Every month, Gallup asks an open-ended question—“what’s the most important problem?”– in a tracking poll to gauge Americans’ unprompted top-of-mind concerns. Economic issues top the list. So, despite the many challenges (and obvious horrors) in the world, in this episode we revisit what today’s technology trends tell us about tomorrow’s economy. Source

Hundreds of billions of American dollars are about to gush forth from Washington in service of accelerating the vaunted energy transition. But there’s a problem, one anchored in what can only be called the physics of money. Economists and policymakers like to talk about “market failures” in achieving energy goals. But even gushers of money can’t change what nature permits. Source

The release of ChatGPT, a powerful on-line AI tool, has excited anxieties in the chattering class that automation has finally arrived for “knowledge work,” much as it did for manual labor in the last century. It has, and that’s a good thing for everyone. We even asked ChatGPT to re-write the above paragraph in the style of Shakespeare Oh, tempestuous thoughts that swirl within my mind, Of ChatGPT’... Source

Robots aren’t as far in the future as many people think, especially ones that can be put to work in the skilled trades and “hard industries.” And we’re going to need them because of the existing and expanding shortage of skilled (human) labor in those industries, and given the fact of rising demand for all the things produced by “hard industries” whether basic materials, from metals to grains... Source

The year 2022 ended without an energy crisis. And that’s a good thing. But now, for 2023, the gap is widening between ambitions and possibilities for one key reason: The world isn’t mining or planning to mine enough materials to build the quantities of “green” machines imagined. Eventually the world will equilibrate around what’s possible, i.e., an “all of the above” energy strategy... Source

It’s the time of the year for the lollapalooza of retrospectives. On the energy front, the electric vehicle (EV) was at the top of the year’s obsessions. As a foil for framing an exploration of the state-of-the-EV, we’ve chosen a recent column by Dan Neil, the Wall Street Journal’s automobile reporter, and graded the answers he’s offered to that column’s title question, “Should You Buy An EV Now?”... Source

In Part 2 we highlight some specific technologies and sectors where radical, promising new products and services are already emerging, i.e., we predict a future “that’s already happening” per that great aphorism from the late great management consultant Peter Drucker. Source

Politicians aren’t innovators or inventors. Economic growth—wealth creation—is dominated by technology progress and then what policymakers either impede or encourage. Of course politics matter, but what we know about emerging technologies can change the framing, and the stakes. In Part 1 we revist the big-picture macro trends that point to a promising future. Source

Could America Produce a LOT More Oil & Gas? When he recently said America “should pump more oil and gas,” JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon joined a rising chorus of similar calls, including from Elon Musk. And Dimon added that doing so “should be treated almost as a matter of war at this point, nothing short of that.” The context is obvious. But the big question is not whether America should but whether... Source

Marc Dassler (Photo: Energy Robotics) Elon Musk made news (again) announcing plans to build robots. Entrepreneurs like Marc Dassler are in the market now, selling robot services with his company, Energy Robotics, providing critical supervisory software – ways to manage fleets of other people’s mobile robots – thus enabling deployment of a growing array of already available wheeled and walking... Source