“RE: Hugo Chavez Steps Down”

On 4/13/02, Jim Roepcke said:

>
>>But all of that simply relied on better, smarter exploitations of
>>existing technology to move around information. Notice that
>>although the information age has led to a dramatic increase in
>>the number of portable devices, for example, all of which keep
>>getting more and more sophisticated, there has been no attendant
>>technological revolution in batteries. Why? Because the physical
>>world has limits that are much harder to overcome than purely
>>information-related technologies.
>
>I think battery technology has improved greatly in the last 20
>years. Maybe not far enough, and maybe it's evolutionary rather
>than revolutionary, but it's improving.

I had the same reaction to this as Jim did.

Battery technology has come a long way in the last ten or twenty years. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to spend the time to back that up with references, but I *have* read articles related to batteries in laptop computers and cell phones that talk about the progress.

It hasn't progressed at the same rate as processor speed, but I believe it has been close to the same rate as computers overall.

Incidentally, some of the most impressive advances (related to this disucssion) have been made in solar cells. I read an article last year that said in the last 10 (or 20? can't remember) years, solor cells are 100 times more efficient, and cost 1% of what they used to... and they're still improving. Most of the solor panels installed on houses (from the late seventies and earlier eighties) are much much larger than would be needed now to produce the same amount of electricity.

Seth