this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Just finished the stellarbook, by James Arbib and Tony Seba (from RethinkX). They make a very interesting case on how we can move from our current extractive societies to one of abundance. It touches on many themes that are well known in the solar punk community, still it brought together a clear overview and model of where we are now and how to get to a better world.

I was wondering if anyone here has read it as well. And what your take is.

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I came up with something that I called the Seba Technology Disruption Framework, which says that technology disruptions happen because of a combination, so a convergence of technology cost curves, business modelling innovation and product innovation, of which are enabled by this convergence of technologies

Essentially what I forecast as you know in Clean Disruption, was there were four technologies and one business model; solar, batteries, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and ride hailing that were disruptive in their own way, but combined would disrupt all of energy and transportation, that the disruption would be over by about 2030.

After that I decided to start a think tank called ReThinkX, because it turns out that my disruption framework does work, and it does work not just for energy and transportation, but also across the board. One of my hypotheses was that every single industry bar none, every single industry is going to be disrupted by this combination of technologies, and business modelling innovation and product innovation

We made the prediction that it was the convergence of autonomous electric and on demand transportation that would disrupt all of transportation, and the tipping point was going to be 2021. Essentially on the day that level 4 autonomous vehicles are approved and ready, which we assume will be 2021, the cost per mile of transportation will be 1/10th, 10 x cheaper than the cost of owning a car.

as the years went by and my numbers for solar, for batteries, for PVs and so-on, have proven to be right then they’re paying more attention. Essentially that has changed the whole narrative about how quickly this disruption is going to happen, that this is not an energy transition, that this is a disruption both energy and transportation

A really stupid fucking interview seven years ago

Don’t let a bunch of VC-bought, Silicon Valley capitalists ruin an ideology antithetical to their goals. Stay away from this “disruptive” bullshit.