Reply To: Physics Nobel to Big Bangers

[Warwick]

OK several different things

– about jobs

Changes like the use of a particular technology should not in the long run decrease or increase the amount of labour employed. However, they may change the geographical distribution of jobs. In the short run, supply shocks have an impact on the relationship between unemployment and inflation: a positive supply shock would have the opposite effect to the negative shocks seen (for example) in the OPEC crisis of the 1970s. Fiscal and monetary policies are the main determinant of employment, but supply-side changes characterise the environment in which policy can operate. The reflationary capacity of an economy is also related to a permanent supply-side issue, the prevalence of competition vs market power: in the absence of powerful trade unions, monopoly in the product markets is the main force that can drive inflation. Today’s economies contain a much larger amount of large price-setting firms than in the past, and this is generally considered to make it hard to maintain full employment. Perhaps the potential impact of focus fusion power on this should be considered.

– the logo upside-down

As Ivy Matt points out, the only case of “upside-down logo” that will spring to mind for most people is the Nazi swastika. In other words, inverted peace symbol means war – you can’t expect most to know the backstory about the CND logo creator. Everyone knows the Nazi / peace swastika thing.

Saying it’s CUD doesn’t hang together – why would having fusion power make someone stop using guns or bombs? In any case, an unfamiliar idea to most people.

– mass appeal

From a marketing perspective, a putative supplier of power units would not need or want the item to appeal to everyone or not be at all controversial. It has to have a sufficiently strong appeal to a sufficient number of people and firms for them to be prepared to invest in owning one. I think in the USA you’re used to, let’s say, a vocal section of the population decrying all kinds of wicked newfangled things, something which on this side of the Atlantic we do not really have so much – and this maybe breeds a ‘try not to offend’ way of thinking, but you’re in business, not in government, and it’s not your job to universally change behaviour. Society is an intellectual pyramid and the bottom layer follow _after_. The fusion market will eventually eclipse fossil fuels on its own, absent interventions to prevent it; there’s no need for marketing to look that far ahead.

Rather than worrying about appealing to both hippies and rednecks, the focus should be only on appealing to that section of the population that is most open to change and sees themselves as taking an active role in embracing positive new technologies. They’re not rednecks or the paranoid rich, and they’re not the same group as hippies.

That said, I think the downwards logo is sufficiently dissimilar from the CND logo that it’s not a bad choice.

I say “absent interventions” because of course, globally, fossil firms get big bucks of subsidies from the public purse, and when threatened they will screech loudly about jobs and risks and the need to give them much bigger handouts. Too big to fail! Broadly their appeal will be to traditionalists and small-c conservatives; another reason you want to get clearer thinkers on side, whatever their political complexion, and forget the necks and the socialites. You want the Telegraph and the Guardian, not Sarah Palin or Hello!.

— religion

Well if someone can see an inverted crucifix in a CND sign then they can probably imagine anything, let’s face it.
But I’d steer clear of stars. You may recall that Chernobyl means Wormwood, and the passage in Revelation that says something like “And there was a star on earth, and its name was Wormwood, and it poisoned 1/3 of the waters, and 1/3 of the creatures died” (I haven’t looked it up but it’s along those lines.) To an over-the-top religious person anything involving stars and nuclear power would be fertile territory.

— Taylor Swift

I guess my own view of things is summed up by the fact that whenever I have a good day in contributing to Focus Fusion, I play this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1jYllE0T-k
Maybe you should use that song. 😉