Jeff Berkowitz <pdx...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yet at the same time, we have an example: the terminology change from NMR > to MRI. It was significant from perspective of consumer acceptance, and > therefore it was economically significant. If we believe LENR will be > incorporated in consumer products, then words probably do matter. > I agree! That is a different story. That has no bearing on how the thing will be regulated. Actually, I predict that cold fusion will be so pervasive there will eventually be extensive laws and new regulatory agencies to deal with it. It will resemble the Internet in that respect. In 1985 there were no Internet regulations or laws. Now there are thousands, covering things like spamming, file sharing, free speech and so on. There are laws nowadays which would have been meaningless in 1980. The very words they are written in did not exist. I mean words such as "ISP," "spam" or "net neutrality." Many older agencies will wither away, and older laws will become a dead letter. Laws mandating fuel efficiency and reducing pollution will remain on the books, but no one will bother about them. The DoE may shrink to a small agency mainly concerned with mothballing nuclear power reactors. It is myth that government never grows smaller, or abandons obsolete functions. There are probably still laws on the books governing the use of horses in city traffic. But I doubt there are any full-time government employees enforcing such laws, except maybe in New York City where there are still many horse-drawn carriages for the tourist trade. It makes you wonder . . . There are seldom clear transitions in history, or even in technology. The very last Western Union telegraph was delivered not long ago. In 2006! Probably around 1920 the last barrel of whale oil was sold. Sometime in the 1930s, the last square-rigged freighter departed the port of New York. The LORAN navigation system was shut down in 2010. I wonder if laws governing telegraph delivery, whale oil, and navigation by sail are still on the books? - Jed
