The Astounding World Of The Future — Part II

It's been nearly a year since I posted The Astounding World Of The Future, which featured an excellent short film with that title. I've included this timeless video below. When Mish Shedlock posted Corning's video A Day Made Of Glass, he said the featured technology, called photovoltaic glass, was worth a look for potential investors. He also noted that the video was effectively an ad for Corning (which it is). Upon cursory examination, the technology looks pretty good.

Pythagoras Solar makes a revolutionary solar-powered window – literally an insulated window with integrated photovoltaics – that has the ability to turn buildings into massive power producers. The company has been testing a pilot project on the south-facing windows of the 56th floor of Willis Tower, formerly known as Sears Tower. If the pilot goes well, Willis Tower could end up with a surface area of up to two megawatts of solar.

Corning is also getting read to deploy this technology on a commercial scale. From CleanTechnica—

On February 1, [Corning] announced the first commercial order of its photovoltaic (PV) glass substrates.

“This milestone order follows three years of development work and extensive customer engagement, resulting in an engineered glass that enables higher efficiency and lighter weight thin-film photovoltaic modules,” the company notes.

In total, Corning says that its new solar technology can “increase current thin-film module efficiency by 20% to 30%.” That’s big!

“Corning’s photovoltaic glass substrates are also 50% stronger with less than half the thickness of the glass commonly used today in thin-film PV modules,” the company notes.

“The glass has high transmission, allowing more sunlight into the semiconductor layer. Corning’s substrates are also high-temperature tolerant. Because the glass can withstand higher temperature deposition, more uniform semiconductor films may be applied, which increases overall conversion efficiency.”

Despite the miracle of photovoltaic glass substrates, all I could think about as I watched A Day Made of Glass was the astounding world of the future. In Corning's astonishing world all of your needs and desires are satisfied effortlessly by amazing technology which is always at your fingertips. There are no energy shortages in this future world. No dead oceans. No fresh water shortages. No starving masses. No political conflicts. No wars. No debt. No worthless currencies. No predatory elites. No anthropogenic climate change.

In fact, there is no messiness of any kind in Corning's future world, which for all human intents and purposes is a Perfect World, an Ideal World where satisfaction is guaranteed, pleasure is endless and pain & suffering do not exist.

Without further ado, I present A Day Made Of Glass. I've followed it up with the classic film which inspired my original post. Enjoy.