Future predictions

Here are some predictions based on current trends.

Computer chips will have one transistor per atom in 2025.

Every car will be electric by 2053.


There will be enough solar panels to cover all land on earth by 2056.

Two of these predictions are very likely to be wrong.

The first is based on Moore's law, which predicts that the number of transistors on a given size of chip will double every eighteen months.

The figure for electric cars is based on the recent increase in proportion of EVs, which in most countries is still less than one percent. The proportion may increase exponentially, and will of course stop increasing when it reaches 100%.


The figure for solar panels is based on a compound annual growth rate of 30%, which has been been happening for the past twenty years. I'm assuming that power output per area of solar panel will stay the same, which it probably won't. New panels will steadily produce more electricity for the same area, but the increase will not be large, let alone exponential.

Of these predictions, I think Moore's law is the most likely to come true. This law has held true for fifty years. I don't think atoms will necessarily stop it, since quantum computing is now a thing.

Moore's law has been enabled by the success of electronics leading to a steadily increasing budget for development of ever smaller chips. Developments have tended to compliment each other, rather than replace them. The budget is not increasing at a Moorean rate though.

These exponential growth rates are usually unsustainable since at some point they are limited by physical constraints of the real world. If things are getting smaller, of course, there is no limit. Right now there is a limit to our understanding of the very small, but if science shows us one thing it is that when we ask questions, sooner or later we find answers. The harder we look for the answers, the quicker we find them.

More interesting is Wirth's law, which states that "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is getting faster." So all these improvements in the computer power are eaten up by extra complications and functionality that we don't necessarily need. I noticed this around 1992, and decided to stop spending so much time programming computers. I now wish I'd written a paper on it, like Dr. Wirth.



I'm pretty sure solar panel production will peak before we cover the whole planet, although I will not be surprised to see nature reserves clear cut for solar farms, massive floating arrays, or increased solar installation in space. They may even start making the panels up there. The economic effects of increased solar power will likely be that some electricity is effectively free, which will drive down the price of electricity, and reduce the value of the panels, making their manufacture less worthwhile. So I don't think this prediction will come true. I'm hoping to still be alive, and will be able to find out.

There will very likely be a point in the future when the only people not driving electric vehicles are stupid and rich, and I think this point will come sooner rather than later. By the time our computers are firing on subatomic logic, the majority of people will be buying new electric cars. I'm sure this will sound as ridiculous as someone predicting the wide use of steam trains in 1818, or motor cars in 1918. Also, we must not underestimate the size of the stupid and rich demographic, and its disproportionate political power. There will always be a bit of liquid fuel sloshing around, and we are unlikely to ever have 100% electric vehicles, but I think we'll be close to that long before 2053.

Here's an article from the Guardian about accelerating car sales. Here's another claiming that the electric vehicle revolution in Australia is stuck in first gear. The press is never shy to use motor-industry metaphors, but they don't realise EVs only need one gear. Also they may never have experienced the excellent acceleration of electric vehicles.

Thermodynamics of cooking sources

There is obviously a link between food and thermodynamics, and it's not hard to see eating as primarily a means of getting energy into the body. 

In What is Life (the 1944 book by Erwin Schrödinger, not the 1970 George Harrison song), the physicist and theoretical cat-tormentor turned his hand to deep biology. His view seems to have been that the meaning of life is basically beating the second law of thermodynamics by moving energy from the colder bits of the universe into hotter bodies, and beating entropy by promoting some kind of order out of the inevitably increasing chaos.

Schrödinger inspired Watson and Crick in their search for the double helix, and in turn he was standing on the shoulders of Darwin, who had brought the field of biology well into the realm of science from its previous home somewhere down the corridor from stamp collecting.

In terms of evolution, getting energy into the body has been an important part of our development, and the taming of fire was a big breakthrough. Once we applied that to food, we got a double benefit of increasing the number of things we were able to eat, and reducing their volume and the time it took us to eat them. 

Previously I suggested that Watt invented the positive feedback loop that led coal to be used to power pumps that would remove water out of mines and allow more coal to be removed. But perhaps this wasn't really an invention, but simply another application of something humans have been doing for a very long time. 

It's Interesting that calories are now more often seen as enemies, to be scanned on packages, counted, and where possible reduced. Personally I always look at the label when I'm choosing what food to buy, and usually get the food with the largest number of calories since that's what I'm paying for. While some people are desperately trying to reduce the calories in the food, we rarely look at how many calories of energy went into preparation, packaging and transport of the food.

Early attempts at cooking were not so efficient. Wood was most likely the fuel, and little of the heat will have gone into the cooking, so most of the energy was going up in smoke rather than into those hungry human stomachs. 

This discussion on Ask Historians looks at the effects of gas and electric stoves on lifestyle, with many suggesting a revolution in the twentieth century, when cooking stopped being a full time job, and kitchens were no longer dedicated to food preparation, but became integrated into dining rooms. 

Another big innovation has been the microwave oven. Although scorned by a lot of people concerned about health and nutrition, and pining for "real" cooking, microwaves may be more efficient. Of course microwaves do put out radiation, but so do all other cooking appliances. Instead of sending out a broad spectrum of radiation, microwaves focus on frequencies that will excite the water molecules, and however you wrap it up in culinary language, cooking is basically about removing water. Also, you don't need to heat up a heavy metal container to cook what is inside a microwave, so it should be more efficient, but any efficiency is likely to be marginal, and savings will be much less than the energy used to read this.

(Picture stolen from: Green Lifestyle Magazine) 

Early adopters

You may already be familiar with Bernal's ladder, which refers to the way new ideas are received. According to the twentieth century crystallographer, as reported in Nigel Calder's Magic Universe: A Grand Tour of Modern Science, each new idea goes through four stages. First, it can't be right. Then, it might be right but it's not important. Next, it might be important but it's not original. Finally it is what people have thought all along.

At a slight tangent to this, here is a look at the people who adopt a new technology. We are familiar with labels such as "early adopter" and "late adopter". Here are the kinds of people who may adopt a technology, with a tentative order:

• Nutters
• Idealists
• People who can do maths
• Big businesses
• The majority of the population
• Stubborn reactionaries

The first people to use technology are the mad scientists. For example Alexander Graham Bell made the first phone call and Albert Hofmann took the first dose of LSD. Hot on their tails you get people who have irrational and idealistic reasons for using technology. 

Sooner or later, if an idea is to succeed, it will be for economic reasons. Edison's bulbs took over from candles because they produced more light and less incendiary damage per unit of cost. Generators and electric wiring cost more than chandeliers and ladders, but in the longer term candles cost a lot more than coal. People who are good at mathematics would realise this sooner than others. Some people are not good at mathematics, and many more believe they are not good at mathematics. Initially this was because most people could not go to school and did not have the opportunity to study maths. More recently it is because maths is used in schools to discriminate between different students, and a majority are persuaded that they are no good at the subject so that education systems can devote their limited resources to a smaller group. 

In addition, political biases can influence mathematical ability, as reported here. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." There may be two competing mathematical calculations; if the first one is somebody else's money, the one in your pay packet will probably take precedence.

Big businesses often have few people who can do mathematics. Promotion to positions of power more likely depends on interpersonal skills and verbal skills. But once the mathematicians have won their case over the politicians who are in charge, these businesses will take advantage of new technology. Once they have done this, and their own media activities kick in, the masses will adopt the technology. They may have not choice. Whether or not people have adopted LEDs for their homes, they will likely have them in their fridges and cars if they have bought a recent model.

Finally all that are left are the stubborn reactionaries.

I've already built the charger for my electric car

Thanks, Sam, for sending this article about the impending and inevitable replacement of fossil fuels with solar based on the ideas of business lecturer and entrepreneur Tony Seba. The argument in a nutshell is that fossil fuel extraction is becoming more difficult and so more expensive, while technologies in solar panels and batteries are getting cheaper. These trends will continue and at some point the current situation where petrol driven cars perform better than electric cars will flip, so electric cars will be cheaper.

At first there will be a few early adopters, paying higher prices for the new technology - like now in fact! Then prices will approach parity. Soon a critical mass will be reached, and economies of scale will further lower costs of the new technology. Since the price falls are exponential, the old technology will very soon be confined to small groups of wealthy fanatics.

So when will this happen? "By his forecast, between 2017 and 2018, a mass migration from gasoline or diesel cars will begin, rapidly picking up steam and culminating in a market entirely dominated by electric vehicles (EV) by 2030."

Note the expression "picking up steam" in this quote. I read straight through it the first time, but on the second reading it raised a smile, as it is using a metaphor from one obsolete mode of transportation to describe the transition between another two. It also somehow reinforces what Seba says about the speed with which technologies change.

Swift technological change is certainly possible, and I remember our electrician saying that LEDs were a waste of money when we were starting to build our house, but everyone nodding when the architect was boasting about "his" decision to put them in as he was showing people around just before we moved in.

The example of digital cameras is given in the article, and here there are similarities with electric vehicles. Traditional cameras need to be constantly fed with film, just like conventional cars need to drink petrol. Early digital cameras had low resolution and short battery life, but the technology rapidly improved and today they totally dominate. Kodak went from photographic giant to bankruptcy in about ten years.

Of course not everyone believes in this inevitability, but they are probably wrong. I remember a story recently about the problems Nissan was having with batteries for its electric vehicles, told with a strong editorial line that electric vehicles are a doomed fad. We have to be careful with new technologies though, and not mistake the signs. Just like Kodak, dominant powers of previous technology regimes may not survive and when they make mistakes it does not mean the technology is wrong. Polaroid were early pioneers in digital cameras, but it did not save them, and although Apple are now suppliers of many de-facto digital cameras, their early attempts at the technology failed. Even among start ups there will be losers as different parts of the technological jigsaw puzzle  jostle for their place in the big picture.

So the future trinity is likely to be solar panels on the roof, and batteries for the electric car. I'll let you charge your EV from my solar panels if you let me charge mine from yours!

Don't be LED astray... search, and you will find the light!

For the past couple of years I've been searching for decent lights to put in the house. I don't have particularly difficult requirements: energy efficiency, low cost and aesthetic pleasance.

LEDs seem to best meet these requirements, but one obvious problem is the timing. Just in the two years of planning, LEDs have gone from monochromes that the Chinese were adding to disposable toys onto the shelves of shops to replace incandescent bulbs and into traffic lights and a whole range of applications. Certainly they have been in camping shops for a while. This is an area where people have always paid a premium for light weight and a long lifetime. LEDs remain far from standard in domestic electrical installation, but I'm sure this will change in the next five years.

Since their invention in 1962, efficiency and light output of LEDs has been increasing exponentially, roughly following Moore's law, which predicts a doubling every 36 months, which has been renamed Haitz's law for the LED. The costs of materials are probably already below those for incandescents or fluorescents, and it's only a matter of time before the other costs of the industrial infrastructure are accommodated, and prices can come down. As of summer 2011, I'm still set to pay an early adopter tax.