Saturday, September 04, 2010
Here is a city government bureaucrat who is very pleased by the great labor and expense that the City of New York goes to to ensure that the city drinking water is safe. Every single day, workers drive out to water sampling stations across the city, and do 900 water sample tests. That's all very fine and good; but mightn't there be some business or technology that could do the 900 water sample tests every day (and maybe even many more) much more quickly, efficiently, and (more importantly) cheaply? See if you can propose a better solution than sending government officials driving through NY traffic every day to collect water samples...
Hmmm. Here is something I expect we'll be seeing more of--water activists. These folks are trying to prevent UC Santa Cruz from expanding their campus by using water as a political weapon. Doesn't look like it will work, though...yet.
Friday, September 03, 2010
Destroying our Water with Natural Gas
In our rush to harvest the natural gas-rich fields of this country to get "clean energy," we are devastating our water supply. There may not be a more effective way to ruin and destroy our water supply than the practice of "fracking," which you will be hearing more and more about soon...
Virtualizing/Cloud Computing and Water Management
VM Ware and IBM combine to help Tampa Bay Water, serving nearly 2.5 million people, to significantly improve its efficiency...
Privatizing Water
A WSJ article last month on the topic. Apparently it is a growing trend. (I don't know if you need a subscription to view the article.)
Cotton + Nanotechnology = Clean Water?
This time it is the folks at Stanford at work on some of our water problems...
Using IT to Reduce World Energy Consumption
Key quote:
_____________
Innovation in the trillion-dollar-per-year construction industry has been pretty sluggish over the past century. The low-tech method for producing standard gypsum drywall, for instance, was invented in 1917. It has plenty of drawbacks-including the release of some 20 billion pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere annually-but is still in use.
Enter Serious Materials, a Sunnyvale, Calif. company that is applying knowhow from the computer hardware and software industries to reengineer the basic building blocks of construction. It's no small feat, given that construction is responsible for 52% of CO2 emissions worldwide-more than transportation and all other industries combined. By giving a high tech makeover to mundane construction materials such as drywall, Serious Materials thinks it could reduce world energy consumption as much as 75% by 2040.
___________
Is that not cool? Imagine how much water they will be able to save in the process...
_____________
Innovation in the trillion-dollar-per-year construction industry has been pretty sluggish over the past century. The low-tech method for producing standard gypsum drywall, for instance, was invented in 1917. It has plenty of drawbacks-including the release of some 20 billion pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere annually-but is still in use.
Enter Serious Materials, a Sunnyvale, Calif. company that is applying knowhow from the computer hardware and software industries to reengineer the basic building blocks of construction. It's no small feat, given that construction is responsible for 52% of CO2 emissions worldwide-more than transportation and all other industries combined. By giving a high tech makeover to mundane construction materials such as drywall, Serious Materials thinks it could reduce world energy consumption as much as 75% by 2040.
___________
Is that not cool? Imagine how much water they will be able to save in the process...
back to blogging
Okay, I'm going to revive this blog for a while. I am going to be focusing on business, communications, water & sustainability issues for awhile. Check out some of these emerging technologies and businesses!
Monday, August 13, 2007
Toyota's success
From Jon Gertner in New York Magazine comes this nice profile of Toyota. Key quotes:
1) On Toyota's long-term thinking:
"Ten years ago, he said, at about the same time the Prius made its debut, Ford rolled out the huge S.U.V. franchise. “Both of us had the same tea leaves, the same research,” he said. “One of us bet on hybrid, one of us bet on big S.U.V.’s.” In his view, the wisdom of making big S.U.V.’s — Press left unacknowledged that Toyota eventually brought out its own line of S.U.V.’s — seemed dubious: “First of all, long term, is fuel going to get cheaper or more expensive? Is oil going to become more plentiful or less plentiful? Is the air going to become cleaner or more polluted? And so, do you do something proactive and innovative, to be in tune with where society is going? Or do you hold on to where it has been, and then don’t let go, to the bitter end?” It was never a matter of altruism, he seemed to be saying, but an example of how corporations survive in society. “What’s the right thing to do to sustain the ability to sell more cars and trucks?” he asked. The Prius was not about a fast return on investment. It was about a slow and long-lasting one."
2) And then there is this:
"Toyota expects to be in business 100 years from now, one person in the company’s West Coast office told me, long after oil has been depleted or rendered unusable because of its carbon content, and for that reason it has placed all its bets on hybrid technologies. Indeed, Toyota created its hybrid systems not so much with the current era in mind, but because it views hybrids as more practical and energy-efficient. Whether the future is in biodiesel, ethanol or hydrogen doesn’t seem to matter; the hybrid system could be adapted to any of those fuels, says Bill Reinert, Toyota’s U.S. engineer in charge of advanced vehicle planning."
It is long, but read it all.
1) On Toyota's long-term thinking:
"Ten years ago, he said, at about the same time the Prius made its debut, Ford rolled out the huge S.U.V. franchise. “Both of us had the same tea leaves, the same research,” he said. “One of us bet on hybrid, one of us bet on big S.U.V.’s.” In his view, the wisdom of making big S.U.V.’s — Press left unacknowledged that Toyota eventually brought out its own line of S.U.V.’s — seemed dubious: “First of all, long term, is fuel going to get cheaper or more expensive? Is oil going to become more plentiful or less plentiful? Is the air going to become cleaner or more polluted? And so, do you do something proactive and innovative, to be in tune with where society is going? Or do you hold on to where it has been, and then don’t let go, to the bitter end?” It was never a matter of altruism, he seemed to be saying, but an example of how corporations survive in society. “What’s the right thing to do to sustain the ability to sell more cars and trucks?” he asked. The Prius was not about a fast return on investment. It was about a slow and long-lasting one."
2) And then there is this:
"Toyota expects to be in business 100 years from now, one person in the company’s West Coast office told me, long after oil has been depleted or rendered unusable because of its carbon content, and for that reason it has placed all its bets on hybrid technologies. Indeed, Toyota created its hybrid systems not so much with the current era in mind, but because it views hybrids as more practical and energy-efficient. Whether the future is in biodiesel, ethanol or hydrogen doesn’t seem to matter; the hybrid system could be adapted to any of those fuels, says Bill Reinert, Toyota’s U.S. engineer in charge of advanced vehicle planning."
It is long, but read it all.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Free Markets and European Markets
For those of you looking at the ethics, free markets, and "corporate social responsibility," you might want to read the following article by the most recent Nobel Prize winner in economics, Edumund Phelps.
(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com)
On a not entirely unrelated matter, you might want to check out the fate of Airbus, the European-style competitor to the American airplane builder Boeing.
(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com)
On a not entirely unrelated matter, you might want to check out the fate of Airbus, the European-style competitor to the American airplane builder Boeing.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Corporations and Freedom of Speech
Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press From left to right, Mark Chandler, Cisco's general counsel, Elliot Schrage, a vice president for corporate communications at Google, Jack Krumholtz, managing director of federal government affairs and associate general counsel for Microsoft, and Michael Callahan, Yahoo's general counsel before a joint hearing on the Internet in China.
This past week, we have been considering (via the film The Corporation) whether or not there is a significant gap between the role that corporations do play, and the role that they ought to play, in serving the public good (or "public interest" as it is sometimes also called).
Right now, the topic du jour has to do with freedom of speech: to what extent (if any) do multinational corporations have the obligation to cultivate, serve, and defend freedom of speech in the normal course of conducting their respective businesses?
On Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2006, executives representing Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, were called to testify before a Congressional human rights committee about what a subcommittee chairman called their "sickening collaboration" with the Chinese government (requires free registration). [See their respective prepared testimonies here, here, here, and here.)
Right now, the topic du jour has to do with freedom of speech: to what extent (if any) do multinational corporations have the obligation to cultivate, serve, and defend freedom of speech in the normal course of conducting their respective businesses?
On Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2006, executives representing Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, were called to testify before a Congressional human rights committee about what a subcommittee chairman called their "sickening collaboration" with the Chinese government (requires free registration). [See their respective prepared testimonies here, here, here, and here.)
Fortune's online report of the hearings was, I should think, sobering to any Internet-related corporate executive. An excerpt:
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, who chaired the House subcommittee hearing, compared the
tech company's actions to IBM's collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Smith, a New Jersey Republican, dismissed the claim by firms that they have to obey local laws. "If the secret police a half century ago asked where Anne
Frank was hiding, would the correct answer be to hand over the information in
order to comply with local laws?" Smith asked. "We must stand with the
oppressed, not the oppressors."U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and a Holocaust survivor, was even sharper in his attacks. "Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace," Lantos told the tech executives. "I simply do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."
Given the fact that Tom Lantos represents the district containing "the high-tech empire of Silicon Valley," that is extraordinarily strong language. (It also casts doubt on the repeated assertion in The Corporation that one cannot meaningfully distinguish bewteen government and business anymore.) As one would expect, there is broad coverage of the hearings.
However, one notes a certain irony in the massive press coverage. The lead in the CNN story, for example, somewhat sanctimoniously says that US lawmakers were attacking these companies for "putting profits before freedom." But if you look at CNN's own coverage of the cartoon riots, you will note at the bottom this disclaimer:
Such a statement sounds rather innocuous, and perhaps even high-minded, until you read statements of truly brave people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Almost no American news media have chosen to reprint the cartoons.CNN is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of the Prophet Mohammed because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself.
Taking all of these things into account, please write a thorough, fact-based editorial to be submitted to the LA Times, NY Times, or Wall Street Journal in which you express your opinion of the issue raised at the beginning of this blog entry: to what extent (if any) do multinational corporations have the obligation to cultivate, serve, and defend freedom of speech in the normal course of conducting their respective businesses? Be sure that in your editorial, you take into account not only the views of the corporate world (linked above), but also the views of those trying to defend human rights. Examples include:
Rep. Christopher Smith (R, NJ)
Congressional Human Rights Caucus (See "Briefing Testimonies -- Human Rights and the Internet--The People's Republic of China)
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Example for Evan
This is an example of how you make an entry in e-blogger. Here are some blog sites: Little Green Footballs, Powerline, and Daily Kos.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Next New Thing in Biz Communication...
Is going to be . . . . Google? Consider this argument well...
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Did Bad Powerpoint Presentations Cost Merck $253 Million?
Read the analyses here [scroll down] and here, as well as the news reports here and here. I find it very hard to believe that Merck lost the case because they did a bad job of Powerpoint presentations, but still . . . Surely the Merck lawyers should have been more conscientious about using Plain English???
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
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