Working with the Photon as Tool not Fuel to Enable a Rapid Shift to Strong Secure Growth
It is now feasible, through the devoted work of many over recent decades, to near optimally funnel light from source to target.
The extraordinary potential of this little known achievement is largely unrealised.
Yet if this simple, fundamental ability were judiciously applied to advances in a wide range of fields we would be enabled, with great effect, to collaborate globally to provide locally and so build an exceedingly bright though entirely unforeseen future.
For not only would the required global collaboration itself be significantly facilitated by this multi-functional capability but also using it we could all obtain the means to employ, in our individual ways, readily available and largely neglected local resources.
Thereby communities, even in hot deserts, would thrive and so be able to provide for their neighbours and collaborate more widely.
This suggests that 'collaborate globally to provide locally' may well be the urgently needed seed of a viable strategy to make a rapid shift to strong secure growth to best benefit all.
What follows is the evidence I have for the characteristics of this seed. Hopefully this will encourage the rigorous consideration of how to cultivate it into a highly fruitful strategy.
About 50 years ago a branch of optics to optimise the “transfer of light radiation between a source and a target”* was founded.
Over the last 20 years many hundreds of millions has been spent on developing this for solar energy. During that time, as part of EU and UK R & D projects with our partners such as Fraunhofer Institute of Solar Energy and Imperial College, we systematically analysed optical systems proposed and built for this purpose as to efficiency and cost of manufacture.
The large toolkit resulting is now being applied to a wide range of fields, such as those where power is required to be efficiently generated or used, where optical information is to be effectively gathered, where data is to be communicated at speed and where efficient lighting is required.
Many dedicated scientists and engineers have led to this invaluable toolkit being developed. But since standard solar PV modules have come down in price substantially, not only has this technology not been used much in solar but also it still has not found its way out of the solar silo.
This will change when it becomes more widely understood how this technology enables a host of completely radical business models across many core industries. And that with a rigorous systems engineering approach in combination with many other recent advances in other disciplines, the factors of production can now be brought within the reach of us all individually.
This is not only because the optical configurations, unlike those derived from imaging optics, such as from telescopes and microscopes, are so simple and low cost to manufacture with existing equipment. It is also due to the underlying intellectual property being already in the public domain because its patents have lapsed during attempts to cross the Valley of Death, and therefore cannot be controlled or suppressed.
To emphasise the basic nature of this technology the name Photon Funnels seems appropriate.
This site is being set up to encourage the extensive use of this technology to help make the urgently needed rapid shift to strong secure growth.
In the meantime please contact