FaceBook Musings

Facebook and Balkanisation of opinion: I have a very broad cross-section of people as FaceBook friends - people who have connected to me through different areas of endeavour - and recently the way I consume news had lead me to worry - increasingly, I find that I mainly read news items that appear on my FB feed, and less and less often do I read a newspaper as such. I get a wide variety of input from my news feed on FB- however, most facebook circles are I suspect more or less monolithic - and I think many people are engaging in similar news habits and fb usage patterns as myself - looking at FB links and items and shared videos from their news feed....and end up living in a particular bubble, inhabiting a comfortable world, that presents a skewed  reality, where they are constantly reinforcing a particular world view, where there are few dissenting voices - be it a Roman Catholic one, an orthodox Jewish one, or an Islamic one, or one tinged with conspiracy theories, or focused on technology, or one that is completely secular and actively anti-religious. I get the whole gamut, and for this I am grateful to all those varied people who have become my FB friends.

All vegeterians by 2040? Poppycock.

Recent articles on global food supply have irritated me immensely. This is front page news about projections 40 years into the future, based on " Feeding a thirsty world: Challenges and opportunities for a water and food secure world." The Guardian's hyperbolic "scientific" article is typical: However, with the exponential progress in computing, chemical analysis, and technological progress in general, these scare tactic predictions are based on business as usual. But the world is changing. Fast. 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% Well, meat one day in four? Even using current inefficient methods of meat production. Good. People will have fewer heart attacks. Or they'll use less meat, and eat more stir fries. But anyway, in 40 years, I expect there will be an abundance of lab grown meat, primarily small bits for mince, donor kebabs and other processed meats like sausages. Genetic engineering will probably also in this time increase the efficiency of cattle breeds and fowl at converting feed to protein. The same goes for water. Desalination is expensive at present, as it is energy intensive. Solar power is increasing in efficiency:

By 2040, solar will be dirt cheap and ubiquitous. Desalination technology is also increasing rapidly in efficiency and the cost is dropping. By 2040 by current projections, desalinated water will be as cheap as fresh water from any other water source:

I predict that there will be no water shortages by 2040, and no meat shortages.