Friday, January 30, 2009

Bright Ideas and a Case for Economic Optimism.


Fact: Robots are going to take our jobs. This is true and unavoidable. However while this is happening the cost of stuff is going to plummet and our standard of living is going to improve. As long as we have a plan for the transition everything should be better than fine...

...in the short term though, this trend, already present, is going to continue and accelerate. What am I talking about? Light bulbs. LED light bulbs.
FTA: Cambridge University based Centre for Gallium Nitride has developed a new way of making GaN which could produce LEDs for a tenth of current prices.

What's this mean for us? Light bulbs that could last, on average, for sixty years. That's 60. And cost only a couple bucks more than the old fashion incandescent bulbs. Lights that use even less electricity than CFL's, don't need to warm up, can be put on dimmers and contain no mercury. The article sights the UK statistics, not sure what it'd translate out to here in the states, but basically it reduces the percentage of all electricity taken up by lighting (approximately 20% of the total electricity generated)by 75%!!

That astounding reduction translates out to savings to the consumer and less strain on our power grids. It also makes energy self sufficient homes more attainable.

So yeah, a better light bulb... kind of a big deal.

2 comments:

  1. I think we had the idea for this in 11th grade physics. We just lacked the technical know-how to follow through.

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  2. That's awesome! Here's to the future, even if it's filled with job-stealing robots.

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