Comments

"Larry" is right on the money. We've come to expect that our computer chips will double in performance every 18 months, yet when it comes to batteries, increased fuel efficiency for cars, etc., we've usually dragged our feet, moaning about how difficult it will be to come up with an improvement and how expensive it will be. Let's bring the same optimism that we've had toward increasing computer performance to these other important technologies such as batteries, fuel efficiency, etc. There are encouraging signs: while the Big Three car companies are lobbying government to keep our cars as inefficient as they are now and whining "Oh, but it's going to be sooooo expensive to make a car more fuel efficient" other companies are going out and *doing* it (VW with their 70 mpg Polo clean diesel, or the various X Prize competitors striving for 100 mpg or Google's fleet of plugin Priuses, for example). And Nanosolar, with it's breakthrough 99 cent/watt solar panels, or the change from NiMH batteries in our phones and power tools to the much better Li-ion batteries over the last few years, which are now being tried in hybrid and electric vehicles. We can create change. We can demand change from government and big companies. If we want, and are determined and optimistic about our collective ability to discover new and better things, the batteries we use today, for example, will seem so stone age 10 years from now.