Big Data and Bikes: San Francisco Tech and Bikes!

On April 16, there will be an event at Yammer (9th and Market) about the launch of a new bike sharing program in San Francisco. It will be interesting to see what they have planned to deal with the challenges of San Francisco for public goods and safety. I have a prior commitment but will try to make it. Details at the event are available at http://bikeshare.eventbrite.com/. The list of speakers in the conversation are a who's who of the local tech industry. Spread the word.

How the White House sees Climate Change

Wonkblog has a nice summary of the White House annual report that gives a good sense of what the policy possibilities of addressing climate change. It is a mixed bag, the arrows are going in the right direction, but now always for reasons that are politically feasible for long term change. For instance, the recession reduced climate emissions, you can't have a continuously depressed economy there and have stability. On the plus side, energy efficiency is improving and we can catch up with Germany and Japan, which will do a lot to help. Worth a quick read.

Big Time Huge! - The second coming of the light bulb part deux.

The Verge reports that Cree has announced a $13 LED that resembles an incandescent light bulb in the quality of the light. If this is true, this a huge advancement. For those that are not familiar with LED light technology, it is a semiconductor like a chip, and it's life is effectively forever. When you buy a house you basically get the light forever now.

To give you a sense of how inexpensive LEDs are, the San Fransisco Bay Bridge (not Golden Gate) is now lit up as a public art project for less than $30 a day.

The change is already upon us.

Business Insider has a resyndicated post from from the AP explaining how the changing climate is having impact on us in the U.S. It is quite sobering. This coupled with the unreal pollution that is happening in Beijing. (I was in Shanghai and went for my obligatory run during a bad pollution day, needless to say it was a very short run). Environmental issues are becoming very real.

It can be said that in history we have always had these environmental issues, such as Britain during the industrial revolution, but what is unprecedented is the scale of humanity at this point and the number of producers at a this point in time.

We have a really good sense of what is going to happen, it's a question of when not what anymore, or more a question of how frequent. I recently watched the movie "Six Degrees" that was produced in 2007 and talked about a super storm hitting Manhattan that was eerily prescient.

The world is different, are we built for it become the real question. 

Osmotic Marketing for Good

There is a fantastic story at Marketwatch which explores Starbucks efforts to encourage people to use reusable cups and I applaud this. While Starbucks is really savvy in using their own brand of re-usable mugs to spread their messages, it would be great if they do more to encourage people to bring existing reusable cups. The number of cups I get from marketing efforts is unbelievable. I currently use a 17 year old mug (I kid you now) from a Microsoft Training Class, it is so old that some of the products listed on the tumbler aren't even sold anymore.

A side note that gives this post some context is that the Consumer Electronics Show starts next week, and I am not sure many of the products that will be announced next week will have the functional longevity of my promotional mug from so long ago.

Today's technology has an explicit end of life, you can't imagine having batteries that will replace the ones inside since products are hermetically sealed. They are designed to be disposable. They are mandatorily disposable. I can still use the transistor radio of my youth (the stars and stripe AM radio that was so magical when I was young) since it has a classic 9 volt. The EU mandated that mobile phones need to be chargeable by micro USB such that Apple includes adapters in their European phone kits. Planned obsolescence may be good business, but does it make for a good world?

I have been putting mugs in my car and looking for mugs with handles to attach to my travel bag so I don't ever have to use a paper cup. Starbucks will give you a discount. I wish they would reuse the discarded gift cards and reissue them to save some landfill.

The Role of Public Infrastructure

NPR has a story on the role of Amtrak in getting people to the oil fields of North Dakota and Montana. Amtrak is a weird service because like the post office, it really doesn't have the right to cherry pick routes like private services and hence loses money. What's really interesting about this piece is the tortured relationship many have with public infrastructure. The following exchange in the story captures the contradiction, and hopefully this will lead to others to re-evaluate the role of public infrastructure.

STEVEN MCDUFFIE: The new Amtrak slogan should be: Well, you're paying for it anyway. So, you know, that's the way I look at it.

BOYCE: Washington state resident Steven McDuffie travels through Montana to get to the Bakken too. Politically he's libertarian. He's pretty much against the idea of government supported transportation. But, he's been riding the Empire Builder every two weeks since February. And some of the stereotypes about riding Amtrak, he says they hold up.

MCDUFFIE: This is the first time that the train left Edmonds, Washington on time and it's the first time where we're actually scheduled to get into Williston on time since I've been taking the train.

BOYCE: Overall though, he says his gripes are pretty minor. And, again, it's cheap.

MCDUFFIE: I know this is ironic because I'm - philosophically I'm opposed to public transportation, but yet here I am having a pretty good time on the Amtrak train.

BOYCE: And since there's no sign of the Bakken oil boom slowing down for decades, Amtrak can probably count on a lot more people realizing the train is the best way to get there. For NPR News, I'm Dan Boyce in Helena, Montana.

The whole picture....from recycling to compostable (my addition)

The New York Times has an article in the "Your Money" section this past weekend exploring the efficacy of individual recycling and how the act of recycling impacts individual behavior for better or for worse. It's a good read since it explores the real risk that recycling is a token gesture for a "get out of jail card" for consumerist behavior. The article tries to explore both sides in the typical "balanced" approach to journalism these days. Sadly the data is not definitive as to whether recycling programs reduce landfill and total energy use.

While recycling is getting its due, the new black these days is "compostable" as the free pass. Silicon Valley is full of companies offering free meals, and in the cult of efficiency many offer a huge amount of disposables for use. The pass these days is "it's ok, it's compostable" but that assumes a lot of things. The first is that it will actually compost, the argument is that the fork is "bigdegradable" but just because it can degrade does not mean it will unless in the right conditions. But even if it was degrading, that neglects the greenhouse gas impact of the lifecycle of the plastic fork or paper plate. 

There is energy in producing the materials that will compost, it's classic thermodynamics. Looking at the energy equation in isolation misses the whole picture. Is it better than the alternative, probably. But it's not a total pass.

The environmental discussion is rationalized in so many ways, oh I should do X instead of Y because that's where the real energy savings are. True, but if you can do Y still why should you not do Y. The logic is I shouldn't murder because that a real bad crime, and I'll not do that instead of armed robbery. You probably shouldn't do both. 

It's easy to get cynical about recycling and stop, so the environmental challenge is a spectrum and continuous. Or as Billy Beane (well Brad Pitt) said in Moneyball, "it's a process, it's a process, it's a process" 

The friction free existence....

Felix Salmon has a provocative post on how smart phones are making our lives more dangerous because it makes us less aware as pedestrians. To that, I have to plead guilty as charged. The productivity cult is really pervasive in our society and we feel that we have to be active or stimulated at all times, lest we miss something (like the bigger picture). Given the cultural imperatives it's easy for everyone to get swept into the do it now mood.

Salmon, talks about how we become less aware and cognizant of our surroundings, that we become less aware of our world. He feels that it's the absorption of ourselves in an alternate world (infospace perhaps) that makes experienced with realspace. I don't think it's just about alternate realities, but the attempts to eliminate friction in our transactions. The question is does the lack of friction actually reduce any energy expenditure, or just hide it.

Putting all our media in the cloud, do we actually save the energy of not having a DVD and shipping it, or do we simply hide and it move the energy cost to the cloud as well at a higher expenditure. Out of sight out of mind.

 Is having our world in our phones, just another way of having our heads in the sand?