UPDATE: Trying to explain how the misunderstanding/hoax comes about: Explaining the Fibonacci solar breakthrough (that isn’t one)  

 

—-

A couple of days ago, a story made the rounds on many of our usual suspect technology, environment and entrepreneurial media:

 

a 13 year old takes a fresh view on solar panels and the way nature arranges leaves and branches, and finds “solar breakthrough”.

Try a search like this and you will see.

Or see the tweets.

The original post was here.

 

 

Readers’ comments celebrated the “genius”, quote Schopenhauer and drown in a flood of general “awesomeness”.

 

Now, the disappointing truth is that there is

 

no solar breakthrough, no new finding -

 

just a wonderfully enthusiastic young boy who does all the right things: ask questions, allow a fresh view, experiment, illustrate.

 

Before him, mathematical beauty as the result of optimization has been admired by many.

And there are wonderful findings to make:

Plants optimize many factors by realizing the fibonacci series, not just sun exposure – a fact that we could learn from indeed: that we need to optimize many factors, not just one. In the case of solar power, there s many more things to consider, like social optimization, operation costs, etc

With all that beauty, reality is that any 1 percent improvement in cell efficiency and any 10 cents drop in price per watt would have more real impact than any romantic breakthrough story.

 

On an even more fundamental level, a breakthrough in humankinds’ intentions and motivations would have more impact that any revolutionary new technology.

So, there s many interesting aspects to talk about, for young curious minds.

 

 

However, instead of getting competent sparring with good scientists and practitioners, he gets a wave of misled/misleading media attention.

Layers of the TED generations’ technology folklore get put on top an interesting little experiment, like the human body realizing the golden ratio (no it doesnt), and so forth.

 

This article explains some of the reasons why the experiment is mislead and not saying anything -

(blog entry seems to have been removed – archived version is here)

for example the fact that

• measuring open circuit voltage is no measure for power generation, and
• the sum of N suboptimal values will never be bigger than the sum of N optimal values (at least not for photovoltaic power output).

 

But the point is not so much what is wrong with the experiment, or the boy’s approach, or the enthusiastic readers’ comments - the point is what is wrong with our media?

 

We are so wishing for the good news, especially when it comes to our darkest chapter (energy consumption), we so wish to see the new magic, the new mythical entrepreneur -

 

so strong is the wish that we shut down our critical brains. Over the past months, TED has become a regular and major source of annoyance – with  ”awesome” tech stories like Wifi over light waves.

 

This frenzy is doing nobody a favour.

 

Creative young explorers get no chance for critical dialogue (what, if we applied fibonacci optimization to nano structures? There is intense research on optimizing efficient surfaces in nano cells – maybe Aidan Dwyer should get a chance to visit a nano lab?)

 

If ever a young genius should arise and find the magic truth, chances are we would not notice it as we are so busy getting carried away in TED tweets.

 

 

 

Triggered by this SocialSquare blog post (danish only) – it talks about Extreme Transparency (workshop on this topic 17 June 2009), mostly in the context of product and corporate information –

An interesting thought in the discussion of new media, new channels,
and the challenges these pose to both classical journalism and corporate communications – and slightly extending this to the private level:

As they effectively lose control of all communication channels,

full integrity, full sincerity become the only feasible option for both corporate and private entities.

A welcome side effect?

… i am sitting at a table in pretoria and felt like reading and sharing these two poems.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                    i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e.e.cummings

source: http://www-scf.usc.edu/~thier/ee/#yourheart

---

 because it's

Spring
thingS

dare to do people

(& not
the other way

round)because it

's A
pril

Lives lead their own

persons(in
stead

of everybodyelse's)but

what's wholly
marvellous my

Darling

is that you &
i are more than you

& i(be

ca
us

e It's we)

  ee cummings

source: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/because-it-s/