{"id":604,"date":"2009-06-29T18:37:12","date_gmt":"2009-06-29T22:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/modeling-innovation.html"},"modified":"2009-06-29T18:37:12","modified_gmt":"2009-06-29T22:37:12","slug":"modeling-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/modeling-innovation.html","title":{"rendered":"Modeling Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"Much current discussion of the ACES climate bill that passed the House\nis about whether it will really cost one postage stamp per person per day,\nor maybe two stamps.\nThis is like arguing what microcomputers will be used for in 1980.\nI fondly recall a prediction that\n“We’ll never sell millions of them unless there’s one in every doorknob!”\nWell, look at your average hotel today: there’s one in every doorknob.\n

\n\n\"maintech_usa.png\"<\/a>\nDavid Roberts posts on grist.org about\n\nWhy we overestimate the costs of climate change legislation<\/a>,\n12:09 AM on 29 Jun 2009:\n

\nAs for modeling innovation, that’s always been the Achilles heel of economic forecasting. In this piece<\/a>, Eban Goodstein and Hart Hodges trace a history of cost overestimations around environmental regulation. Again and again, models have underestimated the pace of business and technological innovation.<\/p>\n

Today’s modelers surely do all they can to incorporate innovation. (As Brad notes<\/a>, the CBO tries<\/a>.) But there are constraints to how precisely this can be done. In 1980, McKinsey reported to AT&T that mobile subscriptions would rise to 0.9 million by 2000. The real number turned out to be … 109 million. (This factoid is among many interesting tidbits in\nthis presentation from Vinod Khosla<\/a>.)\n<\/blockquote>\nVinod Khosla was one of the founders of Sun Microsystems,\nthe company that mainstreamed computer workstations,\nhas long been a venture capitalist,\nand has been investing successfully in renewable energy for years.\n

\nThe little red square in the Nevada desert is all the area it would\ntake to\n\npower the U.S. with solar panels<\/a>.\nAnd that’s before further efficiency improvements.\nNo reason it all has to be in Nevada, of course:\nGeorgia has a lot of sun.\nDistributed is better than centralized.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much current discussion of the ACES climate bill that passed the House is about whether it will really cost one postage stamp per person per day, or maybe two stamps. This is like arguing what microcomputers will be used for in 1980. I fondly recall a prediction that “We’ll never sell millions of them unless […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[40,12,572],"tags":[1987,1989,3,1984,1985,1986,1983,1988],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-politics","category-renewable-energy","tag-aces","tag-david-roberts","tag-georgia","tag-innovation","tag-prediction","tag-renewable-energy-2","tag-vinod-khosla","tag-waxman-markey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-9K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}