Institute For The Future

Energy grid limitation on the growth of alternative energy

The New York Times recently had an article on how the U.S. electric grid is turning out to hinder the development of wind power:

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.

That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.

The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

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Tech devices to rescue

My credit card was stolen from bag, and thankfully  I was able to report the theft and do quick damage control because I had internet connectivity and international calling on my iphone to report the theft and disable the card. The person who stole my credit card had gone on a shopping spree buying stuff worth thousands of dollars within a span of few hours.  As I was out in the field when I discovered the theft, I used the Internet on my iphone to find the number to report the theft and used the roaming facility on my phone to make the call to the bank in the US.

Abundant mobility and hacks

I am in India conducting research, and as always amazed by the variety of cell phones and hacks that are available. One of our research partners brought my attention to the fact that many people in India have unlocked iphones, and have jail-breaked their iphones to install 'non-Apple" applications. A popular application is twinkle -- a twitter client that includes location based service. Twinkle is very popular with iphone users in India, who use it to twitter. It does not require sending a SMS for twittering. Iphone has not been officially launched in India as yet. It is expected to arrive later this year. But that is certainly not a deterrent for tech savvy Indians who aspire to own the iphones.

Ecorazzi.com The Latest in Green Gossip

This site was created to showcase the combination of celebrity gossip
and environmental causes! At first it was just an experiment, but it
turned out to be a success for gossip fanatics. It is a great way to
grab different audiences, and providing them with awareness of the
green issue that is occuring today. This site incoporates gossip news
of how, why, and when celebs have interacted in some way, shape, or
form to the green issue.

http://www.ecorazzi.com

IFTF in the news

The Institute's new future of making map got a mention in the New York Times.

As important as tinkering has been to the nation’s past, it could become a much bigger deal before long, said David Pescovitz, a research director at the Institute for the Future, a consultancy in Silicon Valley. A new report from the institute argues that the makers could force enormous changes in the ways that goods and services are designed and manufactured. The renewed urge to tinker, along with flexible manufacturing technologies, could shift production from big companies and stores to communities of makers and consumers, Mr. Pescovitz said.

"It’s about having a deeper connection with the stuff around you, and through that with the people around you," he said. That is why his research group took the slogan from the pins given out at the Futurama pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair — "I have seen the future" — and edited it for the report to "I am making the future."

"If you want something done right, do it yourself. That’s really what it’s about," Mr. Pescovitz said.

The X2 project

For the last 6 months or so, I've been working on a big new project at the Institute. I haven't written that much about it, as we've been... quiet. Now, though, we're starting to take the project public.

On Morning Edition

Cyrus Farivar quotes me at the end of his latest NPR Morning Edition piece, "High-Tech Pen Makes Note-Taking Easier." In my sound bite, I reveal that I like my Moleskine notebook because it's harder for me to break paper than the screen on my Nokia N95.

Biocitizens, Advertizing, and the Virtual Dead

A recent piece in the NYT BITS blog has some interesting ramifications for our forecasts on biosocial identities and affinities. It discusses a set of “compromises” reached by the Network Advertising Initiative, an advertising trade association.

The lists of restrictions and red-flag categories represented here is about as culturally loaded as you can get, but what drew my attention was the way that biological identities, biological affinities, online collective organization were called out as particularly tricky areas of “behavioral correlation.”

The coming debate about brain enhancement

The New York Times recently had a pretty decent article about debates over brain enhancement in academia:

an era of doping may be looming in academia, and it has ignited a debate about policy and ethics that in some ways echoes the national controversy over performance enhancement accusations against elite athletes like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.