just imagine: assuming tech evolves a lot slower. What would happen? People would still be OK, games would still be fun, business would carry on regardless.
Hell yes! Back then here in the USA we had only 2 sexes, 3 TV networks, and all libraries had were these printed website things they called “books”.
Nowadays we have 57 sexes, 570 TV networks, and libraries in the city have evolved to their true purpose of sheltering the unhoused. And soon we won’t be burdened by our privacy belongings!
Eventually we will reach a Nash equilibrium [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium