Dana Blankenhorn

What Tebowism Really Tells Us

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 2 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

It's one of the ironies of our political cycles that a decisive turn is often followed by the other side's capture of the culture.

Think about it.

1. The South and the “Lost Cause” were culturally ascendant after the Civil War, even as the grave closed over the Confederacy.

2. Populist-fueled racism became a popular cultural expression after progressives captured the flag in the 1890s. See “The Birth of a Nation” for a fine example from that era.

3. The 1930s and 1940s saw a very conservative culture, which you can see in the movies of that era. I might point specifically to the Andy Hardy-Judy Garland movies for its truest expression.

4. The 1960s were all about the rise of Leftist culture. Funny how the sideburns suddenly start growing across the establishment after Nixon won in 1972.

Today I see another turn happening all around me. My kids are a lot more like those of the 1930s than they're like me. Even the “Occupy Wall Street” movement was well-behaved. It was the police over-reaction to peaceful protest that said otherwise. And did you notice the lack of reaction to that over-reaction? In a cultural sense, we're very respectful of authority these days.

So the best sign of the left's rising to a semi-permanent state of power in America is probably the rise of Tim Tebow.

Tebow is the ultimate expression of muscular Christianity. He is a man who lives his values, and they're values that even Rick Santorum would approve of. He defies our expectations in a throwback sort of way, a run-first quarterback throwing himself into the line. Sort of like a Republican Muhammad Ali, and I'm very afraid he may wind up the same way, a victim of repeated head trauma, old before his time.

I'm seeing similar expressions across the culture. What are the biggest movie hits of the last few years? Why, it's the “Twilight” franchise, in which a young girl swoons before a strong, masculine presence. Our most popular musicians, like Jay Z and Bruno Mars, are self-consciously consumer products, careerist, careful in how they live, careful with their money.

What I find most fascinating about the Tea Party is not how reactionary it's been, but how ineffective. The Congress and governors elected by that movement in 2010 are now almost universally mocked, much as hippies were derided 40 years ago. We don't need Spiro Agnew, they write their own lines. Here's one – will someone get this guy a joint and a paisley flag, please?

It makes sense. Culture tends to act best in opposition. If we don't have anything to be angry about, we really do stagnate.

The Many Markets of Robotics

What's intriguing about robotics, as a market, is that it's not one market.

Robotics consists of many markets – toy markets, industrial markets, military markets, scientific markets, education markets. Which means all the trends currently taking place in computing and education can be brought to bear, profitably.

For example. Cloud computing gives robots a common platform in which to expand their internal knowledge. Social computing gives them a means with which to use all this, a way to self-program. A cloud database can give a robot artificial experience, and social computing algorithms let them share it.  The result is that computing intelligence quickly becomes something that passes for real intelligence as robots “learn” and “program themselves” based on other robots' experience.

This can be important when robots go into the field, literally. Japan wants to use robots to grow crops in the tsunami area, given the lack of young people in that country. and the high radioactivity in the area.

Industrial robots also benefit from what's happening in the renewable energy space. Microbial fuel cells could produce the low-power necessary to keep robots going on distant planets or in space.  We're talking tiny robots, and tiny robots could clear blood vessels of plaque from the inside.  Or reverse it, use robots to move a sail about the ocean that can make biodiesel out of algae blooms. 

Of course, what this whole thing really needs is a generation of young minds, like those who powered the PC revolution in the 1970s. We don't just have to reproduce MIT. We need kids playing with robots the way those in my generation played with electrical breadboards. This is what makes kits like Cubelets (above) so important. Like Little Bits these kits make the transition between playing and learning, the next step being doing.

So what you've got is a thriving industry, and a huge culture growing up into it. The real Susan Calvin may be attending an elementary school near you right now.

 

 

The Next Revolution

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 1 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

It may seem strange, at a time of chronically high unemployment, for me to write about a coming labor shortage.

But that's how I roll. I see around the next corner, or try to. Sometimes, as in the late 1990s, this can leave me depressed in a happy time. Sometimes, as in my posts this last year, it leaves me happy in a time of depression.

What I've seen over the last year, however, makes me confident that labor shortages are indeed in our future. Even if the scare-mongers are right and “peak oil” is just around the corner, I'm now convinced that's more of an economic event than a real one. The amount of new energy being created through efficiency, as well as through renewable technologies like solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and biofuel power, is going to be enough to see us through.

The benefits of this are many-fold. First, there's the economic benefit of having a thum b down on energy prices, a thumb that's only going to grow in strength as the cost of producing solar power (to take one example) falls below that of oil, then natural gas, then coal, over the next few years. There's the environmental benefit, the start of replacing our current carbon economy with one based on hydrogen. There's the social benefit, in which wars over resources are no longer necessary, because the Sun shines everywhere, and the winds blow, the tides roll, and we live on a molten rock.

Of course, these power sources have different sets of economics. For one thing, they create more jobs than what came before. Once you have an oil well drilled, once you have a field in production, the incremental labor required to keep the fuel flowing isn't great. The same is true for a solar panel. But solar panels are tiny units of power. They must be researched, they must be manufactured, they must be tested and they must be installed to deliver an economic impact.

This takes people.

So, as my late journalism professor Elizabeth Yamashita told me, back in 1978, when we sat down to our first business journalism class at Northwestern University's Medill School, I have good news for you. You're all going to have jobs.

There will not only be a lot of jobs in the new energy sector, but there will be new wealth, that must be spent on something. And those somethings will include lots of new jobs in every area of endeavor. So even if you're into video games or studies of urban predation, this applies to you. There will be money to hire you.

But there's another important trend. I, and my lovely wife, and the rest of the baby boom, and everyone in the western world is getting older. I turn 57 next week. There are days, even now, when I feel, like Bilbo Baggins, “thin, like butter spread over too much bread.” Friends are retiring now, and when I look in my loved one's eyes I see someone looking forward to a restful time, a time to read and relax and let the world drift by.

My generation will soon need to be cared for. And there won't be enough people to do the job. The immigration debate is going to shift a decade from now, and we'll be worrying about how we can attract people, not repel them.

Still, this is a tech column, and all this discussion really leads to a single, one-word description of our future, which I hope gives hope, but (as usual) also brings challenges.

Robotics.

2011 In Review: A Blank Page or Canvas

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 51 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

A lot of people worried or argued about politics in 2011.

Me. Not so much. (Pictured, of course, is Georges Seurat's "Sunday afternoon on the Island of Le Grand Jatte," the masterpiece hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago that inspired another masterpiece, Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George.")

It's not that I don't care. I have political views which I express often. It's just that I became convinced this year that politics matters less than I thought, and that in any case political change is baked-into our system.

Some may be surprised at both conclusions, so let's take the first one first.

Why doesn't it matter? Because in the end politics reacts to change, it doesn't lead it. I am utterly convinced, now, that economic change drives the American train.

• The Civil War came about only after it became evident that machines could produce more than people. It was about the John Henry story, not Uncle Tom's Cabin.

• Populists and progressives arose only after it became evident that utility markets needed regulation in order to deliver fixed-price inputs to mass manufacturing. J.P. Morgan worked on behalf of this change, not against it.

• The New Deal arose after it became evident that production needed consumption or would inevitably result in deflation and disaster. FDR and Hitler were saying the same thing – buy.

• The 1960s were not about social change, but economic change. Less Jim Morrison, more Apollo XI. Less Easy Rider, more Apple.

Sun Rise Continues

As I have said before there is deliberate bearishness about solar power, much of it coming from the fossil fuel industries.

They deliberately ignore the basic economics of the trade. Install a capital good now and money comes out, day-after-day, year-after-year, literally for decades. Regardless of the current price of grid electricity you will, in time, pay for that capital good and generate a positive return. As grid prices rise, the deal gets better. As panel prices fall the deal remains just as good.

As I wrote before, Solyndra was actually a good deal. They promised costs 35% below the market. They were worth the investment. The “problem” was that costs fell a lot more than that, due to over-production in China. This created a glut that now has panels selling below their production costs.

Problem? No, opportunity.

Green Comes From the Market

A lot of “green” advocates are feeling blue right now.

Google has dropped its energy efforts. There won't be a new green treaty any time soon. 

This is, in fact, good news.

It's further evidence that the market is moving toward real energy solutions. Headlines from a new IEA report on renewables  are a call for more favorable policies, but renewable energy “now accounts for almost a fifth of all electricity produced worldwide.”

What's really happening is that opportunity is starting to dawn. The market is taking over from the policy advocates. If you want change, bet on the market.

Solyndra Was a Good Deal

Back in 1971, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA) was just starting to put money against what would become the Internet.

It was a good use of money. Not just because the Internet would revolutionize the world, but because the development of new technologies, accelerating change, was the best way to fight and destroy the forces of international communism.

Communism couldn't adapt to rapid change, you see. Capitalism could.

It's a pity we don't have such an enemy today, or I'm sure conservatives would be among those cheering the funding (and failure of) Solyndra and Beacon Power .

Solyndra you've heard of. Beacon Power was another government-backed start-up, this one in the area of energy storage. They had gotten 7% of the industrial power storage market when they went under, taking their government loan guarantees with them.

My larger point is this. Solyndra was a good deal for the government. So was Beacon Power. It was a good investment, even if it went up in smoke. And for the same reason the Internet was a good investment, because its aim was to accelerate change.

The Chart of the Decade

I will have a larger version of the chart at right later this week. I call it the Chart of the Decade.

For now, let's deal with the FUD emerging from Washington and Houston, from people who deny the reality of this chart as Europe once denied that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

First we have this continuing canard from Forbes and others that “the Sun goes down.”  Why yes, the Sun does go down.

Ever heard of batteries?

Seriously, instead of just feeding the grid during the day, you get yourself a battery, which can deliver as much power as you'll need to keep the lights on and the other utilities running all night. The size of that required battery is declining with time, as we move toward LED lights, as all home entertainment equipment becomes more like a laptop, and as home appliances become more efficient.

This results in a grid that is a lot more robust than the one we have today, because every home becomes self-sufficient. Utilities will be competing with customers who are leaving the grid. And there is tons of innovation coming along when it comes to electrical storage. Scaling it down, rather than up, actually improves the outlook.

Then we have this nonsense that solar isn't getting cheap enough, fast enough.  This is often displayed with old market reports showing costs dropping only slowly.

Better than Beating the Aggies

I've never understood the obsession among Texas colleges over winning football games.

I read Sports Illustrated's profile of TCU coach Gary Patterson with interest and, in the end, with revulsion. Not because Patterson's a bad guy. He's a great guy, a real ambassador for the sport. It was the article's description of all the money pouring into his program – for facilities, for salaries, for amenities. TCU is not a school with an enormous endowment, yet it's spending millions of dollars turning kids into billboards (I liked the uniforms they had that were given a look like scales), and thinking that's a good use of education money.

It's not. It's just a bid for political influence. It's influence peddling.

I went to Rice, and when I went there we played in the old Southwest Conference. That conference disappeared in a welter of corruption and greed in 1994, and the school now plays in something called Conference USA. We lose $10 million a year. I wish we didn't, but I also know the only way to reduce the loss is to kill the program. So I keep my mouth shut.

Still, like most Rice alums, I'm a lot happier about news like this than I ever could be about beating Texas A&M. It's a paper in the journal Physical Letters by Prof. Rui-Rui Du (left, above) and his graduate student, Ivan Knez (right, above), describing a "quantum spin Hall topological insulator." This is a device needed to create a quantum computer, a gate for a device that would operate on a sub-atomic level. Instead of using “bits” of on-and-off, it would use base four, the spins possible in a particle.

Understanding Solyndra: Solar is not Silicon

I have talked about Moore's Law in many posts here, because I have an expansive view of the concept. But it's confusing to people, so from now on I'm going to talk about Dana's Law instead. 

Dana's Law holds that the amount of solar energy in production will double every year or 18 months as far as the eye can see. It's a Moore's Law frame applied to technology that's not entirely silicon.

Take Solyndra, for instance. Not silicon. Solyndra was using thin film CIGS technology and a new circular panel design. It hoped to produce energy at $3/watt, including capital costs. A year ago, when panel prices were at $5/watt, that was a breakthrough. But Chinese oversupply this year sent prices plunging to $1/watt, and Solyndra went bankrupt.

Some people are trying to spin this as bad news. It is not. It is good news. Production efficiency and market competition have cut the cost of producing solar energy.  The “problem” is that Chinese companies produced more panels than their own market could absorb and so “dumped” a ton of them on the U.S. market, killing some suppliers that were using technologies, like CIGS that could not scale as fast.

This happens often in tech. It's one reason our big tech companies hold so much cash. It's only a “scandal” if you're looking to make up a scandal. The solution is to do what some smart energy companies have been doing – make a switch from solar thermal to solar electric, and pick up some bargains. Lower costs now mean big profits later.