What Will It Look Like Tomorrow?

I just learned that in terms of circulation Popular Science is the fourth largest men's magazine in the U.S. It's core philosophy is that the future looks bright because of the possibilities of science and technology. Can it be?

This month's cover of Popular Science features a rocket flying through outer space with large bold letters in orange that read, AFTER EARTH. And a subtitle, The Case for Populating the Universe and How We'll Get There.

If the past century contains any lessons, it's certainly shown us what humankind is capable of in the realm of science and technology, from the elimination of once killer diseases to Dolly the cloned ewe. We can also see a century that included incomprehensible genocidal horrors and rampant militarization, always in the name of peace.

Global prosperity has been unprecedented in terms of wealth creation, and economic disparity has also been part of the package, both amongst nations and amongst individuals. Books like Aftershock by David Widemer tout dire warnings about the coming collapse of the economy and the bankrupting of America which leads one to believe those space ships headed to galaxies beyond will be populated by Asians.

So the big question about the future is not whether our farmers can feed us, but to what extent the politicians will mess with things so as to leave our global compatriots hungry or starving. Currently a lot of once productive farmland is being diverted to the production of energy. While art collectors pay millions for the next available Picasso, there are hundreds of millions around the world living in shantytowns with inadequate food, water or basic necessities.

I know that optimism is what keeps us going, but even though the future remains a foggy haze, it's easy to identify with those who see a future that is grim.

We're a complicated people,

a mixed and crazy breed.

We can always blame our parents

for we're all of Adam's see,

though in fact it changes nothing

and there's nothing guaranteed.

The future remains unwrit.

The species dreams a dream,

all the bounds unspecified;

horizons stretch from berm to beam

with hearts can-opened wide;

though nothing makes much sense to us

there's much left to decide.

The future remains unwrit.

The grand and glorious grief

of heroes' anguish, spent

unwinding numb sensation,

reflecting inelegant

the image stream of crisis

without form, impermanent.

The future remains unwrit.

No matter how you cut it

there's a strange, weird story here.

Denials, accusations,

obfuscations and veneer --

no final answers given,

all the songs sound insincere.

The future remains unwrit.

Till next....

It's Electric

I have a pet peeve and it's this. I find it annoying how some people, with a brassy personality and a measure of high-powered PR, can get a whole batch of publicity and dollars for ideas that are so full of holes they can't possibly float. No, that isn't quite the wording. It annoys me when people get publicity for very tentative things way off in the pipe dream realm while very real solutions, albeit incremental, are within our grasp.

Here's an example. Last fall the September 2008 issue of Wired magazine featured a cover story called The Future of the Electric Car, subtitled One man's audacious plan to change the way the world drives. The feature story was about an Israeli fellow named Shai Agassi whose idea is essentially an all-inclusive system of battery powered cars, re-charge systems and infrastructure that integrates computers, cars and GPS. It's a total system.

Here are a few clues to how things would work in a Better Place world.
1. Key fob tells how charged the battery is...
2. Driver unplugs and drives off...
3. During commute car locates three open parking spots to plug into during work day...
4. The car and energy control center connect and communicate...
5. While on the road, if re-charge needed, car OS locates best place for battery swap site...

Evidently it's this last item which is a central piece of Agassi's brainchild, I think. He envisions all these buildings around the country which operate like our car washes, where you drive in at one end and the equipment swaps the batteries so you can hit the road again quickly, efficiently, re-juiced.

But to be honest, I just can't picture it. First off, people hate waiting in lines. When I was growing up in New Jersey you had to go through annual vehicle inspections and if you weren't there a half hour before it opened, you could be in line for more than an hour, a line which sometimes stretched a block or more. Can you imagine having to wait in line to re-charge or swap out your battery every couple hundred miles?

The infrastructure issue alone for this system would be a nightmare. Converting enough parking meters and parking slots in cities like New York to accommodate a gazillion electric cars in need of re-charging would not be cheap or fast to implement. But this is not, as I see it, the biggest hurdle.

When I was at the New York Auto Show last year I saw a whole range of ideas for dealing with this issue, from hybrids to electric transmissions to hydrogen cells and the like. Before we see a technology become truly dominant, won't we have to see buy-in across the board to establish the infrastructure to implement it? Right now we have gas stations everywhere. There are so many gas stations that I almost never have to wait in line to fill 'er up. When we start a ramp up to one of these alternative technologies, how long will it take to put this infrastructure in place? Or more importantly, which infrastructure? Who is going to pay that kind of money to set up a system that may not become the dominant system of the future?

Video movies are a good example. VHS and Beta went head to head. Beta was better, I've been told, but VHS won out. In the automobile power game, a car wash costs about a million dollars. It takes time to recoup that investment. How much will these electric battery swapping stations cost to build or buy and own? Who is going to spend a million dollars on a technology that has a high possibility of not becoming the adopted system for tomorrow? The total rollout can be hundreds of billions... with no certainty of success either in implementation or adoption.

Well, Shai Agassi, on the force of his personal charisma alone, appears to have garnered $300 million seed money for the company he's called Better Place. But will Better Place become the better place he aims it to be? Some are already suggesting that the bloom is off the rose.

My prediction is that this guy Shai will be just another Mary Tolan.

In 2003, the mag Business 2.0 produced a laudatory article by Ralph King about a woman exec from Accenture named Mary Tolan who was pushing the notion that the U.S. could wean itself from big oil by 2015 by switching to hydrogen cell power. The article boldly stated, “Her ideas could help catalyze needed change.” (Mary Tolan’s Modest Proposal, Business 2.0, June 2003.)

Six years later, and where is Mary Tolan? Yes, she is still a connected exec with Accenture, but a zealous advocate for hydrogen cell batteries? Do your own research and you’ll see an impressive 2003 campaign that is just another blip in the history of the automobile.

This is not to suggest that I am opposed to electric cars or efforts to move toward green. If we're serious about being greener, there are certainly things we can be doing now if we wished. I just think there are too many unanswered questions with regard to going electric, straight up. How long will it take to get the power grid up to a level where it can juice all these cars? And when the power grid goes down, is it a paid vacation day or are we simply stuck?

Well, enough of that. Tomorrow's another day.

The Future Remains Unwrit

We're a complicated people,
a mixed and crazy breed.
We can always blame our parents,
for we're all of Adam's seed,
though in fact it changes nothing
and there's nothing guaranteed.
The future remains unwrit.

The species dreams a dream,
all bounds unspecified;
horizons stretch from berm to beam
with hearts can-opened wide;
though nothing makes much sense to us
there's much left to decide.
The future remains unwrit.

The grand and glorious grief
of heroes' anguish, spent
unwinding numb sensation,
reflecting inelegant
the image streams of crisis
without form, impermanent.
The future remains unwrit.

No matter how you cut it
there's a strange, weird story here.
Denials, accusations,
obfuscations, and veneer
--no final answers given,
all the songs sound insincere.
The future remains unwrit.