Technology That Changes Everything

With all the depressing quagmires on the fiat and nation-state front, isn't is nice to look towards the positive high-tech future.

Maker bot, you can print any small 3D object you need in your home with this $1200 3D printer. You could even print larger 3D objects by gluing parts together with Super glue. Of course, the price and performance will improve as the volume of production of Maker Bots increases.

This is sort of technology that changes everything, what I like to call a major paradigm shift that eliminates the old order of limitations. For example, goodbye to the problem with oil consumption, when products don't need to be brought to people and people to a centralized store. Good bye to factories as an economic platform (e.g. China). Good bye to Wall Mart and the domination of the big chains over the smaller businesses. Good bye to taxation when the government can't tax your purchase of products, because you make them at home. Hello to the information age, where knowledge is power, and centralization is impotent.

There are numerous technologies coming together right now that have these same basic effects on the old order, here are just a few:

1. Open source
   
2. Reed's Law, i.e. network effects
   
3. Higher-order information compositionality
   

http://www.govtech.com/technology/A-Robot-That-Flies-Like-a-Bird.html

So now you have the ability to lift off like a helicopter without a runway, and you have the ability to fly horizontally with speed and efficiency like an airplane.

The military will be all over this.

anonymous wrote:Similar flying bird toys have been around for 30 years.

You can buy them at amazon for about $11.

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=flying+bird+toy&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=4031855861&ref=pd_sl_8yyojxp96x_e

This is not amazing, nor world shaking to me. These things "barely" fly, they barely work, they are not genuinely workable as flying machines. They are basically nothing but fancy paper airplanes.

Anyway, my dad made paper airplanes, and sold them, sometimes successfully, but mostly not, ever since I was 5 years old. I suppose that's how I know.

Perhaps you didn't realize the key development, which is now jetsons like flying cars might become a reality, because unlike with a helicopter, this thing doesn't just fall out of the sky and kill you when it loses power or get hit with a strong wind gust, it can actually glide. Yet unlike an airplane, you can take off and land vertically without a runway. It combines the best of the helicopter with the best of the airplane, due to the articulated wing, which those toys don't have (not even close to having from an engineering effort perspective).

This shows why you are not an engineer. You don't naturally see the details. You just see a flying bird and assume they are the same thing, when they are very different.

The comparison you are making seems to be analogous to saying that a kid that can fling his toy car with a rubberband, has a car usable for anything other than flinging.

Those toy flying birds are not fully articulated, because for one reason, they don't have a computer inside of them to drive all the different dynamic configurations of the wing shape (nor do they have the complex wing design), in order to increase and decrease lift and transfer lift to horizontal thrust via the angle of the 2D degrees-of-freedom joint between the inner and outer half of each wing. Then there is all the thermal and aerodynamic engineering to get this dynamic articulation correct.

Basically those toy birds have a constant lift vs. horizontal thrust ratio, so you can only increase or decrease the speed of the motor. They they fly higher and horizontally faster, or less higher/lower and horizontally slower. They can't fly higher while moving slower horizontally or vice versa. In short, they can't vary the horizontal speed independently of the vertical speed, as a real bird can.

Because of that, those toy birds are incredibly useless. They fly up to 100' horizontally in 15 minutes, that is 1 minute to fly 7 feet. And their entire range is 100' before their battery is dead. And you can't put a bigger battery, because then they can't fly.

So why does this matter? For one efficiency. When you have an efficient wing articulation, you don't waste as much energy, so you can carry more payload and/or long distance, for the same wingspan. Notice that this new invention can lift, then glide, lift then glide, etc..

More importantly you can precisely control the movements.

These would be most viable if you could build one large enough to be powered by a small petrol fuel engine, assuming the articulation could be done with a very minimal battery or mechanically from the fuel engine. Because batteries don't have enough energy density to make these things stay in the air with payload long rough to do useful things.

Then you could be talking about perhaps one that a human could ride in. I am not sure because I don't have enough of the specifications. They said basically they needed a laptop battery to run that one on the video for 30 minutes. The bird weighed 400 grams, so the battery must be most of the weight. Or you could perhaps power it with a line-of-site laser and photocell, but I would need to do calculations on that to see if it is realistic. Now since silver is the second most maleable/extrudable metal and the most conductive, imagine you tether these with very hair thin silver wires for power from a hovering helicopter from above.

Mainly I see the application for the military for short-flights with a lightweight camera to do reconnisance and drop into tight spaces with much less noise and steeper descent angles.

No joke:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzHCDknFbDU

Tangentially, note there is a more complete (adds images and important links) and easier-to-read version of the essay Understand Everything Fundamentally.

I hope you don't lose contact with me, because I have some plans which could possibly involve you, if you want.

My current plan is to finish my computer language, Copute, then I want to create teaching lessons that run on a computer (or Android cell phone), similar to these:

http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://codecademy.com
http://lifehacker.com/5744113/learn-to-code-the-full-beginners-guide
http://code.google.com/edu/

My lesson plans will also be freely available to anyone on the internet. And I plan to improve the quality of the lessons significantly, in both technical and conceptual ways that I have already documented else where.

The idea is that people all over the world can get a better education, and thus be more prosperous and successful in all things, including job, economics, and philosophy (i.e. theology or religion).

I expect to be able to fund some physical school locations, where honor students graduating from elementary school take my courses and the computers and learning center is provided to them at no charge to them. They will be chosen because they want to have a career in computer science, and so they will be learning my Copute language, and the paypack for my expenses on the school, will a steady supply of new programmers who favor my computer language.

Currently top college graduates in computer science, are getting job offers in the range of $75,000 - $200,000 per year in the USA. Also my Copute language is going to increase the salaries and make it possible to work independently from any location and generate even more income. So there is enormous economic potential, and this will of course make the schools very profitable. I can think of several ways the schools can generate huge profits without needing to charge the students any fees.

All over the world, many people can not afford education. This problem is now even in the USA, i.e. the current Occupy protests include many college students protesting about cost of college and huge student loan debts. Even parents in the USA want to take their kids out of the "free" public schools, because the schools are infested with drugs, immorality, spiteful cliques, mindless materialism, and government propaganda indoctrination. But most parents can't afford private school. Also high quality and comprehensive computer home-study curricula are not available.

I have insights into math, computer science, economics, and philosophy+theology that no one else in the world is teaching. I will give a few examples:


1. Philosophy+Theology: it is critical to not violate a person's "free will", so that they may commit their own mistakes and learn what they need to learn in order to make their journey towards understanding and thus heaven. Those who violate the free will of others (e.g. judging others and trying to force understanding and compliance), have not yet learned to balance "compassion" and "wisdom", and they become mired in inefficiency and political gridlock. Most organized religious denominations suffer from this. Differentiate between biblical wisdom and organized religious denominations, as the latter is not advocated by biblical scripture. I will be able to quote Christian scriptures to support all my teachings (perhaps in the future I can quote also the scriptures from other religions, so that my teachings can be universally accepted).


2. Economics: even the father of "capitalism", Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations, was a collectivist (socialist or statist) when he said the government should tax proportionally to each individual's production. The basic problem is that humans don't understand the concept that pooling resources reduces "degrees-of-freedom" and "fitness", thus causes slavery. Those are scientific terms, e.g. in physics and other natural sciences, "potential energy" derives from "degrees-of-freedom". Then we must explain that debt, insurance, and government (i.e. tax, legal money, etc) are all forms of pooling resources. I can also provide Christian Bible scriptures that support all of these scientific teachings.

I will give another example. The khanacademy.org and all universities in the world teach that a house is an asset on an accounting balance sheet. This is not true. The price and thus value of a house is not known until it is sold, which can change drastically if everyone has to sell at the same time due to debt bubble implosion as we are seeing in the world now. In the meantime, the house is a liability, because much pay for maintenance, property taxes, and insurance.


3. Computer Science: I am of course an expert in computer science, so I can teach this in fundamental conceptual paradigms that others can't.


4. Math: I have a very conceptual paradigm of learning and teaching all subjects, including math.

Take the problem of 1 divided by 2/3 = 1 1/2. My proposed 4 step
illustrated improvement is as follows.

1) 1 divided by 2/3, illustration is whole pie divided by 2 of 3 slices of pie

2) 3/3 divided by 2/3, illustration is 3 of 3 slices of pie divided by 2 of 3 slices of pie

3) 1 + (1/3 divided by 2/3), illustration is "1 +" 1 of 3 slices of pie divided by 2 of 3 slices of pie

4) Results "1 + 1/2".

The key to them understanding the visual subtraction of the the "2/3" pie from the "3/3" pie in step 2 above, was adding an explanation that division is just like counting the number of times that the denominator is subtracted from the numerator.

The following is my own way of entirely abstracting long multiplication. I showed 4 ways to do long multiplication, so it became clear that addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions are all conceptually related to breaking things into parts and reassembling them. As follows (teaching them how to do math in their head by optimizing the parts, I can often beat someone with a calculator):

Code:

72 - 54 = 72 - 52 - 2 = 20 - 2 = 18

18 x 22 = 20 x 22 - 2 x 22 = 440 - 44 = 396

18 x 22 = 10 x 22 + 8 x 20 + 8 x 2 = 220 + 160 + 16 = 396

18 x 22 = 2 x 18 + 20 x 18 = 36 + 360 = 396

18 x 22 = 2 x 8 + 2 x 10 + 20 x 8 + 20 x 10 = 16 + 20 + 160 + 200 = 396

 18    18
x22    x22
----  -----
 36    16
360    20
----  160
396    200
      -----
      396

Also applies to long addition as follows, so no need to carry the "1" as they normally teach in school.

Code:

 18
+27
----
 15
 30
----
 45

======================================
khanacademy and the software that isn't written yet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy#Technicalities

http://www.khanacademy.org/about/faq

"What equipment do you use to make your videos?

I use Camtasia Recorder ($200) + SmoothDraw3(Free) + a Wacom Bamboo Tablet ($80) on a PC. I used to use ScreenVideoRecorder($20) and Microsoft Paint (Free)."

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/205557-what-software-use-make-video-instruction-your-software-product.html

I realized that Khan does not have the best possible software available to him for creating his instructional videos, because the ideal software has not been written yet.

For Khan's "smartdraw" type video instruction, it should be possible to record only the shapes and mouse strokes and replay these, and no need to record it the entire 2D screen. This will result in a lossless encoding (i.e. video resolution can increase at will when it is played), and also will consume much less storage and transmission bandwidth. Then record the audio stream separately in MP3 or much better Speex for voice audio (much more efficient than the video compression), which is patent-free:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speex

Khan can't even get all of his videos on 1 DVD, much less stored offline on an iPod, iPad, or Android smartphone. I am thinking of all those people in Africa too.

Also I have always felt the YouTube MPEG encodings are crap. At higher resolutions, I have to wait for videos to load before I can play them. Also I can't precisely control the forward and reverse of each step of the video (each drawing stroke). I want to be able to drag the slider and see the drawing strokes happen in real-time, so I can easily move forward and reverse to specific points in the video, so I can review, etc.

Also, then the black background could be changed by the user to white. Also when making the instructional videos, the author could build a timeline of events (e.g. write a digit, draw a line, add a chart, etc), which could be pre-arranged before the author records audio to go along with these events. This would allow review of the script timeline and editing, before committing to the audio. This would allow them to be perfected, instead of real-time improvisation recordings, as Khan is doing. It would also allow the script to be edited later, rather than having to be redone from scratch (e.g. correct typos), and especially if the audio is a computer synthesized voice from written instructions. Then the listener can choose a synthesized voice they like. You see I am a programmer! I can make everything programmable.

I should program these in the Copute language.

Also I think I can make better videos than Khan. Gates says Khan has 160 IQ:

http://www.khanacademy.org/video/bill-gates-talks-about-the-khan-academy-at-aspen-ideas-festival-2010?playlist=Khan+Academy-Related+Talks+and+Interviews

==================================
See the egregious error in "Liquidity vs. Solvency" section of Khanacademy

The comments I provided were in the "Liquidity vs. Solvency" section at khanacademy

http://www.khanacademy.org/video/bailout-1--liquidity-vs--solvency


Shelby wrote:
Why is a house not a liability? Houses require maintenance, taxes, insurance, and have an opportunity cost, because they tie up capital that could be invested at a higher ROI.

How is this an accurate model of financial balance? Asset "price" is known with certainty when sold. The financial crisis involves systemic ponzi effects of debt, insurance, derivatives, and mark-to-model, in that valuations are inflated because no one is marking to reality which props up each other's balances sheets.


kkurt23 replied:
A house is not a liability on a balance sheet because you could sell it tomorrow and get money from it. Think of a balance sheet as a snap shot. You don't owe anyone future taxes, maintenance, etc.. But as they become due you could add them to the liability side until you pay them.

You are trying to look at it and say it is not a good investment or is has poor cash flow. Which is probably true, but it doesn't change its position on the balance sheet today.


Shelby rebuked:
kkurt23, you didn't address the point of the question which is the price of the house is not a snapshot because it is not known until it is sold. You missed the point that the price estimate is subject to systemic effects of the fact that the price is a future estimate. If everyone says their prices are X and then everyone tries to sell their house at the same time, that X can be significantly reduced. Thus when you have systemic effects of debt and other malfeasance pumping up estimates of valuations, then no one's balance sheet is meaningful.

The point of the question is to show that the balance sheet snapshot is not a useful model in finance.

The entire model has to change.

==============================
Homeschooling: Khan on basic addition

Reasonably good imho:

http://www.khanacademy.org/video/basic-addition?playlist=Arithmetic
http://www.khanacademy.org/video/addition-2?playlist=Arithmetic

One error and some subpar issues:

1. He says negative numbers are "smaller than zero". That is
mathematically incorrect. Negative numbers have a greater magnitude (i.e.
absolute value) than zero, along with a negative sign. Where negative
numbers correspond to physical quantities, e.g. physics, they mean the
vector of the magnitude has an opposite interpretation, but not a
magnitude smaller than 0. There is no magnitude smaller than 0, ever.

2. When he jumps from number line and memorization, to doing long form of
carrying for addition, he doesn't point out clearly enough that students
never need to memorize the addition of operations that are not SINGLE
digits, because the long carry form procedure can be used. He mentions it
but does not make it clear that only _SINGLE_ digits needs to be
memorized.

3. His injection of "ones" and "tens" place for the long carry form of
carry addition, is not clear why the terms "ones" and "tens" are used for
those positions. He glosses over the fact that we count from 1 to 10 (or 0
to 9), then we start over again at 1 (or 10). I know what he means, but
the naive student won't. He misses the opportunity to set an important
conceptual concept for base 10 (0 - 9), versus base 2 (0 - 1) and base 16
(0 - 9, A - F, a/k/a hexadecimal), when we get to computer science.

4. I would teach another way of doing long form, without carry, that one
can do in their head. This is about conceptually breaking numbers into
parts. I find this is much more conceptually insightful and less
procedural. This is something I independently invented (although I
probably wasn't first).

Code:

 27
+15
----
 12
+30
====
 42

==========================
Khanacademy on computer science

Perhaps the math and science will be better, but the computer science
introduction is very vocational:

http://www.khanacademy.org/video/introduction-to-programs-data-types-and-variables?playlist=Computer+Science

That is like a computer club. It introduces no explanations about
computers, digital logic, etc. It just jumps into an example program.
Would leave most young kids bewildered. No foundations.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/junior-high-app-developer-pre-teen-tycoon-training-002455041.html

============================
Re: Computer Programming for Children, Minus Cryptic Syntax - NYTimes.com

Awesome! I will definitely incorporate that into my computer science curriculum.

Then I can instruct the relationship to the normal technical terms of computer science, e.g. "data type":

http://web.media.mit.edu/~jmaloney/papers/ScratchLangAndEnvironment.pdf

>
> Just another FYI link -
>
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/technology/personaltech/computer-programming-for-children-minus-cryptic-syntax.html?ref=personaltech

Tangentially, note there is a more complete (adds images and important links) and easier-to-read version of the essay Understand Everything Fundamentally.

See also my comments at the bottom from 2010:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article20857.html

Applies to my current plans for online instruction.

====================
More facts & figures:

http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/doug-hornig/alex-daley/2011/12/01/americas-obsession-liberal-arts-less-competitive

Change is accelerating. World will be remapped by the knowledge age.

$25 Raspberry Pi

http://www.google.com/search?q=Raspberry+Pi
http://online.wsj.com/video/the-25-computer-that-plays-high-definition-video/7E9D6C97-80D5-4175-9D23-454018240138.html (video)

• Exactly the same size as a credit card, measuring 85.65 x 53.98mm.
  
• Consumes only 3 watts.
  
• $35 for onboard LAN access (for internet). Or you could plug-in an external USB Wi-Fi card into $25 model.
  
• Doesn't come with keyboard nor monitor, can drive a TV or monitor.
  
• Runs standard Linux
  
• 700 MHz ARM CPU, also a GPU for video performance
  
• 128 MB volatile memory ($35 for 256 MB), memory card slot for permanent storage
  
• 1920 x 1080 pixels max resolution.
  

Targeted at educational market, they want all kids to get into software programming at an earlier age.

$60 Aakash Tablet

http://www.google.com/search?q=Aakash+Tablet

• 7.5" x 4.7"
  
• Consumes only 2 watts.
  
• GPRS and Wi-Fi
  
• 7" screen, Multi-touch resistive touch (not as good as capacitive)
  
• Runs Android 2.2 (non-standard Linux)
  
• 366 MHz CPU, also a GPU for video performance
  
• 256 MB volatile memory, memory card slot for permanent storage
  
• 800 × 480 pixels max resolution.
  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_Algorithm
http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/vpns/quantum-encryption-quantum-computing-defense-offense-dominate_720

Here is what lead me to the above:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3974#comment-343710
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304 (see item #4 for link to "collision lower bound")
http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/collision.pdf (see Abstract)

THIS IS NOT FOR PUBLISHING IN PUBLIC, but you may publish this on any private paid subscriber area.

The bankers have their SDRs and we will have our LOCs.

My assumption is that the elite represent rich people who want to hold onto their net worth (by any means, e.g. QE-ternity) which is mostly in fixed and financial investments as the old world they are invested in, has reached its futility:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-12/bears-explain-how-rich-get-richer (watch the video)

My assumption is the old industrial age world is dying. You needed a lot of fixed financial capital in that old world (think NAV and ROI
calculations). Everybody thought wealth was something tangible, meaning big resource capital involved. My assumption is that it is being outpaced by the computer age, where a couple of guys in a garage with minimal capital can create a $billion company:

HOW TO OWN THE (*OLD*) WORLD
http://www.mpettis.com/2012/10/07/how-to-be-a-china-bull/#comment-17427

So far, the elite own this new knowledge economy, through their
investments in the major companies:

http://www.businessinsider.com/state-of-internet-slides-2012-10#-8

My idea is to have programmers contribute a common library of modules of reusable code (think of building blocks for building all kinds of
software), and license these to anyone who uses these modules to make software.

The licensee would pay 10% of his revenues distributed proportionally to authors of modules, or the proportional share the licensee spent on developing the software, which ever is greater.

Proportional contribution to the software produced would be calculated (automatically by the system) in a very strict way (the # of function calls where everything is a function call in the lambda calculus) of counting the LOC (lines-of-code).

So then there is this new currency unit, the LOC, that does not depend on gold or any fiat to get its value. In fact, the LOC is likely to rise in value perpetually as the uses of each of LOC finds its way into more and more software, as the demand for software is unlimited and there is radical shortage of talented programmers ($200T + $millions stock options for fresh Stanford BSCS grad). The problem with any virtualized and decentralized system based on gold, was always that you can't move the gold around to the millions of individuals efficiently and that puts you always at risk of raid by the elite. Gold was never the solution any way, we need a store-of-value which is more valuable than gold, and which appreciates always, and which can be moved digitally and which can not be created out of thin air. LOC fits perfectly! It is an incredible paradigm shift. It should usher in 1000s of years of prosperity. Gold was always a problem because you could not increase the quantity faster than 2 - 3% per year, which held the economy back and encouraged use of fractional reserve debt. Whereas the uses and productivity from LOC will increase faster than the quantity of LOC. (Note not all LOC will have same value, the free market-determined exchange rate can be calculated automatically by the system, thus making LOCs fungible)

So it is very likely that module authors will earn more income than they can spend. So instead of billing that income, the system would offer a setting whereby they can delay billing perpetually, and if they declare to the IRS that they are on a cash (not accrual) accounting, then they will pay no tax until they bill and receive payment for these licensed LOCs. The system can handle all of this automatically. Thus their virtual net worth can increase without any taxes on it (until they need to cash it in). I dream of a world of artists, where we all have more than we need and can spend our time doing art (computer programming and higher
derivatives are an art form, encoding of human knowledge).

So then there will be this potentially huge economy taking over the world, and the elite will get no cut of it. It will likely displace these monoliths Facebook and Google, which can't deliver the full range of software people want fast enough.

The system of course can monitor which receivables are high risk
(according to their own income profile in terms of their receivables from others). Those without LOC (modules) assets, will pay cash into the system and will be prioritized for billing, so the system will never be short of cash it is owed. You see the multiplier effect of velocity of currency will be virtualized.

I finally solved the problem of how to keep the LOC fair and also
incentivize others to improve each others modules. When an edit is made to module who is not the owner, then that 3rd party gets the proportion module income according to what % of the LOC he was able to remove from the module. This incentivizes authors to produce the tightest code. Remember the licensees will choose which ever version of a module they think is best, so removing important LOCs (e.g. optimizations for speed, etc), will not necessarily make a popular version of the module.

As for keeping licensees honest, I decided against any "call home over the internet" form of tracking. Licensees will be honest, because they don't want to be sued and they don't want to harm a system that is helping them way more than the small royalty they pay. I want a decentralized system as much as possible. I want competition in every aspect of the system as much as reasonable.

As for the technicalities of how modules will glue together to make software. Basically people will make modules to glue modules for special cases. In other words, there is no magic, just a lot of work for
everybody. Having said that, I have made big strides with Copute and expect to make big technological improvements with module reuse. Copute is orthogonal to this module LOC currency idea though.

As for open source and the importance of letting software be free to gain market share, module owners can set minimums (units shipped, royalties due, etc) under which licensees pay nothing. A system of too many small payers would not only be chaotic and inefficient, it would discourage the widespread use of modules.

Any way, there are many more details than the above, but that is the basic idea of it.

First read this:

https://goldwetrust.forumotion.com/t11p30-stocks-vs-precious-metals-vs-bonds-vs-real-estate#4744

Another proof of this shift is Apple's market cap is now highest in world, surpassing Exxon-Mobile. Software is more valuable than oil now.

Apple is primarily a software company, their hardware is incidental.

Perhaps you've read my prior message in this thread about how to defeat the bankers, by creating a currency of LOCs (lines of code). Bankers will own instead the worthless real estate.

We are moving to a more virtualized existence, a computer driven world. People will mostly cram into high rises in cities (fastest wireless internet will be there). They will always be on the computer (desktop or handheld). The relative market value of farmland will be miniscule compared to growth in value of software. The bankers' *relative* net-worth will shrink. Let them have that worthless sh8t.

Also I did not mean to imply that real estate won't appreciate, rather just that software will grow value 10 times faster (not including frothy markets such as the oil patch in the Dakotas).

Hahahaha, let the bankers have their worthless OLD world capital. Watch it shrink in relative value compared to computer software. Proof is that 10 men with spoons can't create more production than 1 man with a hydraulic backhoe. The Computer is the Bicycle (tool) of the Mind (watch Steve Jobs short video).

Here is a longer explanation by Steve Jobs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxe7Z9M_O1g#t=321s

The reason the rich (elite) are doing this to us, is because their capital is invested passively, meaning they add no active knowlegde/productive to the investment. Even they don't want to have any risk-- they want it all guaranteed. Thus they must steal because their investments are losing relative value to the (growth of software which is now the main driver of the ) progress of mankind. A system with no risk, has no degrees-of-freedom and is gridlock. Their model is a failed one.

Bankers are dumb sh8t. Exhibit Warren Buffet. He invested in BYD. Dumb! BYD makes electric cars. Any one who is technologically astute knows that batteries have too low of energy density to be ROI competitive with petrol.

http://www.mpettis.com/2012/10/27/when-the-growth-model-changes-abandon-the-correlations/#comment-18851
(note this link fails, because the following comment was censored by professor Michael Pettis)

The following post was an elaboration on a reply that I already made on the above blog, and you should read it also to get some context:

http://www.mpettis.com/2012/10/27/when-the-growth-model-changes-abandon-the-correlations/#comment-18792 (this link works)

Shelby wrote:

The Ethiopian example:

http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php

illustrates the power of autonomous human ingenuity, and the relative impotence of top-down management of anything, since knowledge production is where all value-added is created:

http://www.coolpage.com/commentary/economic/shelby/Demise%20of%20Finance,%20Rise%20of%20Knowledge.html#EconomyofKnowledge

Top-down management is expeditious yet grossly unoptimized. We covered the mathematical reason earlier:

http://www.mpettis.com/2012/10/27/when-the-growth-model-changes-abandon-the-correlations/#comment-18789

I had alluded to this math in 2010, giving the analogy to the solution of the airfoil, and that the negative notion of "complexity" is due
reductions of degrees-of-freedom:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article22098.html#comment94393

Note that speed of annealing is critical in a dynamic system, because the optimized solution (the global minima) is a moving target. Also when visualizing a global solution space of N variables, first visualize a domain of 3 variables, and trying to walk the mountains and valleys to find the lowest valley. Obviously many autonomous walkers with two-way radios is optimal. Profoundly realize that the ant can not *ever* be aware whether it is crawling on a huge mountain or a large rock (because after leaving one rock, the question still isn't answered conclusively).

Top-down power is impotent against the power of knowledge production, because like the ant, it can not see the future. The internet exists because the top-down power could not see it as a future threat:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3335

(we are secretly leading the world, not the passive capitalists)

The existence of the internet is a profound communication power that exhibits that knowledge production is defeating top-down control (imagine billions will carry a computerized smartphone with internet connectivity and remember the two-way radios above).

Al Gore didn't know that one serendipitous question from a young geek, changed the entire world in 1984:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2539

Why fear a world where the knowledge producers have all the capital, because knowledge production and slavery are axiomatically incompatible:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4591

A knowledge producer seeks the infinite marginal utility of knowledge, not the illusion of infinite marginal utility of gold that depends on the illusion of infinite economy-of-scale of accumulating passive capital (because debt can not be expanded infinitely, for one reason it misallocates resources away from knowledge producers):

http://www.coolpage.com/commentary/economic/shelby/Demise%20of%20Finance,%20Rise%20of%20Knowledge.html#KnowledgeInvesting

Eric Schmidt (who attends the Bilderberg meetings of the supranational passive capitalists, see the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1tLFuI58_g ) thinks they can see everything about us on the internet, yet he apparently can not see that Google's business model is axiomatically incompatible with the reason people use the internet:

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-10-19/reggie-middletons-observations-googles-dramatic-3rd-quarter-2012-earnings-rel#comment-2905342

(and no amount of intrusive technology for matching demographics will change the fact that people want to discover new knowledge, not be funneled into passive capital traps-- Google's recent change to privacy policy to permanently save your activity as they try to increase the relevance of their ad engine and note logging out doesn't protect you because they save a cookie)

Game theory tells us that humanity is gaming the passive capitalists, not vice versa. All they get are the IOUs that they can collect only from their most ignorant dependents (who refuse knowledge production activity), while the knowledgeable people own the knowledge (everything of value). Some people point to periods of knowledge suppression as evidence that passive capital is in control and they are dividing us with control over for example religion, but I call that freedom-of-choice and remember who won:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Church_reassessments_of_Galileo_in_later_centuries

We need more division and diversity, as unity doesn't scale. "The Chicago Plan, Hitler tried that, China is trying it too" is an example of the math in action:

https://goldwetrust.forumotion.com/t44p90-what-is-money#4748

We've tried to warn them, but again they probably just can't see:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4155

(and no one can stop the progression of knowledge by killing its leaders, since there really aren't any key leaders, as the Ethiopian example demonstrates)

http://www.mpettis.com/2012/10/27/when-the-growth-model-changes-abandon-the-correlations/#comment-18853

Shelby wrote:

Readers who want to explore this concept more, can follow the multitude of links from posts I made in 2010 under the pseudonym “Jocelyn”. Peter Thiel (Paypal, Telsa motors, billionaire) had some interesting insights on China, globalization, and the developing world’s capital being walled off:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2539&cpage=1#comment-278099

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4817&cpage=1#comment-395423

JustSaying (Shelby) commented:

"Houston, we have a serious global problem."

Computer science education adoption is woefully underperforming all the other sciences, ostensibly because there is no primary school curriculum.

Although we noted up thread that by definition autodidactism is a necessary trait for hackers and structured education isn't always the cure for ignorance, until society has efficiently accessible and presented structured computer science education, unemployment will very likely increase to very high levels (c.f. my comment February 13 2013 at 10:56 pm).

Structure is necessary for most novices because of variance of free time, motivation, intellect, initiative, and ingenuity. Although no choice of priorities for the depth and breadth of structured curriculum will be an ideal fit all ranges of the aforementioned qualities, abundant orthogonality of courses choices could be presented to cover a wide range. Such orthogonality reduces structure, i.e. maximizes breath of permuted path options for learning steps.

I am thinking introductory courses need not use overly obtuse, erudite conceptional complexity nor language, if it offers no significant advantage for understanding nor speed of comprehension for any level of student who would use them. Higher intellectuals can consume faster, assuming the courses are not saddled with unskimmable information nor unskippable redundancy.

Here follows some of my opinions and observations of what I have found freely accessible online. Not impressed.

The w3schools.com HTML tutorial is best structural model I found with bite-sized written sections in a semi-unstructured order, incorporating optional interactive examples. The introduction section jumps into unnecessary complexity too early by including the optional DOCTYPE and the overly stark bulleted exposition style does not sufficiently explain to an utter novice what a tag is, how it is differentiated from text content, the distinction between source and rendering, nor the significance of the term "markup". Quickly I might instead write as follows, while not unnecessarily introducing advanced terminology too early such as "embedded" nor "font":

"Hyper Text Markup Language is a written language for making web pages. The source code for a web page is a text document that can be created and edited in a text editor program. This source document contains the displayable text mixed (i.e. marked up) with HTML tags. Tags are text always enclosed in angled brackets (e.g. <tag>). The displayable text can be between matched pairs of tags with a forward slash in the ending tag (e.g. <tag>text</tag>). When viewed in the browser, the text for the tags is not displayed, and only the displayable text is displayed. Paired tags controls the browser's display options (e.g. the text size, styles, justification, positioning, etc.) for the displayable text between the tags. Note, see the Links section for an explanation of hypertext.".

The w3schools' Editors section fails to explain the distinction between editing the source code and WYSIWYG visual editing, erroneously and meaninglessly asserting that the latter is more professional. The Basics section introduces tag attributes (and the term element) before explaining them. The CSS introduces the complexity of style sheets and selectors, before explaining the syntax and examples of the style language.

Saylor.org's free computer science courses are links to external documents, that diverge from any coherent, efficient direct-to-the-point elucidation. For example, the 101 Intro links off to rambling, verbose, incoherent written histories of computers and software, then to tsuris of a unskimmable sequential series of web pages, then to a tediously slow khanacademy video on binary numbers, which doesn't simply explain adding by 1 and carrying to next digit position. The procedural versus oop theory crud is incorrect, false dichotomy+taxonomy, and confused (but so are most compsci educators on that aspect). Attempting to introduce the pedagogical essence of common semantic elements (e.g. data, control, logic) of programming languages using Java and C++ introduces unnecessary syntactical complexity too early. Sadly I find more problems than I can enumerate in a paragraph.

Codecademy.com drops me into structured interactive tutorials that seem to either go off on incoherent "doing without knowing", or disjoint verbose sidebar text that tries to get me to do some incoherent actions in the editor pane.

The video lectures from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Udacity are slow because they are videos, not bite-sized orthogonal sections, not direct-to-point of some topics student might be interested in, layered in dogma, and assume the student will pursue a deep theoretical education.

I find good ideas for conceptual explanation at computerscienceforeveryone.com, but the courses suffer the video format and the introduction of complex terminology too early.

Society desperately needs freely accessible online courses similar to w3schools for syntax and also conceptual courses, with improvements in the direction I have outlined. The incorporated interactive examples could be improved to interact more (while remaining optional) so the student knows what to type and click.