What innovations are most important to world's future?
A desalination plant built by IDE. Cost-effective desalination could help solve the worldwide water shortage crisis, but the technology is not widely available today.
(Credit: IDE)I was thinking recently about the many problems facing our fragile planet--economic crisis, global warming, massive water shortages, and so on--and got to wondering what can be done to solve them.
In part, this stemmed from the recent American election and what it meant for our country and the world, but also from thinking about the ongoing alternate-reality game being run by the Institute for the Future, Superstruct, which tasks players with coming up with ideas that could help stave off a fictional extinction of the human race.
One problem, it seems to me, is that there are so many critical issues to deal with we sometimes feel that unless we can solve all of them at once, there's no popular will to deal seriously with any of them.
But that mentality likely leaves us trapped in stasis, as it's almost impossible to imagine being able to tackle everything at once. On the other hand, if we grapple with one or two major issues at a time, we might start to make some real progress before it's too late.
So, I thought I'd put it out there publicly to see what readers like you think are the individual innovations and changes we could make that could most positively impact our world--and get us on the path to a stable future.
For me, I think the worldwide shortage of drinking water is the one that, if solved, could most benefit the planet. Because while water crises in countries like India and China are well-known, and while political battles between countries like Israel and Syria may in the end have more to do with water than ideology, there are less understood water problems everywhere, including here at home.
In the American West, for example, there are several states sharing water from the Colorado River basin. Yet, even as places like Las Vegas use more and more, the supply is rapidly dwindling as an extended drought gets worse and worse.
So, for my money, the single-most valuable innovation I can imagine would be cost-effective, massively deployable desalination technology. After all, there's a limitless supply of salt water available, but to date, there's simply no efficient way to convert it. Were such desalination possible, it wouldn't solve the crises overnight--you'd still have to figure out how to pay to pipe in the new supplies of fresh water to inland areas--but it would go a long way to a future in which everyone has suitable drinking water.
But that's me. I want to know what you think would be the single innovation that could make our world a better place.
I'm not looking for pure fantasy here, but rather something that is feasible, even if it's a ways off.
If you have an idea, please post it in the comments section here, or e-mail me at daniel.terdiman@cnet.com or Twitter me at twitter.com/greeterdan.
I'll post the best answers in the next few days.
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel.
* given limited resources, a space-bound community will quickly develop techniques and technologies for more efficient use of resources (water, electricity, agriculture, you-name-it), which in turn can be put to use almost directly down here.
* speaking of resources, new means and methods of self-sufficiency and use of unideal-but-locally-plentiful resources (lunar material, asteroids, etc) can be gained from such an endeavor.
* solar (or safely isolated fusion/fission) power generation can be had in orbit, and transmitted back to Earth via microwave. The tech is already proven, and can be refined over time to far higher efficiencies. It's the ultimate clean energy source.
* overpopulation? No problem - move the excess population skyward.
* a pandemic, asteroidal impact, or other global catastrophe would have a far, far lesser chance of wiping out the entire human race.
* running out of $resource? no problem - we could eventually (more often than not) mine far, far more of whatever that item is from NEO asteroids and comets.
Given all of this, I'm guessing that cheap Earth-to-space travel and the tech required to support continuous human habitation off of Earth would do more towards helping us as a species survive and thrive, than anything else I can think of.
/P
/P
There a two huge benefits coming from such a grid:
1) We could put power sources where they make the most sense (windmills where it's windy, and nuclear reactors where there are few people) and then transmit the power to distance cities. Efficient transmission of electricity is key to most/all of the green power technologies under development.
2) Superconducting material needs to be very cold. The authors suggest using liquid hydrogen as the coolant. A grid crisscrossing the country with liquid hydrogen?hmm. Yeah, that would also allow us to end the chicken-egg problem of getting us to a "hydrogen economy." We could use the grid to supply hydrogen fuel cell cars.
There's also a whole other issue the authors discuss regarding increasing power consumption in the U.S. and the fact that our existing grid is looking like it's not going to scale up much more.
Here's a link to the article:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-power-grid-for-the-hydr-2006-07
If that doesn't work, go to www.sciam.com and search for "hydrogen electric grid."
--
Seffer
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/water/
Google any one of thsoe states and the term "water rights"... (hint: when you buy or sell property in the intermountain region of the Rocky Mountains, you don;t necessarily get to buy or sell the right to use any water that is found in or on it. ).
The innovation would be a new kind of politics: a country open to anyone. It may offer further tax incentives for development such as 0 tax for students. Considering many individuals in the world today suffer under horrible regimes, I think that'd be a very welcome change. It would certainly increase the number of innovators.
Let's not forget that there was no democracy in Hong Kong. It was a British colony but it thrived nevertheless.
Having said that, if we could come up with a cheap and clean energy source (ala cold fusion which hasn't been proven yet), then many of the other issues would fall.
Enable people to freely enter water desalinating, purifying, and delivering business to drive price to market price.
Nuclear is cheaper to produce than oil. Creating better nuclear reactor, small and large.
Add the cost of warming the planet into products that caused it. This will require data collection.
More and better information disclosure will help.
People already can do that. Ever see those big trucks delivering water to offices and homes? Or are you saying that private companies should be given access to the public water infrastructure?
I know, not "innovations", but technology cannot save humanity. Only a total culture change can save the species.
Maybe a little birth control would solve the problem?
Yes there is a world water problem so let?s let 1/3 the population die of thirst. Not a very good idea is it. Better we should figure out a way to get more water. That?s what the writer of this article is suggesting. Great so let?s get on with doing it. It doesn?t matter that there are several Corporations already working on this. Let us urge that more research be put into finding a better less energy intensive way to do it. This is a task so important that it will not be successful until plenty of water can be produced for 1 cent a gallon. Now that?s something to work on and it doesn?t deprive anyone of doing what he desires.
Energy should be next so let us do as much research as required to produce Hydrogen and plenty of it at a price that doesn?t freeze out upcoming industrial countries. How about Vaccines and medicine that everyone can afford. The list goes on and on but we are at the beginning and need to start in earnest the journey to achieve these things. If our brightest and best are given the opportunity these problems can be solved within 50 years. If the effort is not made then these problems will only get worse and still be with us 200 years from now.
Ultimately it is a shotgun approach that will win the day, since we've driven so far past the point of easy fixing... clean coal. nuclear, solar, hydro and micro hydro, wind power;
better mass transmission of power vs. small, far more numerous decentralzed power production with short hop transmission;
biodiesel, electric, hydrogen and fuel cell, etc small power plants;
more mass transit, better planning and utilization of available space and resources as well as full suport for locally produced food and products;
true carbon pricing to reflect the full earth-wide cost of product production and transport;
and a huge worldwide, all government committment to making these changes and cooperating with each other. Gonna take some sand to pull this one off, eh?
--Mike
--Mike On the Way to the Web
!. Use natural feature such as the difference in elevation from ocean level with that of death valley that is the lowest elevation in North America at 85.5 m (282 ft) below sea level. by creating a pipe-line through or over the ridge the separates them you can use the pressure difference to run the water through the desalination processes. Any electricity needed is available using solar energy or the drop differential of the water as a hydroelectric generation dam would.
Minerals extracted can be separated for resale or landfill for later use.
This can also be done with the dead sea or any other location near enough to ocean water and sufficient level difference.
2. Greenland has major runoff of pure water. By tunneling into the area under the ice where water is seeping too you can syphon it off and use the pressure to generate electricity and transport the clean water to either the European Continent or the American.
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by Scandahoovian
February 18, 2009 10:05 AM PST
- I think that once desalinization has become more economically viable, and scientifically streamlined, then every single city along the Eastern and Western seaboards should get their water from desalinization. If this happens, then whatever water is available coming into Lake Meade would there for use by cities like Las Vegas. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Los Angeles didn't get their water from anywhere else but the Pacific Ocean?
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