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American innovation

Posted: 11-02-2010 11:17 PM
by SquidInk
UPINGTON, South Africa — South Africa's plan to build what could become the world's biggest solar project has drawn keen interest from investors even though it is still in its infancy, an official said Friday.

More than 400 investors and solar industry insiders from around the world converged on the town of Upington in South Africa's arid Northern Cape province this week for a two-day conference aimed at generating investor interest in plans for a 5,000-Megawatt solar park at the edge of the Kalahari Desert.

The park, whose estimated price tag is 150 billion rands (21.3 billion dollars, 15.4 billion euros), would provide one-eighth of South Africa's current generation capacity, helping end the country's reliance on coal and the power shortages that pummelled its economy in 2008. - source


Related:
“Today the entire American innovation engine is slowly grinding to halt, public and private,” Kasparov said, speaking at an event on Monday night at Palantir Technologies, a company that creates analytics software for government and financial organizations. In his remarks, Kasparov called the U.S. a “culture of optimization.”
...

He thinks the problem is that we’ve replaced the drive to innovate by focusing on making incremental changes to existing technologies. Kasparov drew from his own experiences facing off against more and more powerful chess-playing computers, until finally experiencing defeat at the hands (algorithms) of IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997. That was an unfortunate loss, not only for him, but for science as well because progress on building a smarter chess computer effectively ended after that, he said.- source


So, which of the two parties is talking seriously about innovation? Which has a genuine vision for the future? What political party will help us to overcome "today’s risk-averse environment", so that we can go bounding into the future with something to hand humanity besides poisons, bombs, and bullets?

The answer is neither political party is talking about substantive "change", They can't - because they are interlocked with huge corporations and huge corporations don't do change - they can't, because they can not innovate fast enough. It's an inevitable consequence of bigness.

We've settled "on making incremental changes to existing technologies", and we've also settled for incremental and largely insignificant changes to our crumbling political apparatus. It's far easier than making qualitative, innovative change.

Great America 2.0?

Posted: 02-04-2017 03:21 AM
by Riddick
Squidink wrote:So, which of the two parties is talking seriously about innovation? Which has a genuine vision for the future? What political party will help us to overcome "today’s risk-averse environment", so that we can go bounding into the future with something to hand humanity besides poisons, bombs, and bullets?
...
We've settled "on making incremental changes to existing technologies", and we've also settled for incremental and largely insignificant changes to our crumbling political apparatus. It's far easier than making qualitative, innovative change.
Love him or loathe him? It can't be said Pres. The Donald is settling for incremental and largely insignificant political and economic changes! Nor can it be said he's "risk-adverse" - OR without a genuine vision for America (even as what-all innovation making it "great again" is contentious) -

With that all not said, a question yet to be answered is will his so uncustomarily presiding over the United States federal government cause its retrograde apparatus to 1) recede and reverse OR 2) advance and accelerate, OR 3) go through BOTH 1) AND 2) simultaneously for a time?

I'd bet 3) - A wild ride with lots of shifting for some while yet! America's gears are gonna get a helluva workout - Integrating significant amelioration into the apparatus necessitates both to-& fro movement ahead of a new equilibrium located in the general direction OF greatness again.

(Forces at work impeding all effort at implementing a smooth and successful "reboot & upgrade"? Obviously a great America arrival again is beyond their comprehension! Or is it their vision of a Great America is a system forever more akin to a roller-coaster 'abusement' ride than it needs to be?)