We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

There is plenty of energy at the bottom

I would never have considered that the energy output of a TypeI Civilization could fit into my flat:

It is difficult, even for someone who has been working with these ideas and numbers for the past couple of decades, to get one’s head around the utter raw power potential of real nanotechnology. What Drexler is saying in this dry passage is that the amount of nanomotors needed to power a Kardasheff type I civilization, using all the sunlight that hits the Earth, would fit in a 500 square foot apartment (with 8-foot ceiling).

I might need a bit of air conditioning though…

3 comments to There is plenty of energy at the bottom

  • Dale

    Glad you are on – THEY GOT FUNDING(Link)….

    2 million bucks for Polywell

  • Nuke Gray!

    Dale, the trouble is, we keep hearing about these around-the-corner breakthroughs, but it’s never the corner I go around! By now, we were supposed to be all working and living in paperless offices, but if our office runs out of paper, it’s a disaster!
    A Science Fiction book written in the early eighties talked about an information and power singularity where power to each human would be doubling each year. We should all now be GODS!!! Where is my Godhood?
    Even if this particular prophecy turns out to be real, it won’t keep us happy. We always want more and more computing power, just as we’ll always want more energy, just because it’s there to be had.

  • “Even if this particular prophecy turns out to be real, it won’t keep us happy. We always want more and more computing power, just as we’ll always want more energy, just because it’s there to be had.”

    Bu that is the point. Without the unhappiness, the first prophecy would never have been realised, because we would have been happy already.

    This reminds me of a rather self-indulgent “Comics up the Kilamanjaro” programme that was on recently.

    Airhead celeb (who people think have a more valuable opinion for some strange reason) started talking about how awful the healthcare system was in Africa and how brave people were while in the UK all we did was complain.

    DID IT NOT OCCUR TO HER THAT OUR COMPLAINING IS WHAT HAS IMPROVED MEDICINE FOR CENTURIES!!!!!???

    I know we have had a slide back for the last 60 years, but advances are due to people not being content with the status quo. If you notice, now the Socialists are in place, we are told to be content with whatever the monopolistic edifice does.