In William Halal's "Technology's Promise" the concern for a much improved global transportation system is an underpinning to continued, sustainable and ecologically friendly, economic growth. The advances in technology like, hydrogen fuel cells, hybrid gas/electric engines, and control automation do seem to offer some exciting prospects. These prospects do have real barriers, and the barriers must be considered.
For example the prediction that air transport may become as ubiquitous as car ownership; "A Plane in every driveway" as it were. But reality just says "no". There are tooooo many obstacles in the way of this one: economic, technical, legal, social, etc.
Consider air traffic control alone. Let's pretend that everyone is a good, curteous, and vigilant driver (ha,ha,ha,ha!!...oh!,My ribs!), can you imagine the size and complexity of the air traffic control system required to keep safety? this is assuming that some method of automatic air collision avoidance system existed? Even the Chinese couldn't afford that!.
No, this fellow was much closer with his prediction of a Moon base. Thats much more likely to happen --if-- there is a "Very" compelling value proposition behind it.
Then, we have Hydrogen fuel cells. Again, discounting the cost of the technology itself (significantly more expensive than a comparable 'hybrid' vehicle), you have the cost of infrastructure required to support the technology. Hydrogen does not occur naturally in sufficient quantities that it could just be collected. It has to be synthesized. Here entire new Hydrogen production, storage and delivery systems are needed. Hydrogen, as most folks know, is super volatile --much more so than gasoline. There is an entire development effort just in producing delivery systems that the average person can use (without blowing everyone up). The final note here, is that these predictions were expected to be in some sort of deliverable stage around 2010....its 2011 and were not much closer ubiquitous flight or hydrogen fuel cells than we were in 2005
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Need my Sleepy Time!
Well, heres a sleepy little flick to illustrate the need for my sleep-machine schtick!
30 seconds isnt all that greate to convey the full message, but this works ok as a prototype!
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
30 seconds isnt all that greate to convey the full message, but this works ok as a prototype!
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Love and Hate ...The new Agora
The essay "The New Agora" is a work examplary of those that would cause your typical college COMP 101 instructor to reach for her nitro pills. "Problématique" describes this paper well. Perhaps this is why the authors chose the term for one of the many easter eggs strewn about this text.
The work is rife with mechanical and gramatical errors that make it ridiculously hard to understand: one section does not flow into the next, new concepts or terms are simply 'dropped' into the discussion without prior defintion or some kind of introduction, topics bounce around non sequitur. I wont beleaguer the point.
Then the relevance of some supporting arguments are suspect or just wrong. For example, the author points to "species based constraints" as inhibitors to dialogue. To support the point, a J. Madison entry in "The Federalist" is cited. However that passage says -nothing- about any kind of "species" dependency. Rather, the piece addresses the relationship between size of a population vs. the political homogeneity of that population. By inference the reader might think that there is some connection between communication attributes and the mechanics of achieving that homogenity --but its a stretch. The author does nothing to help someone draw that connection, if in fact, that is what is intended.
Now, does that mean that there isnt some species dependecy? No, not at all. In fact the next section of text offers three direct examples of said "species" specific constraints. The entire piece on Madison is just flotsam one has to muddle through to get on the path to understanding. Then we're assulted with (high school physics teachers, plug your ears)
"The discovery in the beginning of the twentieth century of the phenomenon called“Doppler effect,” i.e., the curvature of light traveling through a strong gravitationalfield, was predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity."(TOR)
What?!
How can this author expect credibility when he attempts to draw an analogy to a reference that is patently wrong? First, the Doppler effect was described in the late 19th century about 30 yrs before Einstein's TOR. Naturally then, the TOR could NOT have predicted such effect. Secondly, the Doppler effect has nothing to do with the bending of light in any form. It is, however, possible to measure the relative speed, distance and vector of an object that emits light because of the doppler effect. (see here: http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/152.mf1i.spring02/DopplerEffect.htm) Once again, in spite of the blunder, some sense manages to dribble out at the end: In order for Einstein to "sell" the TOR, he had to describe it in terms of Reinmanian geometry vs. Euclidian geometry. This was not only a convenience, but also a necessity as Reinmann geometry also offrered the right language with wich to codify and manipulate his concepts.
But is the entire piece without merit? Obviously not or we wouldnt have been asked to examine it. So, I assume, this is a mining exercise whereby you must turn tons of rock to retrieve ounces of gold. Here are the nuggets I found:
1. To correctly capture collective thought, it is necessary to apply a communication and collaboration strategy which harvests thoughts and ideas, but decoupled from the passions of their originators such that they may be assessed on their own merit.
2. Such a strategy may be achieved via the application of "6 laws of dialog" of which the most significant is #2 "parsimony" (gee..why didnt they apply that on this paper?)
3. Synthesizing the collective mind requires at least 2 passes: the first to elicit the raw materials (thoughts and ideas), and the second actually develops these ideas in homogenized thoughts via an Interpretive Structural Modeling technique.
I'll end this review on what may seem a wierd note: I loved it! Its very much like when one goes to the pound to get a puppy and winds up picking the ugliest one...because he wagged his tail for you. This ugly paper wagged its tail for me. As a student preparing a dissertation on the contribution of knowledge management techniques to the creation and sustainment of enterprise architecture, I became immediately interested in the "group communication" message this train wreck contains. There can be no "management" of knowledge without accurate communication between individuals or groups. Likewise, communication is at the heart of enterprise planning.
This paper, re-written, or at least sent to a professional editor is actually quite golden with respect to content. But as it is, it takes a no life like me to sit there and plow throw the sludge, sifting and sorting, to find that value.
The work is rife with mechanical and gramatical errors that make it ridiculously hard to understand: one section does not flow into the next, new concepts or terms are simply 'dropped' into the discussion without prior defintion or some kind of introduction, topics bounce around non sequitur. I wont beleaguer the point.
Then the relevance of some supporting arguments are suspect or just wrong. For example, the author points to "species based constraints" as inhibitors to dialogue. To support the point, a J. Madison entry in "The Federalist" is cited. However that passage says -nothing- about any kind of "species" dependency. Rather, the piece addresses the relationship between size of a population vs. the political homogeneity of that population. By inference the reader might think that there is some connection between communication attributes and the mechanics of achieving that homogenity --but its a stretch. The author does nothing to help someone draw that connection, if in fact, that is what is intended.
Now, does that mean that there isnt some species dependecy? No, not at all. In fact the next section of text offers three direct examples of said "species" specific constraints. The entire piece on Madison is just flotsam one has to muddle through to get on the path to understanding. Then we're assulted with (high school physics teachers, plug your ears)
"The discovery in the beginning of the twentieth century of the phenomenon called“Doppler effect,” i.e., the curvature of light traveling through a strong gravitationalfield, was predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity."(TOR)
What?!
How can this author expect credibility when he attempts to draw an analogy to a reference that is patently wrong? First, the Doppler effect was described in the late 19th century about 30 yrs before Einstein's TOR. Naturally then, the TOR could NOT have predicted such effect. Secondly, the Doppler effect has nothing to do with the bending of light in any form. It is, however, possible to measure the relative speed, distance and vector of an object that emits light because of the doppler effect. (see here: http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/152.mf1i.spring02/DopplerEffect.htm) Once again, in spite of the blunder, some sense manages to dribble out at the end: In order for Einstein to "sell" the TOR, he had to describe it in terms of Reinmanian geometry vs. Euclidian geometry. This was not only a convenience, but also a necessity as Reinmann geometry also offrered the right language with wich to codify and manipulate his concepts.
But is the entire piece without merit? Obviously not or we wouldnt have been asked to examine it. So, I assume, this is a mining exercise whereby you must turn tons of rock to retrieve ounces of gold. Here are the nuggets I found:
1. To correctly capture collective thought, it is necessary to apply a communication and collaboration strategy which harvests thoughts and ideas, but decoupled from the passions of their originators such that they may be assessed on their own merit.
2. Such a strategy may be achieved via the application of "6 laws of dialog" of which the most significant is #2 "parsimony" (gee..why didnt they apply that on this paper?)
3. Synthesizing the collective mind requires at least 2 passes: the first to elicit the raw materials (thoughts and ideas), and the second actually develops these ideas in homogenized thoughts via an Interpretive Structural Modeling technique.
I'll end this review on what may seem a wierd note: I loved it! Its very much like when one goes to the pound to get a puppy and winds up picking the ugliest one...because he wagged his tail for you. This ugly paper wagged its tail for me. As a student preparing a dissertation on the contribution of knowledge management techniques to the creation and sustainment of enterprise architecture, I became immediately interested in the "group communication" message this train wreck contains. There can be no "management" of knowledge without accurate communication between individuals or groups. Likewise, communication is at the heart of enterprise planning.
This paper, re-written, or at least sent to a professional editor is actually quite golden with respect to content. But as it is, it takes a no life like me to sit there and plow throw the sludge, sifting and sorting, to find that value.
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