theory
A Key Thought on Credibility in Science and Technology
In a controversial piece on nuclear power a few months ago, I pointed out that people’s views about nuclear power are embedded in their broader attitudes about science and equity and the trustworthiness of experts.
Turns out, much the same is true of climate science. How people feel about the trustworthiness of a technical analysis [...]
The 5 Cent Savior and the Al Davis Approach to Technology Development
Back in 1993, it wasn’t the Bloom Box that was going to make clean energy “competitive with fossil fuels” but a new wind turbine from Kenetech.
The 33M-VS, which the company promoted as the “5 Cent Turbine,” was going to be the technological savior that would make wind energy as cheap as fossil fuel generation. In [...]
What History Can Bring to (Green) Technology
Green technology is changing so rapidly, one can hardly keep up with all the new solar and wind projects planned across the world. So, what can history bring to the study of such a fast-moving, innovative field?
This American Life on Health Care: The Power of Historical Contingency
The This American Life episode dealing with the rise of the insurance business features one of the best uses of historical knowledge that I’ve observed from a major media outlet.
Unlike many articles about green technology, which are of the history either will or will not repeat itself variety, Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson’s account of [...]
Energy Predictions for the Year 2000: The Executive, The Analyst, and The Professor
At a conference on “Energy, Economic Growth, and the Environment,” hosted by Resources for the Future in Washington D.C. in April of 1971, Philip Sporn, chief of American Electric Power, presented himself to the crowd as a realist.
Joel Darmstader1, an RFF analyst, had prepared a packet of information on energy consumption trends and patterns in [...]
The Momentum of Energy Systems
I read a nice exposition of the changes that will be necessary to make if we’re going to refashion our entire energy system in the Winter 2009 edition of Issues in Science and Technology. Frank Laird, a University of Colorado-Denver professor, authored it. He lays out the reasonable, 30,000-foot steps that we can take to [...]
Bertrand Russell on “The Most Important Effect of Machine Production”
I found this gem in Russell’s monster History of Western Philosophy, published in 1945:
The most important effect of machine production on the imaginative picture of the world is an immense increase in the sense of human power…
There thus arises, among those who direct affairs or are in touch with those who do so, a new [...]
“The Utopian Origins of Economic Growth”
Here’s an account of the passages that I found particularly interesting in Steven Stoll’s The Great Delusion: A Mad Inventor, Death in the Tropics, and the Utopian Origins of Economic Growth.
I’m interesting in it because Stoll uses John Etzler, the subject of my first narrative chapter, to explain and epitomize the kind of Enlightenment thinking [...]
How Many Neos Can You Add to Malthus?
In the wake of reading Steven Stoll’s incredible, The Great Delusion, about John A. Etzler’s mad vision of a limitless world, I’ve been thinking a lot about growth. The following piece is an exploration of the idea of growth with particular emphasis on how Malthus has been used rhetorically by those undercover technoutopians who promise [...]
Technological Change Does Happen, a Reminder
It’s impossible not to laugh while watching this local San Francisco news broadcast. It tells the story of “the first step in newspapers by computer,” the delivery of copy via Compuserve to people like Richard Halloran, whose tagline, in place of say, citizen or CEO, is “Owns Home Computer.”
There’s something poignant about the last scene [...]
Inventing Green by Alexis Madrigal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
