Powers of 2

The creative act knows no bounds. If one is really good with their specific discipline whether it be painting, music, architecture or brick laying, artistry comes forth from putting together seemingly dissimilar ideas to create something new and, in the case of tech, something useful. This certainly apples when ... "a group of researchers at Georgia Tech ...made dye-sensitized solar cells with a much higher effective surface area by wrapping the cells around optical fibers. These fiber solar cells are six times more efficient than a zinc oxide solar cell with the same surface area, and if they can be built using cheap polymer fibers, they shouldn't be significantly more expensive to make."

Cost, reliability and efficiency has been the bane of solar for years. If this research proves out, the implications for solar and the beneficial impact it can have on society and the world knows no bounds.

"Fiber-optic solar cells could also be used in ways that aren't possible currently. Zhong Lin Wang, professor of materials science and engineering at Georgia Tech, says fiber solar cells would take up less roof area than planar cells because long lengths of the fibers could be nestled into the walls of a house like electrical wiring."

Seen below is a schematic depicting the form factor for fiber solar cells. No doubt, this tech rocks.

Fantastic Voyage 2009

Remember Fantastic Voyage, the 1966 flick starring Raquel Welsh, David Pleasence & Stephen Boyd where...."a submarine is shrunken to microscopic size and injected into (a diplomat's) blood stream with a small crew. in order to save the guy from poison administered by an assassin. The graphics and special effects are amazingly good for the times and the story line works, not bad for a film done over 40 years ago.

We still can't shrink anything down like the sub and characters in FV but we can take our own fantastic voyage, courtesy of The Whole Brain Catalog, into the inner working's of a mouse brain without having to be shrunk down to a dust mote in order to do the deed. Very cool to say the least.

Enjoy.

The Connect

The net is pervasive and available 24/7 to anyone equipped with a digital device able to connect but now, the game changes because software will set mobile devices free for the very first time ... Android is the first free, open source, and fully customizable mobile platform. Android offers a full stack: an operating system, middleware, and key mobile applications. It also contains a rich set of APIs that allows third-party developers to develop great applications.

No wonder Microsoft is quietly going crazy trying to fight an enemy that plays by web rules.

18. All warfare is based on deception. - The Art of War

Addendum...It is also destined over the next few years to become a major player in all sorts of other smart devices, including digital washing machines. That has been the clear view of several top executives I’ve talked to recently who are making chips for all manner of electronics.

The most enthusiastic for Android was Sehat Sutardja, the chief executive of the Marvell Technology Group, which makes processor chips for phones as well as other gadgets, including a new $99 computer the size of a cellphone charger.

He argued the world needed a standard, free operating system for all the devices that increasingly have powerful computers inside.

The Metaverse Writ Large

Back in 2007, Beyond Real Time posted a article titled Infinities Within Infinities showing how infinity resides in finite space as depicted by Cantor, Menger and Lorenz. Seems this notion also applies to reality if the research done by Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog holds true...

"Hawking, based at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleague Thomas Hertog of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, are about to publish a paper claiming that the Universe had no unique beginning. Instead, they argue, it began in just about every way imaginable (and maybe some that aren't).

Out of this profusion of beginnings, the vast majority withered away without leaving any real imprint on the Universe we know today. Only a tiny fraction of them blended to make the current cosmos, Hawking and Hertog claim.

That, they insist, is the only possible conclusion if we are to take quantum physics seriously. "Quantum mechanics forbids a single history," says Hertog....

But Hawking and Hertog say that the countless 'alternative worlds' of string theory may actually have existed. We should picture the Universe in the first instants of the Big Bang as a superposition of all these possibilities, they say; like a projection of billions of movies played on top of one another.

It all adds up

This might sound odd, but it is precisely the view adopted by quantum theory. "

Through the Looking Glass:
The Queen: It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward. - Lewis Carroll

Zap, God & Crumb

"Keep on Truckin", the famous quote from R. Crumb resonates when reading about Zap Comix and his latest masterwork, Genesis. a legitimate graphic depiction of the bible with no satiric slant, something which makes the argument about religion being a man-made construct even more compelling than ever as the Old Testament now has drawings accurately keyed to text depicting such niceties as rape, incest, masturbation, murder, infidelity, lust, prostitution, etc., etc., etc., ah, you know, the same old thing man has been doing since coming out of trees while looking for god. No doubt I am going to get it ($13.00 is a steal) as Crumb's work is incredibly interesting to look at and the text is too funky to ignore. :)

In Zap, sex, drugs and rock and roll was the name of the game as Crumb and cohorts Gilbert Shelton, Clay Wilson and Robert Williams (along with significant others) came out with gems like Mr. Natural, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers & Wonder Wart-Hog, characters, needless to say, who were outrageously salacious, stoned and funny as hell. No doubt, Zap rocked big time.


Scroll down to see a few covers and click on any to see why the courts and Zap were on intimate terms. :)

And...just to make sure you haven't forgotten about god,
here's Chapter 1 for your viewing pleasure.

A "Simple" Matter of Power

Steam locomotives are really cool. Everything about this tech is large, useful and, in an odd way, romantic as it harkens back to a simpler age where wood or coal would act as agent to boil water to drive a massive system at speed. In looking at this, I realized how power impacts the acceleration of tech in profound ways.

For example, smart phones are growing like fungus with new capabilities being added on at a furious pace as seen by the upcoming Droid phone coming from Motorola and a prime reason for this, along with the connectivity of the web and the transparency of data, centers on the low power requirements of said device(s).

When power requirements become large, the double exponential advancement of tech breaks down, not because of data transparency needed to design something in a computer but rather building something able to do the job in the real world reliably and at costs acceptable to the consumer.

To whit, consider batteries powering the electric car. Because the power requirements are intense, developing this tech is really hard because not only must said battery be small and light enough to go into a car but also it has to be cheap, reliable and have enough juice for at least 300-500 miles while possessing fast recharging times and environmentally friendly recycling capability. No doubt viable tech will eventually come (IBM?) but when it comes and at what cost is a matter of great concern for the companies developing this hardware. The same issue of power applies to solar as well because low power requirements are relatively easy to solve but not the kind of power needed to run a city or a server farm driven by the likes of Google or Microsoft.

"Microsoft has been the most open - it recently broke ground on a 1.4-million-square-foot campus in Quincy, Wash., close to hydroelectric power. Company officials acknowledge that centers in the South and Europe will come afterward."

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. " - Archimedes

The "law of unintended consequences"...states that any purposeful action will produce some unanticipated or unintended consequences.

Addendum: Here's a blurb about Zinc-Air batteries. Tech looks good, could replace Lithium-Ion but the power equation still applies..."The zinc-air battery for hearing aids will be available next year. The battery for electric vehicles is still some years away from mass marketing."

Go Ahead, You Can't Hurt Anything...

E-Books

On October 7, The Magic of Books post described this writer's passion for books and why they are going the way of the dodo and passenger pigeon at a cost we are now just beginning to comprehend. As follow up, Google has just announced Google Editions, a way for people to buy and download any book able to be read by any digital device other then Kindle, (Amazon, are you reading this?) an e-book reader only able to download content from Amazon.

"Google Inc. is launching a new online service that will let readers buy electronic versions of books and read them on such gadgets as cell phones, laptops and possibly e-book devices.

The company said Google Editions marks its first effort to earn revenue from its ambitious Google Books scanning project, which attempts to make millions of printed books available online. Although the scanning program has faced complaints from authors and publishers over copyright, Google Editions will cover only books submitted and approved by the copyright holders when it launches next year.

The books bought through Google Editions will be accessible on any device that has a Web browser, including smart phones, netbooks and personal computers and laptops, putting Google in competition with Amazon.com Inc. and its Kindle e-book reader.

The reason why this will, IMHO, succeed is the fact that...

Consumers can buy directly from Google or from any number of online booksellers and other retail partners using the Google Editions platform. Google will actually host the e-books and make them searchable.

"We expect the majority will go to retail partners not to Google," Turvey said at the 61st Frankfurt Book Fair. "We are a wholesaler, a book distributor."

Google will try to keep transactions simple, Turvey said, possibly by using its existing Google Checkout platform. Google will collect 55 percent of the revenue and turn a "vast majority" of that to the retailers. The rest will go to the book's publisher, who will set prices.

If the books are being sold directly to consumers by Google, it will take 37 percent and give publishers 63 percent.

Turvey expects the program will start with 400,000 to 600,000 books in the first half of 2010.

Books bought through Google Editions will be stored on the device and readable without a live Internet connection.

This new way of distributing content will also work, with modification, for newspapers as seen in a BRT article titled A New Model? Of course Google is on this one deal as well because content is king and getting it out in ways machines can easily access is the name of the game in today's world of transparent and instant connectivity.

Instant gratification isn't fast enough. - Anonymous