If you want to know what the young, internet-residing, tech-savvy crowd -- an influential if lamentably self-regarding demographic -- thinks about peak oil, read through the comments on this post over at Digg. Eye-opening, and not all bad.Which proves that not all tech-savvy people have good judgment.
Too bad they can't all get invited en masse to the lecture at Cal Tech by Deffeyes. Vice provost Goodstein probably had something to do with this scheduling. And sure enough, he did.
Over at Stanford, EE professors David Miller and James Harris have made in my opinion a huge breakthrough in achieving opto-electronic responses in
SiGe heterostructures. Although the advances don't show emission of light, a kind of Holy Grail for column IV semiconductors, they showed completely unexpected optical modulation properties 100 to 1000 times greater than conventional silicon. I worked with a guy that got his PhD under Prof. Harris; I remember him saying that Harris never used his PC, which we both thought kind of odd. Which supports my claim that many a tech-savvy person doesn't need the "help" of Digg.com.