{"id":629,"date":"2006-12-16T11:43:36","date_gmt":"2006-12-16T18:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=629"},"modified":"2006-12-16T11:43:36","modified_gmt":"2006-12-16T18:43:36","slug":"cooling_is_cool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=629","title":{"rendered":"Cooling is cool again"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently wrote<\/a> about how the formation and removal of reverse salients influence the path of technological progress. As explained by Thomas P. Hughes, \u201cAs [a technological] system evolves toward a goal, some components fall behind or out of line. As a result of the reverse salient, growth of the entire enterprise is hampered, or thwarted, and thus remedial action is required.\u201d Reverse salients are progress’s sticking points.<\/p>\n

As one reverse salient is overcome, a new one forms. What’s interesting is that, as a system advances, problems that were considered “solved” become problems again. Reverse salients form in the same places over and over again.<\/p>\n

A great current example, described in a new Economist article<\/a>, is refrigeration. For many years, refrigeration was a solved problem. The reigning technology for cooling – “draw heat from the thing you want to cool by evaporating a liquid next to it, and then dump that heat by pumping the vapour elsewhere and condensing it” – was good enough. Now, though, refrigeration has again become a reverse salient, at least in computing systems. Not only has the dissipation of heat from microprocessors become a problem in computer design, but the cost of the electricity needed to cool the air around computers has made refrigeration a reverse salient in data center design as well.<\/p>\n

Reverse salients attract the attention of inventors, and, as the Economist relates, some interesting new ideas are emerging for how to cool chips, ranging from paraelectric films<\/a> to thermoelectric materials to newfangled radiators. I would expect we’ll see a burst of innovation in designing more efficient air-conditioning as well. When it comes to technological systems, problems rarely stay solved for long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently wrote about how the formation and removal of reverse salients influence the path of technological progress. As explained by Thomas P. Hughes, \u201cAs [a technological] system evolves toward a goal, some components fall behind or out of line. As a result of the reverse salient, growth of the entire enterprise is hampered, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}