We are witnessing the genocide of the Palestinians based on algorithms and machine learning; a system of apartheid in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip reinforced by artificial intelligence; and surveillance and facial recognition systems of such prowess that Orwell’s 1984 regime would be green with envy. Today’s Israeli-occupied Palestine manifests a dystopian and totalitarian sci-fi movie script as far as the Palestinians are concerned. Moreover, the Zionists are fuelling this AI nightmare.

From the onset of its current war against the Palestinians in Gaza, the Zionist regime, blinded by revenge for 7 October, has leveraged AI in the most indiscriminate and barbaric way to kill tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians. One such insidious AI tool that has dominated the headlines is The Gospel. Since last October, Israel has utilised this AI system to expedite the creation of Hamas targets. More specifically, The Gospel marks structures and buildings that the IDF claims Hamas “militants” operate from. This fast-paced target list, Israel’s disinclination to adhere to international humanitarian law, as well as US support emboldening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, has led to a modern-day genocide.

The Gospel is used by Israel’s elite 8200 cyber and signals intelligence agency to analyse “communications, visuals and information from the internet and mobile networks to understand where people are,” a former Unit 8200 officer explained. The system was even active in 2021’s offensive, according to Israel’s ex-army chief of staff Aviv Kochavi: “…in Operation Guardian of the Walls [in 2021], from the moment this machine was activated, it generated 100 new targets every day… in the past [in Gaza] we would create 50 targets per year. And here the machine produced 100 targets in one day.”

Israel’s apathetic disposition towards civilians is evident as it has given the green light to the killing of many innocents in order to hit its AI-generated targets whether they be hospitals, schools, apartment buildings or other civilian infrastructure. For example, on 10 October last year, Israel’s air force bombed an apartment building killing 40 people, most of them women and children. Israel has also used dumb bombs that cause more collateral damage instead of guided munitions to target low-level Hamas leadership targets. “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” said the Israel Defence Forces’ own spokesperson. This is the primary reason why the death toll of civilians is so high, as is the number of those wounded. According to one study, the current war’s total number of 110,000 and growing Palestinian casualties (most of them civilians), is almost six times more than the Palestinian casualties in the previous five military offensives combined, which stands at 18,992.

“Lavender 3,” digital, Dream/ Dreamworld v. 3, 2024.

Two other AI programmes that have made the news recently are Lavender and Where’s Daddy? Lavender differs from The Gospel in that the former marks human beings as targets (creating a kill list), whereas the latter marks buildings and structures allegedly used by combatants. Israeli sources claim that in the first weeks of the war, Lavender was overly utilised and created a list of 37,000 Palestinians as “suspected militants” to be killed via air strikes. As previously mentioned, Israel’s apathy towards the Palestinians has been evident in their mass killing of civilians in order to eliminate even a single Hamas member. According to Israeli military sources, the IDF decided initially that for every junior Hamas member, 15 or 20 civilians could be killed.

This brutality is unprecedented.

If the Hamas member was a senior commander, the IDF on several occasions okayed the killing of over 100 civilians to fulfil its objective. For example, an Israeli officer said that on 2 December, in order to assassinate Wissam Farhat, the commander of Shuja’iya Battalion of the military wing of Hamas, the IDF knew that it would kill over 100 civilians and went ahead with the killing.

If this was not contentious enough, Lavender was also used without any significant checks and balances. On many occasions, the only human scrutiny carried out was to make sure that the person in question was not a female. Beyond this, Lavender-generated kill lists were trusted blindly.

However, the same sources explain that Lavender makes mistakes; apparently, it has a 10 per cent error rate. This implies that at times it tagged innocent people and/or individuals with loose connections to Hamas, but this was overlooked purposefully by Israel.

Moreover, Lavender was also programmed to be sweeping in its target creation. For example, one Israeli officer was perturbed by how loosely a Hamas operative was defined and that Lavender was trained on data from civil defence workers as well. Hence, such vague connections to Hamas were exploited by Israel and thousands were killed as a result. UN figures confirm the use of such a devastating policy when, during the first month of the war, more than half of the 6,120 people killed belonged to 1,340 families, many of which were eliminated completely.

Where’s Daddy? is an AI system that tracks targeted individuals so that the IDF can assassinate them. This AI along with The Gospel, Lavender and others represent a paradigm shift in the country’s targeted killing programme. In the case of Where’s Daddy? the IDF would purposefully wait for the target to enter his home and then order an air strike, killing not only the target but also his entire family and other innocents in the process. As one Israeli intelligence officer asserted: “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.” In an even more horrific turn, sometimes the targeted individual would not even be at home when the air strike was carried out, due to a time lapse between when Where’s Daddy? sent out an alert and when the bombing took place. The target’s family would be killed but not the target. Tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, primarily women and children, are believed to have been killed because of this.

Israeli AI software also permeates the occupied West Bank, where it is a part of everyday Palestinian life.

In Hebron and East Jerusalem, Israel uses an advanced facial recognition system dubbed Red Wolf. Red Wolf is utilised to monitor the movements of Palestinians via the many fixed and “flying” security checkpoints. Whenever Palestinians pass through a checkpoint, their faces are scanned without their approval or knowledge and then checked against other Palestinian biometric data. If an individual gets identified by Red Wolf due to a previous detention, or their activism or protests, it decides automatically if this person should be allowed to pass or not.

If any person is not in the system’s database, their biometric identity and face are saved without consent and they are denied passage. This also means that Israel has an exhaustive list of Palestinians in its database which it uses regularly to crack down not just on so-called militants, but also on peaceful protesters and other innocent Palestinians. According to one Israeli officer, the technology has “falsely tagged civilians as militants.” Moreover, it is highly likely that Red Wolf is connected to two other military-run databases – the Blue Wolf app and Wolf Pack. IDF soldiers can even use their mobile phones to scan Palestinians and access all private information about them. According to Amnesty International, “Its [Red Wolf’s] pervasive use has alarming implications for the freedom of movement of countless Palestinians…”

For years, Israel has used the occupied Palestinian territories as a testing ground for its AI products and spyware. In fact, the country sells “spyware to the highest bidder, or to authoritarian regimes with which the Israeli government wanted to improve relations” on the basis that they have been “field tested”. Israel’s own use of this technology is the best advertisement for its products. The head of Israel’s infamous Shin Bet internal spy agency, Ronen Bar, has stated that it is using AI to prevent terrorism and that Israel and other countries are forming a “global cyber iron dome”. The glaring issue here is Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights through spying on their social media as well as wrongful detention, torture and killing innocent people. “The Israeli authorities do not need AI to kill defenceless Palestinian civilians,” said one commentator. “They do, however, need AI to justify their unjustifiable actions, to spin the killing of civilians as ‘necessary’ or ‘collateral damage,’ and to avoid accountability.”

Israel has entered into a controversial $1.2 billion contract with Google and Amazon called Project Nimbus, which was announced in 2021. The project’s aim is to provide cloud computing and AI services for the Israeli military and government. This will allow further surveillance and the illegal collection of Palestinian data. Google and Amazon’s own employees dissented and wrote an article to the Guardian expressing their discontent about this. “[O]ur employers signed a contract… to sell dangerous technology to the Israeli military and government. This contract was signed the same week that the Israeli military attacked Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – killing nearly 250 people, including more than 60 children. The technology… will make the systematic discrimination and displacement carried out by the Israeli military and government even… deadlier for Palestinians.” The contract reportedly has a clause that disallows Google and Amazon to leave the contract so the companies’ acquiescence is axiomatic. According to Jane Chung, spokeswoman for No Tech For Apartheid, over 50 Google employees have been fired without due process due to their protests against Project Nimbus.

The Palestinians are perhaps the bravest people in the world.

Whether contained within the barrel of a gun, a bomb casing, or in the code of an AI system, Israeli oppression will never deter them from standing up for their legitimate rights. Their plight has awoken the world to the nature of the Israeli regime and its brutal occupation, with protests and boycotts erupting in the West and the Global South. Using their propaganda media channels, the US and Israel are trying to placate the billions who support Palestine, even as the genocide remains ongoing. Israel hopes that its Machiavellian system will demoralise and create an obsequious Palestinian people – people whose screams are silenced – but as always it underestimates their indefatigable spirit which, miraculously, gets stronger with every adversity.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Technological innovation in the last couple of decades has brought fame and huge wealth to the likes of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. Often feted as geniuses, they are the faces behind the gadgets and media that so many of us depend upon.

Sometimes they are controversial. Sometimes the level of their influence is criticised.

But they also benefit from a common mythology which elevates their status. That myth is the belief that executive “visionaries” leading vast corporations are the engines which power essential breakthroughs too ambitious or futuristic for sluggish public institutions.

For there are many who consider the private sector to be far better equipped than the public sector to solve major challenges. We see such ideology embodied in ventures like OpenAI. This successful company was founded on the premise that while artificial intelligence is too consequential to be left to corporations alone, the public sector is simply incapable of keeping up.

The approach is linked to a political philosophy which champions the idea of pioneering entrepreneurs as figureheads who advance civilisation through sheer individual brilliance and determination.

In reality, however, most modern technological building blocks – like car batteries, space rockets, the internet, smart phones, and GPS – emerged from publicly funded research. They were not the inspired work of corporate masters of the universe.

And my work suggests a further disconnect: that the profit motive seen across Silicon Valley (and beyond) frequently impedes innovation rather than improving it.

For example, attempts to profit from the COVID vaccine had a detrimental impact on global access to the medicine. Or consider how recent ventures into space tourism seem to prioritise experiences for extremely wealthy people over less lucrative but more scientifically valuable missions.

More broadly, the thirst for profit means intellectual property restrictions tend to restrict collaboration between (and even within) companies. There is also evidence that short-term shareholder demands distort real innovation in favour of financial reward.

Allowing executives focused on profits to set technological agendas can incur public costs too. It’s expensive dealing with the hazardous low-earth orbit debris caused by space tourism, or the complex regulatory negotiations involved in protecting human rights around AI.

So there is a clear tension between the demands of profit and long-term technological progress. And this partly explains why major historical innovations emerged from public sector institutions which are relatively insulated from short-term financial pressures. Market forces alone rarely achieve transformative breakthroughs like space programs or the creation of the internet.

Excessive corporate dominance has other dimming effects. Research scientists seem to dedicate valuable time towards chasing funding influenced by business interests. They are also increasingly incentivised to go into the profitable private sector.

Here those scientists’ and engineers’ talents may be directed at helping advertisers to better keep hold of our attention. Or they may be tasked with finding ways for corporations to make more money from our personal data.

Projects which might address climate change, public health or global inequality are less likely to be the focus.

Likewise, research suggests that university laboratories are moving towards a “science for profit” model through industry partnerships.

Digital destiny

But true scientific innovation needs institutions and people guided by principles that go beyond financial incentives. And fortunately, there are places which support them.

“Open knowledge institutions” and platform cooperatives are focused on innovation for the collective good rather than individual glory. Governments could do much more to support and invest in these kinds of organisations.

If they do, the coming decades could see the development of healthier innovation ecosystems which go beyond corporations and their executive rule. They would create an environment of cooperation rather than competition, for genuine social benefit.

There will still be a place for the quirky “genius” of Musk and Zuckerberg and their fellow Silicon Valley billionaires. But relying on their bloated corporations to design and dominate technological innovation is a mistake.

For real discovery and progress cannot rely on the minds and motives of a few famous men. It involves investing in institutions which are rooted in democracy and sustainability – not just because it is more ethical, but because in the the long term, it will be much more effective.

Peter Bloom, Professor of Management, University of Essex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ruled Turkey for the last 21 years. In the first few terms of his rule, Turkey experienced significant economic growth and a reduction in inequality. This was widely believed to be a reason for Erdoğan’s long-term popularity.

However, inflation hit a 24-year high of 85.5% in November 2022, creating speculation that economic instability would count against Erdoğan in the 2023 general election.

Despite this, in the first round of the election Erdoğan attracted 49.5% of the vote. Some argued that what Erdoğan calls his “great achievements” in science and technology were a significant reason for his continued popularity.

In the weeks before the first round, Erdoğan made a flurry of announcements about his “great achievements” and upcoming projects. He unveiled plans for Turkey to send its first astronaut to the International Space Station by the end of the year. The Teknofest Aerospace and Technology Festival was held to showcase many of these projects to the public. Erdoğan also showed off Turkey’s new multipurpose amphibious assault ship and a new Turkish armed drone, capable of taking off from aircraft carriers.

Erdoğan clearly hoped that these announcements would boost his popularity, by creating an image of Turkey becoming a world leader in science and technology. Erdoğan’s government also oversaw the country’s Black Sea natural gas pipeline project, an attempt to make Turkey energy independent. And more than £55 billion had been invested in the national defence industry as part of a plan to make Turkey a world leader in defence products.

Creating Turkey’s own car

Although the car industry has had an important role in Turkey’s economy, it has been dominated by foreign car companies. But the idea of having a national car brand has had a long history. In 1961 the military government attempted to develop the first Turkish car, Devrim, as a symbol of modern Turkey, but it was not very successful. This desire for a Turkish national car was even made into a popular film.

In 2017, Erdoğan invited six business groups to produce a 100% domestic and national car by 2023, a year that marked the 100th anniversary of Turkey’s republic as well as being an election year.

The six business groups and the ministry of science, technology and industry formed Türkiye’s Automobile Joint Venture Group (Togg) in 2019, aiming to build the first fully Turkish-made car, which was also going to be an electric vehicle. Togg received the highest support package believed to have been given to any automotive firm in Europe and North America (about £2.8 billion).

Despite the extensive financial support and hype, the Togg car could not be “100% domestic and national” because domestic suppliers didn’t have the capacity to make the key parts. Crucial complex and expensive components, such as the battery, had to be imported.

In the end, only 51% of the Togg car was domestically sourced. This led to a change in the way it was described, rather than a “100% domestic and national” car Erdoğan began calling it “the car of Türkiye” and claimed the product as a Turkish industrial win.

Social costs

With political economists Gabor Scheiring and Tamas Gerocs I have been investigating the implications of the policies related to Turkey’s car industry on social and economic development. Policy interventions that led to the development of Togg and Erdoğan’s other “achievements” came at the expense of workers. Changes during the Erdoğan years made subcontracting legal for big firms, resulting in more insecure and low-paid employment.

The number of unionised workers in the car industry dropped from 68% to just 17% between 2003-23. Labour rights abuses were reported in Togg’s plant.

Most people in Turkey are unable to afford to buy a new average car, let alone the Togg car, which will be sold for Turkish lira 953,000 (£38,500). This is about 112 times the minimum wage. More than 70% of workers in Turkey earn the minimum wage or less.

Togg received extensive public support despite its inability to keep the promise of a 100% Turkish car and deteriorating working conditions. In a survey, 94% of the population supported the initiative and this support was primarily based on nationalist and patriotic grounds, such as “helping one’s own country”.

The car was portrayed as a major success that would add “success to Turkey’s list of ongoing achievements”. Erdoğan described Togg as the “shared pride of Türkiye and 85 million people”. The businesses involved in Togg were declared “brave fellows”.

Even supporters of the opposition were in favour of Togg and criticised opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu for not showing enough support for such an important initiative.

Rallying nationalist support

It is no surprise that Erdoğan’s “great achievements” were at the centre of his election campaign. Just days before the first round, Erdoğan drove around in the first Togg car to get media coverage. He said the car “will hit the roads of Europe with all of its models” soon and the Europeans “will say ‘crazy Turks’ are coming”.

The government has created an understanding that every Turk must work “hard to elevate the country to the level of developed civilizations”. Low pay and insecure employment are the sacrifices workers must make for their country to reach this goal. Those who die in work accidents such as the mining disaster in Soma are called martyrs.

However, without being able to turn around the economy, Erdoğan’s projection of Turkish success and place in the world would seem to have been a winner.

Merve Sancak, Lecturer in Political Economy, Loughborough University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Silicon solar cells are an established technology for the generation of electricity from the sun. But they take a lot of energy to produce, are rigid and can be fragile.

However, a new class of solar cell is matching their performance. And what’s more, it can now be printed out using special inks and wrapped flexibly around uneven surfaces.

We have developed the world’s first rollable and fully printable solar cell made from
perovskite, a material that is much less expensive to produce than silicon. If we can also improve their efficiency, this points to the possibility of making cheaper solar cells on a much greater scale than ever before.

Scientists at Swansea University have pioneered a printable and rollable solar cell. Swansea University, Author provided

The silicon solar cells that are so recognisable to us have a significant limitation. If enough were made to cover our needs, we could run out of the materials to make them by 2050. So, we need something new and lots of it. The perovskite solar cell is emerging to fill that gap.

Perovskite is a crystal structure made with inorganic and organic components, named after Lev Perovski, a Russian mineral expert of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Perovskite solar cells first appeared in research labs in 2012 and caught the attention of researchers due to two factors: their ability to convert sunlight into electricity, and the potential for creating them from a combination of inks.

In research labs, using highly controlled production methods in environments where oxygen and water are completely removed, perovskite solar cells can now match the electricity generation of silicon solar cells. This is a remarkable achievement.

But cheap perovskite solar cells that do away with silicon have yet to be manufactured on a commercial scale. So what if these materials could be produced using the same sorts of processes we use for printing ordinary packaging?

My colleagues and I recently demonstrated that a roll of plastic film can be loaded into a printing press, and working perovskite solar cells emerge at the other end. However, it’s not quite as simple as pouring ink into your desktop printer.

For one thing, scientists have found that to achieve record efficiencies, the semiconductor and perovskite layers in this new form of solar cell must be extremely thin – between 50 and 500 nanometres (about 500 times smaller than a human hair).

Also, the inks used to print them had required highly toxic solvents. But, after many years of effort, we have now formulated inks without toxic solvents that are compatible with the slot-die coating process – an established industrial technique originally used for the production of photographic film.

How our solar cell works

The printed perovskite layer generates free electrons from the energy provided by light hitting it. The semiconductor then prevents the perovskite re-absorbing these electrons with a good power conversion efficiency (the ratio of optical power in to electrical power out).

One problem remained: how to extract the electrical charge. In the past, this had been achieved by heating gold in a vacuum until it evaporated, and catching the vapour on the perovskite solar cell to form electrodes.

We took a different approach, creating a carbon ink compatible with both the perovskite material and the slot-die coating process. The result is large volumes of flexible, rollable solar cells that come out of the printing press ready to generate power.

More work needed

Perovskite solar cells have demonstrated high performance in research labs, and have now been proven capable of making the leap to high-volume manufacturing. But the job is not quite done yet.

The 10% power conversion efficiency achieved by these rollable printed cells is useful, and higher than the first commercial silicon panels. But it lags behind the typical 17% conversion efficiency of domestic solar panels in use today.

We know there are further increases available by taking advantage of higher-performing perovskite chemistry.

There is an engineering challenge to overcome in order that high-volume, commercially produced perovskite solar panels can match the energy generation of silicon. Further improvements in the lifetime stability of perovskite solar cells are also required – through a combination of chemistry, device design, and other strategies such as protective coatings and laminated barrier films.

In short, research needs to focus on converting what’s happening in the labs into real-world devices. But the possibility of producing hundreds of thousands of square metres of flexible perovskite solar cells is now a step closer.

David Beynon, Senior Research Officer at the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre, Swansea University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

I’m senior correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari. Here’s what I’ve been following and what I’m watching out for in the days ahead.

The Big Issue

( RFE/RL ) – Russia successfully launched an Iranian satellite into space on August 9, in a move that has raised concerns in the West. U.S. officials fear that the satellite could be used by Moscow to boost its intelligence capabilities in Ukraine, which it invaded in February. There are also worries that the satellite will provide Iran “unprecedented capabilities” to monitor potential military targets in Israel, its archenemy, and other countries in the wider Middle East region.

Tehran has rejected those claims, saying Iran will have full control and operation over the satellite “from day one.” Iran has said the remote-sensing satellite will only be used for civilian purposes, including monitoring border areas, surveying water resources, and managing natural disasters.

Why It Matters: The satellite launch is the latest sign of the deepening ties between Iran and Russia. It came just weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Tehran, where he and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pledged to work together against the West.

Both countries have been hit by Western sanctions and international isolation. Yuri Borisov, head of Russia’s state space corporation Roskosmos, hailed the launch as an “important landmark” in cooperation between Moscow and Tehran. Iran’s Telecommunications Minister Issa Zarepour, who attended the launch in Kazakhstan, praised it as “historic” and “a turning point” in space cooperation between the countries.

The satellite launch has also put a spotlight on Iran’s space program. In recent years, Tehran has launched several satellites into low Earth orbit and announced plans to send astronauts into space. But Iran has also seen a succession of accidents and failed satellite launches in recent years.

John Krzyzaniak, a research analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in June that Iranian satellites do not have advanced capabilities, but they represent “stepping stones to more sophisticated satellites that will be more useful and remain in orbit for longer periods.”

What’s Next: Russia’s successful launch of the Khayyam satellite, named after the 11th-century Persian poet and philosopher Omar Khayyam, could worsen tensions with the United States. Just last month, Washington claimed that Tehran was preparing to deliver hundreds of combat drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine.

“Russia deepening an alliance with Iran is something that the whole world should look at and see as a profound threat,” a State Department spokesperson was quoted as saying on August 9.

The United States has long expressed concerns over Iran’s space program, which has both a civilian and military component. The United States fears that Tehran could use the program to enhance its ballistic-missile capabilities.

Via RFE/RL

Copyright (c)2020 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

That is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The faster we put in solar panels and wind turbines, the more money we will save, to the tune of trillions of dollars. That is the conclusion of Oxford researchers on technological change.

Many writers on the infrastructural changes we need to make to fight the climate emergency have assumed that replacing old technology and infrastructure will cost a lot of money. This way of thinking imagines replacing coal plants or internal combustion automobiles with new, decarbonized infrastructure as like replacing concrete buildings with marble ones. They have therefore urged that we go slowly, so as to spread out the cost over decades without overburdening people living in any particular moment along the way.

There is another possibility, though. What if things like photovoltaic solar panels and wind turbines are not like expensive marble, which you need gradually to quarry and slowly to bring in to replace cinder block walls in buildings? What if they are like computer chips compared to a phalanx of abacuses?

Moore’s law was put forward in 1965 by San Francisco-born engineer Gordon E. Moore, a founder of Intel. He said that the number of transistors per silicon chip doubles yearly. Actually, we have seen a doubling of computer chip capacity about every 18 months for the past 50 years. Moore’s Law has enabled computers to plummet in price while skyrocketing in computing power.

Kevin Kelly, a co-founder of Wired, writes at his kk.org site that it is possible that Moore’s Law is not so much physical as social and economic, and it worked because the very assertion that silicon chip power would grow exponentially rather than serially gave permission to engineers and angel investors to try to make it so.

In that way, Moore’s Law would intersect with another well-known principle, Wright’s Law, put forward in 1936 by Theodore P. Wright on the basis of observations of the aviation industry. It predicts that the more we produce of a new technology and the more familiar we become with it, the more its costs fall. Wright found that for every doubling in the production of aircraft, the price fell 20 percent.

What if green technology such as solar panels is like silicon chips? Rebuilding all concrete buildings as marble ones is a serial activity, with the form of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 … etc. Improving computer chips in accordance with Moore’s Law is exponential, with the form of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024 . . . and so forth. You can see that getting to one million in the first series take 1 million steps. Just ballparking it, I’d say it only takes about 20 doublings to reach a million in the second series.

Oxford University’s Eric Beinhocker, J. Doyne Farmer, and Cameron Hepburn report at Bloomberg about a paper by Farmer and François Lafondade at Sciencedirect that makes exactly this astonishing claim.

In the paper, the authors point out,

“The first commercial nuclear power plant opened in 1956 and the first practical use of solar photovoltaics was as a power supply for the Vanguard I satellite in 1958. The cost of electricity generated by nuclear power is highly variable, but has generally increased by a factor of two or three during the period shown here. In contrast, a watt of solar photovoltaic capacity cost $256 in 1956 (Perlin, 1999) (about $1910 in 2013 dollars) vs. $0.82 in 2013, dropping in price by a factor of about 2330. Since 1980 photovoltaic modules have decreased in cost at an average rate of about 10% per year.”

The Bloomberg article points out that the solar panels’ 10% annual price drop is what one would expect if advances in this technology were following Moore’s Law.

In contrast, fossil fuels such as petroleum, coal and natural gas provide no similar cost savings or increased power over time. They note,

“Interestingly, fossil fuels don’t follow such cost improvement curves (despite receiving far more in subsidies — $447 billion worldwide for fossil fuels versus $128 billion for renewables, according to the latest figures). We’ve analyzed more than 140 years of data on oil, coal and natural gas and found that their inflation-adjusted costs are roughly the same as they were in the late 19th century,”

So here is the astounding conclusion of the authors: If we transition as rapidly as possible to wind and solar, we will actually save trillions of dollars. We’ll be dumping a technology with fixed costs and fixed yields, and moving to technologies that get 2000 times cheaper over half a century.

Not only has the cost per watt of photovoltaic solar technology fallen like a meteor, efficiency has also improved, if less rapidly.

This site at Lafayette University observes, “In 1955, Hoffman Electronics-Semiconductor Division introduced photovoltaic products with only a 2% efficiency, with an energy cost of $1,785/Watt (USD).” The efficiency of real-world panels now ranges up to 25%, and in laboratory settings 44% has been achieved. Residential solar now costs less than $3 per watt and falling.

Going big into solar in 2021 is like buying Apple stock in 1980 at $22 a share and then enjoying the ride for the next decades. (And this tidy profit at the stock market would just be an economic expression of the operation of Moore’s Law).

And if Wright’s Law operates on the new technology of the electric vehicle, as we manufacture more and more of them (Germany now has a million on the road), we could see dramatic price reductions. Again, the same downward price curve cannot be expected regarding gasoline vehicles.

—–

Bonus Video:

DW Planet A: “How solar energy got so cheap, and why it’s not everywhere (yet)”

For people who would like to learn more about Islam, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles, available on our website or as six emails delivered every other day, written by Senior Religion and Ethics Editor Kalpana Jain. Over the past few years she has commissioned dozens of articles on Islam written by academics. These articles draw from that archive and have been checked for accuracy by religion scholars.

In the previous installment of this series, you learned about the different Muslim sects and the interesting ways they mix in the United States. This article will take you through the historical contributions of Islam and its influence on other faiths across geographical regions.

Your understanding of Islam is perhaps incomplete without a deeper appreciation of its cultural and intellectual history. History books in the U.S. can give an incomplete picture about the richness of its past, so many students may fail to appreciate the importance of this history.

Islamic scholars contributed to early developments in astronomy, medicine and mathematics. Their work was crucial to Renaissance scientists who built on some of the existing scholarship.

For example, the 11th-century astronomer al-Qabisi, one in a line of famous Islamic astronomers, helped formulate a critique of the then-prevalent notion that the Earth was at the center of the universe. As scholar of Middle Eastern studies Stephennie Mulder writes, that model later informed the view of Nicholas Copernicus, a Renaissance astronomer.

Important works of mathematics were written by Islamic scholars, including substantial contributions to algebra and a commentary on the fourth-century B.C. Greek mathematician Euclid that was later translated into Latin. An early description of surgery to remove cataracts was written by Islamic ophthalmologists in the year 1010.

Many of these scholars were based in Mosul in modern-day Iraq, a city that was occupied by the Islamic State from 2014 to 2017. Mosul was a key center on the Silk Road – a network of trade routes – which also contributed to its rich diversity of people and traditions. As Mulder notes, “The city was home to a diverse group of people: Arabs and Kurds, Yazidis, Jews and Christians, Sunnis and Shiites, Sufis and dozens of saints holy to many faiths.”

Among the Islamic State’s destruction of architectural sites in Mosul was the tomb of the Prophet Jonah, a figure revered by all three Abrahamic faiths. Jews venerate Jonah as a symbol of repentance. In the Islamic faith, Jonah, also known as Yūnus, is seen to be an exemplary model for human behavior. In the Christian faith, Jonah’s story appears in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Influence of Islam was seen in the cultural history of many countries. Scholar Kishwar Rizvi explains that in medieval Spain, for example, the troubadour poets who were known for their lyrical poetry “borrowed their lyrical beauty from Arabic.” Until the 15th century, as Rizvi says, Arabic was the courtly language of southern Spain.

The exchange between Islam and other Abrahamic faiths extended to architecture. The famous 12th-century Palatine Chapel in Sicily takes some of its architectural style from the Fatimids, the Shiite rulers of Egypt between the 10th and 12th centuries.

“Such exchanges were common, thanks to the mobility of people as well as ideas,” writes Rizvi.

Understanding the rich history of Islamic art can help counter many presumptions about Islam today. In explaining how different religious views were accommodated within Islam, scholar Ana Silkatcheva points to a 19th-century tile from Iran depicting a crucified Jesus surrounded by the Twelve Apostles.

“In Islamic understanding, Jesus was a prophet, granted the same respect as Muhammad, but did not die on the cross,” Silkatcheva said. “This is evidently a tile made for or by the Christian community in Persia under Islamic rule.”

Art history can be revealing to many Muslims as well. For most Muslims, the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad is considered to be forbidden. However, Silkatcheva writes about a 17th-century manuscript folio that depicts the prophet, suggesting that visual depictions of the prophet were acceptable in the past.

Rizvi offers a reminder from the poetry of 13th-century Muslim mystic Rumi that sums up this belief in peaceful coexistence:

“All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity.”

This article was reviewed for accuracy by Jessica Marglin, Associate Professor of Religion at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Fact: The Dutch painter Rembrandt collected miniature paintings from the Mughals, a Muslim dynasty that ruled the Indian subcontinent for over 300 years. Silks from the Safavid empire (the Iranian dynasty from the 16th to 18th century) were so popular that Polish kings had their coats of arms woven in Isfahan.
– From an article written by Kishwar Rizvi, Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at Yale University.

In the next issue: Why women wear the headscarf

You can read all six articles in this Understanding Islam series on TheConversation.com, or we can deliver them straight to your inbox if you sign up for our email newsletter course.

Articles from The Conversation in this edition:**

• What’s missing in the teaching of Islam

• On Yom Kippur, remembering Mosul’s rich and diverse past

• No god but God: A breathtaking exhibition bringing Islamic art out of the shadows

Further Reading and Resources:

• “The Shrines of the ‘Alids in Medieval Syria: Sunnis, Shi’is and the Architecture of Coexistence,” by Stephennie Mulder: Scholar Stephennie Mulder’s book on Islamic architecture goes beyond Islam’s sectarian history to reveal a past marked by cooperation and accommodation.

• “Close Encounters in Medieval Provence: Spain’s Role in the Birth of Troubadour Poetry,” by María Rosa Menocal.

• “Mathematics and Islamic Art,” by Lesley Jones: Jones’ journal articles explores Islamic mathematics’ influences in art.

• “How Islam changed medicine,” by Azeem Majeed, professor of primary care at Imperial College Faculty of Medicine in London.

Kalpana Jain, Senior Religion + Ethics Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Guillén is the Zandman Professor in International Management at the Wharton School of Penn and an expert on global market trends. This book has eight chapters, a conclusion, and a Postscript on the impact of COVID-19 on trends in 2030. This book acts as a roadmap to navigate the next decade, since today’s world will change by 2030. The world is changing so fast that folks are nervous about what the future has in store for all of us. One of the biggest changes by 2030 will be technological ones, such as 3-D printing, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnologies.

Technology will generate creative solutions but also create problems, e.g., as a result of autonomous vehicle technology about three million truck drivers may lose their jobs. Autonomous vehicles have a bright future since a computer can adapt to road and traffic conditions, and figure out a complex trip. A single robot in the manufacturing section can displace five to six workers. By 2030 there will be more robotic arms than human ones, more computers than human beings, and more sensors than eyes. Artificial intelligence (AI) can perform tasks that human brains do, such as make decisions, recognize speech, and utilize visual perception.

Today, it takes about a decade of higher education and years of training to become a first-rate surgeon. Yet in 2016, the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) used its own intelligence, tools, and vision to stitch together the small intestine of a small pig. It did a better job than human surgeons who had the same task. The robot’s stitches were more consistent and less resistant to leaks than the sutures of the human surgeons. And an added bonus: robots are neither temperamental nor judgmental.

New 3D printers can create a three-dimensional figure or object by printing very thin sheets in sequence. They then stack them on top of each other to create a three-dimensional shape. By using only the exact amount of material needed to make a dental piece or human replacement tissue, waste is reduced. Less carbon will be put into the atmosphere as fewer goods are made with less material. The clincher is this: companies will need much less shipping as mini-factories and printer farms are constructed that are closer to customers. Companies are learning to manufacture items to real-time demand, instead of storing their supplies in warehouses since freight transportation makes up 25% of all carbon emissions in affluent nations.

Cities can use 3-D printed seawalls to counter flooding and storm surge. The company, Branch Technologies, uses Cellular Fabrication (C-FABTM), that is, industrial robots, complex algorithms, and freeform, extrusion technology that allows material to become solid in free space. This same company is perfecting a new construction product that’s stronger, lighter, faster on-site and with ten times greater design freedom using a waste-free process. This company built the largest 3-D structure in the world, viz., a bandshell at a park in Nashville. China uses 3-D printing to print entire homes that may aid in recovering from natural disasters like earthquakes and cyclones.

Nanotechnologies can go a long way in arresting climate change. The clothing industry accounts for circa eight % of total carbon emissions. Nanotechnologies can design particles as small as one billionth of an inch manufacturing cheaper, stronger, and more environmentally friendly materials that are programable, i.e., material endowed with the capability of changing their shape, conductivity, density, or optical properties in response to sensors. Researchers have discovered a material that tightens in cold weather to provide warmth and yet provides relief from heat in summer. We now have nanomedicine. We can deliver drugs to cancerous cells with enormous precision. Nanotechnologies can detect ovarian cancer when the disease is affecting one hundred cells. Nanorobots are able to be programmed to transport molecular payloads and cause on-site tumor blood supply blockages that can lead to tissue death and shrink the tumor.

Women in the US, Europe, and East Asia are having fewer children yet there’s a baby boom in Africa. Its population of 1.3 billion people will grow to 2 billion by 2038. One might surmise that Africa couldn’t survive such a growth in population, but that’s not the case. The landmass of Africa is humongous, i.e., about as big as India, China, Japan, the US plus Western and Eastern Europe combined. Will Africa be able to feed its increased population? The World Bank says that by 2030 Africa’s agriculture may well become a trillion-dollar sector, thus transforming the entire global economy.

Though today Africa imports food, its positioned to become an agricultural and industrial revolution. It must cultivate 500 million acres of land that’s about the size of Mexico, while greatly improving productivity by growing and processing a vegetable named cassava the third chief source of carbohydrates after rice and maize in the developing world. Over 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa use cassava for their daily dietary needs since it contains less sugar than wheat.

This is a remarkable book, one that I cannot do justice to in a short article. The author has certainly done his homework in writing this book, e.g., it contains 27 pages of notes that enlighten the reader. I have difficulty praising this book too highly.