{"id":262,"date":"2006-02-17T17:19:16","date_gmt":"2006-02-17T22:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=262"},"modified":"2006-02-17T17:21:33","modified_gmt":"2006-02-17T22:21:33","slug":"ephemeralization-against-the-bureaucracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=262","title":{"rendered":"Ephemeralization against the bureaucracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Segway inventor Dean Kamen unveils his next act, and it&#8217;s a doozy.<br \/>\nHe&#8217;s invented two devices to address the <a href='http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2006\/02\/16\/technology\/business2_futureboy0216\/index.htm'>power<br \/>\nand clean-water<\/a> problems in the Third World &mdash; essentially, a<br \/>\nrugged still and a generator that burns cow dung.  But the real<br \/>\nchallenge to conventional thinking is Kamen&#8217;s (rightly) contemptuous<br \/>\ndismissal of conventional development economics, and his plan to<br \/>\nend-run govenments.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>What makes Kamen&#8217;s invention possible is the phenomenon Buckminster<br \/>\nFuller called &#8216;ephemeralization&#8217; &mdash; the replacement of bulk<br \/>\nmatter by design information as technologies get smaller, lighter, and<br \/>\nmore clever.  Of course the most dramatic example of this is the<br \/>\nmicrochip, and the huge number of ways computer-mediated<br \/>\ncommunications increasingly substitute for pushing around matter and<br \/>\nenergy &mdash; but the phenomenon is everywhere.  I haven&#8217;t seen the<br \/>\nblueprints for either device, but does anyone want to bet against the<br \/>\nproposition that they&#8217;re a helluva lot smaller, lighter, and more<br \/>\ningeniously designed than their nearest functional equivalents would<br \/>\nhave been in 1960 or 1980?<\/p>\n<p>No?  No takers?  I didn&#8217;t think so.  Modern life is so saturated<br \/>\nwith ephemeralization that we hardly notice it any more.  Think about<br \/>\nthe weight difference between your first cellphone and the one you<br \/>\nhave now &mdash; then think about how they compared to the big old<br \/>\nBakelite-encased wireline handsets of the 1960s.  As we learn how to<br \/>\nephemeralize more and more of our technology, we downsize and<br \/>\ndecentralize it because that&#8217;s the cheap and effective way to go.<br \/>\nEntire countries are now opting out of building telephone landlines.<br \/>\nWhy bother, when cellphone towers are cheaper and less obtrusive?<\/p>\n<p>Kamen is taking the next logical step: downsizing and<br \/>\ndecentralizing the power and water infrastructure.  And look at the<br \/>\nway he plans to do it; not by enlisting governments, but by tapping<br \/>\nlocal entrepreneurialism.  Says Kamen: &#8220;Not required are engineers,<br \/>\npipelines, epidemiologists, or microbiologists,&#8221; says Kamen. &#8220;You<br \/>\ndon&#8217;t need any -ologists. You don&#8217;t need any building permits,<br \/>\nbribery, or bureaucracies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, baby!  Techno-libertarians like me have been saying for<br \/>\nthirty years that the free market would someday simply compete the<br \/>\nState out of existence.  Kamen, bless him, is actually setting out to<br \/>\n<em>do<\/em> it &mdash; or, at least, to demonstrate that the heavyweight<br \/>\nphysical and bureaucratic infrastructure many of us think we need to<br \/>\nprovide &#8216;public goods&#8217; like clean water and power is an actual hindrance<br \/>\nrather than a help.  Today, Third-World villages; tomorrow the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Segway inventor Dean Kamen unveils his next act, and it&#8217;s a doozy. He&#8217;s invented two devices to address the power and clean-water problems in the Third World &mdash; essentially, a rugged still and a generator that burns cow dung. But the real challenge to conventional thinking is Kamen&#8217;s (rightly) contemptuous dismissal of conventional development economics,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=262\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ephemeralization against the bureaucracy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-technology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}