The Photonic Energy Web
At breakfast this morning,
I mentioned to my travel colleague that yesterday's post
called for a "Unified Photonic Solid State Energy Web".
I told him that not that long ago,
I spoke of the Solar Hydrogen Economy.
But today, I see more emphasis on a muscled up electrical grid
I mentioned to my travel colleague that yesterday's post
called for a "Unified Photonic Solid State Energy Web".
I told him that not that long ago,
I spoke of the Solar Hydrogen Economy.
But today, I see more emphasis on a muscled up electrical grid
that receives energy from many sources and many places.
Every roof and wall structure that sees sufficient photon bombardment
will be coated with power paints that convert some of those photons
into electrons.
Every skyscraper and office building will have glass coverings
with laser etched coatings,
that block the sunlight from the inside, (if necessary)
and convert many of these photons
into electrons.
Every highway, road, and rail bed will be coated with surfaces
which not only cool the road, they provide the energy
for the new age of personal transportation devices, PRTs and trains
that induct energy from charging plates inbedded in rest stops,
at red lights, and in the rail bed itself.
Every parking meter will also have an inductive charging plate
that can instantly bring the PTD to "full ready".
The Unified Photonic Solid State Energy Web,
will be as smart as it is powerful, fully capable of powering
an advanced civilization that has said goodbye to our
burning fires.
Over the years, I have heard respectable fire worshipping technobes
say something like this;
"It would be great to have everything running on the sun,
but the sun doesn't shine all the time."
I just look at them with that raised eyebrow look.
"It doesn't? I wasn't aware of that."
The statement is similiar to those who say that
"solar does not match our electrical peak".
If you build the plant 500 miles to the west,
it matches it pretty well.
Buckminster Fuller used to talk about a Global Electrical Grid,
a grid that would transport the energy that falls to this good earth,
every day, every hour, every moment,
to wherever it was needed.
Imagine a nonpolluting, sustainable, unified photonic energy web
that allows for a new culture, and a new civilization;
A world culture that would consider the invasion of others
to control their resources as truly barbaric behavior, and
as culturally acceptable
as cannibalism.
Imagine a new civilization based on the best tools
that humankind can create,
not the most destructive weapons it can employ.
Imagine a new world run solely on the energy of our Sun.
No longer would the World Soul be enslaved by the Karma
of the dead bones and flesh we liberate through our fires,
For we will have transcended those old bones,
and moved boldly towards the sublime.
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Labels: advanced tech
posted by oZ @ 11:11 AM
3 Comments:
Very informative article and great references for followup study.
Looks like a first world solution space. Appropos for us as we consume the lion's share of the world's resources!
Are these even appliable to the third world energy needs without making these high-tech solutions into local indigeneous industries first? Or else we simply have new captive markets for MNCs and new leverage points upon others? With all these IP laws and WTO patents regime, only the latter will be the outcome, no differently than in the pharmaceuticals sector. Same resonings will be used - investment in R&D and fiduciary responsibility to stock holders, stock markets, living standards of the West, and 'empire'.
--- Aside
As an aside but related to the above point, I can easily imagine the WB giving out enormous loans to adopt these new solution-spaces in poor nations even before they are tried/tested/deployed in the West (too many deep vested interests in status quo to easily allow it), and our poorer nations' astute leaders blindly and eagerly signing on the dotted lines for this private new 'energy grids' - the panacea to all their troubles! Maybe one might be installed in the refugee camps to solve their problems! Can't underestimate the ingenuity 'of the dark side' for continued hegemony - page 101 HB first edition of John Perkins previous book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" demonstrates this! An MIT mathematician is dextrously employed to create a new statistical 'pseudo science' based on 'markov gooblydock' mathematics, of why large scale debt financing is good for developing nations for monstrous projects, by getting this 'science' published in referreed journals and respected science publications, and then selling it to dictatorships in developing nations to borrow huge sums of money in the class lender's trap!
This creates a weird priority problem of focus as applied to the developing nations and the oppressed peoples of the planet - which should be removed from their necks first: "hegemony is as old as mankind" and enable them to live in freedom and dignity pursuing what is only self-evident to the denizens of the first world for their own selves; or this instance du jour of the apparent rational for hegemony 'no access to freer and greener energy for the North-West and all the oil under the feet of the South-East?'
The instance will surely be replaced with water.
Then with something else.
The highest order bits of the problem space, imho, lie elsewhere.
Economic models of supply and demand (in addition to eco-factors) do not tell nor capture the human spirit - a story that brings humanity alive - as depicted in 'Refugees in our Own Land' that I just finished reading - one of sharing, love, and compassion, while having absolutely nothing except the untold story of humanity in their possession!
A very large humanity also subsits on garbage dumps as you well know. They too have human stories. Here is one right in my own back yard: http://www.statelesspeopleinbangladesh.net/bihari_bangladesh.php
I don't have answers, only impotency, frustrations, zero efficacy. Is it inherrently insoluble?
Yes if you ask the 'Zbigniew Brzezinskis' and 'George Kennans'.
No if you ask those living under deprivation. But what happens when the have-nots become the haves? The distance between the morality of the two states of being only seems to exist when the states exist separately!
I hope I am wrong. And efforts like yours surely prove me wrong. I just started on 'The Layers of our Seeing'. Too few of you in the 'haves' world! Too many like me who have chased our respective 'American Dreams' all our lives in the 'Disney Lands' of our nations - not just in the West.
Super depressed, but then I remember what I myself wrote in an essay and remember why there is no luxory to be depressed and one must continue as you do:
'Until I realized (yet once again) that if I was right there under the 'jackboots' of the butchers, any butchers, in any place, even as a Jew under the Nazis, I would want some conscionable person on the outside to yell out my message loud and clear to the world for me: 'I am a human being under the jackboots of the Nazis - do the right thing for at least my children'.
By not honoring that call of anguish of the innocent victims when I perceive the reality of their immeasurable suffering which is a "mystery whose parallel may only be the one of Sinai when something was revealed", I would not like to become the recipient of their curse:
“and I still curse the killers, their accomplices, the indifferent spectators who knew and kept silent” (Ellie Wiesel in All Rivers Run to the Sea)
That clinched it for me. The tyrants will do what the tyrants will do in any case, and as they have been doing for decades. And the people of conscience must do what the people of conscience must do, regardless, to end despots reigns.'
And I would like to add to that - without regard to its immediate efficacy. For now we must do it, not for ourselves, but for our progeny.
--- end aside
Salaam,
Zahir
I read this one more time tonight. It's pretty good and very visionary. Most people may not understand just how visionary.
SP
I LOVE this...and I agree with anonymous--it is VERY visionary--I especially love the poetry of the image of the world soul being shrouded by the karma of the bones and flesh we liberate by burning them!!
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