Recent Posts
- Daylight Saving Time: A Century of Moving the Hands and Getting Nowhere
- Take the Extra Minute to Rest: The World, Upside-Down
- Bologna: The Meat That Sounds Like a Lie
- The AI Gold Rush: What Happens When Everyone Strikes the Same Claim?
- Why Are the Oceans Salty? Because People Have Been Peeing for 10,000 Years, Obviously.
Recent Comments
Category Archives: Technology
The AI Gold Rush: What Happens When Everyone Strikes the Same Claim?
I hear a lot of people talk about AI. It is constant at work. My friends are fascinated by it. I hear people talking about it in line at the grocery store and at social events. It is on the … Continue reading
Posted in Economy, Investing, Money, Technology
Tagged AI, bear market, boom, bust, COVID, data center, David Gardner, Dot-Com, freemium, gold rush, infrastructure, investing, Mark Twain, overinvestment, pandemic, revenue, snap test, stock market, Warren Buffett
Leave a comment
The Two Elephants in the Room
In response to my SMR article, I received a one word message from a reader: “Fusion?” Okay. That’s fair. When we talk about nuclear energy, there are really two elephants wandering around the room. One is fission, where we split … Continue reading
Posted in Economy, Energy, Technology
Tagged Arthur Eddington, Big Bang, Chicago Pile-1, cold fusion, Enrico Fermi, fission, Fritz Strassmann, fusion, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lise Meitner, magnetic confinement, Martin Fleischmann, National Ignition Facility, nuclear energy, nuclear waste, Otto Frisch, Otto Hahn, physics, plasma, science, Stanley Pons, stellarator, tokamak, University of Chicago, University of Utah
Leave a comment
Death by AI
We have seen this movie before, sometimes literally. A computer becomes intelligent. It realizes that humans are the problem. It takes control of something important. The humans discover what is happening somewhere around the point at which stopping it becomes … Continue reading
The Power Plant That Comes to You: Why Small Modular Reactors Could Change Everything
When we think about electricity, we tend to think in one direction. Power plants stay put. Electricity travels. For more than a century, that’s how we’ve built civilization. We construct enormous coal plants, hydroelectric dams, natural gas stations, wind farms, … Continue reading
Posted in Economy, Energy, Technology
Tagged coal, electricity, energy, HALEU, nuclear energy, Power as a Service, power grid, power plant, small modular reactors, SMR, uranium
Leave a comment
Magic of the Future or Just Another Green Mirage?
In response to my recent piece on a civilization poisoned by progress, a reader commented: “Just as we’ve had better energy options, like sodium ion batteries, there’s been fossil fuels alternatives that are far more sustainable. Just algae tech alone … Continue reading
Posted in Science, Technology
Tagged algae, energy, environment, food, kelp, plastic, pollution, public health, recycling, science
Leave a comment
Laying Track in the Cloud: Why AI is the Railroad Mania of Our Time
Two centuries ago, the world was intoxicated by the smell of burning coal and the screech of iron wheels. It was the dawn of the railroad era. A blinding convergence of new technology and aggressive westward expansion that forged the … Continue reading
Posted in Economy, Science, Technology
Tagged AI, artificial intelligence, economy, future, gold rush, innovation, railroads
Leave a comment
Beyond Plastic: Rediscovering the Materials That Served Humanity for Millennia
When I recently wrote about our civilization quietly poisoning itself with microplastics, one reader asked a perfectly reasonable question: “If not plastic, then what?” It’s the right question. We’ve become so accustomed to plastic that many people can’t imagine life … Continue reading
Posted in Science, Society, Technology
Tagged cast iron, ceramics, chemistry, cookware, glass, history, microplastics, nanoplastics, plastic, pollution, public health, science, silicone, steel, technology
Leave a comment
Why Leave Earth? (An Earth Day Reflection on Going Beyond It)
This Earth Day, while we celebrate the only home we’ve ever known, it might seem strange to talk about leaving it, but after my recent post on the Artemis II mission, a reader asked a question that stopped me in … Continue reading
Posted in Science, Technology
Tagged Artemis II, Earth, Earth Day, exploration, International Space Station, Mars, Moon, NASA, science, space
Leave a comment
Riding the Invisible Currents of Gravity
After exploring why gravity doesn’t “turn off” and why astronauts in low Earth orbit are really just falling forever, we can finally follow that idea to its natural conclusion: what happens when you keep falling all the way to the … Continue reading
Posted in Science, Technology
Tagged Artemis II, Christina Koch, Earth, equi-gravis, falling, free-return trajectory, gravity, Jeremy Hansen, Lagrange points, Mars, Moon, orbital mechanics, physics, Reid Wiseman, rocketry, science, space travel, three-body problem, translunar trajectory, Victor Glover, weightlessness
Leave a comment