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Provided we don’t cripple ourselves by engaging in unnecessary wars or bring on energy poverty by attempting to power our society with unreliable wind and solar power, a positive future awaits because of the marvelous new technologies currently being developed. These developments have the potential to radically improve the way we live and help solve many of the world’s problems. And no, contrary to the fears of environmental activists, we can, indeed, must, continue to grow the world population, with increasingly sophisticated technology giving us a cleaner and healthier environment than we have today.
But will these technological developments, especially in information technology such as “the cloud,” result in governments and corporations having complete control over our resources, wealth, and personal information? Will we soon see “Big Brother” controlling everything, as is currently the case in Communist China?
To discuss all this, I have invited Mark Mills, who served in the White House Science Office under President Reagan, to be my guest today. Mark is currently a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. He began his career as an experimental physicist and development engineer in microprocessors and fiber optics.
Later, he cofounded Montrose Lane ventures, a tech-focused energy fund, and was chairman and CTO of ICx Technologies. Mark is the American Energy Society’s “Energy Writer of the Year” (2016) and is the author of The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and a Roaring 2020s and other books (see below).
References relevant to this show:
- The Last Optimist podcast, hosted by Mark Mills
- Books written by Mark P. Mills:
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- Digital Cathedrals (2020)
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- Work in the Age of Robots (2018)
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- Mills earlier coauthored (with Peter Huber) The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy (Basic Books, 2005).