Henry Phish

In retrospect, the 90’s really was the defining point of the tech generation. With the advent of the Macintosh and the original Windows, for the first time since the dawn of computing, anyone with the will to do so and a pile of money could own and operate a computer. Parents bought them for their kids to do homework. Working adults bought them to work from home. And everyone wanted to talk tech.

By 1992, the first CD-Roms were just coming into common use. Floppy disks grew on trees and looked just like those little square data devices from Star Trek. RAM was $150 bucks for 4 megs, a far cry from the 1Gb for 60 bucks in todays economy. And Egghead Software was still a word used in common vernacular. Thus began the age of the personal computer.

From the dawning of the personal computer was born a new dialect. Conversations about ones hard drive or how many Mhz their computer could go were just sex to anyone within earshot of the water cooler. The internet livened things up even more, introducing: chat, email, online dating, movies, games and porn to a generation of men and women looking for an instant fix, opening the way to a “cool” lifestyle. Online gaming such as Quake, Everquest, and eventually World of Warcraft brought people closer together, even as they got farther apart. Gaming addiction and porn were claimed to lead to decreased social interaction, eating disorders, and an increase in the failure of the institution of marriage. Video games were cited as causing anti-social behavior, just as books and music had done before them. The ultimate example of which took place at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, where a group of anti-social teenagers killed several of their classmates in a style reminiscent of a first person shooter. All in all, peoples lives became more and more intermingled with technology, and technology in turn ruled their environment.

As time went by, computers became more portable; wireless networks became all the rage to the modern college student and working adult looking to use their computer in an increasing variety of venues. Restaurants, bars, movie theaters, and hotels began to integrate wi-fi into their business models. Further, computers and cell phones were smaller and lighter than ever before and could process more information than a super computer from a decade earlier; plus, they were beginning to be disposable…when you were done with it, you could throw it away.

By the end of the 90’s and the beginning of the 2000’s, prices had dropped, and computers were available to everyone, not just middle class adults. Computer tech was getting cheaper to produce and was appearing everywhere from your wrist watch, to kids toys, to your blender. This paved the way for broader acceptance, and ultimately America had a computer in every household mentality. Everything was easier, faster, cheaper, better…and to reiterate the point again…it was disposable, disposable, disposable…

Okay, so once technology became disposable, it simply stopped. Not stopped exactly, but it became so much a part of the pop culture; it became so iconoclastic, that technology ceased to exist as a separate entity and just became…well, “it.”

It could go anywhere, it could do anything. It could swing polls, start and end wars, send a kid off to college or open a restaurant to rave reviews. With “it,” you were negotiating with social credit, and not just tech. This was a step in the right direction, because “it” was what ultimately brought people back together. Now it was about the interaction and how people could bump into one another. From this idea, Internet 2.0 was created. With sites such as Ebay, Wikipedia, Second Life, MySpace, and Youtube, the users could control the content and others could interact with it.

For the first time, people could go anywhere, be with people, surf the net, have complete control over their environment, and completely ignore technology all at the same time.

This isn’t a new idea, that the first decisions we make in a moments notice are more correct than the decisions we mull over time and time again. It isn’t a new idea, but it is interesting…but I think I already said that.

Get Out of Your Own Way

Having just read about McCain’s attempt to jump start the economy with the new Ebay model, I simply had to give my two bits on the subject.

While I can honestly see his point about promoting small businesses, since the popularity and personal benefits of these jobs have become an important part of the economy in recent years, it seems kind of crazy to ignore the importance of products and services as staples of the modern United States. We had the same problem with the tech boom of the 90’s. For Yahoo and Google to make their money it took years of tweaking and problem solving to establish a viable business model, and while Ebay is an exemplary example of a large scale liquidation company and can optimistically work as an online web presence for legitimate enterprises, it seems hard pressed to call it an end all be all solution for a slumping economy. While I agree that information is critical to continued success in business, and small businesses in general should be supported, it just seems kind of stupid to put all our eggs in one Ebay shaped basket. The great thing about this country has always been its diversity, and it’s important to support this or risk stifling innovation…innovation being the backbone of the modern independent business.

It’s interesting to see how changes in the market have affected a growing and wildly popular industry such as ethanol production. While it’s always been a speculative industry at best, in it’s current state, it has gained a significant foothold in the United States for its use as an alternative fuel. Though it’s obvious that without continued research into better methods of processing and alternate sources of raw materials, it is a temporary solution at best.

With the corn shortage caused by the recent flooding in Iowa and Minnesota raising the cost of corn to record highs, the Ethanol Industry has suddenly seen a drastic decline in profits and speculation. Since corn in the last year has been in short supply anyway, these events have led to anxiety amongst farmers and business people in Minnesota particularly, where ethanol production has become something of a cottage industry.

Check out this article from the Star Tribune for more information.

For more info on all facets of Ethanol production and its uses visit:

Understanding Ethanol Production and Use

So a few years ago, a little movie came out called: An Inconvenient Truth, which spoke out on the dangers of global warming and global climate change. With Vice President Al Gore as its narrator and chief spokesperson, the film managed to garnish itself a pair of Oscars and grossed over $23,808,111 as of Oct 29. 2006 according to imdb.com. People were ready for a change…

When I was growing up in the 80’s, solar power was just becoming popular, wind energy was hardly even heard of, and in 50 years we were supposed to have completely run out of fossil fuels. We’d heard the stories about the rain forest depletion, the ever popular ozone hole, cow farts and automobile exhaust causing global warming, and CFCs. No one knew what to think of any of it…except that one day everything we knew would be gone.

I remember an advertisement on television in which a little boy and his parents get dressed in space suits and walked across an alien planet on their way to “somewhere.” Along the way, they converse of everyday things such as school and life, and when the family finally reaches their destination, we realize that it is a greenhouse, where they can view one of the last remaining trees on earth.

Images such as that last remaining tree stick with you over the years, and give you the realization that without continued stewardship, we would eventually end up with one tree in a museum.

It was in this early atmosphere of rising environmental importance that I wrote a letter to my senator, Tom Harkin, about the growing danger of deforestation and the need for more uses of clean energy to decrease our dependence on coal and oil. His response was a bit surprising to an 8 year old boy…alternative energy was inefficient, and while he supported the effort, as well as my interest, for the immediate future there were severe hurdles to be overcome.

That was the letter that opened my eyes to how complex the world could be. In all my naivety, I hadn’t realized that if the problem had been a simple one, then the solution would have already been found. What I would realize later, is that it was this continual environmental awareness…little by little, drop by drop…that ultimately would lead to a change in the environment as a whole. As time progressed, so would technology. Solar power became more efficient. Solar cells currently designed by Sunpower Corp rate at 21 to 22% efficient and are near their theoretical max of 26% according to an engineering friend of mine who makes them. Wind power is alive and well outside the front door of my grandmothers house in rural Iowa and is popular in the desert regions of California as well. And in 50 years we’re still going to run out of fossil fuels. But ultimately, in the social conscience, it became easier to think green, feel green, and be green.

The truth is that the 80’s were just sowing the seeds of environmentalism that later culminated in the growing activism of the 00’s. Today, environmentalism seems commonplace. Every corner on trash day contains a recycling bin full of everything from pop bottles, to tin cans, to cardboard, to glass. Nearly everything we dispose of on a daily basis is in some way recyclable if we put forth the effort. These days, you don’t even have to sort the paper from the plastics, it’s all done for you by a machine that magically takes the work out of it. Further evidence can be seen in the popularity of gas economical vehicles such as the Corolla, Civic, and Prius. The growing use of biological additives to fossil fuels such as Ethanol. And the growing popularity of green culture springing up all around us.

By the time Al Gore crossed the stage of the Grauman Chinese Theater in Hollywood, and accepted an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth. America was already gearing up for a change.

So I was watching the news the other day and a story on a growing trend in corn farming was on. Harking back to a series of articles I wrote a couple of years ago on the creation of alternate methods of Ethanol production, the story followed the rising use of Minnesota corn for the dinner table being boughten instead by manufacturers for use in Ethanol production. As one farmer put it, this was a good step for his industry, as the price of feed and dinner table corn was flat, and the use of corn as an alternate and popular fuel source opened up the market for both small and large farmers alike.

While I have several pages of writing on Ethanol in the archives, the story got me thinking about current trends in our economy and how they might grow in the future. Tech was big in the 90’s. The early 00’s were big into disposable culture. But I think that the latter half of this decade and the early part of the next are going to be green.

So stay tuned, as for the next few posts we’ll look into past and the future to see what might become of our brighter tomorrow.