Previously, I wrote about how powerful simulations games are, and the potential that they have for helping us navigate through the stormy waters of the early 21st century. Recently, I was discussing this with a friend of mine, and he suggested that I read Ender’s Game, a science-fiction book by Orson Scott Card.
In the book, humanity is faced with destruction at the hands of an alien invasion for, which takes the form of an intelligent, space-faring insectoid race called the Buggers. Unfortunately for the humans, the Buggers have superior numbers and superior tactics. The only thing that can defeat them is a genius military leader, and the only one available is long dead. For some reason that is never elaborated on in the book, the military leadership has decided to find the best and brightest children in the world, and train them to be military geniuses. (it stands to reason that perhaps a large portion of the adult males were wiped out in the prior invasions, or something like that, but it’s never mentioned.) The children selected have savant-level intelligence, ad the method of training involves two different types of simulation games. Without giving too much away, kids and games save the day.
The basic themes of the book are the intelligence and creativity of children, and the power of games as useful tools. There is a unique aspect to games, which is that you can always count on a select few individuals becoming really really good at each particular one. Also, if you design the game correctly, you can solve almost any poblem. This article outlines how a protein researcher from the University of Washington, David Baker, has discovered the usefulness of games in creating new proteins. Apparently, there are still some things which people are much better at than computers, and designing proteins is one of those.
“Proteins are made up of long strings of amino acids that are folded up into complex three-dimensional tangles with many subregions. The function of a protein is dependent on this three-dimensional structure. One pocket might be ideal for grabbing on to another protein, for example. Other parts of the protein may play a purely supportive, structural role, holding the molecule together. Baker’s new method for creating novel proteins begins with the active sites. Once they’re in place, structural concerns, especially how tightly packed the protein is, determine whether the design is feasible. Figuring out the best way to hold together the active sites is a complicated search problem that requires a lot of processing power. There are a myriad of possibilities, but most won’t work.”
The computer programs take a brute-force approach, trying every possible combination for folding the proteins, and then checking to see if the combination is any good.
“When the computer doesn’t know what the best next step is, it changes the structure randomly. Baker says that he began to wonder whether people working with computers can solve a hard problem that computers can’t solve alone.”
Several people, using Baker’s algorithm, were able to see the steps that the computer needed to take, well before the computer did. Unfortunately, they had no method of providing feedback. Baker teamed up with a game designer, and the result was the game FoldIt, which combines the computer program with human creativity.
“The first several levels of Foldit are designed to teach players what good proteins look like and how to manipulate them using the tools of the game…. For example, it’s good to pack proteins tightly, but not too tightly: electrical charges in different regions of the side chains will repel each other if they’re too close to each other….After improving the designs of a few test proteins, players can advance into competitive play, working in teams or alone.”
Baker proposes that, like Ender’s Game, FoldIt has an interesting added benefit: discovering “protein savants”:
“By making the game available to anyone over the Web, the researchers expect to find people they call protein savants–people who are very good at solving protein structures and who will spend several hours a week playing the game.”
Now, just imagine if your son could find a cure for cancer, while playing Halo 6 with his buddies! Wouldn’t it be cool if your daughter, the smart one, figured out a new way to manage the power grid, saving thousands of megawatts of energy, while playing SimPower, Deluxe Edition, on her PC?
I’ve heard of a lot of unusual and interesting ways to recycle waste back into usable products, but this one has to be one of the coolest and funniest.
The Great Elephant Poo Paper Company (www.poopaper.com), as its name says, is taking elephant dung and turning it into paper. How do they do this? Well, apparently elephant poo contains quite a bit of undigested plant fibers. After washing the poo patties, what remains are the plant fibers, and these are what is converted into paper products.
What’s really neat about this company is the way they close the loop: the poo is turned into paper, the paper is sold on their website and a protion of the profits goes back into elephant welfare and conservation.
If only it were this easy with technological waste.
One of the big problems with solar power is bringing the cost down so that it is competitive with fossil fuels. This post fro Gizmodo describes a new technology which would probably make solar technology much cheaper:
“Solar poweriseverywhere at the mo, maybe because it sounds more sci-fi than wind: which is the case with this new technology that turns windows into power sources. Clever bods at MIT have worked out how to use organic dye solar-concentrator coatings to collect light over a whole sheet of glass and “concentrate” it at the edges. This lets you have a much smaller (and hence cheaper) solar-electric cell mounted in the side of a window, more easily achieved than typical mirror-based concentrators. And by tuning the dyes (originally designed for lasers and OLEDs) to different wavelengths, and stacking them up, you get an even bigger power output. Clever stuff. [Physorg]“
Computer simulations represent some of the most useful tools ever invented, allowing us to experience all manner of complex, dangerous, expensive or long-term situations in short time periods, and letting us try them out over and over and over again without experiencing the potential consequences. The applications range from nuclear weapons testing to pilot training to immersive gaming environments.
I’ve always loved simulation games, ever since I first discovered SimCity on the original Macintosh during the mid-80s. I’ve played every version of SimCity since then, and watched it grow more and more complex and realistic. There’s something very satisfying and innately human about building your own little empire, watching it grow or even destroying it with virtual disasters. The only problem is that, eventually, you get bored with it. There’s no way to “win”. There’s no goal. After a while, you give up and start over again.
Eventually, I got tired of not having a goal in my games, so I progressed to turn-based simulation/strategy games such as Alpha Centauri and Civilization. I love these games, and they can go on for weeks, with more than a few all-nighters, until you finally “win” and launch your Civ into space or some similar thing. Unfortunately, after a while, you begin to feel that the payoff of a short video sequence (especially after you’ve seen it 10 times), doesn’t seem to match up to the hours and hours you spent playing. Once again, the end result is that you have nothing to show for all of your effort.
So, now I’m in business school, working on my MBA in Sustainable Management. While many of my fellow students focus on biofuels or reducing waste, I think about ways that computer technologies can help us solve some of the masisve sustainability problems we’ve created for ourselves. This inevitably leads me to wonder if simulations and games can somehow aid in this effort. It seems to me, that is so many people are willing to spend hours upon hours on their computers playing games, there’s got to be a way that we can harness some of that creative energy, and turn it into something that makes a real difference in the world.
In the 1960s, futurist Buckminster Fuller saw the potential of simulations to help change the world. He envisioned a whole-world simulation, called the World Game, which would attempt to solve problems by taking a “whole-systems” approach and a worldwide scale, instead of the piecemeal method of individual countries and cities acting alone. A key element to this, and the reason that it was called a “game”, was the ability for regular individuals, not just politicians and powerful people, to be able to participate in the process. The Buckminster Fuler Institute describes it this way: “Fuller wanted a tool that would be accessible to everyone, whose findings would be widely disseminated to the masses through a free press, and which would, through this ground-swell of public vetting and acceptance of solutions to society’s problems, ultimately force the political process to move in the direction that the values, imagination and problem solving skills of those playing the democratically open world game dictated.”
Unfortunately, at the time that Fuller proposed the World Game, the technologies which would allow people to receive and manupulate data about the state of the world in real time did not exist. It would have required that players have access to “better data than their politically elected or appointed counterparts.”
Of course, now, with the existence of the Internet, Wikipedia, YouTube, the 24-hour news cycle and powerful video and audio tools in the hands of the masses, we have finally reached a point where a World Game is possible. As a matter of fact, the immense popularity of the virtual world Second Life, where players spend enormous amounts of their free time, is a testament to the power of simulations on the human psyche, and the willingness of people to explore alternate realities. What are the potential problems that could be solved if these games and simulations could bring about positive change in the real world? Are there potential implications for sustainability?
In my next post, I will describe several different simulation games which are actually making positive differences in the real-world, and introduce you to a young woman who is making a career out of it.
The potential market for energy technologies is huge.
New energy technology transitions will take decades to replace existing technologies, not the short adoption timeframes associated with typical Silicon Valley tech companies.
Because of the downturn in the credit and real estate markets, there is a lot of money out there looking for a good place to invest, and cleantech is an obvious place to put this money. The flip side to this is that in down markets, investors traditionally turn to commodities investing, which should place downward pressure on oil prices. Lower oil prices means greater competition and risk for most cleantech companies.
Due to the high competition with oil prices, some VCs are focusing on investing in cleantech which does not have a high correlation to oil prices. The example given was solar power in China, which competes with coal power plants and there for is dependent on the price of coal and not oil.
Cleantech companies compete with long-established energy technologies and therefore face severe price competition. One effect of this is that most cleantech companies are global companies, with manufacturing and distribution on different continents to take advantage of price efficiencies, such as manufacturing in China and distribution in the US.
There has been an increase in the number of quality entrepreneurs starting companies in the cleantech space. These are “2nd-stage” entrepreneus, who had previously worked at leading-edge companies and became aware of the gaps in the market. These entrepreneurs are now attempting to fill these market opportunities.
The best quote of the day came from Steve Bengston of PricewaterhouseCoopers. When asked to define what, exactly is cleantech, he paraphrased Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart quote on pornography by saying that “cleantech is hard to define, but we know it when we see it.”
About solar power:
Solar is still very dependent on subsidies to be competitive.
Most of the panelists felt that the unsubsidized cost of solar is still too high to be competitive with existing energy sources, and is still a factor of 2 or 3 away at the retail level. The consensus was that the retail price for solar needs to come down to at least 30 cents/KWh to be competitive. On a wholesale level (large power plants), solar is even farther away, where it needs to be around 5 cents/KWh to compete with fossil fuels.
The solar business model is still based on an assumed theoretical declining cost curve. While this cost curve remains to be proven out, most people believe that it is accurate.
There are some locations where solar is already competitive, due to very high energy costs or favorable conditions.
When asked about solar’s dependency on scarce raw materials (i.e., silicon) one panelist said that third-generation solar tech is focusing on becoming less resource-dependent. He also stated that a large portion of the cost of solar panels was in the aluminum and glass components.
About storage technology:
While energy storage technology is potentially a very important component in the adoption of new energy generation technologies, the cost is still much too high to justify implementation.
Even if energy storage technology becomes price-competitive, it is not clear who will pay the cost to implement it. Will is be the energy generators, the suppliers or the consumers?
About alternative fuels:
Alternative fuels are “sexy”. They are easily understood by the public, because of their day-to-day experiences fueling their vehicles, etc.
Alternative fuel investing is extremely risky, but also has extremely high rewards. The VCs who are investing in alternative fuels see it as a necessary component of their portfolios, albeit a small one for now.
The biological and chemical expertise necessary to implement alternative fuel technologies is extreme.
There is an opportunity in techologies which can convert e-waste plastics into biofuels. This is viable technology which can also greatly reduce waste.
About pollution and recycling technology:
Current efforts are focusing on mercury, sulfur and nitrogen waste reduction.
Silicon Valley is not currently investing very heavily on these types of technolgies. Sillicon Valley VCs focus more on products than services, because products are easier to scale up to profitability levels that VCs are interested in. Pollution and waste reduction technologies are viewed as mostly services, which are harder to scale up.
Most of the panelists cited the need for an appropriate regulatory framework in order for these types of services to be feasile. There is some debate on whether regulation should lead the way or wait for technologies to prove themselves before regulating them. Countries like Germany are taking the leading approach, while the US is mostly taking the lagging approach.
All in all, the news was very positive. It seems like cleantech is not being affected by the downturn in the economy. Om the contrary, it appears to be benefitting from high oil prices and a dearth of good investment opportunites.
Carectomy brings us this cool, new concept for increasing the efficiency of a train by allowing the bulk of it to stay in constant motion:
“Yu-Lun envisions a small separated car perched atop the train. When the train enters a station, this car slides along on elevated rails that smoothly and gradually remove the car from the rest of the train and bring it to a stop.” At the same time, a second car picks up new passengers.
The animation is very cool, albeit very slow in getting to the point.
I like this idea, especially if the design incorporated a maglev (magnetically-leviated) element to it. If you theoretically could combine the reduced friction of maglev wth the added efficiency of not having to speed up/slow down most of the train’s mass, this form of transportation would probably be way ahead of most rail and light-years ahead of automobiles.
I’ve heard of a lot of unusual and interesting ways to recycle waste back into usable products, but this one has to be one of the coolest and funniest.
Computer simulations represent some of the most useful tools ever invented, allowing us to experience all manner of complex, dangerous, expensive or long-term situations in short time periods, and letting us try them out over and over and over again without experiencing the potential consequences. The applications range from nuclear weapons testing to pilot training to immersive gaming environments.
