So in our last video, we introduced sort of, again, exploring the idea of building out our own heuristics because when we were dealing with, say, the sliding puzzle problem and moving, say, that to into its correct location, the big issue there was it's not an easy translation to sort of a traditional graph or grid structure, and so we had to use sort of, we explored multiple heuristics, H1 and H2, and said, oh, well, you know, if I took the max of those two, I can potentially generate a good one. But that actually leads into sort of our next sort of topic point, which is this idea of an optimization problem. The big idea is, well, you know, again, if heuristics aren't just a magic, super easy translation, where else could they kind of sit? And that's actually, again, looking at this idea of now something known as a configuration, rather than a path. Again, a path had a starting point, you traverse some set of things until you reach the goal. Well, we still want to kind of utilize the same algorithms, they seem to do very well in that world. Could we use them here in some sense? And that's where I'm going to introduce a new problem to you. Something known as the linear assignment problem. I have five people, P1 is red, P2 is orange, P3 is green, P4 is blue, and P5 is purple. Now, with that in mind, which task should each person do? Oh, well, you see that they're, they're, you know, reds, right above custodians, so that, you know, just give them what they're next to. All right, we're done.  So in our case, red, if red is a server, generates a value of 23. Maybe this is a cost. It's red costs the restaurant $23 an hour to be a server. Or it's productivity. Red generates $23 worth of revenue if they are the server. Either one of those comes into play. And our goal is to min max the minimize or maximize that cost or productivity. But the big issue is that as we start to expand, our numbers get bigger on possible configurations. I'm only dealing with five because it's easy for me to make these slides. And so as a consequence, you know, five only has 120 possible configurations if each person can only have one job and only one person can do a job. All right, fine. You see that's not hard. You can build an algorithm to do that and just have it solves it within a second. But the problem is what happens as we increase how many people in tasks we have or how many do we have to deal with how many configurations do we have to deal with when this number gets to like 25, you can see it gets into a giant number. And so we can't brute force this anymore because yeah, that's going to take millennia. And this is the exact same problem that you have with password cracking, right? There are if someone has 13 characters and there are, you know, your work, I'm just looking at my keyboard, there's roughly speaking 62 possible characters.  And we're running into that same sort of problem as we expand this, right? You can see this possible configuration, it's not feasible for us to do a just traditional search. So we have to find out ways and, you know, it's harder because a star, you know, everything that we saw with a star, like there was a distance involved. This one's going to get a little harder because, you know, I can't tell if this is good or bad because I may not know the goal. It may be actually incredibly difficult for me to find the goal. Again, if we're thinking about 25 star configurations, or, you know, 25 factorial configurations, we can't do that. I can't find what the best possible solution is because, again, even brute forcing it would take millennia to do. And so that's actually sort of where we're going to work off of this idea that each one of those configurations, however we set up, you know, P1 was going to equal the custodian, P2 was the chef, P3 was the bartender, etc. This whole setup with all of those would generate some fitness measure, or you may remember we saw this, this was the F score in our A star solution. And so at least when we're thinking about this, what we want to do is something known as iterative optimization.  I don't need to explore all these possible routes and decide which one's the next possible route, or the best next possible route to consider. Instead, instead of a search tree, it's much more a simple loop. I just iterate through my search at each sort of cycle. I just say, all right, let's refine our search this loop around. And hopefully that works out. So when we're dealing with the linear assignment problem, you know, what you could possibly do with this is you could randomly assign our people to a task. So again, red is the server, orange is the sous chef, green is the head chef, or the person who designs out the menu, whatever. Again, we start with some configuration. Or you could just, you know, linearly assign it. Either one will work. The big idea is we're going to iterate from it later. But what you do with this is once you have your configuration set up, you essentially calculate out your fitness measure. And I'm just again, being super lazy and saying, Oh, well, I'm going to just take wherever these configurations are lined up, add them together. And congratulations, that gave me a 106. My my fitness value is a 106. Done. Okay, well, you know, I need to figure out if this is the best configuration. And how could I do that? Well, again, I can't brute force or I can, but brute forcing will take forever. So what are their options? Do I have at my disposal? And this is where, you know, we'll start with the super simple version. What if we just randomly generate configurations, right? You know, we do that first one, we see, you know, reds at the server, orange is the sous chef greens, the head chef, blue is the custodian and purple is the bartender. That gives us again that f score of 106. I randomly generate a new configuration it has a 105. Well, again, I make the the decision, is this better or worse? And oh, well, if it's better, say we're reducing costs, congratulations, I have a new configuration. Or, you know, I look at the next one, and I say, Oh, well, you know, it's this configuration, and this is the f score for it. Oh, well, you know, again, if we're trying to find a smaller number, that's not a good small number. So we ignore it. But you know, again, if you're thinking about random, right, random may not lead to any good solutions, because again, it's random, we can't control it. And in fact, that's actually going to be what the next few heuristics are going to look at is, can we control control, I'll put some air quotes on that random. So to at least start before we get there, we've already started to see this idea that again, if I have some initial configuration, and I build new ones, are they better or worse? And what we call that is hill climbing. And the entire idea is, well, wherever I'm currently sitting on sort of, in this case, a polynomial curve, that's more whatever, on a curve, again, I want to make steps that lead me towards some peak, or bottom, again, trying to think about maximizing rf, or minimizing our fitness value. And again, so one way if we're looking to maximize it is again, if I see steps that would be better, I'd go towards them. And if I see ones that are worse, I don't. Or I flip it again, I'm just dealing with it depends on your problem. So again, what I would do in this situation is I maybe generate my moves. And in my case, for this, again, since there's so many possible configurations, the only thing I'm going to focus in on is what if I'm just swapping red, red is the only person that I'm looking at in this first iteration of who to move. Okay, well, we see that again, I have my 106, I see if I do the swap of red and orange, I get 105 if I swap red and green, I get a 100 if I swap red and blue, I get 121 and red with purple, I get 93. All right, I generated in characters, built their fitness. Okay, now what? Well, again, it depends on your problem. If I'm looking for something to be maximized again, I'm looking at this idea that I want to pick the child that would be the best next step. So the 121 is the best next step. So that's the child I would go to minimizing it's obviously the other way around. But the big idea here is again, I'm going to just take this maximizing what I would do is this new configuration, again, in our loop, remember, think about this whole iterative optimization process is this big old circle, I say that this configuration, this nice little orange, you know, highlighted one, that's my new configuration.  So I do that, I take it. And now, again, just only focusing on on red, red swaps with the worms, red swaps of green, red swaps of blue, red swaps with purple. Done. But I'm not getting any good children out of this. All my possible children are worse than I am. What did I do? Am I done? Have I reached the peak? Well, not necessarily. You could almost think that what we just did may have been this step. We thought we were here, we thought we were making our moves upward to this giant mountain and we'd get to this peak and we'd be done. But we may find ourselves in this type of situation. Now we're running into a problem because we've sort of created what we like to call a local maxima. There are no better options that we can work off of. So we're not going to move or we don't dare move anywhere else. Again, because everything's worse than what we are. So we're stuck here. And so again, you have sort of this problem. I don't want to move to either one of them. But at least for our sake, the big idea that you'll see here is we're not at the global maximum or global maxima. We may be stuck at this local maxima. And the big idea with these types of problems is when we're trying to brute force them, we can't. Because again, if it's a 25 factorial or if it's in is 25, that's 25 factorial. It's impossible for us to figure out all the possible configurations to see this. And so here are the limitations of hill climbing. But in the next video, we'll start to see some of those approaches that we can use that say, well, maybe sometimes it's okay to go down.


Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for coming to MIT for this symposium and announcement from the FCC Broadband Initiative. My name is Chris Juxen-Mihai. On behalf of MIT, the MIT Media Lab and the Center for Future Civic Media and Comparative Media Studies, which is a lot of organizations, we want to. So there's a lot of welcome out to you. Thanks for coming. We were approached by the FCC to host this and felt it was an important part of our service to promote a public dialogue on this broadband plan because it really is a historic moment. For almost all of the whole of this nation's history, it's been considered the role of the US government to proactively ensure a free and diverse press and source of information for communities. One of the ways this occurred was through strong discounts, postage discounts for magazines and newspapers, where the postal policies gave tremendous subsidies to any newspaper, magazine, or periodical that could inform a citizen and improve a democracy. None other than George Washington worked to provide massive subsidies to mailed newspapers. Subsidies that largely benefited the smaller publications that couldn't reach economies of scales or negotiate special bargains. Washington wasn't able to give the 100% subsidies that he thought were necessary. It's really easy to be dismissive of the postal service at this point, at your own peril. But at that point, that was the medium for getting information to people. But nonetheless, newspaper shipment was so cheap that citizens would often buy a newspaper, write a letter to their mom in the margins between the headlines, then fold it back up and send it because it was so much cheaper than sending an envelope. I love that because there's this great moment in which personal and political news are traveling together in the same medium. In the second decade of the 20th century, communities in the Northern Midwest started experimenting with the process of rural electrification, developing electrical connections for moat farms. By the 1930s, the REA, the Rural Electrical Administration, was formed by an act of Congress. And within five years, they'd doubled the number of farms that had access to the point where now we're talking about 98% of rural communities and farms in the US have electricity. And if you fuse those two remarkably successful examples of smart government, you get to the point where we're at now where through electronic medium, through a wired or a fiber service, much of the news that we get and the important information and communications that we have in the United States are traveling. So today, the Pew Charitable Trust released a report titled Understanding the Participatory News Consumer, which finds that for the first time, according to their study, American consumers get more information online than they do from printed media. Now, the unfortunate problem there is that most of the news that's being generated, the kind of complex journalism, long-term investigation that we rely on for democracy, most of that is still being generated by those news organizations. So there's a little bit of a schism there and kind of a crisis brewing where the organizations that are gathering much of the important news are really hemorrhaging their sources of income. But they're still doing it, or at least last night when I checked, they were still doing it. Let's just hope they are today. So what we're witnessing is a monumental transformation and a really critical thing for communities to be part of that discourse, to be on the information matrix. But our broadband access rates are kind of closer to those of wired rural farms in the 1920s. They hover between somewhere around 60, 65%. 12% of that, the last I read was through borrowed Wi-Fi. My neighbor's in 54 Adams Street, for instance. But unfortunately, the costs and even the connection speeds are far higher than they need to be and the US is lagging many, many, many other nations in terms of speed and availability. So we're about to hear from the FCC regarding their report to Congress on how to spend the $7.2 billion set aside for ensuring that every American has access to high quality broadband. The point of this event is to hear from the FCC, which has already worked quite a bit and already taken a lot of public comment. So we're not really focusing this so much on a dialogue or public comment because they've had many, many public hearings already. But we are going to bring two panels of excellent people together afterwards to concentrate on two subject. First, interactions between citizens and government that are enabled by online access and how those interactions might be better made through ubiquitous broadband. And second, the role of public media in this changing landscape. I hope that both panels will pay special attention to issues of the digital divide as the FCC didn't its plan. This report is only the first step of the process though as community leaders, collectives, co-ops, individuals, educational institutions and businesses need to work to ensure that as we did with electricity and free press before that, we help government to help our communities to be more vital, prosperous and democratic. So let me then introduce our first speaker, Eugene Wang, who was appointed Secretary of Technology at the State of Virginia at the age of I think 14, was it? Later he became Senior Policy Advisor to Henry Paulson but he read the writing on the wall and moved to the FCC where he is Director of Government Operations for the Federal Communication Commission's National Broadband Task Force and with someone with a long last name, I really appreciate that title. So please join me in welcoming Eugene. Chris, thank you for that very kind introduction. It's wonderful to be here at MIT, MIT Deep Appreciation to MIT for serving as our host today. MIT has produced a great number of many great graduates and the not least of which is a member of my team, Vishal Doshi, who's in the second row right over here. To Vishal, thank you for your hard work on the National Broadband Plan. To MIT, thank you for letting him graduate. Now, in all seriousness, MIT and the Center for Future Civic Media is a leader in the area that my remarks will address today, the area of civic engagement. You are truly a leader in the world in innovation at the intersection of technology and civic engagement with an incredible number of groundbreaking projects going on here. From Newsflow, which maps real-time news reporting to Lost in Boston, a web tool that cities can use to engage citizens in improvement projects. There is tremendous innovation occurring here. For the team members who have worked on the civic engagement section of the National Broadband Plan, this has been a long journey. Many hours of work and many sleep-deprived days and nights will have been spent on the plan. A plan that, when it is released in about two weeks, will inspire a vision for broadband's future in America. The team has worked very hard to get to this point, and before I lay out our proposed recommendations, I'd like to take a minute to explain how we got here. The path to a National Broadband Plan began over a year ago with Congress. Congress tasked the FCC with developing a National Broadband Plan as part of the Recovery Act. And to quote directly from the Recovery Act, the ambitious goal of the plan is to ensure that every American has quote, access to broadband capability, unquote. Congress mandated that the plan address four questions. First, how will broadband infrastructure be deployed throughout the United States? This question is answered through an analysis of the most efficient and effective means to deploy broadband, either via wired, wireless, or satellite infrastructure, to ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband. Second, how will we ensure adoption of broadband services in the United States? This question has led to a detailed strategy for adoption of broadband services, including achieving affordable access to broadband services, as well as maximum utilization of broadband infrastructure and service by the public. Third, what is the status of broadband deployment in the United States? And fourth, how will Americans use broadband services in the future? To address this question, we've looked at how broadband will address specific national priorities, including government performance and civic engagement, public safety and homeland security, community development, healthcare and health IT, energy independence and efficiency, education, workforce training, private sector investment, entrepreneurial activity, job creation and economic growth. So how did we develop answers to each of these four questions? Now to develop the national broadband plan, Blair Levin, our director, assembled a task force of more than 50 individuals from backgrounds, including government employees, individuals from the private sector, technologists, consultants, venture capitalists, MBAs, PhDs, and yes, even a few lawyers. But don't blame me. I'm an electrical engineer and a technologist, not a lawyer. Overall, we've described the work we've undertaken since last summer as a three act play. In June and July of last year, we began with the prologue, outlining the process and vision serving as the foundation for the plan. Act one, which started in August and went through December, represented our fact gathering stage. Act two, stretched into January and focused on analyzing the facts that had been collected. And in act three, our final act. The task force is developing our recommendations prior to the release of the plan in just a few short weeks. We're doing our best to ensure that the plan is neither a tragedy nor a comedy. But in all seriousness, during this process, the FCC has worked hard to practice what we preach in terms of civic engagement. One of the major goals for the process of developing the national broadband plan is to ensure that we are a transparent, inclusive and participatory. To that end, I'm proud to say that this has been the most open and transparent data-driven process in the FCC's history. We've attempted to practice what we preach by seeking public input in a variety of ways. We've held more than 35 public workshops with well over 350 panelists on the different topics that the plan will address. These workshops have generated tremendous interest with more than 1,000 people attending in person and more than 5,000 people participating online. Every one of the workshops we've held has been streamed online. And individuals have been able to participate as far as way as America, Samoa, and Sweden. We've also had a record number of public notices. For everyone here that isn't steeped in the minutia of how the FCC goes about its work, a public notice is the way the government formally asks for public comment or input on an issue. We released 30 public notices, and in return we amassed a significant volume of public comments that represents a public record of over 20,000 individual responses that in total exceed over 70,000 pages. The FCC has also made extensive use of social media and crowdsourcing tools during this process. The FCC launched a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites. And since launching on Twitter last fall, we've amassed more than 330,000 Twitter followers, making us the third highest of any government agency behind only the White House and the CDC. If government Twitter followers were an Olympic sport, we would have been awarded a bronze medal, a significant accomplishment since the gold medal went to the president and the silver medal went to swine flu. We've also launched a blog where the chairman and members of the task force have posted updates and have asked for feedback. The blog, located at www.broadband.gov, had 40 blog posts and 340 comments in the first month after we launched it. Now our blogging has only increased since the first month of launch with 175 total posts and more than 11,000 comments. We've also used IdeaScale to crowdsource ideas for the plan. The result? More than 450 ideas, many of which are in the plan. These ideas generated more than 7,500 comments and over 37,000 votes. Now after all of this data collection, we came to what may seem like an obvious conclusion. Civic engagement is the lifeblood of our democracy. While this might sound cliched, I don't believe that it is. Democracy at its core is about self-governance. At the most basic level, this requires an informed and engaged citizenry to participate in society's institutions, engage their government and hold it accountable. Democracy requires an informed and engaged citizenry in order to validate the actions of government so that it reflects the will of the people. In short, civic engagement is a very big deal. So that's civic engagement, but what about broadband? What does broadband have to do with civic engagement? We came to the conclusion that broadband has the potential to transform civic engagement in two principal ways. First, broadband can strengthen the reach and relevance of mediated and unmediated information for our society. A healthy democracy requires an informed citizenry and broadband can change the way that people engage this information. This is true for mediated information, such as public media, and this is also true for unmediated information, such as the data the government provides citizens. Second, broadband can enable citizens to engage in their democracy through a variety of broadband-enabled tools that will make our democracy more participatory and more representative. Broadband-enabled technologies have already revolutionized the way citizens interact with each other in the private sector. Companies such as YouTube enable the distribution of user-generated content over the internet. YouTube now supports more than 120 million viewers watching more than 10 billion videos monthly. And more than 80% of U.S. adults who are online use social media at least once a month, and half of them participate in social media, social networks, such as Facebook. Today, 26% of Americans are involved in a civic or political group, and more than half of them use digital tools to communicate with other group members. Given this context, our proposed recommendations for the national broadband plan fall into five areas. First, we looked at ways to build a more open and transparent government. This principally involves increasing citizens' access to unmediated information, and we think that the federal government has made good progress in this area recently. But we believe that there is more that the government can and should do. The Executive Branch's data.gov initiative is one example. Data.gov is a web portal that offers an index of data generated by government agencies in machine-readable format. Launched last May, Data.gov has been a tremendous success, receiving more than 47 million visits in the first seven months. This initiative demonstrates that while there is great demand for government to be a wholesaler of data, it's still not enough. Data.gov includes only a small amount of federal government data, and we believe that all data and information that the government treats as public should be made available online in machine-readable formats. And although Data.gov applies to the Executive Branch, we believe that similar initiatives should also extend to both Congress and the judiciary. Moreover, for data that is actionable or otherwise time-sensitive in nature, the Executive Branch should provide individuals with a single web-based interface to manage email alerts and other electronic communications from the federal government. In addition to making more data available to the public, we believe that the primary legal documents of the federal government should be made free and publicly available online. While this might seem obvious to some, this is not current practice. For example, in the federal judicial system, the public access to court electronic record system, or PACER, still charges for access to federal district, appellate, and bankruptcy court records. The U.S. federal courts themselves pay private contractors $150 million annually for electronic access to judicial documents. We believe that these types of barriers inhibit a principle of democracy, that every person who is subject to the laws of this nation should have free access to those laws online. We also believe that the Knight Commission had it right when it expressed the principle that the public's business should be done in public. Toward that end, government meetings, public hearings, and town hall meetings should also be streamed online. These events should also offer closed captioning services to increase accessibility for persons with disabilities, and should also allow people to ask questions online where feasible. Our second area of focus has been public media. While broadband can enable the release of more unmediated information, it can also provide greater access to mediated information through media and journalism. Public media has historically provided invaluable educational, news, and other media content. Looking into the future, this could not be more important at a time when many of our journalism and media institutions are under severe stress. Today, newspapers are closing, local TV news stations are laying off reporters, and state houses and other institutions are drawing fewer and fewer journalists to cover the news. Just as communities depend on individuals to create and maintain communities, individuals need trusted intermediaries to connect them with relevant, accurate information. In response to this trend, public media must continue to play a critical role in the development of a healthy and thriving media ecosystem by providing individuals with information, developing public debate and conversations, and building cohesion and participation in our communities. But if public media's future is to be successful as it's past, it must transition from a 20th century broadcast-based model to a 21st century broadband-based model. Today, public media is at a crossroads. It is predominantly structured around broadcast-based communications, both legally and in practice. This presents a clear challenge as we enter the digital age. Public media must continue to expand beyond its original broadcast-based mission to form the core of a broader new public media network that better serves the new multi-platform information needs of the future. This is no small challenge. Yet I'm optimistic about the future of public media because it has already begun this transition and is showing great results. Let me give you a few examples. Across the Charles, right here in Boston, WGBH has developed the teacher's domain, a free collection of more than 2,000 digital resources covering diverse content for students and teachers. Last year was the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street and just a few months ago, PBS launched the PBS Kids Preschool Video Player with more than 87 million streams of educational content being delivered in just the first month. We also have great examples in public radio. NPR launched a tremendously successful API and apps using this API, our content, to access content, have been developed for the iPhone and Android. And NPR podcasts are being downloaded more than 15 million times a month. So we believe that the future of public media is bright but it also faces challenges. To the extent that government can help to facilitate a digital transition and mitigate these challenges, we believe it should do so. One of these challenges is the Copyright Act. Congress passed special copyright exemptions for public broadcasting in the 20th century but these provisions no longer fulfill their original purpose. For example, current licensing practices inhibit public broadcasters from producing and distributing the highest quality digital programming. These exemptions should be updated to facilitate the distribution of the highest quality programming on 21st century digital platforms. Finally, during this process, we began to ask ourselves what a national digital archive for the 21st century must look like. Broadband holds great potential for increasing people's access to historical materials. And we believe that the government should get the ball rolling in this area by creating video.gov, a new video platform for the federal government's digital public video content. Video.gov should be modeled after data.gov and the federal government should convene a group comprised of federal agencies, the National Archives and the Library of Congress to develop this platform. We believe that video.gov has the potential to be a huge success but we think it should be only one part of a larger national federated archive that would include public media and maybe even commercial media as well. Today, these institutions sit on a wealth of America's civic DNA in the form of historic TV news content that goes back more than 50 years. Millions of hours of historic news content that represents America's daily life. This archival content could provide tremendous educational opportunities for generations of students and could revolutionize how we access our own history. We believe that this is a tremendous opportunity but we realize that this is not without its challenges. For example, public television has attempted to launch such digital video archive but has run into difficulties obtaining the rights and clearances that it needs. To mitigate this issue, Congress should consider amending the Copyright Act to enable public and broadcast media to more easily contribute their archival content to a digital national archive to help turn this vision into a reality. Digital archives hold tremendous potential to transform the way the American people learn about themselves, their communities and their history. We can enable this transformation by removing the barriers that inhibit the development of a new ecosystem surrounding public media. Now, in addition to increasing the Americans' people access to mediated and unmediated information in digital formats, broadband can also improve the quality and number of points at which the American people can access their government. We've been focusing on three specific areas to this effect, social media, innovation in government and digital democracy. Social media has been our third area of focus. By most standards, social media is not new. Many Americans use tools such as Facebook and Twitter in their daily lives on a regular basis. The FCC recently released a study of broadband adoption and use in America showing that 55% of broadband users also use social networking sites. Focusing on individuals aged 18 to 29, much like individuals here at MIT, this number skyrockets to 85%. And these numbers are likely to grow even further in the coming years. Unfortunately, government has not integrated these tools across the board in the same way that the private sector has. We believe that government must adopt these tools to provide opportunities for citizens to engage using the same communications mechanisms that they use in their daily lives. Furthermore, we believe that government should view social media technologies not as pilot projects or add-ons, but as core to its mission. Government should use a variety of new media tools from those primarily used to communicate to those that enable more intensive participation and that specialize in co-production and co-governance. While the success of these integrating these tools in the government has been uneven, we believe that there is reason for optimism. As I mentioned earlier, the FCC has integrated the use of Twitter, Facebook, Ideas Scale, and other tools into the fabric of the agency. In addition, the CDC has had great success in this area using social media platforms to provide access to credible, science-based health information. The CDC's use of social media has been instrumental in enabling them to get reliable information about the H1N1 virus to the public quickly. Between April and December of last year, the CDC had more than 2.6 million downloads of H1N1 podcasts, more than 3 million views of H1N1 related YouTube videos, and more than 37 million views of H1N1 related media feeds. Social media is also giving rise to citizen-to-citizen diplomacy. These tools are connecting individuals across nations and regions. As one example, the State Department recently launched its virtual student foreign service, enabling college students to become quote-unquote dorm room diplomats. These students are then matched with embassies and students in other countries to build transnational relationships and cultural understanding through digital citizen-to-citizen diplomacy. In short, government is certainly making progress, but these examples are the exception rather than the rule. Recognizing the promise that social media holds, our federal government should accelerate the adoption of social media technologies across all agencies. The fourth area that we've been focused on in civic engagement involves the innovation that occurs at the nexus of broadband and civic engagement. Beyond communicating with individuals, broadband provides an opportunity to engage citizens in more direct collaboration with their government in ways that lead to greater innovation. We all know that many of the best ideas come from outside of government. To take advantage of these ideas, we should create avenues for more citizens to help spur innovation within the government. Government is just beginning to think about these types of issues. As one example, the White House has used participatory tools in the Open Government Initiative to begin changing the nature of participatory governance. Specifically, the White House has engaged citizens in development of this initiative through public brainstorming blogs, a Wiki, and a collaborative drafting tool. But we believe that government can and should do more in this area. An Open Platforms Initiative throughout our government has the potential to leverage digital platforms to engage and draw on the expertise of citizens in the private sector. From peer review and open problem-solving platforms to open grant-making platforms, we believe that these platforms can both engage citizen experts and improve government performance. Bringing individuals with a proven record of innovation into government service has the ability to bring new ideas and perspectives to some of the challenges that government faces. An innovation fellows program can place private sector experts and innovators throughout the federal government on one-year fellowships. And an innovation core could serve as a think tank for technologists from inside and outside government to help design digital platforms and applications for all levels of government. Last, but certainly not least, you can't talk about the future of civic engagement without talking about the future of our democratic processes. More Americans engage in democratic elections than just about any other civic act. By bringing the elections process into the digital age, government can promote greater civic participation and increase the efficiency of the process. Providing broadband to more Americans provides an important opportunity to fix the problems in the existing process, starting with voter registration. The current paper-based system for registration of voters can include multiple cumbersome steps, from collecting information on paper forms to manually entering handwritten data onto voter lists. One recent study estimates that voter registration problems resulted in more than 2 million voters being unable to vote in the 2008 general election. The challenges are even more difficult for members of the military serving overseas. These individuals are more than twice as likely to face registration problems as the general public. While these challenges are great, several states have already taken steps to modernize the voter registration process. As examples, Arizona, Kansas, and Washington state already permit citizens to complete and submit voter registration applications online. In addition to allowing for online voter registration, common standards would assist in making voter records portable to increase accuracy, improve efficiency in the process, and decrease cost. Several states have already begun moving forward with standards to facilitate data exchange across state borders. While this process is encouraging, we need a more comprehensive effort to modernize the process across all 50 states for elections at all levels. We believe that federal, state, and local stakeholders should work together to modernize the elections process by addressing these and other concerns. Finally, as mentioned earlier, our military men and women serving overseas face very real challenges when they are trying to vote. One survey showed that more than half of the military serving overseas who tried to vote weren't able to do so because their ballots were late or didn't arrive at all. And a survey of seven states showed that an average of more than 25% of military and overseas ballots were returned as undeliverable, lost, or rejected in the 2008 election. We all agree that the government has a moral obligation to ensure that those military men and women protecting us from harm's way are able to vote, because no one should have to give up the right to vote as a condition of serving their country. The federal government has recently taken steps to begin addressing this problem. The Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, recently passed by Congress, requires that starting with the 2010 elections, states must establish procedures to allow military and overseas voters to request absentee ballot applications electronically for federal elections. This is an important step in the right direction. States are making some progress on this issue as well. In 2008, Arizona launched a web-based voting system that allows the military and overseas citizens to vote online with completed ballots uploaded directly to the Secretary of State's website. There are exciting initiatives happening at the intersection of broadband and democratic processes, and we need to ensure that this progress continues. To this end, the Department of Defense should be tasked with the development of a secure internet-based pilot project that enables members of the military serving overseas to vote online. DoD has looked into this in the past, and there are clearly security and privacy concerns that must be addressed. But we believe that as long as our military men and women are serving overseas and unable to vote, we must continue working to do everything we can to address this serious problem. The proposed recommendations that I've presented to you today represent not an end, but a beginning. A beginning of a new era in civic engagement in America. In five distinct areas, open and transparent government, public media, social media, engaging citizens in government innovation, and modernizing our democratic processes, we believe that broadband has the potential to transform civic engagement. But this transformation will not occur on its own. It will take a commitment from all of us, our government, our elected leaders, and the public at large to renew our democracy in a broadband-enabled 21st century. We look forward to this challenge. Thank you very much.


Thank you, Jack, and friends of the library and all the poets in San Francisco who create the atmosphere for this. America in present tense, and there's a historical note to this. The reference in this poem is to the workman's circle, which, with similar organizations not only helped forge the unions, but put in place for their members those benefits and rights while they fought to legislate them for all workers. America in present tense, the past is present, Jefferson crafting from ideas and thought both his house and the shape of a nation, Lincoln pausing amid war and opposition to send words of hope to a widow, to the survivors, to the future. My great-grandparents, selling everything but clothes and memories, taking ship to become strangers in a foreign-tongued future for life, for their children's education, and their children using that schooling and the dream to fight unfeeling greed for a living wage, laboring late under the lamp light, studying, meeting, to shape what people working in union could do, win the right to vacations and build a country camp to enjoy them, combine to pay doctors for members hurt and sick, create a safe haven for those who live to retire. Other heritages tell other ancestral tales, and the richness and strength of this land includes this generation now stooping in the hot fields, living the tales their lawyer and teacher-grandchildren will tell. Let us embrace the strength, the courage, the selflessness, the risk of being unpopular, denounced, defamed, insulted, scorned as those before us were, to deserve what we have inherited enough to pass it on.


With Coach Gary Stewart after Stevenson falls 94.77 to Alvernia here tonight. Coach, let me start with Michael Byrd. It was senior night here tonight and he had a really heck of a nice 16 points in a block that I don't think anybody here will ever forget. I know that more than anything I think it seems like you'll miss his his effort, his energy moving forward. He brought that in night in night out. Yeah, Michael's a talented guy and we benefited from that and I wish him great success moving forward. He's got a lot of different directions he can go. He's exceedingly bright and played on championship team here and and did a lot of good things both on and off the floor and again he will be sorely missed. 31 point night for Cameron Hayes led your team in scoring as a freshman. It seems like there's there's something really bright for Stevenson basketball fans to look forward to when it comes to Cameron Hayes. He's an unusual guy, usually a freshman hit a wall and he's ascending late in the season. He's played his best basketball the last half of conference and there's nothing he can't do on on the basketball floor. We're really excited about his spring and summer moving forward and and he's a hard worker so he's going to get better and better and better and we're going to we're going to reap the benefits of that. Coach, you got one more to go obviously up at like homing on Saturday. What do you want to see from your team knowing that this is going to be it? What what do you want to see in this last game out? Well, we're doing some interesting things. You know, we we turn the ball over at an alarming rate against to hood tonight. We had 11 we shot over 80 percent from the free throw line. We out rebounded them but we've got to get better defensively and we'll keep working at it. We've got two more practices to try to address some things and and looking forward to Saturday. Got a good tough opponent and we need to bring our best. Coach, we've appreciated all season. Thanks for taking the time for us and best of luck on Saturday. Thank you, Glenn. He is coach Gary Stewart. I'm Glenn Clark. This is Go Mustang Sports dot com.


Hey, what's going on guys? It's be Avery here for another trailer your action This one right here is a first look at Cobra Kai season 2 the official teaser now if you don't know what this is Karate Kid came out. I believe in 1984 with mr. Miyagi and Daniel Aruso probably should have looked it up before yeah 1984 or whatever with Ralph Machino and Pat Morita rest in peace my brother great movie classic film It's you know You don't really watch it for the martial arts choreography watch it for the story and character development and believing in yourself great film It's a classic like I said three times So they have more and more Karate Kid sequels But last April they came out with a Cobra Kai season that you can watch free on YouTube that ties in with the series It was perfect. I loved it. I mean one of the things that I loved about the most was a soundtrack If you've seen the season that came out last year last April, you know what I'm talking about But it's dope as hell, but we have Cobra Kai season 2 right now. We have the second season 2 trailer I'm so freaking excited about this. I cannot wait. I don't know when it's dropping But we from the find out man. We from the find out. So anyway, let me go ahead and stop wasting you guys's time and Let me go ahead. Yeah, I thought I got the trailer pulled up right here Let me stop wasting our time and go ahead and put on these headphones and y'all can stop listening to me talk and Watch me Watch this trailer Here we go Focus balance You can learn the secrets of Okinawan karate true karate by joining the Miyagi dough team because at Miyagi dough It's not about the money. It's about the karate I Have been hater over here This ain't the feet It's not the old teacher in this dojo. You're for a rude awakening Cobra Kai is about being badass Remember it doesn't matter who anyone was before they stepped into this dojo all that matters is that we are all Miyagi dough I know how to beat Cobra Kai. I did it 30 years ago I can do it again Just make sure the Cobra Kai snake comes in at the end. All right. I want to really pop Episodes April 24 Yes, please well Okay, so I probably know what you guys are thinking like Be that looks kind of wack as hell. It looks kind of corny. It is corny. That's kind of the point Sometimes corny is good. Sometimes corny is bad. This is the good corny or whatever It won't mean anything to you if you have not seen a karate kid If you did not grow up in the 80s and 90s or saw it well before all this came out It's probably not just gonna do anything for you But I mean karate kid is just like it's a classic film or whatever and to see them stick to see them Still, you know keep the story going or whatever.  Let y'all are wasting time money and resources.  I had to go to Oklahoma for my job about a year ago, right? I stayed up for about a week.  It was a lot of people. He played the first episode up there It was like oh snap. I've been seeing this advertised on YouTube for so long. I thought it was wet I was gonna know it but this is like actually pretty good like it's really good So it just caught everybody by surprise.  I remember that night I came back home and Ben's the whole show and I loved it It was it was a pleasant surprise and I am on board with season two or whatever like real talk Like I am on board. So if you if again, don't watch season one of Cobra Kai or season two If you have not seen karate kid the 1984. I mean, there's like four karate kid movies um, I Yeah, yeah for karate kid movies with the main character and then you have the fourth one that was okay with the lady So you got well, we're not counting the one with Jaden Smith that came out in 2010 with with Will Smith's production company Westbrook and Jackie Chan and Taraji P and his son Jaden I enjoyed that movie, but this has nothing to do with that So you had a karate kid that came out in the original in 1984 the karate kid part 2 came out in 1986 the karate kid part 3 came out in 1989 and then you have the next karate kid Pat Marita or Pat Marita Pat Marita was still in that with Hillary Swain They came out of 1994. All those films are connected So the karate kid with 2010 That it's not connected with this and then that's one Cobra Kai so I Mean look if you just want to watch some old classic 80s 90s stuff watch karate kid one two and three The first one is the best of my opinion and then part three and then part two and then part four You don't have to watch them all at least watch the first Two if you're interested I strongly suggest I strongly suggest you not watch Cobra Kai if you haven't seen any of the karate in my opinion, they won't do anything for you But I've seen them all and I love all this and I am on board So all my karate kids fans out there, you know, I'm saying comment in the section below You know, let's make some noise all the good stuff. Let's support this. Let's give us some views It's free anyway, and if it's not free I think you get like the first two episodes of free And then if you sign up for like a 30-day free trial or like a week trial You can watch it or whatever just make sure you know You cancel it if you don't want to pay for it before the trial ends and all that good stuff But to me it's worth it But guys that is just my opinion for Cobra Kai season 2 the first official trailer What did you think did you like it? Did you like my opinion or reactions you like to hate did I turn you on that I turn you off Do you agree with me or do you disagree with me? Let me know down in the comment section below Let's get this conversation going and keep it flowing about comments I'm very very behind on all of my captain Marvel non spoiler review comments and things like that. I apologize I'm not gonna make any excuses, but I'm gonna catch up on them Also guys Please look me up on social media all that good stuff Facebook Instagram and Twitter all that it's right there at the bottom of the screen And I'm provided links to all that good stuff down in the description box below. Please subscribe to my channel I would really appreciate it, but guys I just want to thank you again for tuning into my opinion slash review slash reaction for Cobra Kai season 2 the first official trailer And before you go, don't forget that my name is brandy Keith Avery and that's just my pain peace


Hello everybody, it's Eva from Bohemian Crafting here again. I'm coming to share with you finished project. I made Tutorial about one pocket here in this this book It was that hide-and-slide pocket, so I'm going to share with you this all book what I made. I made kind of Journal photo book part of this book. It's journal and that other part. It's like photo folder. I used five folders, two file folders. I put them together to make like cover and It can be open open three times here is This half it's for photos and here is my small journal which I made for this book and I came out with this idea when I downloaded new software to my computer and I burned all my images, Photographies, digitals to DVDs and when I downloaded the new software I found that my old software didn't burn all those images. I lost loads of Photographies and I've been always Loving person with books, so I think it's only good if we try to keep memories in books That's why I came up with this half and half journal where you can keep Photographies as well because I lost a lot of photographies when my mommy was here in England and that's no good I'm missing them and nobody else got them. That's horrible. So this is my book. I made it in blue and cream colors and Here it's backside. I made few photo Photomats for this book and I use those beautiful vintage corners like template for the photographies not all of those Not all of those photo Photomats, they've got those corners. I just place them on few of them Here I've got rules about marriage because I hope This will belong to some loving family hopefully And I think it's good to know how to do a little bit marriage Here I include this beautiful kiddo Because that smile is just amazing and here it's just small note About love. This is my top cover And I used beautiful papers. I'm not sure If I remember that right I've got those it's kind of Parisian style They are in blue and cream color and I've got them I think I've got them from a vintage Epimera garden, but I'm not sure and Unfortunately, I can't find it now because I lost those images Which is really bad. I will try to have a look on vintage Epimera garden page, but I'm not sure if I will find it Those I found on Pinterest. Here is small small folder I made and few Epimeras All is coffee died and tea died. Here is large pocket And as I said before this can be opened once and Second time here I've got. Oh, yeah, when I made that tutorial about sliding pocket I used this glossing bag and I made that bellyband around it and I told you that I don't like At the first I thought that I will place that layering in different Direction and I didn't like it how I made it so I took it off and I'm using this Glossing bag just without that moving moving system still is it pocket here for this small triplet It can be used for journaling or for photography Here very small envelope and it's still pocket behind that it's pocket as well For this small Book I use this beautiful picture and it's holding here this bellyband and also this clip. It's holding it's extendable like Accordion accordion style photo photo Photo album, maybe here are pockets on this side and on that other side It's just plain without pockets here. You can see that beautiful paper I used so this is This page and it's holding on the top It's holding with this strip of paper and on the bottom It's magnetic like this and here I've got that paper clip. Here is it it's paper clip here and It's open like this and here I've got Here we've got some epimeras and this Photomat and here you can see another paper from this beautiful collection. Here is another photomat I made for this journal and it have another opening here and here So here are another section of this journal. It's kind of in marriage stuff Maybe it can be used like wedding journal I'm not sure because I used beautiful images about wedding about love.  It's really great embellishment here. Just this Epimera and I used small those dies like Embellishment and it's open like this here is like photomat and behind that. It's another photomat It's like cut here Here a small epimera and another beautiful photomat It's in this pocket and it's pocket here. Here are four pockets for small tags They are all same are here and here is another tea bag Which time we've got all this is horrible that Here is another tea bag and here you can see how I decorate it. Here is that layering I used on that I didn't pocket when I didn't like it. I just move it here and I made a little bit different decoration But still I use it. So here is another Beautiful paper from this collection. I believe it's from Vintage Epimera garden. Unfortunately, I lost it.  Whoops So here we've got small journaling section of this book I made this small booklet and I use this this was rice paper And it's using for the kubash. So I use it here. This is Glossim bag It's like my first pocket and I use this beautiful image from napkins to decorate this postcard and behind that Glossim bag It's another pocket and I put that dose Epimeras and I use those wooden pieces Okay, here is my small file folder. This is a wooden button.  I'm still Okay, okay, just leave me Here is another Epimera. I use it like my pocket those This legitimation and some I think it's clock card Holding all this file folder with this small clip And this is the journaling section and I use those Parisian style papers in all this section everything. It's coffee died Those are I think freebies from a Pinterest. I believe Here is another for tomat or journaling mat and it looks like this Here this beautiful girl and I made out of book page I made this envelope and I decorated with this beautiful image from Pinterest to this postcard with lady So it's another pocket here and this is very simple journal Because I thought I've got loads of stuff in that Photography section, so I wanted to leave this one as much simple as possible to get space for some stories Some notes here another Epimeras. This is made like that Cabinet card Here another Epimeras Here that other half of this pocket It's my first signature Come on, here another Epimera Also cabinet card and here is second signature. It's very simple as well. It's beautiful Cabinet card This beautiful Parisian style image. I really like that blue. It's it's look it looks nice Here I made a pocket out of this Epimera and I include that this image. It's like postcard And this mini folder I made so it's in this pocket It's really very simple journal this one. Here is lots of space for journaling for tax For anything you want here another Maybe photomap or journaling spot and again holding with small paper clip I forgot from this side This Epimera and this is end of my second signature and here you can see that Hidden slide pocket. I showed you before in that tutorial. Here is small pocket behind And with small Epimera with small booklet Epimera with small booklet and it's hide now. It's covered with this Embellishment here. I include few photography this Epimera This way I think it's some ticket for some much and here I've got small triple triple booklet or photomap again And here I made oh, I think I forgot to show you another pocket I forgot some one section from those a photography section here. I made small It's like file folder That's shape. I hope I am in view. Am I? I'm not too much. Oh, sorry that Shape or how to make this I took from Michelle Mooney channel. She's like paper addiction She's got amazing tutorial how you can make Book out of file folder. So I've been watching that tutorial and I made it Just like she said I hate to do it. I'm going to show you one more thing from this side Sorry, I forgot I showed you it can be open like this like this like this and also Like this. I forgot open this side. Oh my god. Oh, what a book And here I've got small booklet as well. Here is just A small ephemera. It's like leather or not leather letter It's holding behind this belly band here. You can see another paper from those beautiful Parisian papers and Here is another book When I've been watching this tutorial By Michelle It's just very simple book Here few beautiful papers. I used some stenciling. I used few stencils Timholt stencils and I made some stenciling You know sometimes when I'm taking videos, it's horrible. So it's behind this belly band. So this is my Photo general book. I'm not sure how you can how I can call it this one It's decorated well with laces with beads with putons. I Really enjoyed to do this And I feel really bad that I didn't make yet any book for myself because now when I lost a lot of images Lots of photographers. I feel horrible. I like all my technology, but I Like books more and I'm totally surprised. I didn't make any book for myself to keep my images I have to do my some book for myself So this is book which I will placed on eBay Because I still can't get to my Etsy store I am not sure what I made wrong that I have to figure it out how I can open my Etsy store again I would like to say thanks huge thanks to all of you for your amazing comments I've got there many many beautiful Notes and beautiful saying I've got there. Oh my god. I think I wrote somewhere I have to have a look just bear with me. Oh, yeah If I'm I'm saying that right I love Jojo she left comment that if we can hang out somehow together and craft together It was beautiful. Thank you so much.  It's amazing. Thank you so much for that. And yeah, I know Someone asked me where I'm from. Oh I think it was it was a law. Yeah, it was I think she asked me where I'm from I am from Czech Republic and I never learned English language before. So that's why Sometimes confusing myself. I'm learning from movies from YouTube. I'm listening to your English I'm listening what you are saying when you are promoting your video your journals or your art and I'm trying to copy that and sometimes I'm not sure if I am copying all right way So thank you so much for all your support for all your kindness. It's amazing and I've got there few requests about tutorials. I'm working on it I'm working right now. I'm preparing right now myself for tutorial For masculine cards. I hope it's it's not too late one of my beautiful subscribers Elisabeth she asked me for tutorial for her grandson. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm a little bit struggling with making cards. I Totally Respect all the ladies who can make cards. I'm horrible with making cards. I don't understand why Why it's so hard for me to make card, but I'm trying. So this is my sharing for today I really hope you like it. Thank you so much for all your amazing comments Thank you so much ladies for your support. I love you all. Thank you so much and see you next time. Bye


We are moving towards the globalization of corporate governance and we are also looking at how there is the contextualization of universalization of corporate governance. And that was the main topic for our previous session. Today, we are going to be looking at premium for corporate governance and the focus is going to be on an international survey which was conducted by Mackenzie and through that various premiums were identified for corporate governance. Now, if we look at this survey, then this survey was carried not only in a particular country but was basically a global survey and that survey basically covered Asia, Europe and the United States because again, we are looking at the universalization of corporate governance. So, what that basically revealed was that three quarters of the investors say that board practices are at least as important as investment performance. So, again, when we are talking about investment performance, that is very important. That is the destination but we are also looking at the pathway and the pathway are the board practices that how does the board conduct itself? How does the board keep itself as an independent platform overlooking the corporation or the organization or the conglomerate? And then what are the checks and balances that have been implemented and executed within the organization in the context of the relationship of the board with the top management and vice versa? And therefore this revealed that more than 75% of investors focused on board practices because they thought that whatever the performance of their investment is going to be, if it is going to be in the long run, then there have to be good board practices. Similarly, over 80% of investors say that they would pay more for the shares of a well-governed company. A well-governed company was defined as one that is a majority of outside directors with no management ties on its board. So, again, we are looking at an independent board and the investors would basically pay a premium. They would be willing to pay more if a company is well-governed. So, again, looking at the structure of the organization is extremely important rather than just the performance because the performance could be a compromise performance but giving good results. So, the important thing is not reaching good results but how are those good results basically materializing and what is the process of reaching those good results? And again, the famous example of Enron, I mean, Enron was showing fabulous results but the process was wrong and therefore then it tumbled down and more than 56 billion dollars were vanquished overnight. So, that itself tends to set the tone of what and how it should be done from the context of getting premiums for corporate governance. Another aspect of this multi-global survey by McKinsey also revealed that directors should also hold significant shareholdings in the company. A large part of their pay should come in the form of stock options. So, again, they should have a stake in the organization and rather than getting hefty salaries, they should be benefiting from the stock options that they have and if they are not doing good then definitely the stocks would be going down and they would be on the losing side. That would be a check and balance would ensure that the board would be a good regulator, would be a good facilitator and would be the paragon of transparency and accountability within the organization and that tends to give confidence to the international investors to invest in that type of organization. The size of the premium the institutional investors say they are willing to pay for a good board governance. So, again, like I mentioned earlier that a good board governance system and framework is very important, investors all over the world believe that the investments in Asia and Latin America are better protected by a well-governed company. So, whenever they are going into volatile markets of Asia or Latin America, then better well-governed companies would ensure the protection of their investment and therefore it would be easier for them to basically either add more investment or take out investment, ensure that whatever capital gains are coming in, they are more sustainable and more long-term if they are in a well-governed company. That is extremely important especially in the context of Latin America and Asia because of loose legal frameworks and lesser implementation from the judicial organizations and that's why the premium can be paid for such organizations. The size of the premium the institutional investors say they are willing to pay for a good board governance and again they want to ensure that the best companies are well-protected and their investment is protected in Asia and Latin America. The survey also tends to reveal that companies and policy makers to take heed of developments. If companies could capture a small part of the governance premium that is apparently available, they would create much greater shareholder value and then again the survey was again predominantly held in this particular context and that the company and policy makers have to understand the developments taking place globally and also at a national level so that they are more well-prepared and they can have better projections in creating greater shareholder value. High governance standards will prove essential to attracting and retaining investors in globalized capital markets and that is extremely important. If those high governance standards do not exist, then the investors would shift their investment to other countries and that would basically destabilize any economy and especially like a country like Pakistan if investment is taken out then the whole stocks and the whole stock market and also the economy would just plummet down because it does not have the space and it does not have any other in alternate source of incomes or alternate source of investments so that is very important that high governance standards should be formulated should be implemented and executed to the best possible dimensions and to the best possible standards which are internationally accepted. Thank you so much.


Down deep in the earth lies the treasure that makes our civilization run. Petroleum, oil and gas supply three quarters of the energy that fuels our society. But now these resources in the United States are fast running out, and we face a serious energy problem. At the risk of economic blackmail, we import 35% of our petroleum, and even that will be used up in our children's lifetime. We must develop new energy choices for the future. It will be a difficult task, perhaps the greatest challenge in our history. It is the challenge of the future. The earth itself knows no energy crisis. The crisis is misdirected technology and resources. Today we depend most on petroleum, our least abundant resource, but rely least on our most abundant resources. Now we must begin a shift to other forms of energy. In the past, such changes in technology, as from wood to coal and from coal to oil, took 60 years. We do not have that much time. Many new sources must be examined. To coordinate this job, ERDA, the Energy Research and Development Administration, has been charged by Congress to meet the energy needs of present and future generations. Meeting the needs for the next generation may be the most difficult task. Alaska is one of the five richest oil regions in the world. The pipeline will eventually carry 2 million barrels of oil a day. But as demand increases and U.S. production declines, this great source will not be enough to maintain our present level of supply. Petroleum engineers are working hard to increase production on land and offshore. Most wells initially bring up only 15 to 20 percent of the oil. But secondary and tertiary treatment can force more oil to the surface. Now, as production moves to the outer continental shelf, oilmen develop new methods to drill in deep water while protecting the environment. If we can extend the life of our petroleum reserves, then we may have the time to develop new energy sources. More than any recent technological development, the automobile has changed the nature of our national landscape and affected our daily lives. It also takes about a third of the petroleum used in the United States. Along with the automotive industry, ERDA is working on improved engines and components, alternative fuels and power plants in an effort to increase efficiency and save petroleum. ERDA believes that a strong commitment to conservation by all elements of American society will be necessary to carry us through the critical years ahead. Great potential savings exist in industry, in residential and commercial buildings, and through conversion of urban wastes to power. Energy saved through conservation is better than any produced, for there is less environmental impact. From beneath our own lands comes another energy source, the greatest fossil fuel treasure we have. America has enough coal to last for hundreds of years and help give us needed energy security, if we can find ways to use it cleanly and efficiently. In its basic form, coal is bulky and expensive to transport. And with present clean air standards, much of it cannot be used without special equipment or processing. It contains polluting sulfur compounds. Poll is an important fuel for making electricity, but conventional generators get at most only about 40% efficiency. The remainder often contributes to heat pollution in streams and rivers. To solve these problems, ERDA, industry, and the universities are seeking new ways to burn coal. The fluidized bed method, for example, uses a mixture of coal and dolomite, a substance similar to limestone. In a boiler, this combination burns on a cushion of air, so heat is used more efficiently. The sulfur in the coal reacts with the dolomite and is retrieved before it goes out the stack to pollute the air. To get useful energy from waste heat, engineers are creating so-called combined cycles. By linking turbines and boilers together, the excess heat is recycled to raise overall efficiency. Researchers are also trying to develop a process with a jaw-breaking name, magnetohydrodynamics. Called MHD for short, it creates electricity without the friction of moving parts. Coal is pulverized and burned in a superheated flame. The hot gases, so intense they conduct electricity, are blown through a duct that is surrounded by an electromagnet. It has been compared to a rocket blast through a magnetic field. Through basic principles of physics, electrical current is generated. Like other fossil fuels, coal is primarily compounds of carbon and hydrogen. By reforming these mixtures under heat and pressure, liquid or gaseous fuels are created and pollutants removed. Scientists are hard at work to improve this technology. The goal is a national synthetic fuel industry whose products would replace dwindling supplies of natural petroleum. Liquids could replace crude oil for refineries or be used in the petrochemical industry. Already well developed are processes for making clean burning, quality synthetic gas from high sulfur coal. ERDA, in partnership with industry, is operating pilot plants. The pulverized coal is subjected to high heat and intense pressure and mixed with hydrogen. The product has the same energy content as natural gas and is low in pollutants. It is the kind of synthetic fuel that will be needed to replace diminishing reserves of natural gas. One of the greatest potential sources of synthetic oil, greater perhaps than Persian Gulf reserves, lies in the western United States. But freeing it for use without environmental damage will be a massive challenge. One of the several methods of extracting oil involves removing the shale by conventional mining techniques.  These problems may restrict the amount of oil recoverable through surface techniques.  But underground processing may reduce these problems. So ERDA plans to test underground processing of oil shale on a pilot plant scale as another possible source of synthetic fuel to replace natural petroleum. During the last century, travelers in the American West navigated their way across the barren Idaho desert by using natural landmarks that stand above the horizon. Today, man-made landmarks point the way to progress in new forms of energy. Among them is the first nuclear reactor to generate electricity. Inside are the names of the men present at that historic event. During its first run, it generated only enough power to illuminate four light bulbs. Twenty years later, nuclear power produces about 8% of America's electricity. Though more expensive to build than conventional units, in most cases, nuclear plants are cheaper to operate. One pound of nuclear fuel has the energy equivalent of 3,000 tons of coal. Enriched uranium is sealed in metal fuel rods, and these are bundled together in the reactor core. There, the action takes place in a controlled chain reaction. This causes heat, which creates steam, and that drives turbines to generate electricity. Like all energy systems, nuclear power has some drawbacks. Plants discharge about 50% more waste heat to the cooling water than coal-burning plants. The waste products must be solidified and stored permanently. Each application for a plant must be carefully reviewed for environmental impact and safety. Nuclear plants must compete with other energy projects for capital, materials, and labor. And there have been a few technical problems with the hardware of the complex systems. But nuclear power is a proven technology that can free our valuable oil and gas for other uses. One vast potential for unlimited power comes from the natural heat in the Earth's interior. The only commercially operated geothermal field in the United States is the geysers in California. Underground steam is tapped by conventional drilling techniques and piped to turbines to generate electricity. Eventually, this operation may create enough power to supply half the needs of the San Francisco area. But the geysers is in many ways the ideal situation. Clean, dry, steam, easy to use to make power. Unusual circumstances for geothermal sources. Beneath the arid floor of the Imperial Valley lies hot, salty water. Technicians working for ERDA have used the water's own heat to desalt itself. Next, they plan to try and use this heat energy for electrical power. And in the Salton Sea area, one of ERDA's labs wants to put a high pressure brine through a turbine to generate electricity. But they must develop special turbines that can withstand the corrosive effects of the salts. Many potential geothermal sites are found in the United States. Each with its peculiar set of problems. The Raft River Valley is typical. Underground are geothermal reservoirs of hot water that can be tapped with wells. Some families near Burley, Idaho have used this natural hot water for years to heat their homes and businesses. In new drilling, ERDA is exploring the potential of this hot water to create power. But because of its low temperature, about 300 degrees, low pressure turbines will have to be perfected. In theory, there is potential for geothermal energy anywhere in the world, from the dry, hot rock deep in the earth. But power from this lies more in the future as geothermal technology continues to develop. Windmill may have been one of ancient man's first technical achievements. Probably beginning in the area of Persia, but spreading through most of the world. Actually at one time, windmills provided thousands of Midwest American farms with electricity. Now, radical new shapes of windmills of much greater size, using space age materials, are being investigated for use in areas with constant wind. But before they contribute much energy, problems must be solved. How to store energy when the wind is not blowing? What lightweight materials can bear the stress of persistent motion? What kinds of axles and gears generate constant current despite the variable wind speeds? This new approach to an old energy source will help supplement our larger energy systems. No potential source is as clean and abundant as solar energy. A few homes in the United States have used the sun to help in central heating and hot water for some time. But problems remain that limit large-scale and widespread use of solar power. To help overcome these barriers, the government has begun solar energy programs. One project uses the sun to heat and cool school buildings. The schools in different climatic areas use solar energy to supplement their central heating and cooling, and to heat water for various uses in the physical plant. Though different manufacturers supply the hardware, most systems operate in a basic way. Water circulates through collector panels that trap the sun's heat. Pumped to the building's heating and cooling system, it exchanges its energy or is stored for later use. Presently, solar collecting systems have high initial costs. Their contribution to total energy needs vary in different parts of the country. Nevertheless, ERDA sees a great future for solar energy. As part of the National Solar Heating and Cooling Demonstration, ERDA has been using a portable laboratory to calculate the sunlight received in various areas. This project will test solar heating and cooling units across the United States. The purpose will be to create the demand for a viable solar industry, whose products would be dependable and available to the average homeowner. Further in the future is solar electric power. One system would concentrate the sun's rays to create steam for driving turbines. Its success will depend on finding ways of storing collected energy and converting it cheaply to electricity. Because of present high costs, commercial use of solar electric systems will come only after extensive development and demonstrations. But solution to these problems could provide an inexhaustible source of energy. One system directly converts sunlight to electricity with solar cells. Now they are handmade from individually grown crystals and are too expensive for a mass market. But scientists hope to develop new materials and mass production techniques to bring their purchase in the range of builders and consumers. It may be the next century before they have any significant impact, but prototypes of solar cells have already proven their worth in years of use on space satellites. And this very earth in partnership with the sun offers another renewable energy resource. For growing here are all manner of plants that learned millions of years ago to transform sunlight into energy. Man, through biochemical processing, can convert agricultural crops, forest products, even urban wastes into energy farms such as methane and alcohol. Marine energy crops are also a strong possibility. One study underway with IRDA support would grow giant kelp for energy conversion. In the distant future, this fast growing plant might be cultivated and harvested on large farms submerged in nutrient rich ocean currents. The power of the ocean offers other potential sources of energy. The world's first tidal power plant is now an operation in the Rance River Estuary in France. Reversible turbines in a dam across the estuary capture the power of the incoming and outgoing tidal surges. Few sites are available in the United States for similar operations, but in our offshore waters exist another potential for energy from the sea. Researchers are investigating how to build floating power stations that would use the temperature difference between the ocean surface and the deep water to create energy. In the long term future, as petroleum supplies dry up, more of our energy will be delivered by electricity. As part of its work in conservation, IRDA is seeking ways of transporting electricity more efficiently. Because the ordinary electric cable loses massive amounts of power through resistance, scientists are now researching systems that would carry large electric loads with little loss of power. To take this strain off utilities now caused by wide peaks in demand, new ways to store electricity and ways to change it to other energy forms will have to be developed. Hydrogen gas, made from water by utilities during off-peak periods, could be transported by pipeline to supply many energy needs. Someday, giant flywheels, electromagnets and large storage batteries may help carry us into a future world of energy. There will be increased demand for uranium enrichment as more nuclear power is needed to replace other fuels in the generation of electricity. By the turn of the century perhaps half of our electricity will be generated by nuclear plants. Today's reactors get only about one to two percent of the energy potential from natural uranium. To raise this efficiency to as much as 60 percent and assure that our supply of uranium lasts for several centuries, IRDA is developing the liquid metal fast breeder reactor. The breeder consists of a central core of fissionable material surrounded by a blanket of uranium-238 which is in plentiful supply. During operation the uranium-238 is transformed into fissionable plutonium which can be used to fuel other nuclear reactors. Today IRDA scientists and scientists in several countries are developing the systems and the components that will go into the breeder and in partnership with a group of electrical utilities, IRDA is building the first large scale fast breeder demonstration plant. If developments are successful and if social, environmental and safety standards can be met, then the liquid metal fast breeder could help assure supplies of electricity into the next century and beyond. In the seas lie the clues to the origin of man. Therein may also lie his hope for the future. Limitless supplies of energy fuel from ordinary water through the wonder of fusion, the mechanism that powers the enormous energy of the sun, the stars that gave birth to the universe itself. Now man is trying to duplicate this process for an endless source of power. Fusion happens when atoms of hydrogen are brought together with such force that they fuse and create energy. The fuel for this process would be deuterium, cheaply obtainable from water. It would take place in the form of a plasma, a gaseous material which comprises most of the universe such everyday things as the inside of fluorescent lamps. Since it reacts to magnetism, the major effort has been what is called magnetic containment fusion. Its greatest problem has been keeping the plasma stable long enough to cause a fusion reaction. Today, scientists in several countries are cooperating in work on a variety of fusion devices. Erd's program includes several different magnetic containment machines to examine fusion problems. The first American test reactor is scheduled to begin operation in 1981. But even if things go well, it may be after the turn of the century when commercial fusion operations begin. The challenges to the creation of fusion power are great, but the rewards are monumental. It could mean a limitless supply of fuel available to all people, a system that would use water to run our civilization for millions of years. A newer line of fusion work is with lasers, the incredible machines that create pure, orderly and intense beams of light. Since lasers themselves were only invented in 1960, much more has to be learned about them before they can be proven to work for commercial fusion power. A laser fusion machine would be gigantic, generating several powerful parallel beams. At the end of the mechanism, they would converge on tiny pellets of deuterium and tritium, causing the pellets, a succession of several each second, to implode upon themselves and produce fusion reactions. We are now entering a new era, a time when energy, at least for the rest of this century, will be more expensive and less abundant. All new sources will mean some costs both to environment and economy. The future will be a challenge to us all. We must conserve and be efficient with all forms of energy. We must depend more on our own energy resources and less on petroleum. Now, while we still have the time, we must develop new energy technologies for the future. This challenge of the future will be met not only in our research labs, but in our industrial plants and our homes. How well we meet that challenge will determine the shape of civilization to come.