Raymond Kurzweil and Aging

"Kurzweil expects that, once the human/machine race has converted all of the matter in the universe into a giant, sentient supercomputer it will have created a supremely powerful and intelligent being which will be Godlike in itself." - Wikipedia article on Raymond Kurzweil

At first glance that sentence is ridiculous and hilarious. Then it dawned on me that he kind of had a point. Anyways, his wiki is worth reading. It is a bit long however.

I first became aware of him when watching a show on research done to slow down and even reversing the aging process. It interested me because I had just read an article on MIT's Technology Review about (this is my non-pHD interpretation) the first insights as to exactly what causes aging. Bare with me; the only organism for which aging is understood is yeast. In yeast, aging occurs because as DNA duplicates itself mistakes are sometimes made. These mistakes are passed on from one generation of cells to the next and over time begin to account for an increasing share of the DNA sequence. Then there is a protein that gets involved and starts expressing dormant traits (I'm a bit shaky on that part) to fill in the gaps left by mistakes. Researchers have discovered a similar pattern in mice, but are quick to caution that aging is a very complex and haphazard thing... so this may not be the whole story. The point is that aging is not necessarily "natural", but rather just a screw up in our genes.

Long story short, Kurzweil proposes that aging will soon become a thing of the past. In a series of steps (or "bridge to a bridge to a bridge" as he calls it) humans will learn to slow down, stop, and eventually reverse aging. All supposedly within the next few decades. It would be easy to dismiss if he weren't so damned credible. He invented the flatbed scanner, text to speech synthesizer, text recognition software, and he sold his first software company at the age of 20. While he was a sophomore at MIT none the less. So at the very least he's a talented inventor, business man, and prediction maker.

There's a lot to write about on this guy. I guess I'm mostly fascinated by his research topics, ideas on increasing rates of change (in terms of technology), and his predictions. They're much further looking than mine and much more sci-fi. The odd thing is that as outlandish as they seem, if current computer advances continue I don't see how they will not become true.

Energy; or Electricity and How We Consume It

So I read this article a while back about how we need to vastly improve our network of energy distribution. Naturally, I object. I think it's a wonderful idea, but there is another solution that isn't even being talked about. Better yet, you can combine them both...

Here's my plan. Currently about 7% of the energy produced at a power plant is lost in the grid. Not too bad actually, but 7% is enough to satisfy 21 million people in the US. That's 7 times the population of Chicago proper...

The problem is this. With traditional sources of energy such as gas and coal plants you need to build the generation stations big enough to handle peak demand. Peak demand is something like the hottest day in summer when everyone is running their AC. Low points are 2 AM in the morning when no one is using electricity. Ideally you would have medium sized generators that ran all the time, but because of peak demand the power companies have to bring plants online occasionally to fill demand. They're called peak plants. In fact I've seen some of them. ComEd actually has jet engines it can turn on to spin turbines and meet peak demand. They're cool... but that can't be cheap. Electrical demand has to be matched exactly. There is no fudge margin. Excess gets wasted and if enough isn't produced then things start to fail.

In comes renewables. They aren't very reliable in terms of output. If the wind slows down around a wind turbine farm so does energy production... by a factor of the difference of the cubes, so quickly (an 8 knot wind produces half the power of an 11 knot wind). If a cloud passes over a solar array it produces less energy. Thus, the aforementioned article calls for a newer smarter grid to deal with these things. I agree, it's a good idea to start work on this. But is that the whole solution?

What if most homes (or at least newly constructed homes) had a bank of batteries tied to their own renewable energy generators plus a plug in hybrid car? The car is in this case is essentially just more battery storage potential. Basically, if most homes had a decent battery storage capacity they could store the excess energy from power plants during the night when none is being used. Plus, with the renewables they would offset the peak demand. Think about it. When is peak demand? Midday when it's hottest and the sun is the brightest. So peak is reduced by the usage of renewables, and trough point demand is raised because everyone is charging their cars and banks of batteries. The demand for electricity is now much more flat.

Power plants could becomes smaller, run more consistently, and be more efficient. Then again, no one wants to pay for anything up front. We seem to be more content with paying higher costs indefinately than paying more initially.

I Love Predictions

Freakonomics is having a long sighted contest for economic or really the best unforeseen event of 2009. You can enter here.

That being said, I write down predictions/business ideas (that are inevitable) from time to time. It's a pseudo hobby of mine and I'd like to think I'm good at it. One of my big ones for the past couple years now has been that some day all media will be licensed to users and downloaded cheaply via the internet. By media I mean books, music, movies, etc. Anything that has a transaction cost that approaches zero will be salable via this method. Why is this inevitable? Currently stores like Best Buy and Borders exist... which means they have to pay employees to stock a physical product, rent a store, pay for electricity, get books/cds from a distributor, who gets them from a manufacturer, etc. By downloading these things via the internet you get rid of over 90% of that. Apple's iTunes is screwed up because they charge $1 a song. Yea, it should be like 5 or 10 cents and the price should fluctuate with demand... will someone please hire me to think up ideas? I have note books full of them.

Here's another; okay, everyone needs food right? And less and less people can or have the time to cook... yet the current food that fits this bill is crazy unhealthy and we all know it. Speaking of which, McDonalds is posting some of its biggest gains they've ever experienced. No money? It's cheap and calorie laden. So why not combine the cheapness and ubiquity of McDonalds with the health that should be inherent to inexpensive food. Cheap tasty food doesn't need to be unhealthy. Now the twist, serve in measured portions and allow your customers to sign up in your store or online for a preferred card type system (much like your grocery store) that would allow them to see what they've eaten in terms of calories, protein, carbs, etc. (if anyone steals this idea, which BTW I'm fine with, please credit me or hire me as a consultant or something). This also allows the business to gather a ton of data on its customers. Parents could also give their kids meal cards that could specify dietary restrictions, allow the kids to eat a good meal in the absence of their parents, and allow the parents to check up on their childrens' diets. The prices of food should also fluctuate with market prices, and the menus should be diverse and constantly changing. So an electronic menu would be necessary. Also, these restaurants should be low frill affairs. They should also start in cities and there will need to be a lot of them initially to achieve the kind of economies of scale that will make the food affordable. O, and it needs to be deliverable. The mission statement of this business should follow along the lines of... improve the health of your customers while providing transparency of dietary information at an extremely low price (meal + snack for between meals for about $2-4, yes it's possible).

Side note: the reason this will work is because kitchens are expensive to build, grocery stores are inefficient (it's a middle man), healthy restaurants are unnecessarily expensive, peoples time is increasingly limited and valuable, cooking for yourself is inefficient, fast food is generally unhealthy, and fewer and fewer people can cook or ever do so at home.

And yes, all my ideas eliminate jobs. I'm evil. Then again wouldn't it suck if we still had blacksmiths and ice delivery men? There's plenty of work to be done in this world. Don't cling to menial tasks that can be done better by technology.