Ramez Naam
Ramez Naam
Ramez Naam is a professional technologist and science fiction writer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
asteroid bulk burst environmental eruption form killer life massive planetary ray threats wipe
Threats that could wipe out the bulk of life on earth abound. Planetary catastrophe could come in the form of a killer asteroid impact, the eruption of massive supervolcanoes, a nearby gamma ray burst that sterilizes the earth, or by human-driven environmental collapse.
activity affected area converted engaged environment farms food humans land production roughly surface third
Food production has affected the environment more than any other activity humans have engaged in. Humanity devotes more land to food production than anything else - roughly a third of the surface area of the earth, much of which was once forest but has been converted by humans into farms or grazing lands.
certain concern environmental level phenomena tends
Environmental concern is a phenomena that tends to rise in a nation after a certain level of wealth.
technology pie environmental
New technology lets you grow the resource pie, which is the only way you can get out between that pincer of rising consumption (as we end poverty) and environmental and natural resource depletion.
technology environment pity
Unfortunately, in the environment, I don't see as much willingness to invest heavily in R&D as I do in consumer technology. And that's a pity.
thinking environmental movement
I think the environmental movement is now so large and diverse that it's hard to talk of it as a single entity.
environmental energy brilliant
That, to me, is a kind of brilliant environmental ju-jitsu - using the energy of the market and the profit-motive to get businesses to invest in preserving and improving natural systems.
both played steam tower tried video
I've tried Oculus Rift; I've played with the Steam VR rig. Both are mind-blowing. In a traditional video game setting, in a first-person shooter, you can see a tower in the distance. You can walk up to that tower and use your controller to look up.
demanded dreamed fiction life published science sort turned writer
I've read science fiction my whole life. I never really dreamed that I'd be a published science fiction writer myself, but a short story I started years ago sort of demanded to be turned into a novel.
deeply media notion orwell small society sort state turned ubiquitous
Orwell wasn't right about where society was in 1984. We haven't turned into that sort of surveillance society. But that may be, at least in small part, because of his book. The notion that ubiquitous surveillance and state manipulation of the media is evil is deeply engrained in us.
best carbon coal emissions eventually natural oil slow switch ways
We have to slow down the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane from coal burning, oil and eventually natural gas... And the best ways to do that are energy efficiency and a switch to renewables.
best combine flow free mostly move multiple nine people
Ideas come mostly bottoms-up. They come when you have a free flow of ideas and you have people able to combine multiple ideas into one concept... And you've got to have competition, too. You've got to say, 'We're going to have 10 different ideas, nine of them are going to fail, and the one that does the best is going to move forward.'
born capital fix human invest source system
If we fix our economic system and invest in the human capital of the poor, then we should welcome every new person born as a source of betterment for our world and all of us on it.
bigger consume cut developing food gets large people pipe
On a large scale, people aren't going to cut back how much they use. That's a pipe dream. If anything, as the developing world gets richer, the world's going to consume more - more cars, bigger homes, more energy, more water, more food.