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I just saw on TV (TLC I think) that Denmark was building wind generators offshore...

Here is my idea, we build a powerplant (hopefully wind/solar but nuclear is ok too) and hook the generator up to a hydrogen refinery (a la iceland)... that way the power can be stored (ok not perfect efficiency but still pretty good)...

I think we should do what makes the most sense. For instance, if we're burning fuel to make heat and we need electricity too, we should look at heat engines to convert a little heat to power along the way. It probably makes more sense to create storable fuels via chemical or biological processes (like crop wastes or the hydrogen from algae trick) instead of converting solar or nuclear electricity into hydrogen. Then there are the no-brainers, like compact fluorescent bulbs, hybrid vehicles, insulation and daylighting. None of this is rocket science, it's just attention to detail.

These miniature fuel cells would be a great source of hydrogen. That might let them avoid some of the difficulties of storing liquid hydrogen in the car. Also, an alcohol-powered fuel cell would allow for a cheap and easy fuel distribution system....just use the methods we use now to transport alcohol.

Bruce Sterling has been doing more writing on the California energy crisis, on his Viridian Design mailing list. You can read the Viridian Manifesto here, and read the list archives here (although the archive is lagging a bit behind the mailing list at the moment).

Bruce Sterling recently included this in his Viridian mailing list http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/. Viridian is a great read, although I the archives seem to be lagging a bit behind the mailing list at the moment.

You could start by reading the viridian manifesto outlined with gobs of beautiful green.

Bruce Sterling recently included this in his Viridian mailing list http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/. Viridian is a great read, although I the archives seem to be lagging a bit behind the mailing list at the moment.

You could start by reading the viridian manifesto outlined with gobs of beautiful green.

There are two sources are, the story in a 99 Forbes article based on this report

These figures have been disputed here , with much lower estimates

electric cars may avoid the gasoline problem up front, but they still need to get electricity from *somewhere*

That's what the regenerative braking is all about. Instead of getting your electricity from the power plant, you're generating it yourself.

Also, for a good look at one of these from the eyes of a non-technical consumer, you might want to check out this article from the Viridian mailing archives. It shows that the very design of the car not only promotes fuel efficiency mechanically, but also promotes the user to be more fuel efficient.

However, politically... those of us who actually work in the industry rather than own it (realizing that some folks do both), have very little influence. Politically, we are all over the map with a general spirit of libertarian ethics with a distrust of the megacorporation ingrained into our psyche by personal expierence and cyberpunk literature we have been gobbling for the last two decades.

And, if we formed our own party in the single member-district system of the U.S (sorry, I know the rest of the world is more democratic with parlimentary systems) such would be a third party which would never gain any influence outside of local elections in California and the Pacific North West. We also, as workers, don't have the money to buy...er...lobby politicans. Easy example... if you and AOL/Time-Warner lobby congress about MP3s, who do you think is going to win?

No, fellow workers... we get paid so much because we have power. Power, untapped and unrealized. Middle-management was gutted through downsizing and our network connections have given rise to more "just-in-time" capitalism. Our skills , if you believe the Software Labor Shortage Myth are in such short supply that we can not train and import workers fast enough. Imagine if we can collectively come to agreements in which we decide what things we will work for and will not. Not only can we have influence over technology, but a host of other things that need geeks to be accomplished.

Our power is in action, not the ballot box. We can vote with our feet. We can strike (here is the source. We can slack and slow down. We can sick-in. We can boycott. We can Direct Action. We can be as Electornically Civilly Disobedient, and we can be... it works like we did with Low Power FM through an organized political campaign of radio piracy, we were able to sieze part of the spectrum from corporate monoplization for community interests. We can break mass media blackouts of information, by making our own media, like we did in Seattle, and like we'll do again in DC.

Are you tired of 60-hour work weeks? Of corporations making deals with politicans to undermine over-time pay and encourage permatemping? We don't have to be slaves.

Are you tired of technology developing that penalizes both the worker and the consumer, to the benfit of a handful of the rich and power... anybody remember the Java Class War? Where was our class in that? Complaining about how the standards needed to be independent of propietary control, and largely doing nothing about it! We need to take control of training and make it clear that it is those of us work in the industry that can figure out who knows what, rather than some profiteering third party or a way for leading software companies to gouge folks for certification!

We need non-profit employment services (or hiring halls) so we can dump our contracting companies (ie. pimps, job sharks, etc... ) once and for all.

We need to organize, and organize in a way that maintains our autonomy and democratic values. We don't need any union bosses, telling us what we can and can't do... but we do need to be in solidarity with our fellow workers so we can support each other in struggle. Who among you wouldn't strike to help the workers in hardware manufacture to get a better shake? Some more pay, a safer environment, etc... Who among you wouldn't refuse to work, if you knew by refusing for a short time you could bring in ecological sound practices. We can bring on the Viridian revolution, but innovation won't be enough... we have to force the issue and force companies to clean up their mess.

We have to become responsible, or we have noone to blame for how bad work is but ourselves.

Solid,

Flint

Baltimore IWW Telecommunications and Computer Workers IU560

(San Francisco, Toronto)

Also check out: Syndicat de l'Industrie Informatique, Washington Technical Workers Alliance, FACE Intel, Alliance@IBM, BITE Division of NWU (Business - Instructional - Techincal - Electronic).

We Can Win! No Nerds, No Birds!

Ooh, look at those flames go. Brief intro to point out biases: I'm Hugh Hancock, the CEO of Strange Company mentioned above (although I should point out that we're far from the only motivators of Machinima- other groups like the Ill Clan have been instrumental in its growth). I'm also, I think, even more extreme in my views on IPR and its upcoming demise than Jon.

Yes, Intellctual Property Rights as we know them, or indeed at all, are doomed. Count on it. Why? Because they're not "rights" at all. They're abberations forced upon us by the primitive nature of the distribution media we've had, up to now, available to us.

I think that a key point of Bruce Sterling's brilliant Viridian Manifesto is apposite here: ideology doesn't transcend technology. Technology transcends ideology. And technology, in this case digital distribution, is forcing a change in thinking, back from a top-down distribution model, where a few companies crank out CDs for the masses to a, well, distributed version.

Distribution is only the first stage. The thing that's really going to do horrible things to the whole concept of owning either and idea or an expression (thanks to the poster who pointed out the difference) is the freedom to not only copy, but copy, alter and release your own version of a song, a film, a TV series- whatever. It's not the freedom to distribute an unaltered version that counts- it's the freedom to find something you like, take bits out of it, change it, combine it with something else and then release it.

That's where Machinima comes in, of course. In the next year, there will be the technology to allow Star Trek fans to create their own episodes of Voyager or Deep Space Nine. There will be the capability for fans of the Heavy Metal series of comics and films to go and create their own movies in that universe. There will be the potential to take any fictional universe, any story, and extend it, re-tell it or alter it, and then distribute it, in a way that's almost impossible to stop until it's too late. (For the curious, there's an article covering this concept in more detail over at http://www.machinima.com)

At the same time, we should look at other ways in which the concept of "plagiarism" is being destroyed: with fan-fiction, distributed over the Web. With "re-mixes" and "covers", now an accepted part of modern music, where an artist takes an existing track, changes it or re-records it to suit himself, and re-releases it. Hell, even with sophisticated photo-manipulation software: are you sure you haven't seen a similar picture somewhere else before?

So, does that mean that we're entering a new age? No. It means that the abberation of the last 400 years or so, and most pervasively the last 80 years or so- the concept of "intellectual property"- is about to come to an end.

Intellectual Property as a concept grew up with the spread of books as a means of recording information, but it became important with the creation of the printing press: a device that allowed mass reproduction of identical copies of a work. However, the important thing to note here is that IP is tied very closely with the notion that reproduction and distribution of a work, whether it be the printed word, music, a picture or a film, is difficult, and that distribution of the same is even more difficult. In every industry where there is a major fight currently underway to prevent "piracy", there is the situation where the monopoly big players had- the monopoly of distribution- is suddenly being undermined, as the ability to distribute freely is given to every player in the market.

The last time that was the case ended around 200 years ago, with the printing press and common literacy started to spell the end of the oral tradition of storytelling.

In many ways, the oral tradition mirrors the current situation on the Internet very closely. There was no ownership of an idea- a particularly famous storyteller may have been credited with the creation of a story, but that didn't mean he had the right to decide what happened to it, any more than nowadays Linus Torvalds has the right to decide what you, gentle reader, do with his source code to Linux. There were no "royalties", and by the very nature of the distribution medium- the human tongue- it was kinda hard to stop people changing a story to what they thought was an "improved" version.

Many people have conceptualised the Internet as a "group mind". It might be better to think of it as a "group campfire": a place where we can trade tales and ideas with, rather than just the people of our village, the people of (oh, horrible buzzword) the global village. And in that situation, the concept of preventing people from distributing the latest film or the latest CD becomes as idiotic as George Lucas trying to prevent someone from recounting the story of Star Wars in a bar to his friends.

It's fun to go nuts over these reports, and dream of a care-free life, but please, let's think about the overall thermodynamics of the situation.

What's really going on here?

What's going on here is that someone has found a way to use a natural (harmless to the environment, because already part of it) self-reproducing (cheap) organism to provide large amounts of chemical energy in a very useful form using what appears to be inexpensive methods. This is a huge advance because the expense of collection is radically lowered.

Is it realistic to expect this source of solar energy to compete with solar panels, which provide direct electric current, and which do not suffer from the inate energetic inefficiencies (I'm talking metabolic pathways here, not current efficiency levels) of biological processes?

For further reading see:
Burning Backwards (New Scientist), an article about converting CO2 back to methanol enzymatically (powered by hydrogen to convert NAD back to NADH), and
Viridian Note 129, regarding methanol fuel cells.
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Here's the link from the Viridian Mailing List Archive. Note the date on the article: December 30, 1998. Yup, over a year old. (Why's Slashdot so slow on some of these things?)
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Thinking about Bruce Sterling's recent Viridian Manifesto, it seems that we really need something new regarding intellectual property rights for the networked age. Surely the success of the open source movement in software could extend to any area of intellectual property - why not the design of hardware and processes too? Maybe we can start with Lego Mindstorm design :-) But I think it's time for a new model - something which rewards creators yes, but also which does NOT keep things secret or proprietary in such a way that the use of new creations is in any way limited. I don't know how to do this yet, but I think there's a glimmering of a more general idea in there. Lets replace patents with something better!

The print.asp page now includes the remark

Cynical slashdotters note:
Go here for 100+ articles of background on the Viridian Movement
before you get all judgemental and cranky.

On said index page is the remark

people unwise enough to use "Microsoft Outlook" cannot read the entire "Manifesto of January 3, 2000." That's because one line of the text happens to begin with the word "begin," followed by two spaces. When Microsoft Outlook sees this, it interprets everything that follows as an attachment. ... Here is a slightly reformatted version of the manifesto, deprived of that one extra space that utterly baffled the best efforts of the world's most profitable monopoly. Microsoft users, its still January 3, 2000 where I sit. Youre only a little bit behind the curve.

This from a site that is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98.

You can start here. The manifesto doesn't make a whole lot of sense without the context (perhaps that makes it less of a manifesto?) - but I think what Sterling is trying to do is a kind of unification of the arts with technology. When he says there is no modern "intelligentsia" what he means is that today's influential writers and thinkers have, for the most part, not embraced science and technology. And on the other hand we techno-geeks have, for the most part, failed to learn those rhetorical, literary, and general social skills requisite for thoughtful leadership. And yet what we are doing, in creating software or new hardware "gizmos", is highly creative and close in spirit to what "artists" see as their responsibility.

Our society has some serious problems. The greenhouse effect is perhaps the one with the worst long-term possible consequences (think Venus). Technology alone can't solve the problems but it provides us with the routes the world needs to follow, IF we can persuade the rest of the world to follow along. Logical argument doesn't usually help. Economic argument may - but you have to have a sizeable market before fuel cells or what have you can be made affordable: the usual chicken and egg problem. To get over that hump you need something else - emotional power, style: we as technology experts need to work closely with people who are people experts if we expect any of our great ideas to really solve problems. That's what (I think) Sterling is getting at.

There's one final thing art movements don't have. Lucky Feature Fourteen. They don't have a beta pre-release. That's why I have one. Real zealots ship, you see? Our first pilot project, our first official rollout, is a Viridian Manifesto for January 3, 2000.

Freedom has to be won, and, more importantly, the consequences of freedom have to be lived.

Ivory towers are no longer in order. We need ivory networks.

No. Protect extend and rebuild the environment at the same time as raising all of humanity to a standard of living better than what we enjoy currently in America. This is using today's technology and free market mechanisms, not this authoritarian "Third Way".

Life is a gamble, get used to it. You HAVE to do something in life, might as well make it worthwhile, right? Think of what you are saying, basically, that the Third World, and poorer people in the developed world, should be kept down for the benefit of the international ruling caste? The "Third Way" leaders (Clinton, Blair, Schroedinger, etc) are not interested in any "common" people, they are only interested in their helping the corporations that have granted favors to them, and to the special interests and other lobbies that dictate policy to them. If you aren't "special", or Fortune 500, they consider you nothing more than a source of money and consumption.

On your fear of environmental degradation, in the US, it's alot better than people realize. Also, do a search on "bruce sterling viridian" on your favorite search engine. Here's a good Viridian starter:

http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/

Man, do I have indigestion from this...

J05H

No. Protect extend and rebuild the environment at the same time as raising all of humanity to a standard of living better than what we enjoy currently in America. This is using today's technology and free market mechanisms, not this authoritarian "Third Way".
Life is a gamble, get used to it. You HAVE to do something in life, might as well make it worthwhile, right? Think of what you are saying, basically, that the Third World, and poorer people in the developed world, should be kept down for the benefit of the international ruling caste? The "Third Way" leaders (Clinton, Blair, Schroedinger, etc) are not interested in any "common" people, they are only interested in their helping the corporations that have granted favors to them, and to the special interests and other lobbies that dictate policy to them. If you aren't "special", or Fortune 500, they consider you nothing more than a source of money and consumption.
On your fear of environmental degradation, in the US, it's alot better than people realize. Also, do a search on "bruce sterling viridian" on your favorite search engine. Here's a good Viridian starter:
http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/
Man, do I have indigestion from this...
J05H

I think the whole point of the Viridian movement is to hack the "culture industry." The idea being that what most people would consider "real art" has been relegated to the province of a rich, intellectually elite minority. What "real art" passed for in previous historical periods is now what we generally refer to as "popular culture" and is increasingly dominated by the huge corporate culture conglomerates, i.e. Sony, Time-Warner, CNN, yadda, yadda.
The key is that the culture industry does not have any native artistic sensibilities. They merely pile onto, absorb and regurgitate the zeitgiest. So, if one can introduce into the zeitgeist a "viridian" chic (see Viridian Note 001 and the The Viridian Manifesto as to what are the criteria of being viridian) that makes it incredibly desireable to reject carbon-consumer culture then one should be able to effect a change in attitude among the general public.
You need to check out those two links as they really flesh out the Viridian Pope-Emperor's (a.k.a Bruce's) ideas regarding viridianism.
Connor Anderson (who forgot his /. login)

You can also gossip about Viridian on the unofficial and unmoderated Viridian-d

Bruce, so far I've been _very_ impressed with Viridian, both as a concept, as a social experiment, and as a peice of social engineering.

I'd like to ask you four questions:

0> Is this more fun than writing science fiction? Why?

1> In your opinion, has Viridian so far been a success?

2> How many people does it take before Viridian becomes a household word?

3> Apart from buying green power, what can an individual nerd with viridian leanings _do_?

PS: I'm vinay(at)neuron.net, posting as an AC.

Here are some links I was looking for when I wrote the above:

• A web comic called " The Guy I Almost Was". Great comic, someone mentioned it in the comments a while back. Gets into the cyberpunk-fakeness bit
• The Viridians (sorry about the spelling before). Bruce Sterling's promotion of green-as-sexy