Solar OP Technology Blog

Today’s hottest technology news, according to tFeeder:

• Techrunch Robin Wauters (the leading Techrunch blogger in terms of tweets-per-post), reports that Youtube no longer supports Internet explorer 6. IE6 is a terrible product, but where does it stop? Could Google one day say ‘we do not support IE6,and IE7, and IE8′ ? The post is Boiling, with over 1,000 retweets in the past couple of hours.
• Techrunch also reports that sales of the Palm Pre are flat. Techrunch has a long history with the Plam Pre, as they criticized the product early on and caused quite a stir when a fellow tech blogger reviewed a giveaway Palm Pre, hinting foul play
• Cnet news has an interesting story about the growing importance of Chip makers (e.g. Intel) as the Google-Microsoft war expands. It used to be a software war, between search engines, office suites and online services, but since Google’s announcement of the Chrome OS, it’s becoming a hardware war as well.
• Engadget, the gadgets blog, reports that Apple crossed the 1.5 Billion downloaded apps mark. That’s truly amazing. Apple invented the market for application downloads and no one to date was able to imitate its success.

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I’ve been working in information technology for about 7 years when I decided I need to go to university to get my bachelor degree. My friends were somewhat surprised that I decided to quit my ‘great’ job - good salary, benefits, company car, flying all over the world. Why would I want to quit my job? They were even more shocked when I told them I was going to study chemistry.It was at the peak of the Biotechnology trend, about 7 years ago, and I tough I could change the world.

The first class we have, the dean of the chemistry faculty walks in and says ‘the B.A. you will earn here is worthless’. By the end of my first year I decided I like traveling abroad on company expanse better than dreams on re-engineering the human race. I completed a B.A. in Information Systems Management, and went back to a comfortable, yet useless job in IT.

My last post tried to convince you that the technology revolution, the one that brought us electricity, cars and medicine, is in a coma. And I claim now that we need to blame the Internet for that. Why?

It all started in the early 90’s. Suddenly, people were making ridicules money writing code. That’s so easy - you sit in a room in front of a screen, type something on a keyboard, and a year later your filthy rich. We all read the stories about the guy next door who made a gazillion $$$ on his stock options (two strongly recommended books: Forbes Greatest Technology Stories and Founders At Work). Before you know it, all the talents of these world, the bright,fresh minds who could have made a real difference, they all go to work for Google. They used to work for IBM, then for Microsoft, now it’s Google.

I know these guys, some are close friends. Bright, fresh minds. Their logic is as strong as a computer, numerical heads. Super-mathematicians, they could build mathematical models of this world and find elusive backdoors that could solve some genuine problems, but instead, they want to build the next Twitter.

The next Einstein is wasting his time developing a new Google beta program when he should be building a spaceship. The next Tesla is working on a chip for a home entertainment unit instead of designing a teleporter. And worse of all, the next Pasteur is working for a for an anti-aging startup instead of researching a cure for cancer.

The solution - government cash, corporate brain power, Academia knowledge. The next Einstein can still drive his company car, eat his chef foods and call himself a Googler. Instead of spending time on the next feature of yet another beta web service he’ll be working on the next feature of a time machine. He’ll sit together with a physics professor, who’s role is to take very large problems (time travel? efficient solar technology?) and break it to small, digestible pieces. The professor will also provide guidance and tools for our Googler, who’ll have an atomic problem to solve. Take all these atoms together, you’ll have a molecule, then an organism, an organic solution to problems that lead to quantum leaps.

I honestly believe that what is required for the next leaps in technology is nothing more than creative thinking by the right minds - technology’s greatest breakthrough were mostly analytical (e.g. occurred in the minds of people and not in lab experiments).

Definition of a coma (from Wikipedia):

a coma (from the Greek word koma, meaning deep sleep) is a profound state of unconsciousness.

Technology is amazing. Those ’smart phones’ for example, wow, 25 years ago you’d need a computer the size of a building to do what these little monsters can do.Take the iPhone, an unbelievable piece of brilliant engineering, the games you could run their, crazy! (TapTap Revenge, a sort of Cartesian revolution). And the Internet, OMG, I can communicate with other people in ways I never imagined possible, I can buy windsurfing gear from a guy leaving half way around the world. I can even pay this couple with a webcam to do whatever I ask them to do. How could we lived without the Internet, I keep asking myself. And how about those electrical cars, they’ll really blow your mind. No more getting high on gas fumes, try that battery aciman,d, right into the vein! It’s a revolution!

But wait a minute, somethings wrong here. Is this the best we can do going into year 2010? Where were you during the 70’s and 80’s? Didn’t you watch the movies, read the books? Where are those flying cars? Why can’t I take a trip to the dark side of the moon? And why won’t you beam me up,Scottie? What’s that? Technology is not there yet? But they promised us all these cool things. Teleporting, when can I get my mobile teleporter, or an R2D2?? A Kindle 2? That’s what’s hot on Amazon? Aren’t we smarter than that?

Sorry guys, but we are at a complete technological halt. Deep Freeze. Hibernating. The elevator stopped, push the button please. A mechanic is on his way. Technology has become outrageous. Useless. A nice to have. Who relay needs an iPhone? I want a cure for cancer. I want to buy 2 solar panels at 100 bucks a pop, providing me with enough energy to power all my appliances.I want to watch the Matrix in real 3D, not the one with the stupid glasses that gives you a headache before Neo gets to realize that the world is not real.

Am I expecting too much from technology? If you think I am, then you agree, technology is dying.

Take a look around you - nothing changed for the past 50 years. Cars - same engine, same materials, running on fuel. Planes - most planes in service today are 30 years old. And what do the new ones have to offer? Internet access? I want a plane that can’t crash. I want to fly a plane that takes me to Thailand in 30 minutes max, no matter where I’m flying from.

Desktop computers are the best example. The computer I’m using now is identical to the first computer I ever bought, about 15 years ago, an i486 CPU, with 32 MB of memory and a 15 inch monitor. Both computers are identical. CPU, RAM, Hardrives, video card, monitor, mouse, keyboard. Sure, my newer computer works faster, resolution is better, but it’s fundamentally the same. It’s been the same since silicon chips replaced glass tubes to represent 0 and 1.

Ever since then, chip makers have been scamming us to buy faster and faster CPU’s, and when they realized that consumers are not that stupid anymore, they invented multi-core CPUs, making us upgrade-junkies. I’m wondering what’s next (let me guess - lower energy consuming CPUs, green sells good). I’m currently running an Ubuntu Linux operating system on a 2 years old computer (very old, one might argue), and it does everything I need it to do. I have a feeling that in 10 years times, I might be still using it. Nothing fundamentally will change in computer architecture, only nicer-to-have computers will sell.

To conclude my argument, name one living scientist you know,other than that man turning machine, Hawking. I mean someone like Einstein, Darwin, Thomas Edison, Freud, Tesla. We all know Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin. But hell no, no way. Google is cool, Microsoft isn’t, but these guys didn’t change our lives the way people did 100 years ago.

So why is technology in a coma? Because of the end of the cold war? Global Worming? George W. Bush? No, it’s because of the Internet, of all things. Register to our RSS feed, read the next posts, you might find some answers.