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To: Slagle who wrote (68145)	8/26/2005 5:27:48 PM
From: arun gera	Respond to of 74559

Reverse-Malthusian trends could happen. Birth rates are declining as countries develop. China could see similar decline. The material usage is primarily in buildings and cars (and associated roadwork). Most of the new wants - cell phones, internet, mp3, cable TV, video games, movies, are very light weight. The hardware is made of cheap silicon. >The problem is that we are still stuck here in the world of Newtonian limitations, which can all be simply summed up as variations on the "no free lunch" rule. And we are using vastly more "industrial age" material and with no let up in sight>

To: Slagle who wrote (68145)	8/26/2005 6:48:27 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

<Nothing has changed in an important way in my lifetime, and I doubt it will in the future in any big way. We still make steel, rubber, plastics, chemicals, fibers, ceramics, paper, and all the rest the same way we always have. Efficiency improvements in all these areas have been little tiny changes at the margin, not order of magnitude improvements. The limitations are imposed by natural law, a whole array of road blocks ranging from Ohm's law to Newton which we will never cross. The only change is that we now consume vastly more of all these things than we ever have.> Slag, you are reducing your use of "never". You should have written, "Nothing has changed in an important way in my lifetime, and it never will in any big way ..." Wouldn't you say reading these words is an important change and even a "big way" change? Not lack of ink and paper being used in the process. Note Iridigm which will be a paper replacement, making electronic images easily visible in bright daylight, which is not the case with normal computer screens. Tiny changes at the margin? You have to be kidding. Fuel consumption per airliner passenger kilometre is hugely different from 50 years ago and even 20 years ago. So is safety. There are quantum changes everywhere you look and they are accelerating. Mobile cyberspace is arriving at a place near you shortly. That is the biggest change in human history. Well, that's an understatement. It's the biggest change since sexual reproduction was invented and perhaps even since carbon started linking together in DNA spirals. Really, it's bigger than that too. That was just a boring old crystallisation process. The development of mobile cyberspace is nothing less than the creation of an ethereal mind of mega or even peta proportions. Maybe that just looks like a change at the margin to you. There's nothing Newtonian about It This is as big as it gets. Mqurice

To: Slagle who wrote (68145)	8/27/2005 10:13:47 AM
From: Moominoid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

There have been huge increases in efficiency in lots of areas, particularly in manufacturing industry of course. A lot of the gain happens early on after a new process is introduced and after that the learning curve is much flatter. That is the nature of learning curves. The ongoing productivity increase in manufacturing drives a lot of the political-economy stuff we see and people blame on other stuff. Everything from medicare problems to off-shoring/outsouring has its roots I believe in the productivity boom in that sector (and agriculture).