Future Topics

I have had an extraordinarily busy weekend, which including an application for OpenPhilanthropy’s Living Literature Review, a submission to the Cosmos Institute’s essay contest on artificial intelligence, and finalizing a paper on learning curves for next month’s Markets & Society conference. I will share each of those things here once the respective processes are resolved, but in the meantime, I have little time for the blog this week. And so we will do an easy and (hopefully) fun topic, which is the set of topics on my agenda.

I come up with new topics faster than I can write about them, and I keep a list of topic ideas in my notes. There is no possibility that I will ever run out of topics, but I nevertheless don’t mind hearing suggestions.

Here are some things on my agenda, though recognizing that I won’t ever get to all of them. First, the energy and environmental topics.

• I’ve done a few energy production topics, such as offshore wind, solar, ocean energy, geothermal, and nuclear power. Now I feel that I might as well try to complete the series and cover every major energy source, but methane hydrates is one in particular that I am looking forward to. I’ve also written about fusion power a few times, though in a sporadic and piecemeal fashion, and I would like to do a full post on that subject.

• Over the last two weeks, I’ve done two posts related to carbon capture. Future topics on the subject could include carbon capture costs from various industrial sources, direct air capture, and the political economy of carbon capture.

• I’d like to do some broader discussion about energy storage, but flywheels are a particularly interesting topic. They may have a brighter future than people realize, especially if exotic materials such as carbon nanotubes can be used.

• I’ve discussed steel and aluminum before, and I want to complete the series with cement, paper, and plastic. Under paper, it would be especially interesting to discuss The Myth of the Paperless Office and why we still use so much paper.

• With cheap and abundant electricity, could titanium become a major industrial commodity like aluminum is now?

• A review of industrial heat: what it is used for, what temperatures are required in what quantities, and what are the prospects for non-fossil provision of heat?

• Emerging lighting technology, such as OLED and laser diodes.

• The outlook for remote work and why it appears to be having trouble these days.

• A series on farming intensification could be fun. It would cover greenhouses; hydroponics and its variants, aquaponics and aeroponics; vertical farming (which I already covered); biotechnology; other uses of technology in farming such as plasma; plant-based and cultured meat; and electrolyzed proteins.

• Noise pollution is a topic that is both important and not yet very well understood.

• Since it does come up in environmental discourse, what the Easterlin Paradox is and why the concept is faulty.

• “Geoengineering” is a word that is falling out of favor due to being imprecise. The concept is splitting into carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management. Both would be good topics.

Most of my interest in industrial topics is related to environmentalism. One in particular with no clear environmental angle is graphene. About a decade ago, graphene was all over the press as the emerging wonder material. Where do things stand now?

I have a few wish list topics related to cities and urban design.

• I’ve mentioned in passing a few times the speed and space tradeoff in transportation, but I would like to do something bigger there.

• Urban utopian visions, such as the Venus Project. Actually, this one project alone might merit a full post.

• The history of purpose-built national capitals is more extensive than you might realize.

• Earlier, I mentioned my application for a living literature review grant. The topic would be agglomeration economies, and if I get the grant, I will write on that subject extensively here as well. Even if I don’t get the grant, this is a topic that I want a few posts on.

• Marchetti’s Constant, that cities are typically structured by a 30 minute commute radius around a central point, is so fundamental that it deserves at least one post.

Space exploration and colonization a topic that I have written about far less so far than I thought I would. Here are a few topics of interest to me in that area.

• The rocket equation. It may be fairly basic, but it explains so much about how space development is (or is not) proceeding.

• When it comes to cheap space access, the conversation usually begins and ends with reusable rocketry. But what about spaceplanes, thermal rockets (nuclear or solar), microwave launch, and laser launch? This might be a single post or several posts.

• What kind of infrastructure does a civilization transitioning to spacefaring status need? This will be mostly about launch infrastructure, such as the Lofstrom loop.

• How could interstellar travel realistically work?

• Gerard K. O’Neill was right: rotating habitats in space is where people belong.

Earlier this year, I wrote a seven part series on the seven deadly sins. I don’t intend for religious topics to be a major focus of this blog, but there are a few others that I would like to write about.

• The age-old problem of evil: how can evil exist in the world if God is good?

• The nature of ecological brokenness. Tension between humanity and the non-human world goes right back to the Fall in the Book of Genesis, but this is a topic that I don’t feel is discussed nearly as well as it should be.

• Does suffering have a redemptive characteristic?

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I wrote quite a bit on defense and geopolitics. I have more or less said my piece on the subject, but one particular piece of unfinished business is cyberwarfare. I have attempted to write a piece on the subject before, but I don’t feel that I have yet gotten a decent grasp on the topic.

Artificial intelligence is an especially hot topic right now, despite my distaste for the term. I intend to post my Cosmos Institute essay submission on the subject once that contest is resolved. Unfortunately, I want to understand the topic much better at a technical level before I write too much, and I don’t really have the available time to do that right now. Possible topics include,

• The semantic web is one of those “whatever happened to…” topics, but I think its potential, in light of advances in language models, is greatly underestimated.

• Generative AI for video games. It seems like there is a lot of potential, such as for more interesting NPC dialogue. Or maybe to generate whole games. My attempt at that didn’t go so well.

• Various roadmaps to achieve artificial general intelligence, such as Eric Drexler’s Reframing Superintelligence.

Posts about history are the most fun to write, but I don’t like to write them unless there is a good connection with contemporary issues. A few of the topics I have queued up now include,

• I briefly discussed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Operation Cyclone a few weeks ago, but I would like to do a whole post on the subject. It is especially relevant today in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

• Dwight Eisenhower’s foreign policy. Rather wrongly, Eisenhower have become a bit of a hero for the anti-war movement.

• Should the calamities of the 14th century in Europe be considered a Malthusian catastrophe?

Also after the post a few weeks ago, I would like to make it an annual tradition to write something about September 11 around the anniversary, if the blog survives long enough. Potential topics include,

• Why was the American intelligence apparatus asleep at the wheel in the 1990s?

• Does Al Qaeda still pose a threat?

• Stories of heroism and survival.

I like to keep a friendly atmosphere and therefore not do too many highly controversial posts like the one a few weeks ago on immigration. But two other explosive topics I wish to cover are abortion and vegetarianism. I have to discuss abortion because I wrote about immigration, and the histories of those two topics are deeply intertwined. As for immigration, my post was mostly about the history of the issue and not specifically on why I think a pro-immigration stance is the wise and ethical position, and so that might a subject to revisit.

And there are a few subjects that don’t fit in with general topics I have done before, but that I would like to look at.

• The Video Game Crash of 1983 was one of my favorite posts to write, but I intended it to be a one-off. Nevertheless, a personal retrospective series on the Final Fantasy games would be fun, and maybe some other games that I grew up with.

• Various attempts to understand total factor productivity, and whether TFP is a useful concept to begin with.

• There is much angst about negative cognitive effects of smartphone proliferation. Is this a real problem or overblown?

• I would like to do a post on my mathematical research from back in the day, but it is hard to find a way to not make this too technical.

• Understanding debt/deficits and their solutions.

And finally, although I have no intention to bring this blog to an end in the foreseeable future, if I do end it, I do have a series finale planned. No spoilers.

Quick Hits

Mustafa Akyol has a new book, The Islamic Moses, which considers the intertwining of the histories of Islam and Judaism.

CaspianReport (a. k. a. Shirvan Neftchi) has a video about the lost decade in the UK. Among wealthy countries, the UK isn’t doing all that well lately, although the video’s title is a bit sensationalized. Also, the AP provides some background on anti-immigrant riots in the UK last month.

Company Man has a video on the decline of Tupperware. Many of us might think of Tupperware as a brand that was big in the 1950s but since then has lost cultural relevance. Well, that’s what the video is about.