Bow down before Google

While perhaps well-meaning, Google is overstepping its bounds in trying to shape the nation's energy future.

Google has been quietly pushing an energy agenda with the Obama Administration, and on February 11 the Internet giant unveiled Google PowerMeter, a program that helps people monitor their home power consumption. See the article here. See Google's own blog on the topic here.

Again, all good and well, but I think Google already has enough of a handle on what Americans do with their time, money and conversations (public Web, e-mail, phone).

This is coming from someone who loves Google products like youtube, and blogger, which supports this particular blog.

I remember when I first saw Google in action. It must have been the late 90s. I was an editor at a newspaper, and a hotshot intern was showing me the search engine he really like. And it beat the heck out of the multiple search engines I was using at the time. It was just a simple little search box on a white Web page.

At its core essence, Google hasn't changed so much. In what else it does, it has taken a life of its own that is probably too much power for one entity.

Google and NASA launching school to help humans keep up with computers

From the world of truth is stranger than fiction comes the news that Google and NASA are partnering to create a special school for futurists in Silicon Valley to "prepare scientists for an era when machines become cleverer than people," according to the Financial Times article.

The institution - “Singularity University” - will be led by Ray Kurzweil, who predicted the exponential pace of technological change.

Among other things, Kurzweil gained notoriety for his stance that before 2050 artificial intelligence will outpace humans, thus meaning we will be living in the freaking Matrix.

To quote the FT article:

The so-called “singularity” is a theorised period of rapid technological progress in the near future. Mr Kurzweil, an American inventor, popularised the term in his 2005 book “The Singularity is Near”.

Proponents say that during the singularity, machines will be able to improve themselves using artificial intelligence and that smarter-than-human computers will solve problems including energy scarcity, climate change and hunger.

Yet many critics call the singularity dangerous. Some worry that a malicious artificial intelligence might annihilate the human race.

Well, I'm glad NASA is on this one. We will need the world's brightest minds to save us from computers. Aren't we already addicted enough to these things?

Not to trivialize a significant matter, because the law of unintended consequences is alive and well. Who knew that those computer punch cards of yore would lead to where we are today, a world where people text instead of talk, surf instead of walk and theorize without chalk.

Welcome to the future.

Seattle inventor puts forth rooftop wind turbine. Target price tag? $500

The high cost of most alternative energy ideas is a major hurdle to adoption by the masses.

A Seattle-area inventor has a wind turbine that he thinks could be produced and sold for less than $500, according to this story.

His prototype cost only $100 to build.

The turbine would not create a lot of electricity, but perhaps as much as 40 kilowatt hours a month. That's enough to offset the amount of high-efficiency bulbs used in some households.

"It's not going to power the whole house," inventor Chad Maglaque told the Seattle Times. "But it's about doing every little bit."

According to the article, he's entered his wind-turbine idea in Google's "Project 10 to the 100th" contest, which, to celebrate the company's 10th birthday, will award $10 million to five innovative ideas that seek, in simple terms, to change the world.