Algae (As In Renewable Energy) And M.C.C. -- February 16, 2023

Wow, I'm in a great mood. 

I'm way behind, and I may not get to all these stories but I plan on talking about algae (as in renewable energy) and M.C.C. later today.

At one time "algae" was such a big deal, I actually tagged blogs in which I discussed "algae."It's been a long time, but "algae" is back in the news. LOL. 

What has really got me excited was the 16-page essay on Austin, Texas, in the most recent issue of  The New Yorker. Even by TNY standards, this is a very, very, very long essay, and it's about Texas. In a positive light. It's not a story one would expect in TNY.

It would be nice if all readers could see it but it's behind a paywall. If I were a college professor in urban studies, this one article could easily serve as a one-hour credit course. One could spend a full semester on everything mentioned in the article.

I had never heard of the M.C.C. but wiki provides a summary. It's an absolutely amazing success story, a Reagan initiative. Of the sixteen pages, the author devotes a full page to the M.C.C.

I'll come back to the M.C.C. later perhaps, but the wiki entry pretty much covers it as much as TNY article does. For me, this one article on Austin was worth the annual subscription price, about $14 / month.

The link to TNY Austin article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/the-astonishing-transformation-of-austin. 

Another excerpt:

Austin is the fastest-growing major metro area in America, having expanded by a third in the past ten years. It is already the eleventh-largest city.

New jobs mop up newcomers as fast as they arrive. Every day, the metro area adds three hundred and fifty-five new residents, while two hundred and thirty-eight Austinites depart, many of them squeezed out by high rents and property taxes, or by the disaffection so many of us feel because of the pace of change and the loss of qualities that once defined the city.

Austin is now characterized by stifling traffic and unaffordable restaurants. It was never known as a home for billionaires and celebrities, but in the past few years notable refugees from Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and New York have stampeded into town, with different expectations about what Austin should become—and outsized power to shape the city around their desires. Locals point disdainfully to the Hermès shop and the Soho House on South Congress, formerly the funkiest street in town. Evan Smith, a founder of the Texas Tribune, told me, “Austin now has an upper class.”

Elon Musk is just one of the recent billionaire arrivals hanging around Austin. There were two or three until not long ago; now I hear there are fourteen. Imagine you invite the new neighbors to a pool party and they turn out to be elephants. When they jump in, it changes things.

Of course, such complaints are signposts of a booming economy—the kinds of problems many people elsewhere would love to have. In any city whose identity is changing, it can be hard to avoid the sense that a golden age has slipped away. Newcomers to Austin fall prey to this nostalgia almost instantly—and, with a longtime resident like me, the symptoms can become comically acute. But the feeling is more like watching someone you love become someone you didn’t expect. It doesn’t mean that you’re not still in love—just that complexity has entered the relationship. Austin forty years ago was like a graduate student with modest tastes and few resources; now she’s sporting jewels and flying first class. She’s sophisticated, well travelled, and well connected, and those aren’t necessarily bad things—they’re just disorienting. Nostalgia is a way of remembering when things were simpler; it also makes us forget that simple things can be boring and frustrating. Instead of running on the fumes of memory, I decided to reacquaint myself with the actual Austin I’m living in—a city rapidly transforming into America’s next great metropolis.

Austin’s future was determined in January, 1983, when Admiral Bob Inman, recently retired from the Navy and from serving as the deputy director of the C.I.A., was selected to head a novel consortium called the Microelectronics and Computer Consortium.

Japan dominated the semiconductor-manufacturing industry at the time and had announced an ambitious effort to create computers capable of generating artificial intelligence. The Reagan Administration saw this as a serious threat, and M.C.C. was the response. Twenty of America’s foremost high-tech companies—among them Microsoft, Boeing, G.E., and Lockheed—would share resources to secure America’s hold on the future. The first decision was where to locate this new entity.

I feel strongly that two of the largest bills signed by President Biden last year could have the same effect for no less than half a dozen cities in the US and a dozen exiting companies and who knows how many new companies. 

I was energized by what I saw in Portland, Oregon, last week, and I even think California has the potential to surprise "us" in a very, very positive way.