This group will be hosting a demonstration of driverless vehicles o the streets of NYC in June 2009. More here.
And Chrysler is adopting driverless technology to lower testing costs. And Brad Templeton's Blog. More delivery bots running inside a huge factory.
And another transportation society here.
Automatically dropping groceries into one of these is simple technology.
A video of Luigi, the robot pizza man.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
A Warning About Another Oil Shock
Averting the next energy crisis: The demand challengeGlobal energy-demand growth is expected to flatten in the short term but will rebound with recovery. Indeed, there is potential for liquids-demand growth to outpace that of supply—risking a new spike in oil as soon as 2010 to 2013, depending on the depth of the economic downturn.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Smart Freight
Another smarter freight hauler. It uses GPS and terrain data to compute the optimum cruise cotrol up toamile ahead. This techology, along with deisel electric thaulers are getting very close to electric tethered autonomous trailers.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
First time on the track for driverless cars
Toyota Grand Prix Long Beach presented the first ever "race" between autonomous vehicles. The European Union appears to move ahead with robotic vehicles in public venues, more here. And some photos of the French built RoboCab
Sunday, March 1, 2009
The incomplete theory of Keynes
There is considerable confusion, began by Keynes because of his incomplete theory of animal spirits. Going back to his General Theory, specifically chap 7, we can complete his animal spirit theory and get a better idea of what a stimulus is and is not.
The essence of his theory is that individual savers make decisions without knowledge of the aggregate savings, thus ex ante, the saver expects one return on savings, but ex post, because of aggregate actions, he gets a lower return to savings. The difference is because the savers were animated by spirits that caused collective action unknown to each individually. The concluasion is an unexpected glut of capicity as consumers unknowingly quit consuming in the aggregate,
Savers do not unexpectedly act in synchronization, they are evolutionarily adapted to both save and invest and work in synchronization. The problem of aggregate shifts in savings preceed aggregate worries about unemployment and future goods availability. That is how the economy works. It matches both work and consumption to consumer groups such that the employed producers and targeted consumers match. This process is related to Krugmans agglomeration, there is an expected chain of production that matches consumption, and that structure must be re-aggregated, or re-agglomerated due to significant technology changes.
The Keynesian stimulus, according to the incomplete theory of animal spirits, would have the government act to restore the old agglomeration by deficit spending. The complete theory of animal spirits would have the govenment adapt itself to the new structure of agglomeration, thus removing a constraint to the new equilibrium position.
The key elements of a csuccessful stimulus are 1) A technology shift in production, 2) and monopoly player in the market that unexpectedly capitulates to the new system. My claissic case of a stimulus is the adoption of the industry compatible PC by IBM in 1974.
The essence of his theory is that individual savers make decisions without knowledge of the aggregate savings, thus ex ante, the saver expects one return on savings, but ex post, because of aggregate actions, he gets a lower return to savings. The difference is because the savers were animated by spirits that caused collective action unknown to each individually. The concluasion is an unexpected glut of capicity as consumers unknowingly quit consuming in the aggregate,
Savers do not unexpectedly act in synchronization, they are evolutionarily adapted to both save and invest and work in synchronization. The problem of aggregate shifts in savings preceed aggregate worries about unemployment and future goods availability. That is how the economy works. It matches both work and consumption to consumer groups such that the employed producers and targeted consumers match. This process is related to Krugmans agglomeration, there is an expected chain of production that matches consumption, and that structure must be re-aggregated, or re-agglomerated due to significant technology changes.
The Keynesian stimulus, according to the incomplete theory of animal spirits, would have the government act to restore the old agglomeration by deficit spending. The complete theory of animal spirits would have the govenment adapt itself to the new structure of agglomeration, thus removing a constraint to the new equilibrium position.
The key elements of a csuccessful stimulus are 1) A technology shift in production, 2) and monopoly player in the market that unexpectedly capitulates to the new system. My claissic case of a stimulus is the adoption of the industry compatible PC by IBM in 1974.
The Treasury Bubble
It has two possible paths, it will continue until the Federal Government comprises another large part of the economy, or it will pop rapidly and catastrophically. Given our recent history with bubble, I suspect smart money is watching for early signs and will exit the market suddenly resulting in othe second outcome.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)