Monday, April 28, 2008

Energy, information, civilization

After watching Copenhagen movie I've did some further reading on nuclear power, and, again, I'm amazed by it's potential. Following up a link from peakoildebunked I've read parts of this paper from 1956.
If its only approximately correct, it would mean that we really have centuries or even milleniums-long supply of uranium, which can power our civilization exactly the same way it's powered now. Will have to check that (and current consumption levels in comparison to those mentioned in the paper).

On the other hand, as Stanislaw Lem predicted (in 1960s) we will be (actually we already are) moving into more information-hungry than energy-hungry civilization. Microsoft's success, premature Internet-bubble, and Google are (early) signs of that time, I guess.
When we develop virtual realities and robotics even further, we will certainly be able to drop a large portion of travel. Also manufacturing can't grow forever. Actually, as some people complain, we already consume more information (in various incarnations) than actual physical goods. Steve Jobs knows that as well.

And when, finally, we will be able to put information production and processing into really automated and efficient process, we will be able to grow even faster in this dimension.

So good luck civilization! We all put great hopes in you!

Sunday, April 6, 2008

What's next?

Climbing in California was certainly fun, however I haven't achieved what I've hoped for in terms of route hardness. Maybe next time...
Right now I'm preparing to one-week paragliding course. This should be fun as well.

This weekend we've watched Star Wars for the first time. It was nice, still not breathtaking. But it put into my mind an idea to try to watch some more movies from the IMDB's top 250. This is kind of a follow-up idea to visiting all countries of the world. Certainly this one is cheaper and easier to achieve ;). After initial counting, I can remember watching 39 of those 250 movies. This is surely better percent than ~15 countries visited so far...