Acute Angles: California Dreaming |
The power crisis in California has taught us an important lesson. Our society
is far too dependent on electricity, and we must make serious efforts at conservation.
No matter how many new power plants we build, the problems associated with pollution
of our environment and depletion of our natural resources will eventually limit
our capacity to produce and use electricity.
Instead of thinking of the crisis as a problem, we should think of it as an
opportunity. Our scientific genius will be presented with fabulous opportunities
to reduce our dependence on electric power. We are about to enter an age of
new technologies and instant billionaires that will make the computer revolution
look primitive by comparison. Here are this column’s predictions of some of
the new products we can expect to see in the new low-electricity future.
Using electricity to produce heat is wasteful and extravagant. We can expect
that stoves which use electric elements for cooking will eventually be replaced
by something different. One possibility is to bring in natural gas by pipe and
cook over gas burners. This gas can also be used instead of electricity for
heating the entire house. Another possible way to replace electricity for home
heating is to use petroleum oil, which can be delivered by trucks and stored
in underground tanks until needed, then burned to provide heat. A whole new
industry will be established to design and build these stoves and oil burners.
The use of electricity to dry clothes after washing is especially inefficient.
The technology already exists to use solar energy for this purpose. A strong
line made of natural fibers is suspended in the open between supports, the clothes
are attached to it, and the sun’s energy causes the water in the clothing to
evaporate.
In modern society people have a need to remain in contact with one another.
At the present time, this is done in an extremely inefficient manner and the
technology is limited. People carry phones with them all the time, for reliable
communication they have to be within range of a communications antenna, and
the batteries in the telephones have a limited capacity before they need recharging.
In the future there will be a system that won’t require people to carry phones
around wherever they go. There will be communication centers placed in areas
where people congregate, with individual glass enclosures called phone booths
where they can make a call in private.
Most people get their news from television or from their computer screens,
which require electricity. These displays have the disadvantage that the user
has to sit in one place and has to pay attention. An alternative electricity-saving
method of news distribution might be to print an entire day’s news on several
sheets of inexpensive paper made from wood pulp, and distribute them to the
general public at a nominal price. These papers could be taken anywhere and
read at one’s convenience.
Individual documents are generally produced by use of a computer or a word
processor, which become inoperative in the event of a power failure. Work is
already in progress on the development of a new type of word processor which
does not require electricity for its operation. It has a keyboard like a standard
word processor, except that the keys are connected to a mechanism which permits
each key to produce a specific character through an inked ribbon onto a sheet
of paper. The resulting document looks very similar to those produced by computer
word processors. When such a unit is developed, it will be especially useful
to journalists and other writers who frequently have to work without electric
power.
Timepieces consume far more electricity than most people realize. The average
household has more than ten clocks operating all the time and using electricity
continuously: a kitchen clock, one or two bedroom clocks, one on the microwave
oven, one on the conventional oven, one or two on VCR’s, a radio clock, one
or two automobile clocks, several wristwatches, and one on the computer. Each
one must be reset twice a year for daylight saving time. Those that use AC all
have to be reset every time there is a power interruption. In the others, batteries
must be replaced and the old ones disposed of properly. Someday there will be
a whole new industry devoted to the manufacture of timepieces that do not need
electricity. There be factories with highly skilled craftsmen producing a new
type of timepiece into which the user supplies the energy for its operation,
possibly by winding a spring every day.
This is only a small list of some of the remarkable new products we can expect. The possibilities for progress in non-electric products are so vast that they stagger the imagination.