Read the second link for all the tech-details. These things are pretty amazing: durable, cheap, crypto-secure, and can be mounted on a key fob, ring, watch, or other personal item...whatever thing it is that you, personally, have spent your whole life learning not to lose.
When I started learning about everything they can do, I was amazed that they weren't more widely known (although there are more than 85,000,000 of them in use around the world.) Slashdotters looking for new toys to tinker with and code for would do well to look at this platform. It's ripe with options, capabilities, and possibilities.
I realize that mamy people don't study history (even the relatively short history of computers), so we're doomed to repeat it. And while this idea is cute (and good!), it's hardly new. Sun Microsystems had "PizzaTool" built into OpenWindows as far back as ~1990-1991, and while it's hardly fashionable to mention here, SCO (yes, them...back before the Suits & Lawyers took over and they became "Un-Cool") had the first web-based pizza ordering tool, in 1993-1994. It was called "PizzaNet" and ordered from Pizza Hut. Domino's wasn't online yet. In fact, neither was Pizza Hut!:-)
PizzaTool used a GUI to let you select your toppings, crust, etc., and even provided a cute little graphical rendition of your pizza which you could "spin" to get all the various pixels to blend together and simulate the melted cheese, etc. I think it was written using their "NeWS" system. It ordered by FAX and went to Tony & Alba's Pizza, which has been a consistent favorite in the SF Bay Area for at least 15 years or so. It even had a cool warning that popped up when you hit the "order" button that said (roughly) "WARNING! This is about to send a *real* FAX to a *real* pizza parlor, who will deliver a *real* pizza and ask you for *real* money! Are you sure you want to continue?"
Since my friends and I were in school in Buffalo, NY at the time, we were pretty sure they wouldn't deliver to us, but it definitely gave us an early glimpse into the importance of pizza in the workplace in early Silicon Valley culture, not to mention introducing me to the existence of Tony & Alba's! (When I moved here a couple years later, I made a pilgrimage and they've been a favorite ever since.) This only worked in Mountain View, CA, at the time, but that's where Sun was concentrated then. (Still is.) Tony & Alba's has 7 shops around the Bay Area, now, and their own website - http://www.tonyalba.com/
PizzaNet used a web-to-FAX system that would submit the order using the existing Pizza Hut FAX ordering system, and your pie would arrive in about 1/2 hour. I used it once around May/June of 1994 and it worked wonderfully. This one only worked around Santa Cruz, CA, but again, that's where SCO was concentrated, then. It was written by my friend, Steph, who had been the IS Director at SCO for years at that point, and knew that Engineers were mainly fueled by pizza and caffeine (still are!) so he made sure pizza was easily available at the touch of a few keys. (There were free soda fountains in all SCO buildings.) This SCO "easy pizza" policy, like the Corporate Hot Tub, also went away as the "Age of the Suits" began to take over in the mid-late 1990's.
The neat thing about both systems, aside from providing a really geeky way to get pizza (which obviously still amuses us to this day, given this article's appearance on/. ), was that they both interfaced with the existing FAX-based systems the pizza parlors had in place, and didn't bother any of the pizza makers/delivery folks with any new interfaces or computer details, allowing them to focus on what they did best, and allowing us to get pizza easily. (Remember that both of these were many years before most people/businesses had even *heard* of the Internet, and in the case of PizzaTool, before the WWW even existed! When did *you* first hear of them?)
There are lots of good ideas floating around. Especially in computers and software. However, there are far fewer that are actually original or new ideas. Dig into the history a bit. It's fun, and you'll likely be surprised. You may also save yourself a whole lot of coding-time.:-)
We've been talking about methanol fuel cells off and on for almost 2.5 years on a mailing list I run devoted to the topic. Web archives are here and subscription info is here. We also cover other types of fuel cells, and various news about the technologies and industry.
Probably because each one does a tiny bit of a computation. How many transistors are there in a modern chip? Uh-huh. Now you get the idea.
When you're dealing at the atomic scale, just flipping a lever or doing something mechanical takes the place of all those little electrons flowing through logic gates.
Given the level of our technology, I suspect that these little DNA "computers" are a lot more like a transistor than they are like a Pentium IV.
To get your head around things at this scale, go to http://www.foresight.org/ They've got several excellent nanotech books there that you can download electronically for no charge. Well worth it.
I've got my threading set to drop all the 'anonymous coward' posts, and yet *still* I see 80%-90% of the replies to this story being nothing but crude jokes about melting rooms, arson, and the Three Little Pigs.
You guys call yourself forward thinking? Sure, if it was something about TiVo, or the latest Quake knockoff, I'm sure you'd be all over it, but try to stretch your minds a little.
Yes, it's cardboard. And as I seem to have to point out to every single person who makes a rudimentary crack about cardboard melting when it gets wet: Milk cartons are made out of cardboard. They hold liquid for weeks at a time! This is not rocket science, people. It's design science.
I have been looking at cardboard as a building material since about 1990. It works. It's cheap. It can be made to withstand many of the stresses of the environment. (My design professor, Harold Cohen, built untreated cardboard domes in the 1960's that sat out for a year in the rain and snow of Southern Illinois. They didn't melt. They worked just fine.)
I've worked with friends to design low-cost emergency shelters for disaster relief and the homeless. And just like all of you, most of them couldn't get past the idea of cardboard melting. So I went with a corrugated plastic material, made just like cardboard, but made from milk-bottle HDPE type-2 plastic. Totally recyclable, and totally waterproof. (Once again, designed to hold milk for weeks, just like the cardboard cartons.:-) ) You can find images of the dome-building
party we held at my house in 1998 here
and can see some of the results. This dome was about 12' in diameter and 5' high at the center. It was a 1/2 to 1/3 scale model of what we'd deploy to disaster victims or the homeless. The total cost of materials was about US $50.
Standard building materials for housing cost about US $110 per square foot of area covered. This corrugated plastic drops the price down to US $0.50-$1.00 per square foot covered. If you use cardboard, that price falls another order of magnitude to about US $0.05-$0.10 per square foot covered. So you see, it's not just eco-friendly, and it's not just recyclable. It's also up to 1100 times cheaper than doing it the old-fashioned way. So even if it did wear out after 3 months, as one pundit wrote in these comments, you could keep replacing the building for about 400 years for the same cost. Which is far more than a standard school will last.
>>I, a taxpayer, should be allowed to exert unilateral control over which public programs are candidates to receive my portion of the tax pie. If I'm an ignorant baboon and I demand that none of my money be used to view bomb making instructions, then I should be allowed to do that. And if I demand that none of my money should go to pro-DMCA biased studies, then I should be able to do that as well.
>>Of course, implementing such a system would be a bookkeeping nightmare. So then we get the all or nothing solution that is so popular in the US' version of a democracy: if enough people raise a stink about something, then no one's tax money is spent to do that thing.
This is why I'm in favor of what I call "Line Item Taxation". You can find (and contribute to) a discussion about it here.
According to some research I did for a paper, there are actually about 13,000 cubic kilometers of water resident in the air at any period in time. Details and numbers are here.
This comes out to about 1/10th the total of all freshwater lakes on the planet, or 13 times as much as all the freshwater streams and rivers of earth.
The nice thing about pulling out of the atmosphere, is that it's a great automatic distribution system. There's water vapor blowing over most of the planet, most of the time. No need to truck it in or dam up reservoirs when it can be drawn from the air where it's needed.
One other person was asking about environmental impact. If you look at the diagram at the above URL, you'll see a great graphic of the hydrological cycle. There's so much water in constant motion on the planet, that any we took out of one place is being replaced someplace else. And since it's in gaseous form, when you draw it out in one place, you're creating a 'relatively dry' airspace for more water vapor to flow in towards you. Also, given the numbers in that graphic, you'll see that we couldn't really even begin to dent the amount of water in the atmosphere. Most of it falls directly back into the oceans, so there's plenty we could get from nature's own desalination process.
I also run a mailing list devoted to discussion of water topics like these. You can find info about it (and lots of other neat stuff) at the Reality Sculptors website.
I wrote a paper about atmospheric condensing about 2 years ago. You can review it here. I built a prototype condenser that was pulling between 1 cup and 1 quart of water per hour out of thin air. I'm getting ready to work on a larger prototype, soon.
Also, I run a mailing list called "clean-water", where we discuss things like fog collection, condensing, filtration and other ways to address water shortages around the world. All interested parties are welcome to join.
I've been working with folks in the Reality Sculptors Project for a few years to hash out the details and designs for a fully autonomous, portable and self-contained house that will work anywhere on the planet. Obviously, it's going to need some wireless networking capabilities, and I'd like to have it use Bluetooth to communicate with various automagic thingies around the house, such as doors, sound system, security, communications systems, automatic greenhouses, etc. (Not necessarily the toilet.:-) )
We've got a bunch of mailing lists, and can start a bunch more for specific projects such as code development, etc. If you're interested in helping us hash out an opensource OS or are just interested in finding out more about these projects, please join us.
I've actually been thinking of this for several years, as I think it's important that every employee "know thy product". I agree that all companies should provide their employees with the product they make, so everyone can use and be familiar with it.
Whenever I manage to get my company started, officially, I plan to do the same, but do it with the autonomous, self-contained houses we plan to build.:-)
You can find info about those houses at the above URL.
As a former Sr. System and Network Admin for ClariNet ( http://www.clari.net/ ) for almost 2 years, I've been exposed to an awful lot of of both the "traditional" press world (where we got all our various newsfeeds) and the digerati that we sent the news stories out to. As a long-time customer of ClariNet before that (I've read their stuff since they came online in 1989) I've been following the transition of traditional news sources into the infosphere since long before most people even knew there was an Internet. Certainly long before the web existed.
One of the things I find limiting about the current print papers is something that's even more prevalent in the online versions - lack of depth. I know earlier comments have pointed to newspapers as bastions of well-thought-out, detailed analyses of events and issues, but the truth of the matter is that these people are on timelines, and trying to beat each other to the scoop. Newspaper stories, just like digital postings to Web and USENET are slanted, incomplete, and scoped to different levels of detail.
The thing that was nice at ClariNet was that we shipped about 3700 stories per day, and these went out to about 2 million people around the world. It was way too much to possibly keep up with, but when you wanted to know about some specific thing, you had multiple views of the event, based on different reporters, working for different wire services (Reuters, AP, UPI, etc.) and they would have different takes on things, as well as point out different details that might have been omitted by others. In this way, it was very difficult for truth to be masked out based on one editor or leaning of one publication. Certainly, you had to weed through a lot more stuff, but as with USENET, you got a better general overview, and were able to make your own decisions and come to your own conclusions. Case in point: When Princess Diana died, we were carrying hundreds of stories per day. Sometimes 100 or more per hour. It might not be exactly the news you were interested, if you weren't into Princess Di, but if you were, there was no better way to find out as much as possible. The nice thing was, this didn't apply just to news about Pricess Di, but to everything.
I certainly don't think that newspapers are dead, by any means, but I'm not not sure they yet recognize the metamorphosis that they're going through. (Caterpillars don't understand butterflies, nor do they understand their own transformation while in the chrysalis.)
I make it a regular habit to stop by the newspaper stands whenever I pass them on the street. I scan every cover, note every story, and sometimes pause to read a bit more. Seldom do I need to actually buy one for more detail, but I certainly use it to remain aware of what's going on. I also listen to NPR and the BBC on public radio almost all the time while in the car, at home in the morning, etc. I also read all the news that comes through my pager, as well as scan Slashdot numerous times per day, and follow many of the other links through to various other websites.
To be honest, I can't get enough information, and as I learn ways to process more, I up my daily intake, because the knowledge rush is fantastic. I feel that all of the info-services (papers, websites, etc.) provide a great service, and I see them morphing in the future into info-pools that people can dip into to get personalized news that fits their interests. NewsEdge (http://www.newsedge.com/) is already doing this, as are many others, but each tries to monopolize the attention of the user, and keep them on their site. (Usually for ad-revenue-generation purposes, which seems very short-sighted.)
If you've read "The Diamond Age", you'll recall the "mediatronic paper" that was left laying around in doctor's offices, subways, busses, etc. It was blank, but "live", wired to the Net and able to pull up your info from wherever you prefered it. The material itself, the mediatronic paper, was throwaway. It was community property. Someone sat down in a subway, picked up a "paper" (blank at this time), logged in, and suddenly it filled with their stock quotes, world news, etc. When they dropped it at their next stop, it logged them out, went blank, and waited for the next person. (When they picked it up, it might be all sports and nudie GIFs, who knows?) The medium, in that scenario, was free. The message, however, came streaming in from the data-cloud.
This is where I think the future of all info-providers is heading, whether they realize it or not. Nowadays, I access the net from numerous machines, locations, and browser types. I can get my info wherever I am. A newspaper, a physical newspaper, is a convenient way to carry the info around with me. Certainly easier to fold and carry than my notebook. The E-Ink corporation (http://www.eink.com/) is already working on primitive 1st-generation mediatronic materials. It will only get better, cheaper, and more portable.
As we move forward into this century, I suspect we'll see more intelligent agents that go out and forage through the data-fields, harvest what we want, and bring it back. I suspect that the info itself will be cut, chopped, bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated along the way, to build the custom view that we want, regardless of how the original publisher intended it.
My advice to the newspaper people out there (whom I hope are reading this) is to stop trying to focus on how to hold those eyeballs on your page, for the express purpose of pushing ads at them. (I already have my browser programmed to filter out all ads, and you can, too. See http://www.junkbuster.com/ ) Instead, focus on making your info good, accurate, WIDELY AVAILABLE, and in an easily digestible form. (ASCII works great on pagers and cell phones, images are still limited in this regard. Take a lesson from that.) Try to work with others to develop standards of interoperability, so that your massive armies of reporters and data-gatherers aren't competing with each other for the scoop in order to get more ad-eyeballs. Just gather as much info as you can, and get it out to as many people as you can. We're out here, and we'll harvest it, and make our own decisions, provided we've got enough info to allow us to do so.
There are now (finally!) companies addressing all three levels of fuel-cell use.
Ballard Power Systems (BLDP) is doing stationary fuel cells for homes, and for cars. Plug Power (PLUG) is doing cells for homes, and Manhattan Scientifics (MHTXE) is currently developing these micro-fuel cells which Motorola and others will probably be licensing.
If you're interested in fuel cells, check out those companies, and also check out my fuel cells mailing list. Info is available on how to subscribe at http://reality.sculptors.com/lists.html
I'm surprised as well that the UN is just figuring this out. About 10 years ago, as I began studying population and global life-support issues, I discovered that there is a direct (and very repeatable) corellation between the raising of living standards and the automatic lowering of birthrate.
As noted by many other folks here, this seems to be a no-brainer when you look at industrial societies vs. agricultural ones. I won't repeat their points here, just read the above.
I will say, though, that something as simple as running an electric power-line into a village will begin to affect the living standard (bringing power, heat, light, communications, cooking abilities, appliances, and all the other stuff we take for granted in industrial societies) and thus begin to lower the birthrate. Given our newer technologies of solar cells, fuel cells, and other off-the-grid power and wireless communications systems, we no longer even need the wire.
If you're interested in this topic, and want to help us figure out ways of raising the living standards of people by finding ways to bring them power, water, shelter, local hydroponic food production, etc., then please check out the Reality Sculptors Project and join some of the mailing lists there. We're always happy to have more sharp minds focused on these issues.
If you're into geodesic domes, Bucky Fuller, Design Science, floating cities, fuel-cells, airships, futurism, and doing-more-with-less, this might be the place for you.:-)
Patrick Salsbury
Here's the Official Word from Neal...
on
The Big U
·
· Score: 1
I decided to go right to the source and ask.
Here's his reply.
Pat
I don't hate The Big U, and I haven't been buying up copies of it. I think it's a fair book and that people should devote their time and money to reading good and excellent books instead. It is going to be re-published by Avon Books in the fairly near future, which should have very little impact on the price of the old first edition copies.
The reason there are so first editions in existence is because after the book tanked in the marketplace, the publisher pulped the unsold copies.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/ibutton/ and, more specifically,/ java.cfm
http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/ibutton/ibuttons
Read the second link for all the tech-details. These things are pretty amazing:
durable, cheap, crypto-secure, and can be mounted on a key fob, ring, watch, or
other personal item...whatever thing it is that you, personally, have spent
your whole life learning not to lose.
When I started learning about everything they can do, I was amazed that they
weren't more widely known (although there are more than 85,000,000 of them in
use around the world.) Slashdotters looking for new toys to tinker with and
code for would do well to look at this platform. It's ripe with options,
capabilities, and possibilities.
PizzaTool used a GUI to let you select your toppings, crust, etc., and even provided a cute little graphical rendition of your pizza which you could "spin" to get all the various pixels to blend together and simulate the melted cheese, etc. I think it was written using their "NeWS" system. It ordered by FAX and went to Tony & Alba's Pizza, which has been a consistent favorite in the SF Bay Area for at least 15 years or so. It even had a cool warning that popped up when you hit the "order" button that said (roughly) "WARNING! This is about to send a *real* FAX to a *real* pizza parlor, who will deliver a *real* pizza and ask you for *real* money! Are you sure you want to continue?"
Since my friends and I were in school in Buffalo, NY at the time, we were pretty sure they wouldn't deliver to us, but it definitely gave us an early glimpse into the importance of pizza in the workplace in early Silicon Valley culture, not to mention introducing me to the existence of Tony & Alba's! (When I moved here a couple years later, I made a pilgrimage and they've been a favorite ever since.) This only worked in Mountain View, CA, at the time, but that's where Sun was concentrated then. (Still is.) Tony & Alba's has 7 shops around the Bay Area, now, and their own website - http://www.tonyalba.com/
PizzaNet used a web-to-FAX system that would submit the order using the existing Pizza Hut FAX ordering system, and your pie would arrive in about 1/2 hour. I used it once around May/June of 1994 and it worked wonderfully. This one only worked around Santa Cruz, CA, but again, that's where SCO was concentrated, then. It was written by my friend, Steph, who had been the IS Director at SCO for years at that point, and knew that Engineers were mainly fueled by pizza and caffeine (still are!) so he made sure pizza was easily available at the touch of a few keys. (There were free soda fountains in all SCO buildings.) This SCO "easy pizza" policy, like the Corporate Hot Tub, also went away as the "Age of the Suits" began to take over in the mid-late 1990's.
The neat thing about both systems, aside from providing a really geeky way to get pizza (which obviously still amuses us to this day, given this article's appearance on /. ), was that they both interfaced with the existing FAX-based systems the pizza parlors had in place, and didn't bother any of the pizza makers/delivery folks with any new interfaces or computer details, allowing them to focus on what they did best, and allowing us to get pizza easily. (Remember that both of these were many years before most people/businesses had even *heard* of the Internet, and in the case of PizzaTool, before the WWW even existed! When did *you* first hear of them?)
There are lots of good ideas floating around. Especially in computers and software. However, there are far fewer that are actually original or new ideas. Dig into the history a bit. It's fun, and you'll likely be surprised. You may also save yourself a whole lot of coding-time. :-)
-Pat
Hope to see you there.
Pat
Probably because each one does a tiny bit of a computation. How many transistors are there in a modern chip? Uh-huh. Now you get the idea.
When you're dealing at the atomic scale, just flipping a lever or doing something mechanical takes the place of all those little electrons flowing through logic gates.
Given the level of our technology, I suspect that these little DNA "computers" are a lot more like a transistor than they are like a Pentium IV.
To get your head around things at this scale, go to http://www.foresight.org/ They've got several excellent nanotech books there that you can download electronically for no charge. Well worth it.
Pat
You guys call yourself forward thinking? Sure, if it was something about TiVo, or the latest Quake knockoff, I'm sure you'd be all over it, but try to stretch your minds a little.
Yes, it's cardboard. And as I seem to have to point out to every single person who makes a rudimentary crack about cardboard melting when it gets wet: Milk cartons are made out of cardboard. They hold liquid for weeks at a time! This is not rocket science, people. It's design science.
I have been looking at cardboard as a building material since about 1990. It works. It's cheap. It can be made to withstand many of the stresses of the environment. (My design professor, Harold Cohen, built untreated cardboard domes in the 1960's that sat out for a year in the rain and snow of Southern Illinois. They didn't melt. They worked just fine.)
I've worked with friends to design low-cost emergency shelters for disaster relief and the homeless. And just like all of you, most of them couldn't get past the idea of cardboard melting. So I went with a corrugated plastic material, made just like cardboard, but made from milk-bottle HDPE type-2 plastic. Totally recyclable, and totally waterproof. (Once again, designed to hold milk for weeks, just like the cardboard cartons. :-) ) You can find images of the dome-building
party we held at my house in 1998 here
and can see some of the results. This dome was about 12' in diameter and 5' high at the center. It was a 1/2 to 1/3 scale model of what we'd deploy to disaster victims or the homeless. The total cost of materials was about US $50.
Standard building materials for housing cost about US $110 per square foot of area covered. This corrugated plastic drops the price down to US $0.50-$1.00 per square foot covered. If you use cardboard, that price falls another order of magnitude to about US $0.05-$0.10 per square foot covered. So you see, it's not just eco-friendly, and it's not just recyclable. It's also up to 1100 times cheaper than doing it the old-fashioned way. So even if it did wear out after 3 months, as one pundit wrote in these comments, you could keep replacing the building for about 400 years for the same cost. Which is far more than a standard school will last.
-Pat
Patrick Salsbury
The nice thing about pulling out of the atmosphere, is that it's a great automatic distribution system. There's water vapor blowing over most of the planet, most of the time. No need to truck it in or dam up reservoirs when it can be drawn from the air where it's needed.
One other person was asking about environmental impact. If you look at the diagram at the above URL, you'll see a great graphic of the hydrological cycle. There's so much water in constant motion on the planet, that any we took out of one place is being replaced someplace else. And since it's in gaseous form, when you draw it out in one place, you're creating a 'relatively dry' airspace for more water vapor to flow in towards you. Also, given the numbers in that graphic, you'll see that we couldn't really even begin to dent the amount of water in the atmosphere. Most of it falls directly back into the oceans, so there's plenty we could get from nature's own desalination process.
I also run a mailing list devoted to discussion of water topics like these. You can find info about it (and lots of other neat stuff) at the Reality Sculptors website.
Patrick Salsbury
Also, I run a mailing list called "clean-water", where we discuss things like fog collection, condensing, filtration and other ways to address water shortages around the world. All interested parties are welcome to join.
Subscription info is here.
Hope to see some of you on the list!
Pat
We've got a bunch of mailing lists, and can start a bunch more for specific projects such as code development, etc. If you're interested in helping us hash out an opensource OS or are just interested in finding out more about these projects, please join us.
Patrick Salsbury
I've actually been thinking of this for several years, as I think it's important that every employee "know thy product". I agree that all companies should provide their employees with the product they make, so everyone can use and be familiar with it.
Whenever I manage to get my company started, officially, I plan to do the same, but do it with the autonomous, self-contained houses we plan to build. :-)
You can find info about those houses at the above URL.
Patrick Salsbury
One of the things I find limiting about the current print papers is something that's even more prevalent in the online versions - lack of depth. I know earlier comments have pointed to newspapers as bastions of well-thought-out, detailed analyses of events and issues, but the truth of the matter is that these people are on timelines, and trying to beat each other to the scoop. Newspaper stories, just like digital postings to Web and USENET are slanted, incomplete, and scoped to different levels of detail.
The thing that was nice at ClariNet was that we shipped about 3700 stories per day, and these went out to about 2 million people around the world. It was way too much to possibly keep up with, but when you wanted to know about some specific thing, you had multiple views of the event, based on different reporters, working for different wire services (Reuters, AP, UPI, etc.) and they would have different takes on things, as well as point out different details that might have been omitted by others. In this way, it was very difficult for truth to be masked out based on one editor or leaning of one publication. Certainly, you had to weed through a lot more stuff, but as with USENET, you got a better general overview, and were able to make your own decisions and come to your own conclusions. Case in point: When Princess Diana died, we were carrying hundreds of stories per day. Sometimes 100 or more per hour. It might not be exactly the news you were interested, if you weren't into Princess Di, but if you were, there was no better way to find out as much as possible. The nice thing was, this didn't apply just to news about Pricess Di, but to everything.
I certainly don't think that newspapers are dead, by any means, but I'm not not sure they yet recognize the metamorphosis that they're going through. (Caterpillars don't understand butterflies, nor do they understand their own transformation while in the chrysalis.)
I make it a regular habit to stop by the newspaper stands whenever I pass them on the street. I scan every cover, note every story, and sometimes pause to read a bit more. Seldom do I need to actually buy one for more detail, but I certainly use it to remain aware of what's going on. I also listen to NPR and the BBC on public radio almost all the time while in the car, at home in the morning, etc. I also read all the news that comes through my pager, as well as scan Slashdot numerous times per day, and follow many of the other links through to various other websites.
To be honest, I can't get enough information, and as I learn ways to process more, I up my daily intake, because the knowledge rush is fantastic. I feel that all of the info-services (papers, websites, etc.) provide a great service, and I see them morphing in the future into info-pools that people can dip into to get personalized news that fits their interests. NewsEdge (http://www.newsedge.com/) is already doing this, as are many others, but each tries to monopolize the attention of the user, and keep them on their site. (Usually for ad-revenue-generation purposes, which seems very short-sighted.)
If you've read "The Diamond Age", you'll recall the "mediatronic paper" that was left laying around in doctor's offices, subways, busses, etc. It was blank, but "live", wired to the Net and able to pull up your info from wherever you prefered it. The material itself, the mediatronic paper, was throwaway. It was community property. Someone sat down in a subway, picked up a "paper" (blank at this time), logged in, and suddenly it filled with their stock quotes, world news, etc. When they dropped it at their next stop, it logged them out, went blank, and waited for the next person. (When they picked it up, it might be all sports and nudie GIFs, who knows?) The medium, in that scenario, was free. The message, however, came streaming in from the data-cloud.
This is where I think the future of all info-providers is heading, whether they realize it or not. Nowadays, I access the net from numerous machines, locations, and browser types. I can get my info wherever I am. A newspaper, a physical newspaper, is a convenient way to carry the info around with me. Certainly easier to fold and carry than my notebook. The E-Ink corporation (http://www.eink.com/) is already working on primitive 1st-generation mediatronic materials. It will only get better, cheaper, and more portable.
As we move forward into this century, I suspect we'll see more intelligent agents that go out and forage through the data-fields, harvest what we want, and bring it back. I suspect that the info itself will be cut, chopped, bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated along the way, to build the custom view that we want, regardless of how the original publisher intended it.
My advice to the newspaper people out there (whom I hope are reading this) is to stop trying to focus on how to hold those eyeballs on your page, for the express purpose of pushing ads at them. (I already have my browser programmed to filter out all ads, and you can, too. See http://www.junkbuster.com/ ) Instead, focus on making your info good, accurate, WIDELY AVAILABLE, and in an easily digestible form. (ASCII works great on pagers and cell phones, images are still limited in this regard. Take a lesson from that.) Try to work with others to develop standards of interoperability, so that your massive armies of reporters and data-gatherers aren't competing with each other for the scoop in order to get more ad-eyeballs. Just gather as much info as you can, and get it out to as many people as you can. We're out here, and we'll harvest it, and make our own decisions, provided we've got enough info to allow us to do so.
Ballard Power Systems (BLDP) is doing stationary fuel cells for homes, and for cars. Plug Power (PLUG) is doing cells for homes, and Manhattan Scientifics (MHTXE) is currently developing these micro-fuel cells which Motorola and others will probably be licensing.
If you're interested in fuel cells, check out those companies, and also check out my fuel cells mailing list. Info is available on how to subscribe at http://reality.sculptors.com/lists.html
I'm surprised as well that the UN is just figuring this out. About 10 years ago, as I began studying population and global life-support issues, I discovered that there is a direct (and very repeatable) corellation between the raising of living standards and the automatic lowering of birthrate.
As noted by many other folks here, this seems to be a no-brainer when you look at industrial societies vs. agricultural ones. I won't repeat their points here, just read the above.
I will say, though, that something as simple as running an electric power-line into a village will begin to affect the living standard (bringing power, heat, light, communications, cooking abilities, appliances, and all the other stuff we take for granted in industrial societies) and thus begin to lower the birthrate. Given our newer technologies of solar cells, fuel cells, and other off-the-grid power and wireless communications systems, we no longer even need the wire.
If you're interested in this topic, and want to help us figure out ways of raising the living standards of people by finding ways to bring them power, water, shelter, local hydroponic food production, etc., then please check out the Reality Sculptors Project and join some of the mailing lists there. We're always happy to have more sharp minds focused on these issues.
If you're into geodesic domes, Bucky Fuller, Design Science, floating cities, fuel-cells, airships, futurism, and doing-more-with-less, this might be the place for you. :-)
Patrick Salsbury
Here's his reply.
Pat