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1 Nov, 6 tweets, 2 min read
What are some compelling examples of new things we could do with energy abundance—say, 10x (or more) energy usage per capita?
In the 1930s, Winston Churchill (yes, Churchill) predicted that with fusion energy, “Schemes of cosmic magnitude would become feasible. Geography and climate would obey our orders.”

rootsofprogress.org/winston-church…
He also predicted “materials thirty times stronger than the best steel”, engines that carry “fuel for a thousand hours in a tank the size of a fountain-pen”, and farming “without recourse to sunlight”, all based on having enormously abundant energy at incredible energy densities.
In Where Is My Flying Car?, Josh Hall echoes those themes, adding nanotech and flying cars as applications of greater energy usage and higher energy densities: rootsofprogress.org/where-is-my-fl…
Similar themes from @mattyglesias: artificial farms, desalination, fuel synthesis, carbon capture, faster transportation
Some other themes from the replies on this thread:

• Materials extraction (from air, oceans, rock, asteroids, even garbage)
• Climate control + terraforming
• Faster transportation
• Lots more manufacturing + infrastructure

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More from @jasoncrawford

Jason Crawford Profile picture
4 Oct
Facebook is down this morning, apparently due to a BGP problem.

What's BGP? It's an absolutely essential but fairly obscure internet protocol. I have a CS degree, but I only know about it because I did a summer internship with @Akamai a very long time ago.

A brief explainer:
One of the more mind-blowing facts about the Internet is that *no one owns or manages all of it*, and there is no central authority keeping track of all of its parts. Authority and responsibility are distributed among a large number of ISPs who manage independent networks.
Each ISP has a map of its own network, so its routing computers can route packets of information internally. But how does information go beyond the confines of one ISP? How does a browser on Comcast talk to a website on AT&T?
Read 15 tweets
Jason Crawford Profile picture
4 Oct
Proposed NYC subway expansion, 1920. Everything in red was proposed to be built by 1945.

Source: NYT, colorized for readability by @Chaos_Boy / @transitmap transitmap.net/ny-subway-expa…
Here's the original, from Oct 3, 1920. The plan was for an additional 830 miles of track over 25 years. The eventual capacity would be 5 billion passengers per year.

timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1…
Said chief engineer Daniel Turner, “the growth of the city will never cease… in twenty-five years the population will be in the neighborhood of 9,000,000, and … the city must speedily provide facilities for the accommodation of an additional 2,000,000 passengers a year.”
Read 8 tweets
Jason Crawford Profile picture
9 Jul
In the 1960s, one of the top concerns of the environmentalist movement was “overpopulation”. Books such as *The Population Bomb* and *Famine 1975!* waged a campaign to sound the alarm.

What happened next: Image
*The Population Bomb*, by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, was particularly defeatist, opening with:

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s… hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”
In 1970, Paul Ehrlich said: “When you reach a point where you realize further efforts will be futile, you may as well look after yourself and your friends and enjoy what little time you have left. That point for me is 1972.”

books.google.com/books?id=pwsAA…
Read 12 tweets
Jason Crawford Profile picture
30 Jun
Cars are one of the most amazing and wonderful inventions in all of history. They serve us. They connect us. They liberate us.

The future should have lots more cars. Self-driving cars. Flying cars. Space cars! Cars are fantastic.
Nothing else:

* Takes you directly from origin to destination
* Is available instantly on-demand
* Can carry a family and/or packages
* Protects you from the elements
* Is safe to use at night and in all weather

For convenience, practicality, and safety, cars are unbeatable.
Cities should absolutely be designed around cars! Not as an exclusive consideration, but as one of the top considerations.

A city that is unfriendly to cars is a bad city.
Read 31 tweets
Jason Crawford Profile picture
13 Jun
It’s almost impossible to predict the future. But it’s also unnecessary, because *most people are living in the past*.

All you have to do is see the present before everyone else does.
Less pithy, but more clear:

Most people are slow to notice and accept change. If you can just be faster than most people at seeing what’s going on, updating your model of the world, and reacting accordingly, it's almost as good as seeing the future.
We see this in the US with covid. The same people who didn’t realize that we all should be wearing masks, when they were life-saving, are now slow to realize/admit that we can stop wearing them.
Read 15 tweets
Jason Crawford Profile picture
26 May
The more I study nuclear technology the more I think that every problem of today's nuclear tech has a potential solution that has already been identified. They just haven't been brought to market, because the market is sclerotic.
Nuclear is slow and expensive? There are faster, cheaper ways to build.

It's dangerous? There are safer designs.

Nuclear plants are bespoke megaprojects? There are small, standardized, modular approaches?
Nuclear can't do load-following? Actually it can (and does in France).

It produces waste? There are designs that burn that “waste”.

Weapons proliferation? There are designs that don't produce weapons-grade material.
Read 7 tweets

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