Sunday, September 30, 2007

Electric Microbes

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's all about power; power generation, power transmission, power storage and power consumption. The most useful form of power in our modern electronic world is electricity, it can drive technologies that move us, assist us, inform us and ultimately protect us. With such a bright future for electricity shouldn't we be laser focused on finding better ways to generate it.

A couple of years ago I read an article about a naturally occurring bacteria that produced electricity by eating pollution. Given the modern energy and pollution situation, it seemed like a potentially important new avenue for energy research. Since that initial article I have seen a few follow-up articles, like this R&D one on bacteria based fuel cells, but nothing about the commercialization of the science. Even if they haven't been productized yet, the approach probably will eventually get to the commercial markets (kidding aside, products like mud batteries could give another revenue stream to chicken and pig farmers as they sell power to the grid while detoxifying all that waste).

Of further interest is the recent discovery of other bacteria, at Yellowstone National Park, that convert light to electricity. Using photosynthesis to create electricity, these bacteria are sure to become an important research and discovery tool.

For the future, all of these bacterial generators could become important for energy independence, not just national independence, but personal independence as well. With the prospect of inexpensive alternative energy generation from sunlight, waste disposal and other readily available sources, along with intelligent power storage systems, shouldn't we expect to someday generate enough energy for our own individual needs? If not completely then what about partially?

With so much attention dedicated to research on batteries, power management and alternate power sources shouldn't there be some system thinking going on that would bring it all together? How about self-contained on-site power systems for our homes? If Apple produced one it could be called iPower and it would be launched with a very hip and expensive ad campaign. As for me, I’ll be waiting in line on launch day.

DeMockerAcy

Democracy ???
Democracy is widely established as the optimal governance mechanism. This is mainly due to the distribution of power among various institutions (rather than individuals) and the checks and balances against abuse of this power.

But the way the system has managed to beat itself in this game amazes me. If there's anything I've learnt in my diploma institute, its that a system can be adjudged to be a good one only if it does so when all players act in a self-interested ( a sophisticated way of saying 'selfish') manner. Hence I refuse to lay blame on the politicians' door for being selfish. When they find no incentive to lead their respective constituency on the path of development, why would they? When there is an easier and surer way to cling to power than carry out developmental work, why would they care to develop their people?

The least one should expect in a good system of governance is for performance to be linked to rewards/punishment. Instead, there is significant proof that one's misdeeds does not necessarily mean defeat in the next election. Well, we have a live example where a person needs less than 1500 days to make a trillion dollar deficit from a surplus state, gets the energy corporations to decide energy policy and of course, run a war to settle scores with the guy who tried to kill his father, and then win an extra four years to continue his service to his nation. A little before Lok Sabha elections in India this year, India Today reported a survey in which people displayed a remarkably high negative correlation between their preferred candidate choice and his performance.

Political parties seem to consciously avoid issues of importance and would rather debate non-issues. If, in India, it is Mandir / Mandal / Foreign origin etc, in US it is abortion, gay rights, Vietnam War and of course the War on Terror. Whatever happened to good ol' poverty, increasing divide between the wealthy and poor, poor infrastructure etc?!
Even if at a later date, a political party does decide to take up issues of development, by then the public is fixated over the non-issues to the extent that any vote for this new political party will probably be based on its perceived stand on the non-issues.

In other words, the current set of political parties benefit by changing the rules of the game so that the ideal winner is destined to lose.
So what is the way out of this mess? My answer is rather simple - I have no clue whatsoever. I just hope there exists some person who can creatively and intelligently play the game of electoral politics to break this impasse.

Well, the only reason I can think of for democracy to be considered a good system is that every other conceivable system is worse.

In any case, I just hope that out of all this churning will emerge a better system of governance. Hope is good - Andy in Shawshank. Indeed it is.

The Great Indian Dream By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

BANGALORE, India

Nine years ago, as Japan was beating America's brains out in the auto industry, I wrote a column about playing a computer geography game with my daughter, then 9 years old. I was trying to help her with a clue that clearly pointed to Detroit, so I asked her, "Where are cars made?" And she answered, "Japan." Ouch.

Well, I was reminded of that story while visiting an Indian software design firm in Bangalore, Global Edge. The company's marketing manager, Rajesh Rao, told me he had just made a cold call to the vice president for engineering of a U.S. company, trying to drum up business. As soon as Mr. Rao introduced himself as calling from an Indian software firm, the U.S. executive said to him, "Namaste" — a common Hindi greeting. Said Mr. Rao: "A few years ago nobody in America wanted to talk to us. Now they are eager." And a few even know how to say hi in proper Hindu fashion. So now I wonder: if I have a granddaughter one day, and I tell her I'm going to India, will she say, "Grandpa, is that where software comes from?"

Driving around Bangalore you might think so. The Pizza Hut billboard shows a steaming pizza under the headline "Gigabites of Taste!" Some traffic signs are sponsored by Texas Instruments. And when you tee off on the first hole at Bangalore's KGA golf course, your playing partner points at two new glass-and-steel buildings in the distance and says: "Aim at either Microsoft or I.B.M."

How did India, in 15 years, go from being a synonym for massive poverty to the brainy country that is going to take all our best jobs? Answer: good timing, hard work, talent and luck.
The good timing starts with India's decision in 1991 to shuck off decades of socialism and move toward a free-market economy with a focus on foreign trade. This made it possible for Indians who wanted to succeed at innovation to stay at home, not go to the West. This, in turn, enabled India to harvest a lot of its natural assets for the age of globalization.

One such asset was Indian culture's strong emphasis on education and the widely held belief here that the greatest thing any son or daughter could do was to become a doctor or an engineer, which created a huge pool of potential software technicians. Second, by accident of history and the British occupation of India, most of those engineers were educated in English and could easily communicate with Silicon Valley. India was also neatly on the other side of the world from America, so U.S. designers could work during the day and e-mail their output to their Indian subcontractors in the evening. The Indians would then work on it for all of their day and e-mail it back. Presto: the 24-hour workday.

Also, this was the age of globalization, and the countries that succeed best at globalization are those that are best at "glocalization" — taking the best global innovations, styles and practices and melding them with their own culture, so they don't feel overwhelmed. India has been naturally glocalizing for thousands of years.

Then add some luck. The dot-com bubble led to a huge overinvestment in undersea fiber-optic cables, which made it dirt-cheap to transfer data, projects or phone calls to far-flung places like India, where Indian techies could work on them for much lower wages than U.S. workers. Finally, there was Y2K. So many companies feared that their computers would melt down because of the Year 2000 glitch they needed software programmers to go through and recode them. Who had large numbers of programmers to do that cheaply? India. That was how a lot of Indian software firms got their first outsourced jobs.
So if you are worried about outsourcing, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that a unique techno-cultural-economic perfect storm came together in the early 1990's to make India a formidable competitor and partner for certain U.S. jobs — and there are not a lot of other Indias out there. The bad news, from a competition point of view, is that there are 555 million Indians under the age of 25, and a lot of them want a piece of "The Great Indian Dream," which is a lot like the American version.

As one Indian exec put it to me: The Americans' self-image that this tech thing was their private preserve is over. This is a wake-up call for U.S. workers to redouble their efforts at education and research. If they do that, he said, it will spur "a whole new cycle of innovation, and we'll both win. If we each pull down our shutters, we will both lose."

Pulavar - Tamil Kavidai - Anonymous


Enough !!!!

I am sitting in a little cubicle at work, ( such a joke that, work) and for some reason, I decided what had been bothering me ever since I stopped to consider how I was doing, three minutes ago.

Enough, really, my life has deteriorated into some nothingness, mostly conflicted decisions and loss of sleep and major unproductivity.

It pains me.

No really, damn it, I think I have over the course of the last tow years asked more people for help, advice, support and chocolate than I had in the previous happy existence. I definitely have whined more more more than I thought was possible, perhaps as an experiment in pushing the limit.

Also profund inabilities to write in paragraphs less than three sentences baffle me.

I know, I know, I've reached similar conclusions about state of afairs before, but none of them have been very helpful.

Shall therefore vow to:

1) be an arrogant snob
1) not whine that much
1) do more more with life
1) not hate myself in anyway
2) read more ( and stop trying to finish the bloody wheel of time series - it is painful.)
2) be happy
2) go on vacation - must.
2) get_____
2) not guilt trip oneself. no. not your fault, not yours not yours (raguvaran style)

and lastly, and yell at me if i dont stick to this, but not to make this a personal diary space - uh huh - well atleast not too overtly.

yes. there. new me.

new me is proud to report fresh explorations in the fields of music, ledzepplin come to lifelike. If you live close by, come n have a look :) .

Quote of the day

Each Step ...“Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect.

There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions.

So what. Get started now.With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”

- Mark Victor Hansen