Brasilia, the capitol of Brazil, represents an example of what humanity must do in this early part of the 21st century.  In my last column, I discussed the history of this great city and the fact that it was created in the late 1950s to be “the capitol of the third millennium” and that it was built literally in the middle of Brazil hundreds of miles from the nearest city.  In other words the eyes of the visionaries who built the city were completely focused on the future.  What should a capitol of the future look like?  How should it …

Brasilia is the futuristic capitol of Brazil.  It has been so since 1960 when the federal government moved there from Rio de Janeiro.  I recently spent two days there and it is truly magnificent. It has been a place I have wanted to visit almost my entire life, but more on that later.  First it is important to briefly tell the story of its creation as it is all about vision and how vision can project humanity into the future.

The population of Brazil, since colonization by the Portuguese has always been predominately oriented to the Atlantic coast, where the majority …

Regular readers know that I have often written about energy conservation, alternative energy and innovative ways that people are working to make all that we do more energy efficient.  I recently wrote here about how a simple keycard technology employed around the world could save the U.S. hotel industry money and conserve a great deal of energy.  The most recent column was about how a Brazilian company has been working with Intel, a U.S. technology giant to find ways to reduce and even eliminate heat from laptops.

There are two themes I would like to explore in this column.  The first …

Technology has been the defining force of the Information Age.  Technology has given us an appreciation for speed, global communications, connectivity, miniaturization and of course computing power.  We embrace new generations of computers, cell phones and digital content players.  Many of these innovations, as they increase in power, generate heat. As they decrease in size there is often a proportionate increase in generated heat.

Decades ago, the large main frame computers were housed in large refrigerated rooms.  Today server farms reside in similar cooled environments.  Heat can cause computing and networking equipment to malfunction, slow down operating speed and in extreme …