Dazzling Possibility

INCH BY SOLAR INCH . . .

A new dye may make solar cells 14% more efficient – here. The progress seems slow week to week, but in a few years we may look back and find that solar energy is highly competitive with its more problematic competitors.

. . . AND MUCH GRANDER VISIONS OF THE FUTURE

Hey, kids, stick around: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Nearly free energy! Space elevators! Robot-human-hybrids! Books you can download to your cell phone the minute you want them! (Oh, wait: we already have that, which is how I’m reading this one, Michio Kaku’s, Physics of the Future.) Previewed and summarized here.

It’s much in the vein of Ray Kurzweil’s contention that technological progress these next 50 years will be 32 times as dazzling as the last 50.

All the more reason to stay focused, logical, and constructive – lest, as a species, we snatch extinction from the jaws of near boundless prosperity and self-actualization.

Which is to say: vote for the party that sextuples the number of stem cell lines available to researchers rather than the one that cuts them back; the party that empowers the department of energy rather than the one that vows to abolish it; the party that seeks to modernize our infrastructure rather than the one that votes to let it decay.

Oh – and (speaking of the survival of our species) the party that leans toward, not away from, environmental regulation.

Tomorrow: Stiff Competition from Abroad