George Rebane

– Advanced, cheaper solar panels rival fossil-fuel electricity;
– Human made crises coming faster than we can deal with them;
– Orwellian public monitoring system developed by EU;
– Nanotube springs as energy storage devices may replace batteries;
– New omni-flu vaccine, ‘one dab’ll do ya’.
– The future of human enhancement from Nick Bostrom

New breakthroughs in solar panels promise to start providing electricity at costs competing with fossil fuel powered generators (here).  The advent of such unexpected technological developments in all fields is the prime reason why we should never allow government to become the gatekeeper to innovation in any field.  Today we have governments that more than ever seek to lay their cold, dead hands on human creativity.

In the meantime, there are people who point out that worldwide man-made crises are multiplying faster than our ability to deal with them.  Here is a report on how some scientists are calling for greater global control of everything we do so that life on earth can achieve some grand social engineering goals held by certain people.  My concern is that these scientists may be the intellectual descendants of the ones that had similar aims in the 1920s and 30s.  They seem to have skipped the technical courses teaching that central control of complex systems doesn’t work very well.

Along the same vein, EU governments are sponsoring development of public monitoring systems that can detect suspicious behavior of individuals walking in a crowded mall or sidewalk (here)  All of this is done in the name of public safety, but it doesn’t take a genius to see the Orwellian applications of the same technology by an autocracy.  I go a step further and maintain that such monitoring and control technologies will actually foment and enable the rise of autocracies.  Most certainly their application within existing autocracies/tyrannies will make those kinds of regimes more ‘stable’.

On a more cheerful note, it seems that we may soon be using ‘batteries’ based on compressed springs.  One of the slew of under-reported developments from the field of nano-technology is the ways that carbon nanotubes can be used.  These sub-microscopic tubular structures of carbon atoms will now be made into very tiny springs that can be compressed to store energy at densities rivaling/exceeding  state-of-the-art lithium ion batteries. And as a set of compressed springs, these new ‘batteries’ will have many advantages over the batteries that generate electricity through chemical reactions.  We may soon have several of these energy chips implanted in our bodies to power all kinds of performance enhancing gizmos.

A new type of flu vaccine is being developed that is designed to protect us from all types of flu.  This vaccine, announced by Inovio (here), works on a different principle than the designer vaccines we must custom produce each year to nail the flu-du-jour which this year includes the notorious H1N1 swine flu.  One has to keep in mind, that the people behind Inovio expect to get filthy rich if they can pull this off.  They will deserve it because of the millions of lives and dollars that this vaccine will save.  However, we now have a government that seeks to put an end to such risky innovation which gives rise to ‘unconscionable’ income inequalities.  Nevertheless, this radical rightwing extremist’s conscience is quite tranquil as I contemplate the arrival of such benefices to us all.

And speaking of human enhancement, Nick Bostrom is a leading researcher and writer in the field whose work has been previously reported here.  (please visit his homepage, it’ll put a dent in what you had planned to do today)  I recommend taking a look at this short read to catch up on the latest Machine-Augmented-Man technologies, some of which will be available soon through your health maintenance provider – provided, of course, that it’s not Obamacare.

[23sep09 update] Justin Rattner is the Chief Technical Officer of Intel, the world’s largest chip maker.  He recently offered some insights on human enhancement and the Singularity here.  I continue amazed at how little interest the MSM shows in these developments that already tremble our world.  They really don’t know what’s going on.

(You may also want to think about all this pre-Singularity stuff in light of the notions I advanced in this piece on the future of the American workforce.)