05.27.2K7: Sequestering carbon in manufacturing

Thanks to rising population, and its demands on power and technology resources, we are in a predicament where the need to produce can lead to unacceptable levels of pollution, ultimately burying us all under global warming, waste and smog-choked skies. At the same time that the global economy is forced to increase by a factor of four by 2050 to keep up with global demand for food and necessities, the amount of carbon we emit into the atmosphere must remain steady or decline to prevent disasterous climate change. After 2050, that amount must decline, period.

There are many conservation steps, along with pollution-free energy production methods, that we can use to improve this future. However, there will always be emissive energy generation, and between now and 2050, we are not likely to be a zero-generation society. This is why scientists are discussing improving present carbon-emission technology, and sequestering, or capturing, the carbon that is produced.

Most carbon sequestration methods discussed involve pumping the carbon in a gaseous form underground, into porous geological features that can hold this carbon indefinitely. However, this system is not yet well understood, despite the fact that oil companies have been doing something similar to it for years, in an attempt to get more oil out of the ground. Other methods of carbon sequestration are far better understood, and less potentially hazardous... such as planting vegetation. Plants and trees absorb carbon and hold it in their structure, not to be released until the plant dies, rots or burns. Although clearly this is not a permanent sequestration method, it follows that the more vegetation there is, the more carbon sequestered.

But there is another form of sequestration that needs to be considered, especially now that such measures are so necessary: In the same way that carbon can be sequestered in natural things like rocks and plants, it can also be sequestered inside man-made objects... or, in other words, built into manufactured products. And we are in a unique position in history to be able to start taking advantage of this idea, starting with carbon fiber, and eventually moving into nanotechnology.

Carbon fiber is exactly what it sounds like: Fibers of carbon, shaped and locked into place with epoxys (said epoxys are made out of plastics, another material with carbon in it). Carbon fiber materials are incredibly strong and lightweight, and can be shaped into any form, making them ideal building materials. Carbon fiber is already being applied to vehicles, from body parts to interior components, making them lighter, so they consume less fuel to get around... a double-benefit. As long as we need to sequester carbon, therefore, it would behoove us to develop ways to capture carbon emissions and transfer them to manufacturing centers that can spin that carbon into carbon fiber and build with it, instead of producing an equal amount of plastics, glass, metals and other materials to do the same job. These same manufacturing systems often produce their own waste emissions, so teaching them to capture their own emissions and use them as building materials are in everyone's best interests.

Beyond carbon fiber, manufacturers are looking at nanoscale technology, which often centers around Buckminsterfullerenes... carbon molecules that form compact shapes such as spheres and tubes, that can act as components or support structures in more complex technology. Fullerenes, also referred to as "Buckyballs" because of their soccer-ball-like configurations, are revealing new and impressive capabilities every day, and scientists believe that in time fullerenes will make up more and more of the things we use in every day life, from complex devices to simple electronics to the most basic fabrics. And fullerenes are carbon... which means that we have another vector to direct our carbon emissions towards.

In the future, carbon sequestration could mean capturing carbon and using it to construct our everyday devices, as much as pumping it back into the ground or planting trees to hold it. As we already have systems in place to recycle used materials, the obsolescence of these devices does not automatically mean they will end up in the atmosphere anyway... it means we will have a way to meter and control how much carbon gets released, and a way to recapture and recycle more carbon into the products we will need to survive into the future.

05.25.2K7: eInk is busting out all over

eInk, a technology that only recently reached the consumer through devices like Sony's new eReader, has seemingly become a media darling lately. More companies than I can keep track of, from traditional software and display companies, to unlikely corporations like Bridgestone, are announcing R&D efforts and upcoming releases of products featuring eInk technology, or improvements on eInk (such as full color displays). For good examples of the various eInk developments, visit MobileRead.com.

Why, all of a sudden, eInk? eInk technology has a great advantage over traditional display technology: It does not need a constant source of power to function. When eInk is triggered, forming images and/or text, it stays in its configuration until it is powered and triggered again. Therefore, a page on eInk could conceivably hold its image all day long, without using a drop of power after the image is created. That means big-time power savings, something everyone can get behind. And since eInk displays seem to be almost universally accepted as easy-to-read, there is little concern that eInk displays won't be popular with consumers and commercial users.

eInk is being seen as the next big display technology, possibly replacing the LCD screen on laptops, the small screens on cellphones and PDAs, electric displays and advertisements, and maybe even the paper in your newspaper. It may even be suitable for full video, replacing that expensive TV screen, and making small portable video displays more ubiquitous. To be sure, we are still looking at years before we begin to see most of these products appear. But when we do, we could be looking at a major shift in display usage, affecting us at every level. Should be interesting.

05.20.2K7: Roth's complaint: Age of books is at an end.

Literary news is full of Philip Roth, author of "Portnoy's Complaint" and many other novels, winning the first ever PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, a $40,000 prize named for the late Nobel laureate and one of Roth's closest friends and literary heroes.

However, when listening to this news bit on the radio, my ears pricked up when Roth was recorded saying, "(I regret that) the age of the book is coming to an end."

Sour grapes? Maybe, considering that it is coming from an author who is famous and lauded, but whose successes are all past now. Maybe not, as we're also talking about someone who's watched the literary business from the inside, and who obviously has a learned insight into the state of the industry.

Various discussions (including this one, on the MobileRead forum) confirm that book reading is under stiff competition for peoples' time, especially from more interactive and media-rich distractions like TV and video games. However, it's not as if this competition only just began to heat up... in fact, books have been competing against video games for the past thirty years, against TV for the past seventy-five years, and against all sorts of other entertainments and activities for over two hundred years. The rise of the paperback is most likely attributed to this competition, an effort to make books more portable and affordable (for the consumer, as well as the publisher).

The development of the e-book is similarly a reaction to the realities of the times. As computers and electronic delivery systems become more ubiquitous, and as consumers demand more flexible options for content access, so e-books will rise to the occasion and provide that flexible electronic access. That will keep literature accessible to the consumer, improving its portability and affordability, and enhancing its flexibility.

Are books being read less? Sure... a lot of things are being done less, as there are more and more things to occupy peoples' time. But I do not believe that's an indication that the age of books is coming to an end, any more than it has over the past few hundred years. It just means that the book is going through another change in its development, one as significant as the transition from hand-written texts to press, and from big, expensive hardbacks to cheaper, portable paperbacks.

Books aren't ending, they're evolving. Will the new age be different? Of course... but hardly unrecognizable. Roth should be able to appreciate it... he only has to try.

05.1.2K7: Could DC Library fire serve as a wake-up call for e-books?

Washington, DC suffered two devastating 3-alarm fires on Monday, to two historic landmarks on opposite sides of town. One of them was the Georgetown Library, renowned not just for its prominent location in Georgetown, but for its many original pictures and documents of Washington and American history (read the Examiner article). Many of those documents and paintings were damaged beyond repair, and there is no present guess on how much was permanently lost.

Some of the people aware of the things that have been lost or damaged, have commented that there are no copies of most of them... not even in the Library of Congress, another single source of original, unarchived historic material. It has been mentioned that there were no scans of images, and no e-text copies of the books. That means those items have been lost to time, and won't be recoverable. And it surely won't be the last time a fire takes out an old building full of historic, unarchived materials.

Could this event serve as a wake-up call for archiving documents and images as electronic files? After losing irreplaceable artifacts, the idea of storing electronic copies of them, in multiple archive locations for protection, seems to make sense. It would also be a monumental task, but one that would be worthy of government backing and concerted effort, a national mission to preserve our past.

It is often true that new technology is developed or implemented not because of desire, but out of need... witness the many technologies that have developed during the desperate needs of wartime, or after the devastating effects of a natural disaster, disease or famine. Could e-books, long a niche market, become a hot market item thanks to a disasterous loss of our history, and a desperate desire to preserve that history at any cost?