The 10 Algorithms That Dominate Our World

io9.com ^ | 5/22/2014 | George Dvorsky

[ckilmer]

An example would be a cure for diabetes.
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Thanks for thinking my question through.

On diabetes, there has been a barrage of news in the last couple of weeks and even a movie against the ill effects of sugar and things that convert easily into sugar like flour—especially refined flour. One of the ill consequences of the emphasis on sugar and carbohydrates and the de emphasis of fat over the last 40 years has been that people have gotten fatter and become subject to diseases that were previously virtually unknown like type 2 diabetes.

Judging by the tenor of the news I’ve seen—likely its just the opening salvo in a decades long war against sugar and the things that convert easily to sugar. So that sugar will be placed in the same category as cigarettes and alcohol. (Actually sugar converts in the liver to ethelyne which is the active ingredient in alcohol. The sugar high and low you get is not like an alcohol high and low. It is the same thing. Only slightly weaker because of the weaker concentration. Its easy to understand this. When beer is made the ingredients are hops and sugar. Its the sugar that converts to alcohol. Same deal with hard liquor.

My favorite technological beef is that less resources are being investing in killing the cost of water byo desalination. Kill the cost of desalination and it becomes possible to farm the deserts, turn the deserts green and double the size of the habitable earth. To kill the cost of water you also have to kill the cost of energy. Killing the cost of energy will have millions of knock on effects including increasing the total wealth of the world many times over while impoverishing the Arab gulf states and defunding al Qaeda and the Russians.

[ckilmer]

Space travel is a romantic idea and has been heavily promoted to young men and boys as such for decades. Thus we have a scientific community today that assumes that space travel makes sense for society at this point in time, both economically and scientifically.
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My favorite technological beef is that less resources are being investing in killing the cost of water byo desalination. Kill the cost of desalination and it becomes possible to farm the deserts, turn the deserts green and double the size of the habitable earth. To kill the cost of water you also have to kill the cost of energy. Killing the cost of energy will have millions of knock on effects including increasing the total wealth of the world many times over while impoverishing the Arab gulf states and defunding al Qaeda and the Russians.

The cost of desalination is falling. Its cut in half about once a decade. So we will arrive at a place where desalinized water can be used for agriculture. But at current rates of change—that time won’t arrive for three decades. With a concerted effort that time could arrive in one decade.