The question is whether communications improvements can overcome biological and geological limitations. Crude oil is now more than 50% depleted and concentrated phosphate about 70%. These problems can be worked around if we are prepared to substitute communication for physical transport. Thus we might spend our time in small communities getting around by bicycle and re-using our own wastes, but is that what people want? Better communications may not bring us exotic foods or enable us to visit those places.

While some technologies are showing steady improvement they may also be more costly. Examples are batteries and photovoltaic cells. Newer forms may have double the performance but triple the price of early versions. I see the next twenty years as a race between technology and increased demand for water, food, transport, housing of a quality not much different to now. I'm not sure technology can win that race.

Ziggy - here's another prediction: By 2030 the logistics swarm of raw materials, processed materials, fuels and equipment required to keep microprocessor factories running will have slowed and become so disrupted (due to declining oil availability and the economic and food-supply chaos and conflict that will ensue) that availability of computers, mobile phones and the like will have become problematic. The internet will consequently be failing if not already useless for most current purposes. Goverments will be strugglling to meet the short term cries for help from a hungry and largely unemployed population and will not have the energy/money for longer term investments such as nuclear reactors.

The crash of the finance bubble was triggered by the high oil prices due to an inability to grow the oil supply to support economic growth. The bailouts have not solved any of the toxic debt problems and there is much, much more coming down the pipeline. When the economy tries to grow again the oil price will shoot up and crush it again. Technology and complexity need energy Ziggy. But hey - you sing a nice version of "Don't worry, be happy"!

Dr Switkowsi is the eternal optimist and to some extent, rightly so. However it seems to me that for all the advances made and yet to be made by science and technology, there has been a failure to come to grips with a number of major global concerns.

Among these are the threats posed by the effects of seemingly unstoppable climate change, the increasing scarcity of oil and its many derivatives on which we depend and, growing inability to sustain burgeoning uncontrolled and unsustainable population growth.

For all their brilliance, technological advances made and yet to be made are put at risk because of their failure to overcome these problems.

GHG emissions into the atmosphere have been increasing for 200 years because technology has failed to devise an efficient and effective means of reducing their concentration, thereby averting the more dangerous effects of global warming.

Our ability to convert sunlight into affordable electricity or store and transport that energy is of fundamental importance. Yet over the past century we have made little progress towards production of efficient photovoltaic cells and although technology promises much, a high capacity, light durable and cheap battery has yet to be produced.

Unconstrained population growth increasingly pollutes the environment and in so doing reduces our ability to survive as a species and, in the process, condemns other species to extinction.

The need to address these problems is not entirely due to political myopia and government inertia. The failure of science and technology to adequately contribute to their resolution is also a significant part of the problem. Have we got our priorities right?

Ziggy - you might be interested to read this paper in full. (Note: rate of innovation is innovations/year/capita):

Technological Forecasting & Social Change 72 (2005) 980–986

A possible declining trend for worldwide innovation
Jonathan Huebner

Abstract

A comparison is made between a model of technology in which the level of technology advances exponentially without limit and a model with an economic limit. The model with an economic limit best fits data obtained from lists of events in the history of science and technology as well as the patent history in the United States. The rate of innovation peaked in the year 1873 and is now rapidly declining. We are at an estimated 85% of the economic limit of technology, and it is projected that we will reach 90% in 2018 and 95% in 2038.

I wonder if Zigs supports the rest of French society and culture or is it only their nukes he covets. Does he want their IR and union laws, their welfare state, their farm subsidies and protections, their bloated public service and socialist governments? Does he agree that such things as nukes should be in government control (as in his example France) or does he think the septic way of private owners is better? How much does Frances nuclear industry cost it and what do they do with their waste? No mention of that just selective and misleading propaganda.

Picking and choosing their arguments to suit their own spin is a hallmark of these capitalist spivs and their quest to enslave us all to their sick view of "progress" and to hell with the dangers and the will of the public. These turds with their money always know better than the rest of us even the ones who chased knowledge over power and wealth.

Ziggy, where is the evidence of well focussed, strategic science driven public policy from Australian Governments: 1 national, 6 state and 2 territory legislatures?

There is no way Australia can reach anywhere near its latent potential in the coming decades under our seriously dysfunctional federal system of government.

Our consitition was formulated in the horse and buggy era where small isolated communities needed to be united as a nation.

Fast forward 108 years to 2009 and our plethora of inconsistant standards and science policy directions has been responsible for appallingly expensive and ineffective outcomes for the Murray-Darling basin, our national energy grid and smart government investment in Reaearch and Development is just a dream.

Clearly we need a new forward thinking constitution for the next 100 years but only a few leaders recognise the urgency of linking better governance with the potential for more participatory democracy.