Singularity University is one of the most interesting developments in education in some time.    SU is bringing together experts in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, engineering, and other thought leaders along with business leaders.   The discussions include abstract topics as well as pressing global problems and it is clear this group could yield some great innovation.

Here are some of the project SU identified in a recent press release:

• One Global Voice leverages mobile phone proliferation to accelerate economic development. It envisions a platform that will provide a set of modular programming tools accessible through a web portal, empowering individuals to create applications empowering education and commerce, linking together the developed and developing worlds.
• Gettaround addresses how an intelligent transportation grid can positively affect energy usage and slow climate change, as people value access over ownership of cars. The first step to the grid, Gettaround is a marketplace for peer-to-peer leasing of under-utilized car hours. It enables car owners to derive revenue from their idle cars, and for renters to have easy access to cars – affordably and conveniently.
• ACASA focuses on advances in rapid, additive manufacturing technologies to construct affordable and customizable housing in the developing world. Cost-efficient, environmentally sustainable solutions have the potential to create a transformative new paradigm for improving housing construction using local resources.
• XIDAR considers a new paradigm for disaster response, allowing users to overcome the communications network problems typical of crisis situations. The project enables innovative solutions to facilitate evacuation, medical triage and aid during natural disasters.

Although I’m not a big fan of Government spending I’d like to offer a suggestion to President Obama and the big spending gang – negotiate an agreement with all the leading scientific journals that will make all scientific papers free or very low cost to anybody.     A big frustration and a possible impediment to innovation is the fact that many science papers are “locked away” by expensive subscription paywalls at leading scientific journals.    One can understand that those journals are struggling to survive and need money, but the current practice of charging exhorbitant fees so only libraries and a handful of specialists can read the leading edge research is misguided at best and intellectual crime at worse.

Since journals operate on what is usually a very low budget, the government could offer very modest amounts – probably something equal to 1.5 to 2 times their current subscription fees to keep the journals ticking and happy.   Authors would be happy to see many times the audience for papers often destined to obscurity.

I think I’d actually favor a “no cost” option that required all research papers funded in any way by any grants or portions of grants  to be made public by the author upon publication,  but the “new” science community seems to be incredibly stubborn about  changes and very protective when territory is threatened so I’m guessing they would likely reject that out of hand, using the argument that the journals should continue to act as a sort of “referee” and organizer of relevant research content.    I think this used to make more sense than now as politics have become too much a part of the research and publications framework (I think mostly in the climate sciences), raising several important issues about publications standards, peer review, and data sharing.

Did you thank your kid today for all the money they’ve been loaning you?

As a supporter of many of the changes President Obama has brought to our national table it’s painful to watch so many folks simply back away from the next glaring financial catastrophe which makes the last one look like a walk in the park.    It’s the massive US national debt and massive deficit spending that has been going on now for over a decade, though never on the scale of the coming years.

Ironically this is a problem all of us were talking about a *lot* before the economy melted down, and even before the GW Bush era of what is best called “fake conservatism”  doubled the national debt.    President Bush was able to push his irresponsible spending down the pike to Obama thanks to inheriting  a very robust Clinton era economy, keeping folks happy with tax cuts, and claiming the war spending was essential to preserve our freedom.   Where a handful of real fiscal conservatives cried foul, legions of fake conservatives stayed silent and followed the leads of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who suckered the gullible into focusing on the lies and distortions that fueled the Bush v. Gore,  Bush v.  Kerry, and McCain v. Obama campaigns.   Power was far more important to all the parties than sound principles of governance, spending, or national policy.

Now it’s Obama who is able to ignore the massive spending and debt because the economic meltdown he inherited from Bush has trumped concerns for the debt. and some form of stimulus is certainly called for according to almost all economists.

Thankfully the massive Obama spending stimulus appears to be bringing us out of recession though it’s not clear at what future cost.     In politics it’s hard for parties and Presidents to look too far past the big power curve, and in my view Obama and the Democrats won’t even work hard to undertand the implications of spending themselves past the 2012 elections and then they will just hope for a miracle.   More likely than a miracle is that we’ll see very high inflation as  the Government is virtually forced to print money to repay obligations since the tax rates required to repay the anticipated debts will be totally unsupportable and unsustainable.

Another irony of the situation is that all those formerly quiet “conservatives” are now quite reasonably suggesting we’re creating a new financial catastrophe, but the concerns are falling on deaf Democratic ears because these same people were not critical of their own political allies back when they did have a voice and they tend to blend in nonsense talking points (birth certificates, communist agendas, etc, etc) about Obama and the Democrats.

In simple terms we are saddling our children and future generations with a debt that almost certainly cannot be repaid in any conventional fashion.    The amounts are too staggering to understand even if you are well versed in accounting and math.   This interactive chart is worth a look if you want to see how the numbers shake out in terms of government spending per capita:   http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/US_per_capita_spending.html#usgs302

So, when you hug your son, daughter, niece or nephew today be sure to tell them “thanks for the money”  because they have been loaning you a LOT of money for the past ten years, especially this last one.   Many tens of thousands and growing hugely each year.

We’re stealing our kids prosperity away.   The least we can do is say “Thank you”.

P.S.   The solution to all this is remarkable simple.   After a few years of stimulus deficit spending the government should be required to lower spending to balance the budget over the following few years.  Our current massive entitlement and defense spending could sustain 100% of the required cuts to balance the budge without any significant diminished standards of living for Americans.

IMPORTANT:  Few of the comments below represent my views, but I avoid censoring politics here so I’ve chosen not to delete the many off topic comments.   I’m reconsidering that policy because much of the material below is, in my view, not helpful to any rational discussion of these topics.