Alain Sepeda <[email protected]> wrote: I've rethough about my simple rough analysis of Energy being 10% of all > cost in economy. >
I have talked about the potential economic effects with many experts. I conclude that it is darn near impossible to estimate the impact or likely course of development because -- 1. Much of the outcome will depend on politics and what people chose to do. In the past, we have often failed to use a technology effectively. We have let many problems fester that could easily be fixed. We fail to take advantage of technical opportunities. That is why, for example, pollution was not reduced in Japan until after the disasters at Minamata and Yokkaichi. They might have done it earlier. It would have saved lots of money and thousands of lives. But they didn't. We might not make effective use of cold fusion. Capitalism is not perfect. People are not perfect. They are often irrational and self-destructive. 2. At the level of energy, the economy and technology are so complex no expert can sort out the inputs and outputs, or the effect of change. You might estimate the impact of an improved washing machine. You might even predict the impact of an effective vaccine for AIDS. But when you get to something as big as cold fusion, the effect is too big to predict. 3. In the past, experts have often examined nascent technology and guessed wrong about what will have an impact, and to what extent. I mean real experts, not self-appointed ones. A classic example was in the late 1940s when people looked at two products from WWII: nuclear power and computers. They guessed that nuclear power would have a wide-ranging, profound, and direct effect on people's lives, whereas computers were likely to remain laboratory curiosities for a long time. They imagined isolated, giant computers, like the ones in the sci. fi. stories by Asimov. Computers seemed fragile and useless for the ordinary tasks of daily life, whereas everyone needs electricity. By 1985 it was clear that computers would be in everyone's house and car, but nuclear power is a distant and not particularly important technology. Granted, it is easier to see how cold fusion can play a direct role in daily life, by powering automobiles, home generators and the like. It is much more viable than fission nuclear power. It is cheaper, and safer. For many reasons described in my book I expect it will have a profound effect, both direct, and indirectly by reshaping other technology. But the full extent of those changes and the course of events are impossible to predict in detail, or even imagine. Quoting a top expert (myself): "I doubt that anyone now living can grasp all the ramifications of cold fusion, or imagine more than a small number of ways it will be used. We have no experience working with it, and no feel for it. Someday, product engineers who have dealt with cold fusion all their lives will take its capabilities for granted, and they will instinctively know how to apply it in ways that would never occur to us. In 1970, the most forward thinking computer engineer or futurist probably did not imagine that people in 1990 would be stuffing microscopic computers into automobile fuel injection systems, kitchen blenders, hotel guest room door locks, Jacuzzi bathtubs, cameras, “fuzzy logic” rice cookers, handheld radio-telephones (cell phones), and thousands of other machines. Computer experts were masters of arcane hardware and software, but they knew nothing about cooking rice. They thought of computers as accounting machines, or handy tools in the laboratory, not as gadgets to cook rice with. When microprocessors came along, the people who make rice cookers saw how to use them. Product engineers everywhere went to work, putting computers in new places and using them in new ways. In retrospect, most of these improvements were predictable. Any hotel manager or guest can see the advantages of computerized doors and access cards. What makes the future difficult to imagine is not any particular incremental improvement, but rather what happens when all sorts of different machines are improved simultaneously. When cold fusion power supplies become available in every size from a hearing aid battery to an aerospace engine, product designers everywhere will find novel ways to use them, and the cumulative changes will affect our lives and societies more profoundly than the microcomputer revolution did." As I said elsewhere, imagine telling a typical computer expert in 1960 that by the year 2000, a Jacuzzi bathtub would have computer control more sophisticated than a Vanguard Rocket computer. He would probably be more baffled than astounded. I imagine him asking: "Why the hell does a bathtub need a control?!? What is there to control in a bathtub??? You turn the water on; you turn it off. A sophisticated, electronic control? For what?" I would not even want to try to explain to our time-travelling engineer why some 21st century Japanese flush toilets have ultra-sophisticated computerized electronic controls, easily capable of guiding an Apollo Rocket. See: http://www.hutchinsonline.net/japan/toilets/japan%20toilet.html Regarding the overall subject of progress . . . many people fail to appreciate that it never ends. We are aware of that, but we fail to grasp the ramifications. We have the illusion that we live at the end of history. As Jefferson said, progress will continue not *infinitely*, but * indefinitely*, "to a term which no one can fix and foresee." This is not the end of the development electronically controlled Japanese toilets. They will grow ever more sophisticated in the future. Today, the manufacturers are talking about adding equipment to do on-the-fly (on-the-flush) health analyses for various diseases. In the distant future, I predict the toilets will instantly process the sewage, recycle the water, and prepare the sludge for robot collection and recycling in sealed plastic containers, eliminating the need for sewer pipes. As a rule, technology develops and changes throughout the entire time it is used. Fire is our oldest technology, but combustion engineering is a vital field. Research into fire, and improvements in combustion heat engines, space heaters and fireplaces will continue until the last fire has burned out. In the book "Collapse" J. Diamond described how stone age tools evolved and became far more sophisticated as the eons passed. Needless to say, we are still using obsidian, granite and other stone age materials and techniques. We are still getting better at it. In 5,000 years, when people look at the remains of buildings constructed from stone, I expect they will say that 24th century stone buildings are lot better than 21st century ones. Even simple things such as spoons, which have not changed much in appearance for around 200 years, have changed profoundly in ways we cannot see, in the manufacturing phase. They will soon change again, with the introduction of 3-D replicator bot machines. - Jed
