Green Technologies That Work and Are Available Today!

Former Vice President Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth” may well have launched the green movement that has swept the world. That film captured the imagination of many and since then, going green stories of individuals and organizations from all walks of life have littered the media and news outlets. Advertisements for green products, books on living green, and advisories to increase recycling and conserve energy have grown in number and urgency.

All of this is good, and if you believe Al Gore, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is needed. This Monday, we take a look at some of the technologies behind the green movement and how they are impacting our lives. We’ll talk about using the sun to heat our water and power our homes, efforts to turn trash into electricity as well as other means of reducing the energy consumption of buildings and improve the quality of our water supply.

Joining us in these discussions will be Stan Sersen, LEED-accredited professional, founder of The Green Building Institute and the EnviroCenter in Jessup, MD, and a nationally-recognized expert in green buildings and green spaces. He has served on numerous sustainability task forces and is a licensed architect.

Dr. Nickolas Themelis, Professor of Chemical Metallurgy and the Director of the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University will join us to talk about efforts to turn trash into heat energy and electricity. Also joining us are Paul Murphy, a green space enthusiast knowledgeable on trends and innovative approaches to energy conservation. Plus Rick Peters, a principle of Solar Energy Services, Maryland, who will discuss solar power for residential and commercial applications.

Maybe Green Isn’t a Revolution – But an Innovation

Maybe Green is less a revolution and more a new innovation.

A Green Movement has certainly been upon us since the release of Vice President Al Gore’s groundbreaking and Oscar-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth”. That film, more than any other single event, captured the imagination and raised the awareness of man-made global climate change. Since that time, going green stories of corporations, educational institutions, government agencies and a myriad of other organizations have littered the media and news outlets. Advertisements for green products, books on living green, and advisories to increase recycling and conserve energy have grown in number and urgency.

All of this is good and if you believe Al Gore, the majority of climatologists, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is needed. Still, one sector of our economy and our lives has not joined the movement.

Small businesses – responsible for the majority of our nation’s jobs – don’t seem to have changed practices as much as their larger counterparts claim to have. Small businesses haven’t gone green even when most people now feel that it is the right and perhaps even moral thing to do because they are so focused on keeping the lights on, they don’t have time to worry if they are compact fluorescent light (CFLs) bulb or not. They may not see the business advantage for going green, likely don’t have the time to figure out how, and either aren’t being rewarded by the consumer for doing it, or punished for not making the transition.

What does that mean?

Should we lose heart and give up hope for a climate-stable future? Not in the least. Perhaps this is simply an indication that the green movement is not so much a revolution of existing business models and practices as it is an opportunity for new research and development as well as technological innovation. Green may not mean Mom and Pop will use less energy and recycle more, but that a whole new sector of jobs will be created learning how to turn cellulosic algae into car fuel, extract energy from powerful, predictable, and near-constant ocean waves, and modernize our power grid to accept and distribute power from traditional as well as alternative sources (e.g., solar, wind, geothermal).

In this light, Green may follow in the footsteps of the introduction of air conditioning, the advent of the computer, the Internet and biotechnology. Each of these saw an increase in productivity, research, led to job growth which leads naturally to economic expansion, and is exactly what our country needs right now – even more than a stimulus – to claw out of this recession.

Sure, it would be great if all U.S. businesses, large and small, switched light bulbs, telecommuted to reduce miles driven, and maybe set their thermostats up a few degrees in the summer, but those activities don’t create new jobs. And unless such changes take place globally, they will have no noticeable effect on global climate change.

On the other hand, firms competing to be the first to accelerate a car with hydrogen are a part of a new industry, with the potential for numerous high paying and local jobs, and opening new markets and new exports for the U.S. These are the things that foster and reward innovation, hold the promise of reducing our addition to foreign oil and fossil fuels, and stand a chance of reversing the melting of the world’s glaciers.

So where do we go from here?

It remains critical to educate and assist everyone to do their part for the planet. Progress measured by one small business or one person at a time is still a sign of progress even if the results may be hard to measure. But, let’s also recognize that the best opportunity for salvation comes from our green technologists, alternative energy researchers, and environmental scientists. Their efforts can both save our nation economically and the world from the worst of what climate change may have to offer. Governments’ role can be to use tax incentives, grants, laws, regulations and all other resources at their disposal to foster an environment conducive to the growth of such technologies and the firms and research labs where they are developed.

I’m not sure what Al Gore’s role was in developing the Internet, but let’s hope one day we’re all debating his role in the birth of green technologies.

New Frontiers in Space Technology

President Obama formally announced his new directive for NASA and the goals for its space exploration program on Thursday, April 15th, and the plan has generated a fair amount of controversy over its various elements. For example, the President’s new initiative calls for scrapping NASA’s current activities involving preparation for a return to the Moon, which will result in the cancellation of the new ARES-1 rocket and the potential loss of thousands of jobs. There is also a belief, including among astronauts, that the new directive essentially grounds America’s manned space exploration efforts. The President says he is 100% committed to NASA and believes his plan will send more astronauts into space, and deeper into space. On Monday’s show, we’ll discuss the President’s plan as well as other issues impacting the current state and future potential of space technology.

We also have the distinct pleasure of having best-selling author Bill Scott join us. Mr. Scott’s books, Space Wars (2007) and Counterspace (2009), describe a fictional but realistic scenario of World War III. Bill will share his experience in space technology gained in his long career, including 22 years with Aviation Week and Space Technology magazines, where he retired as Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief. He covered advanced aerospace and weapons technology, business, flight testing and military operations, and received 17 editorial awards. Bill also served a 9-year career in the U.S. Air Force, where he was a Flight Test Engineer (FTE) and graduate of the Air Force Test Pilot School. He’s logged approximately 2,000 hours of flight time on 80 different types of aircraft. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from California State University-Sacramento. His full bio is available at http://www.williambscott.com/williambscott.com/Bills_Bio.html.

Also joining us is Dr. Scott Pace, Director of the Space Policy Institute at the Elliott School for International Affairs at George Washington University. I’m excited about hearing his thoughts on President Obama’s new plan. You can check out another recent interview with Dr. Pace at http://www.gwu.edu/~spi/news.cfm#cspan.

This is going to be an exciting show – Join Us!

Are We Securing Education?

Monday’s show took us to Atlanta, Georgia, for the EDUCAUSE Security Professional’s conference, and I’m still in town as I write this for another day of conference sessions, exhibits, and southern hospitality. Right now, I’m waiting for the evening Birds-of-a-Feather session to start and taking the time to think about my own personal takeaways from this week’s show. Here are my thoughts:

1. Teach cyber ethics along with digital literacy early on. We have to let kids know what can (and likely will) happen if they try to hack their grades, cyber bully, or conduct any malicious online behavior. Yes, school networks should be more secure, teachers should use at least two-factor authentication, physical access to grade databases should be monitored – all of that is true – but the biggest take away here is that we do a disservice to our kids if we teach them technical skills without also teaching them the consequences of their actions.

2. We’re at the beginning of a trend to push security into the cloud, or put it another way – the fat pipe is becoming the fat, smart pipe. (I won’t say fat, secure pipe yet, but that is the direction we’re heading.)

In the residential and small business market, ISPs bundle anti-virus, spyware, firewall, identity protection and other security software. Why not the same notion at the corporate level? At the least, ISPs that offer broadband connectivity can block known bad traffic, such as known Trojans, spyware, malware, and traffic to and from known bad IPs, like the known Zeus IPs. The Federal government’s Trusted Internet Connections Initiative is very much along these lines.

The Internet (the cloud) right now is the Wild West. Making the connection to the Internet smart is not the end-all solution, but is a first step – its like dispatching sheriffs to frontier towns in an effort to start bringing some order to the chaos. We can only wonder how long the sheriffs will last until they need to call in the Calvary.

Securing Higher Ed

This week we take the show on the road – to Atlanta, Georgia, at the site of the 2010 EDUCAUSE Security Professionals Conference. EDUCAUSE is the leading organization for information technology in the education sector and the annual Security Professionals Conference attracts delegates from across the country as well as overseas to discuss the shifting landscape of cyber security and how colleges and universities everywhere are addressing this shift.

We will also discuss Hacking in High Schools, specifically the case in a Montgomery County, MD, high school where eight (8) kids are facing criminal charges for allegedly using a USB keyboard logger to capture as many as 35 teachers’ passwords and then logging in to change the grades of 54 students in the school’s database.

Ajay is joined this week by Rodney Petersen, Director of the EDUCAUSE Cybersecurity Initiative, and a major force behind the planning of the conference. He is the lead staff liaison for the Higher Education Information Security Council. Prior to joining EDUCAUSE, he served as the Director of IT Policy and Planning and Chief Information Officer at the University of Maryland. He is the co-editor of a book in the EDUCAUSE Leadership Strategy Series entitled “Computer and Network Security in Higher Education”. He is also a founding member of the Association of College and University Policy Administrators and the author of “A Primer on Policy Development for Institutions of Higher Education” and “A Framework for IT Policy Development”. He writes and speaks regularly on topics related to higher education cyber law and policy. He has a law degree from Wake Forest and a certificate in Education Policy, Planning, and Administration from the University of Maryland.

We will again take your calls live at 866-472-5790, your e-mails at agupta@technologytodayradio.com, your tweets at /techtodayradio, as well as your posts on our FB fan page for Technology Today.

Join us.

Google vs. China

On Monday, April 5th, we’ll discuss the Google vs. China case. This presents an interesting intersection between technology (a search engine self-censoring its results in one country when it runs a global platform), law (Chinese law calls for censoring the Internet on the mainland); international relations (relations between China, the U.S., EU businesses and their home countries), corporate ethics (how does a corporation balance its ethics with profit motivations and the desire to serve customers?). We’ll discuss this issue from the technology perspective – including the impact on the tech and general business sector going forward.

Please feel free to share your thoughts by calling in to 866-472-5790, tweeting (/techtodayradio), e-mailing (agupta@technologytodayradio.com), or on our Facebook fan page – Technology Today.

Technology in the Nonprofit Sector

Technology is intended to increase productivity and equalize the capabilities of smaller organizations with those of larger organizations. Nowhere is this clearer than in the nonprofit sector, where technology can make a world of difference in the communication, fundraising, and outreach abilities of small nonprofits and associations. Technology projects, including everything from the implementation of software-based business applications to using web-based collaborative tools, should allow small associations to act like large, well-staffed entities. However, when poorly executed, technology can weigh down an organization for years. We’ll look at what can happen when technology projects are run poorly as well as what smaller organizations can do to ensure things are done right to achieve positive benefit from their IT investments.

Joining us in this discussion is Steve Thomas, a ten-year veteran of the nonprofit world and head of Firebird Agency, a management and consulting agency for the nonprofit community. Steve specializes in turnarounds and rapid growth projects. He recently served as head of the Cooperative Development Foundation, a 65 year old organization with an established history of helping move hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty and towards self-sufficiency. Prior to the CDF, he served as Executive Director of TiE-DC, an association of entrepreneurs and CEOs dedicated to helping entrepreneurs develop successful business enterprises. Steve, at Bernan Associates, coordinated the publication of the award-winning Handbook of North American Industry, the first industry-by-industry analysis of the affects of NAFTA on businesses. A graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, he is also Chairman of the Spotsylvania County Economic Development Authority and a volunteer firefighter.

We’ll also take your calls again this week at 866-472-5790. Join us.

Prosecuting Cyber Criminals – A Moral Imperative

Last week, in a new segment on the show we call “The Tech Fact of the Week”, we learned that our Nation’s capital, Washington, DC, is also the capital of cyber crime with 116 cyber criminals for every 100,000 District residents!

I’m sure the District is not happy about this distinction, even though it speaks to the level of connectedness and Internet access that is prevalent in Washington, but what is to be done about it? Clearly, we need to better secure our networks and take steps to make everyone more aware of the threat, how to protect themselves, and become more knowledgeable about the overall security issues involved.

In addition, we also need to catch and prosecute cyber criminals. That’s what we are going to look at on Monday’s episode. We’ll discuss the unique challenges law enforcement faces in pursuing cyber criminals – who are distributed all over the world, operate underground, often hidden among state-supported entities, and protected by weak and confusing cyberspace laws. The laws sometimes complicate law enforcement’s efforts to track and capture hackers.

We’ll also look at what the end user can do to help, without resorting to vigilante hacking. Join Us.

Once again we’ll be taking your calls and comments: Reach us live at 866-472-5789, on Twitter @/techtodayradio, or by e-mail at agupta@technologytodayradio.com.

Talk with you soon.

Cyber-Insecurity?

The U.S. Congress is considering a bill to mandate that the White House work with private industry to protect our nation’s cyber infrastructure.  Apparently, health care isn’t the only thing Congress has been doing these days.  This bill certainly appears to be a good idea; this issue and the consequences from insecure networks are big enough to need all hands on deck.

The bill is called the Cyber Security Act, S. 773, and is co-sponsored by Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).  But, what does this bill mean?  Is this a Government takeover of private networks?  We’ll discuss the issue.

Also, did you know that young people are becoming the #1 target for identity thieves?  We’ll ask why and talk about what we can all do to protect ourselves.  We’ll also discuss the economic hurdles standing in the way of better cyber security overall.  This is a discussion you won’t want to miss.

The Social Side of Tech

Today’s episode (March 15, 2010) discusses whether technology supports a capitalist agenda or a socialist one… and if it can support both depending on how it is used and implemented.

Can technology serve an agenda of individual responsibility and empowerment – and at the same time be positioned to support a socialist concept of the state providing resources to the people?  This week, we’ll look at a few areas where technology has successfully improved our lives and discuss whether it is ideology-neutral or has a strong capitalist or socialist pull to it.

We are joined by Ms. Arpita Mukherjee, Founder and Director of Rasa DC, a theater group based in Washington, DC, who will discuss how technology has positively impacted in the theater world.  She discusses how technology has decreased the cost of putting on a stage production and increased the ability of theater companies to reach a young, diverse audience (the desired demographic in the theater business), which has led to expanded access to theater for both patrons and thespians.

As a playwright and producer, Arpita draws from her interest in all modes of expression and in the diversity of contemporary voices to write, direct, and produce plays around the nation’s capital. Her current project is “Love Times Seven”, an English language Hollywood-inspired musical about a love story that spans seven decades.

Also, Mr. Dan Jones will join the show to discuss how the public policy debate in the U.S. has a great bearing on the design and implementation of large-scale technology projects.  He draws on his years of experience working around the U.S. in the design, planning, and administration of public transportation facilities. He has held high-level positions in both the public and private sector and brings a wealth of knowledge on how large public works projects are financed, debated, and managed. Mr. Jones is currently working to ensure the stimulus legislation allocates funds for public transit systems.