Get Smart with Technology's New Paradigms. By Joel Garreau, Wilson Quarterly, October, 2008. "Our roads and airports are jammed. Drought threatens from Tucson to Atlanta. Floods are a plague from the Chesapeake to California. Our air conditioners and computers are straining the capacity of our electrical grid. We can't go on like this, goes the hand-wringing refrain. Turns out that's true, in an ironic way. Our industrial-age solutions are approaching their limits. Not only are they crumbling into decrepitude, but they have reached levels of physical absurdity that spark kamikaze political resistance, from 17-story-tall electrical transmission towers despoiling rare and pristine landscapes to interstate highways approaching the width of the Bosporus. The business-as-usual interests lining up for more tax dollars rarely mention the impending obsolescence of their favored projects...
"Solar power is the real solution to the energy crisis. As it happens, that low-hanging fruit is one of the first targets of nanotechnology. Several companies, such as Nanosolar Inc., are going commercial right now with processes that produce endless sheets of thin plastic with astoundingly tiny energy-converting semiconductors printed on them in nano-ink. If the technology rolls out as hoped, it will be able to turn sunshine into electricity priced as cheaply as power from coal-fired plants. A National Association of Engineers panel recently predicted that solar power will scale up to produce enough energy to meet the needs of everyone in the world in 20 years. Would that profoundly change the infrastructure challenge? You bet. What is now a top-down hierarchy dominated by big generators, big transmission lines, and big coal would become a bottom-up network in which every consumer could also be a creator. Just as the Internet has chewed up the television, radio, movie, newspaper, music, and telephone worlds, distributed GRIN [genetic, robotic, information, and nano]. technologies could cause an upheaval in the world of utilities. "
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