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7.23.2005
SATURDAY, JULY 23, 2005
A New Vista
Yesterday Microsoft announced a name for its new operating system due out some time in 2006 - Vista. They also launched a new one-page website that has the Windows Vista logo and all of about a paragraph describing it, saying simply it will help you search your computer better and help you live in the new digital world. Very underwhelming. And it won't even be out until next year. Windows XP came out five years ago. In that same five year period Apple has not only named, but developed and put into the market two amazing new operating systems - Panther and Tiger. Tiger not only has all the search features Vista plans to have, but a dazzling array of other imaginative features that make life easier and your computer fun. The Mac operating system is simply light years ahead of Microsoft. And Apple has named its next new operating system - Cheetah.
Microsoft is like the way the world is. Microsoft is the world we settle for. Apple is like the world as it could be. Apple is the full expression of our imagination and possibility.
The big behemoths that want nothing more than to ensure their own perpetuation are like the system of the world as it is. The little entrepreneurial geek companies are demonstrating the way the world could be. General Motors is like the world as it is. The North American Solar Challenge is the world as it could be. Boeing is the world as it is. Scaled Composites, which built Spaceship One, and the around-the-world-non-stop Global Flyer, is the world as it could be. The big behemoth charities, so many of which have no interest in ending disease, but in keeping themselves alive, are the world as it is. Bono's One Campaign, which seeks to end extreme poverty, is the world as it could be.
Take heart - the world as it could be is being demonstrated out there. And not only in tiny little ways. While Microsoft's stock falls on poor quarterly sales, Apple's stock is soaring, on growth in sales rates of five times the previous year. A new world is emerging, and it will blow past the old like a hurricane when a critical mass of people begin to see it. That's the vista we're really waiting for.
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7.22.2005
FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2005
Carl Jung
The psyche is not of today; its ancestry goes back many millions of years. Individual consciousness is only the flower and the fruit of a season, sprung from the perennial rhizome beneath the earth; and it would find itself in better accord with the truth if it took the existence of the rhizome into its calculations. For the root matter is the mother of all things.
- Carl Jung
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7.21.2005
THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2005
North American Solar Challenge
Arrgh. Sorry the blog's so late today. Have you heard about the North American Solar Challenge? It is a cool 2,500 mile race across the country for solar-powered vehicles that begins in Austin Texas and ends in Calgary, Alberta. The University of Minnesota team is in the lead, having traveled over a thousand miles in about 27 hours - using only the sun!
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7.20.2005
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2005
Fear
Someone at a dinner I was at last evening said that fear is a great motivator. Fear is only a great motivator in a vacuum. It cannot survive in the face of a great vision. In the absence of a great vision, terrorism will loom large. People will be full of anxiety. They will seek security at all cost. Survival will become the primary concern. But in the face of a great vision, the horizon will loom large. People will be full of a sense of purpose. Progress and achivement will be the primary concerns. Imagination will reign. And a sense of joy will pervade all activity.
This is true not only in the world-at-large, but in our own personal lives as well. If you are being motivated by fear, you have either a vaccuum of vision, or a vaccum of faith, or, more likely, both. Because without faith, there can be no vision.
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7.19.2005
TUESDAY, JULY 19, 2005
 Karl Rove and the Model A
This is the Ford Model A, built in 1931. It was powered by a combustion engine. It is the same technology that powers most American cars today, seventy-four years later. This is basically what we're all driving today, just with a CD player. If the Democrats could get one percent as excited about a vision for transforming the U.S. automobile fleet to a technology that is as advanced as the CD player as they are about getting Karl Rove fired, they might be in the White House, instead of him, and America might be living into an intentional future, instead of wandering around in the past.
Karl Rove might well deserve to be fired. But when that's what you're running around leading with every day - when that's the best you've got - man you're in trouble. There is a better world to be won. There are spectacular new industries to be created. There are great social goals to be achieved. There is a future that awaits us. And it's not going to be found in Karl Rove's e-mails. America will respond, as they did to Henry Ford, to whoever has the courage to show them the future, for they are in the end, human beings, the most imaginative species on the planet, and they are weary of living in the past.
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7.18.2005
MONDAY, JULY 18, 2005
PHEVs
I have two cars - a Toyota Prius, and this little one-seater all-electric vehicle (no longer manufactured, but may be again by Myers Motors) called a Sparrow. The Prius uses a gas engine and an electric motor in tandem. At high speeds, the electric motor assists the gas engine, allowing it to squeeze more mileage out of a gallon of gas. At low speeds, the electric motor operates alone, allowing you to move without burning any gas. And when you're at a stop, both shut down completely. All this is what allows the Prius to get, on average in my case, about 42 mpg. You don't ever have to plug it in.
The Sparrow, on the other hand, has only an electric motor, so it never uses any gas. It is powered by 13 batteries that sit in the floor of the vehicle. You plug it into a regular 110 wall outlet for about 6 hours to re-charge. It can go about 35 miles on a charge, and can go as fast as 90 miles an hour. It is a great no-gas solution for going short distances (like the distances people travel to get back and forth to work every day). Its downfall is you could never take it on a 200-mile trip because you'd have to pull over and re-charge it 6 times.
Recently, some grassroots engineers have been putting the two technologies together. They have been modifying the Prius and putting in a battery that can hold a 30-mile charge, so-to-speak, that you plug in. So on short distances, it acts like the Sparrow, using only the electric motor and absolutely no gas, and on longer trips, it acts like the Prius, using both. This has upped the mileage of the Prius to 78 - 122 miles per gallon, and it has an 800 - 1,200 mile range on one tank of gas. They call the new cars PHEVs, for Plug-In Hybrids.
Yesterday there was a major story in the L.A. Times about how the Chinese are making long-range plans to acquire more of the world's oil, and how this is making the United States nervous. In the next twenty years or so, the Chinese are expected to be needing as much oil as we use today, as the number of cars in China explodes from 20 million today to 140 million by 2030.
Instead of going head-to-head with the Chinese to monopolize scarce oil resources, we ought to start using our heads and embrace technologies like PHEV. It could truly change the world as we know it. Not only could we dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and reduce pollution and cut pulmonary and cardiovascular disease incidence in half, we could also start building these cars for all the Chinese who want to start driving and inject real life into the U.S. economy.
I have a third vehicle - a motorcycle. When I was learning how to ride it, they taught us one thing - if you don't want to hit something, don't look at it. The motorcycle will go wherever your eyes are looking. This is a good metaphor for life. What you focus on is what you get. In the case of the United States, we need to take our eyes off of our fear of the Chinese, and put them on the possibility of a new technology that could revolutionize our lives. The question is, where do we want to go?
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SUNDAY, JULY 17, 2005
J.K. Rowling
I was in Barnes and Noble and the Harry Potter books were flying off the shelves faster than Wonka bars. Most people probably know that J.K. Rowling was living in her car when she wrote the first book. My partner told me she wrote it for her kids, just as a way of keeping them all occupied. Today she is the wealthiest woman in Great Britain. Wealthier even than the Queen. Who says there's no such thing as magic? We have no idea the amazing things that can happen in our lives if we keep our intention alive and never give up.
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