Here's some stuff I have read or listened to lately that I found interesting.
Climate change
Author Kim Stanley Robinson on 'a plan for a world in flames' . I read his novel The Ministry of the Future at Christmas last year. Although I enjoyed it I was a bit disappointed that it didn't feature much of the epic planetary engineering that feature in his novels about colonising Mars. I suppose because this is meant to be about a more real scenario in our own near future. Some of the more interesting stuff which he touches on here is the role of central banks and the financial system as civilisational 'software' that could be rewritten.
The UK government published their Hydrogen Strategy this month. There's a lot in it if you like that sort of thing, I aren't qualified to comment on how realistic it all is. As an aside relevant to my own professional life I thought the document contained a nice examples of setting out a vision, goals (p14-16) and metrics (p107) in a context outside of software and digital products.
When I read things like this I feel a bit jealous of those who bring real-world science and engineering skills to humanity's greatest challenge. The BBC World Service's Crowdscience programme looked at 'how smart tech can help tackle climate change', which highlights things those who write software for a living could contribute.
Economics suggests that the best way to make people care about externalities like carbon emissions is to put a price on them. But I came across a couple of interesting pieces on the limitations of emissions trading markets:
There is a lot I don't understand about cryptocurrencies. Regulators and central bankers are starting to worry that they may pose systemic risks to the stability of the financial system. What if Bitcoin went to zero? asks The Economist.
I'm not sure what it says about the dysfunction of US politics that Congress are shoehorning legislation aimed at cryptocurrencies and decentralised finance into an 'Infrastructure bill'. I don't know what it says about me that for probably the first time ever I find myself in agreement and sympathy with Ted Cruz:
As “no more than five” senators could answer “what the hell a cryptocurrency even is,” he said, “the barest exercise of prudence would say we shouldn’t regulate something we don’t yet understand, we should actually take the time to try to understand it.”
Historian Niall Ferguson also cautions against killing crypto with regulation, finding parallels with the impact of Richard Nixon's demolition of the Bretton Woods system 50 years ago this week:
