Water is necessary for life.  It has been said that a human can go weeks without food, days without water and minutes without oxygen before there is death.  I have written here before about water and the need to look more closely at how we use it.  The two prior blog posts about water were triggered by the prolonged drought in the Southwestern United States and the fact that what was thought of as a temporary drought is now thought to be the new normal.

There is now severe drought across not only the Southwest, but also the Southeastern U.S. …

People started using computers outside the corporate research lab in the 1950s.  The early computers created in garages were brought to market in the mid 1970s.  The PC came out in 1981.  The 1990s saw the early explosive growth of the laptop and the current decade is when the PDA and other wireless devices took off.  This 50 year history is punctuated by various breakthroughs in the computer human interface.  Each one of these breakthroughs changed usage, behavior and ultimately society.

Mainframe computing of the 1950s looked like a technological religion.  Well lit, air conditioned rooms housed large computers that were …

This is the third in an on going series of interviews with some of the leading scientists and thinkers on the subject of energy.  The first two are here and here.  Regular readers of this blog know that I believe that facing and solving the multiple issues concerning energy is the single most pressing problem that we face as a species.  There is a lot of media coverage about energy, alternative energy and global warming, but what has been missing is the knowledge and point of view of scientists, at least in the main stream media.  What do …

In the last year I have written often about disintermediation. It is a force that is affecting numerous industries. Residential real estate, as I have written here, is one of those businesses. Any business that has historically inserted itself between buyer and seller and has also kept market information to itself is a business that sooner or later will have to redefine itself in this Internet age. As mentioned in this column, both the stock brokerage and travel agent business have been substantially changed due to the disintermediating power of the Internet. …