Harnessing the Power of the Masses to Achieve a Population “Glide Path”

The population explosion is testing our intelligence as a species. There are a great many of us on the planet now, and the power of the masses has become incredible. When there are 6 billion people, and 10% of them change their habits in a way that causes them to use a tenth of a gallon less water per day, the savings of 60 million gallons of water per day, or almost 22 billion gallons of water per year, is staggering to contemplate. This incredible power over our planet and our future can only be harnessed through the use of our media to educate all those people, and that will require breaking through a lot of political and economic barriers. Can we do this and get ahead of our problems before a large proportion of the world population dies from famine, disease, or some combination of natural and man-made disasters?

Future Nanotechnology Could Change Warfare in Places Like the Pakistani-Afghani Mountains

What future military equipment might succeed in the mountains on the Afghan-Pakistani border? Why has Osama Bin Laden been able to successfully hide for years in the mountains on the Afghani-Pakistan border?  Modern military equipment and strategies have failed in this rugged environment, first for the Russians and more recently for the U.S. Can a new high technology approach be devised, incorporating nanotechnology, that will enable the capture of Osama Bin Laden and his Al Quaida commanders? It may take years more, but the technology and strategy to carry out difficult operations like this are not far in the future.

What Ever Happened to the “Better Mouse Trap”?

Back in the early 20th century they had a saying: “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” What happened? I just don’t hear much about individual inventors any more, though I am sure they are out there.  Part of the reason must be that today’s mass media don’t report on such things like they once did.  Another may be that people are both afraid of getting tangled in patent and copyright lawsuits and afraid to let anyone know about their inventions for fear their ideas would be stolen.  Still a third reason may be that our current cutting edge technologies are all seen as being too expensive or requiring too much knowledge for the average person to attempt, leaving invention to the academics and corporate researchers.  This is all unfortunate, for individual inventiveness was surely one of the great strengths of the American economy going back to the inception of the country.

Infrastructure Will Change Significantly as Population Inevitably Declines Towards a Sustainable Level

Studies of past population reveal some valuable facts with implications for our future. Given that, before the widespread use of fossil fuels, there were apparently never more than about a billion humans on the planet, the fact that we are over six billion now and climbing fast, and that fossil fuels prices are already rising due to increased scarcity, it is probable that human population will decline back toward the one billion level in the next century. This suggests a variety of scenarios for making the adjustment. Most scenarios sound bad, but the challenge to us is to create and implement long term plans to manage the change. Given what we can anticipate, can we sufficiently raise the importance of taking the long term view and making long range plans to minimize the pain of the adjustments we face in the future? The economy and infrastructure will have to change significantly, but how? How will the business world change in response?

Why Do So Many Deny Global Warming Could Be Occurring?

Why are so many people determined to deny that we are facing some daunting problems? I can understand that scientists interpret data differently, and don’t expect that scientific opinions will all agree.  The denial I see, however, is mostly not coming from scientists.  

Nanotechnology Brings Thinner and More Effective Insulation

Nanotechnology insulation has implications for the future. More than one company is already selling nanotechnology-enhanced insulation products (link) (link) (link). It is clear that nano-scale materials and tiny mechanical nano-structures can be used to give surfaces amazing properties and functions, just by painting them. What other applications are emerging or not yet developed?