"WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a three-month investigation, a team of Northwestern University student reporters has found that the US nation's security establishment is not adequately prepared for many of the environmental changes that are coming faster than predicted and that threaten to reshape demands made on the military and intelligence community. This is despite the fact that the Defense Department has called climate change a potential "accelerant of instability."
The Medill School of Journalism graduate student team began publication on January 10 of its findings on the national security implications of climate change with a series of print, video and interactive stories."
If I could write, this is exactly what I would write about rocket, GO, and so on... :)
"we are decadent and tired. But none of the bright young up-and-coming economies seem to be interested in anything besides aping what the United States and the USSR did years ago. We may, in other words, need to look beyond strictly U.S.-centric explanations for such failures of imagination and initiative. ... Those are places we need to go if we are not to end up as the Ottoman Empire of the 21st century, and yet in spite of all of the lip service that is paid to innovation in such areas, it frequently seems as though we are trapped in a collective stasis."
"But those who do concern themselves with the formal regulation of "technology" might wish to worry less about possible negative effects of innovation and more about the damage being done to our environment and our prosperity by the mid-20th-century technologies that no sane and responsible person would propose today, but in which we remain trapped by mysterious and ineffable forces."
Very interesting, though I'm amused how the author tends to (subconsciously?) shift the blame to non-US dictators :-) Suggestion that in absence of cold war US might have abandoned HB and ICBM programmes is ridiculous.
Interesting, this was written by Neal Stephenson ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson#Works ). Great article indeed.
The videos of the event from which this arose might be equally interesting:
Here Be Dragons: Governing a Technologically Uncertain Future
http://newamerica.net/events/2011/here_be_dragons
"To employ a commonly used metaphor, our current proficiency in rocket-building is the result of a hill-climbing approach; we started at one place on the technological landscape-which must be considered a random pick, given that it was chosen for dubious reasons by a maniac-and climbed the hill from there, looking for small steps that could be taken to increase the size and efficiency of the device."
You know Luis, when I read this quote, I could help thinking about GO, which would be kind of ironic considering the context but not far from what happens in the field :p
mmmh... the wheel is also an old invention...
there is an idea behind but this article is not very deepfull, and I really don't think the problem is with innovation and lack of creative young people !!! look at what is done in the financial sector...
The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE will be awarded to the first privately funded teams to build robots that successfully land on the lunar surface, explore the Moon by moving at least 500 meters (~1/3 of a mile), and return high definition video and imagery.
The Google Lunar X PRIZE expires whenever all prizes are claimed, or at the end of 2015.
As of midnight on December 31st, 2010, the team registration for the Google Lunar X PRIZE is closed. No additional applicants will be accepted to join the competition.
...too late
Original implementation
Integrating 2D Mouse Emulation with 3D Manipulation for Visualizations on a Multi-Touch Table -- project built on top of VisLink, check video !!
By pulling raw data from the news and plotting it onto a graph, Sean Gourley and his team have come up with a stunning conclusion about the nature of modern war -- and perhaps a model for resolving conflicts. - really interesting
Meet the Spacecraft That Could Save NASA a Fortune. Somehow related with Leopold's cubesats. To my eyes, this kind of spacecraft can open the door to "cubepayload"