[p2p-research] Spray-on solar cells

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Ryan Lanham wrote:
> I must admit, it makes a lot more sense to me than solar films...if you can
> print it, you should be able to spray it.
> 
> http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/08/25/spray-on-solar-cells-energize-almost-any-surface/

Shhh! If people don't believe in solar panels, this stuff will only scare 
them! :-)

And just think of the scary potential for the Dark Mountain group you just 
linked to to use this to power big self-powered luminous graffiti spelling 
out "Beware Peak Oil" on the sides of buildings. :-)

And once they succeed there, They can use the global computer network to 
coordinate their team efforts about how our world is dying from lack of 
community. :-) Then they can get ahold of some Roombas and send them into 
the streets beeping the message that there is no way the industrial base can 
meet our needs anymore. :-) Then they can drive their modified Priuses to 
the next rally on battery power produced from wind farms. :-)

I know, I know, they will say I am in denial:
   http://www.dark-mountain.net/about-2/the-manifesto/8/
"""
Today, humanity is up to its neck in denial about what it has built, what it 
has become – and what it is in for. Ecological and economic collapse unfold 
before us and, if we acknowledge them at all, we act as if this were a 
temporary problem, a technical glitch. Centuries of hubris block our ears 
like wax plugs; we cannot hear the message which reality is screaming at us. 
For all our doubts and discontents, we are still wired to an idea of history 
in which the future will be an upgraded version of the present. The 
assumption remains that things must continue in their current direction: the 
sense of crisis only smudges the meaning of that ‘must’. No longer a natural 
inevitability, it becomes an urgent necessity: we must find a way to go on 
having supermarkets and superhighways. We cannot contemplate the alternative.
"""

Anyway, this is not to say they don't make some good points. We are in for 
change, and their are a lot of things about our current system that are 
awful: compulsory schooling and other factory farms; oil is polluting and 
corrupting; the mainstream captitalistic myths we live by often do have a 
toxic element; the free market has externalities, can't plan for systemic 
crisis, has boom-bust cycles because of debt-based fiat currencies, 
centralizes wealth to the point of dysfunction; voluntary simplicity often 
leads to a happier lives and happier families and happier communities (if 
*voluntary*); and so on.

The biggest issue is will the change be what people usually call 
"evolutionary" or will it be "revolutionary" (perhaps in the aftermath of a 
"collapse" or war). I'm hoping for "evolutionary" in that sense, part 
market-driven (cheaper solar) and part peer driven (a better commons). I 
feel a lot less people will get hurt with an evolutionary change. And, 
frankly, revolutionary change by people steeped in scartity-ism but wielding 
technologies of abundance like spray-on nanotech is not my idea of a good 
time. :-(

By the way, it's disappointing to me the inventors of that ink in the 
article try to spread FUD about regular thin-film solar panels, especially 
since Nanosolar uses something very similar is the ink in its thin-film 
panels. Sad.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/