The open service packet service - idea.

The Open Packet Service (OPS), work just like the backbone of the Internet (the IP protocol) with a twist.

How it works:

I want to send  a packet to my friend living a 100 km from me. I go to the Internet website for OPS and I plots in where I live and where I want the packet to go. OPS then suggests how much I should "CHARGE" the packet with - lets say 50 bobs. I pay 50 bobs to OPS. Then OPS puts on the Internet that a packet is waiting at my house for pickup and that there is 50 bobs to be made if you deliver this packet. Now here comes the beautiful part. Someone sees this message (on the OPS site) and he is going by my house anyways so he picks up the packet. He would love to take the packet all the way to the receiver, but he can only take it half the way. Fortunately there is a small OPS trading post half way on route (It a small shop of any sort with Internet connection). He hands in the packet in at the OBS trading post - This is being registered at OBS and he gets his cut of the 50 bobs - Lets say he gets 23 bobs. Then the packet lays at the OBS trading post - Charged with 25 bobs (the shop-keeper gets 2 for his service). Another person sees the packet on the Internet an picks up the packet and deliver it to the receiver, earning him 25 bobs (when my friend tells OPS that the packet is being received).
That is Open Service Packet service!

As long as the packet gets nearer to its destination you can ear money.
A traveler can pick up several packets on the way earning more money on the way.
If a packet gets stock on its way (or you think it goes to slow) to the destination, it can be "overcharged" where it is (because you can see where its stuck on-line).

Most cars only travel with 1 passenger, this could be a way to make that car travel a bit more reasonable (and economic).

The infrastructure making OPS possible is all in place (Internet, VISA, mobile phones, people, cars, boats etc.).

There is one several obstacles that need to be worked out in order to make the system work.  

• Make it  possible for citizens to earn micro-money (there is a tax bureaucracy issue here).
• Get around the argument that OPS will be used to carry illegal substances eg. drugs. When I have discussed OPS with friends they all mention this - but I cant see how this differs from other postal-services. Maybe a solution is to carry OPS packets in transparent plastic wrap. 
• What if the packet is lost on the way? Who is responsible? Again I think there is a workaround to the problem. When the OPS-traveler picks up the packet he gets liable for a specified amount and if he loses the packet the sender is compensated.

You can say that OPS is just the file-sharing network of real-world packets. People do it all the time through friends (can you take this and give it to..), OPS is just a more organized way of doing it. This is to me what getting organized is all about.  

Background:
I live on an island in Sweden and this comes with mixed blessings, one of them being trying to get a packet from "overseas". Several times I have ordered items from Australia and Hong Kong. I can follow the packet via the wonders of the Internet a see how Its getting nearer and nearer - Until it gets to Sweden then it stops. Nothing happens. 3 days later I get a letter telling me that I can pick up my FEDEX/USB etc. packet at the local post-office (5 km from here and not the nearest post-office). Trying to SEND a packet from this place ANYWHERE, and that includes just across the island, is very expensive and slow or maybe impossible.

Why you ask am I so hung up on sending or getting a packet you may ask?
The answer is that the second I want a spare part or something that is not a consumer goods that is pre-chewed and forced-feed my through proper channels I'm in trouble.
If I try to get my friends on the other site of the island something they need, I don't think it should be cheaper and a lot easier to drive a 100 km in order to do this.
The postal service has gone from bad to worse the last 20 years. Service is gone and the postman can not as before deliver anything or pick anything up (still unemployment is rising..).
If we are to able to save energy, travel less, make things last longer, repair stuff - we must have a working postal service. Before the state thought is was vital to have a working postal service - I gees its why they chose to own it - now 5 to 12, 10 minutes before we really need it, its sold of and dismantled.

That made me think of the idea of the Open Packet Service (OPS).

______________________________
Small update (24/2-2010). Announcement; The Swedish postal service is to be cut by 2000 (more).

Toolbox for a future - 1 - Electricity and transport

As I stated before I'm not a strong believer in the unknown God. The future is going to be made up of things we know now, known tools, known solutions and known limits. It's going to be a real cold turkey getting out of the carbon addiction to paraphrase late president Bush. But the important thing to remember is that there IS solutions, there is a way.
The way may not the smooth and easy way we want it to be - but there IS a way.

What is the toolbox of the future?

• Electricity and electric transport.
  
• Permaculture
• Electronics (Open hardware and DIY)
• Open communication technology
  
• Community

These tool can be made sustainable - that mean they can earn back there investment. As a plus these tools are also good for the environment.
Each of the points are major undertaking. And we are to undertake these big, costly projects when resources becomes less available.
Lets take them from the top.

Why electricity?
I have read A LOT about alternatives to oil. Hydrogen, palm-oil, ethanol (1st and second generation technology) and biogas to name some. One of the true wonders of oil is that it is highly compact and storable - meaning it can be put in a car. It sits there for 6 month until you decide to drive 500 km - that i truly amazing. And furthermore oil has the highest energy density next to uranium. Then we just have to make some more oil now don't we.. and sure sure we can "make" oil - the easiest way is to let plants do it (killing whales is another great way since whales are mostly fat) there is just a little catch there. Making food takes up farmland where we other-ways could grow food and modern agriculture has become VERY oil-consuming (1 cal food uses ~ 10 cal oil to produce). Neither does it produce very much oil for the work - In fact if you are to produce oil in the most part of world the you would need more oil for machinery and tools and pesticide and fertilizer than oil produced - the same goes for ethanol except some contryies like Brazil that have LOTS of sun and water and cheap labor, then you can make it work (ERoEI > 1). USA is in fact starving the 3. world by subsidizing Ethanol production with ERoEI less than 1 (and that just plain stupid and horrendous).
Hydrogen isnt better - the only reasonable way to make (in terms of ERoEI) is to convert oil to hydrogen..
Palmoil isn't a silver bullet either...
Biogas has also some problems in terms of scalability that does it very hard to see as an alternative to oil - but small scale biogas is here to stay - as it has been around for 2000 years. But from idea to powering all cars in eg. the UK or Sweden there is a long way to go. And to produce the amount of biogas needed to power all road transportation is doubtful, but trucks and buses seems feasible... but what about me and my car? What is that gonna run on?? Electricity!
The only real alternative to oil in terms of transportation is electricity. The only ones that have a problem of seeing that is the special interest groups. When you get down to the numbers - the electric car is realy a thing of the future.

To sum it up.
Cars - electricity
Trains - electricity
Trucks - biogas
Ships - ships has been sailing before - they can do it again.
Planes - no. There is no real future for transport by air unless some enormous scientific breakthrough.
Then there is all the wonderful thing you can do if you have electricity, like living in 21. century. The electric grid is one of the great wonder of our time that will live on in the post carbon world, the product of a true genius who all to few knows about - Nikola Tesla.
With the grid (we already have) we can power our (electric) cars. We can power machines and electronics. Electricity is THE game-changer making a modern future possible. Its either that or back to 1850 (after some adjustments).

More about permaculture next.

Grid 2.0 (smart grid) - why we need a new power grid.

How the power-grid works today (in principle).

• The grid operator provide power to the grid - with a steady output of 220 volts and 50Hz in EU (110 volt 60Hz USA).
• You turn on eg. a washing machine and draws power from the grid. The onset in power-consumption make the Volt level drop on the grid (very little, but still).
• The grid operator monitors the Volt-drop and orders more output. That increases the voltage to 50Hz again.
• When you turn off the washing machine, the grid voltage rises (very little) and the grid operator adjust the power-output a little down to get 50Hz again.

Thats the way it works very basically and how it have worked since the grid was invented. This way of regulating the grid is working but is really not very efficient. The grid is always counter-reacting to a changes in the grid. The grid is NOT adjusting to the current power-output. That wouldn't be a problem if power-production had a flat-rate cost regardless of the production level or how fast it has to react to changes. But power-production is organized into different categories dependent on how fast it have to (and can) contribute to regulation of grid.

• Basepower output - Do not change output.
• Medium changing power output - Changes output within minutes.
• Eminently changing power output - Changes output within seconds.

Reacting power-production can cost a 100 times more than base power production, so grid-operators go to great length in trying to predict what to power-consumption in the near future in order to be able to count in the biggest changes in power-demand, thereby save money. They look at past statistic, look at the weather forecast, read the TV schedule and predicts the coming need of power to a hight degree - but the are still reacting to changes. That is called regulating by swing-producer.
Power consumption is not ever over the day. Very little power is used nighttime and then BANG - 7.00 - we get up and turn on every kind of electronics we have and use a lot of power. Then it wobbles a bit during the day until we starts preparing dinner in the afternoon (putting on the stove and oven and dishing-machine and washing-machine all within minutes), then turns it all of and goes to sleep.
That means that most of the power-production is idling a large part of the day and that is not very efficient. It also means that grid operator have to be able to call in power supplies to meet demand - something that is not possible with eg. wind power (therefore there is put a cap on how much wind power that grid operators will accept in the total power production). A novel idea is to get demand to react to production - that is called Grid 2.0 or Smart grid.

In a grid 2.0 the grid-operators communicates to the consumer that now is a really good or really bad idea to turn on electronics. The electronics can be made to automatically react to power output or tell the the consumer how the situation are on the grid. A monetary incitement can be given to the consumer to adjust power consumption - cheaper electricity when there is low demand and high when there is high demand. To make this possible communication capabilities has to be build into the washing machine, the freeze, the heating system and so on.

Grid 2.0 will make it possible to produce electricity in a more efficient way. It also make it possible to include more wind power in the total power production.
Denmark is the country with the highest degree of wind power in the power production - 30% of Denmark's electricity is produced with wind power, but Denmark is unlikely to expand that number until a new way or regulating the grid is deployed. 30% - thats it - stop. The rest of the danish electricity is produced by gas and coal power-stations and this a problem Denmark shares with the majority of countries in the world. A sustainable electricity is not possible until the problem of regulation of the grid is solved. Grid 2.0 is one of the solutions and the technology has been there for several years now. Its a question of communication capabilities and (cheap) microcomputers. Communication can be via; GPRS, 3G, Broadband, VHF and direct via the electric cables. And then there has to be a standard and will to implement the technology. I'm pretty sure the biggest problem is the later. Power production has been privatized in most of EU and the Enron case showed clearly that more money can be made from chaos than order. Now Enron did create disorder in order to make money - the private electricity marked is only benefiting from the current faulty market model and statuesque. A Grid 2.0 is a smaller marked - fewer can do the same amount of power with the less disorder in the grid. To let it up to the market to solve this structural problem is irresponsible of the state. A stable and working power-grid for the future is a question of national security not to be taken lightly and left to (friends in) the big companies.
This transition to 2.0 is big and will take many years - it's a huge investment and we should get it started today rather than tomorrow.

Read more about Grid 2.0

Idea: Sun blimp

I am listening to BBC world service. Haiti has crumbled (even further). The describe the total chaos especially at night when the lack of electricity plummets the city into total darkness making every relieve effort impossible.

Idea: A sun-blimp.
Fit a "Goodyear" blimp with thousands of LED lamps - thereby creating an artificial sun lighting the area of interest.
The blimp can simultaneously provide WLAN and GSM connections (coordination and communication seems to be a reoccurring problem in the first important days of an relieve operation.
A modern soft-body blimp should have the lift capacity to carry this and can stay in place eg. the 12 hours a night lasts in the tropics. It will also provide a reference point at night (this can sound a little strange, but when a city as Port-au-Price gets devastated as it is now - even those previously living in the city have problems navigating - all known landmarks has changed). I have a background in civil-defence and have climbed around rubles at night - not funny ever with light.