As Claire Melamed and others have argued, inequality can reduce growth rates, slow down poverty reduction, and increase political instability—all of which ought to matter to people working in development.
– Why a Focus on Inequality in Fragile States Is WrongI remember these commercials from the 90’s. It’s interesting how close a lot of AT&T’s visions were: GPS, touch screen ticket ordering, toll booth sensors, remote communication on tablets, video chat. Ironically AT&T did bring much of this to us, but only through data transmission. The innovations and engineering came from companies like Apple and Google. Still, they were apart of it.
What should today’s version of these commercials predict?
Another difference is related to Julian Sanchez’s observation about the artificality of America’s bipolar two-party system and the way it flattens disparate philosophical commitments onto a single left-right axis. Because the Dutch political scene is divided between a plethora of different parties, it hasn’t become obligatory to adhere to climate-change scepticism for conservative tribal-recognition purposes, certainly not if you’re affiliated with a centre-right party such as the Liberals or Christian Democrats. The American system exacerbates these kinds of conflicts by forcing allegiances on all sorts of unrelated issues into tight alignment.
– Kevin Drum(Source: economist.com)
Via fellow futurist Jack Uldrich’s blog - made me think! I do have doubts about energy becoming that abundant soon, though…
Abundance, Not Scarcity May Be Your Biggest Problem in the Future
The future often has a funny way of turning out differently than most people expect. Today, it is conventional wisdom that the world’s energy needs will grow significantly in the years ahead and the only way to meet this growing need is build more coal and nuclear power plants. This future may come to pass but what if Smart Grid technology, LED lights, real-time pricing and home networks dramatically reduce energy usage? What if the price of solar cells and fuel cells drop radically and are installed in greater-than-expected numbers? And what if wind turbines, tidal power, geothermal technology and battery storage all improve to the point where the world has more than enough energy? In short, what if the abundance of electrical power—and not its scarcity—is the greatest problem facing the industry in the future?
greenfuturist
