“He was of an age where it was never possible to pursue one errand at a time. He must do many at once. He guessed that people who had lived right and arranged things properly must have it all rigged so that all of their quests ran in parallel, and reinforced and supported one another […]
The notion that an authentic assessment of value requires more than a cursory glance manifests in many forms: don’t judge a book by its cover; appearances can be deceiving; all that glitters is not gold; his beauty was only skin deep. My upbringing was riddled with reminders of this sort, but it was also clear […]
“In a world dominated by the capitalist market and its accompanying utilitarian ethos––which views human behavior as competitive and self-interested––the very idea that human beings might be drawn to a cooperative business model based on collaboration, equity, and sustainability seems hopelessly impractical. Yet much of humanity is already organizing at least some parts of its […]
“Humanity is quickly becoming aware that the biosphere is the indivisible overarching community to which we all belong and whose well-being is indispensable to assuring our own well-being as well as our survival. This dawning awareness comes with a new sense of responsibility––living our individual and collective lives in our homes, businesses, and communities in […]
“Fourteen countries are currently implementing smart grids, and, in the majority of the cases, the Energy Internet is being financed by raising the electricity bill to consumers and by taxes paid by its citizens and businesses. A significant part of the financing of the Energy Internet will go to reconfiguring electricity lines and establishing the […]
“A half century from now, our grandchildren are likely to look back at the era of mass employment in the market with the same sense of utter disbelief as we look upon slavery and serfdom in former times. The very idea that a human being’s worth was measured almost exclusively by his or her productive […]
“Until now, the Makers Movement has been more about hackers, hobbyists, and social entrepreneurs playing with new ways to print out specific objects for personal and general use. The movement has been driven by four principles: the open-source sharing of new inventions, the promotion of a collaborative learning culture, a belief in community self-sufficiency, and […]
“Getting to near zero marginal cost and nearly free goods and services is a function of advances in productivity. Productivity is ‘a measure of productive efficiency calculated as the ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it.’ If the cost of producing an additional good or service is nearly zero, that […]
Deeper into the wordy quagmire that is Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. As with Quicksilver, this volume contains a considerable dose of magical moments dissolved in a nearly impenetrable sea of overdone gibberish. It’s brilliant gibberish, but not brilliant enough to make this book shine the way I typically expect from Stephenson. While enhancing the Baroque […]
“Today, in the sunset of the fossil fuel era, the oil industry remains the most concentrated industry in the world, followed closely by the telecommunications and the electrical power generation and distribution industry. Virtually all the other industries that depend on the fossil fuel/telecommunications matrix require, by necessity, huge capital expenditures to establish sufficient vertical […]