Steorn - The Summary
My last post was a little effusive. I make no apology for that. I would however point out something that the less forgiving among you may have missed. If you do not agree with my reasons for saying that Steorn could not have made a mistake with regard to the functionality of their machine, then you are unlikely to agree with the following. Nevertheless, I do:
If these people are truthful then everything I wrote in the last entry is reasonable and those involved deserve the accolades that will surely come their way. If not, and I have been duped, then it is by a group of individuals who have no moral compass; who are willing to use false charity and the plight of billions of disadvantaged people to sell whatever it is they are trying to sell. We can tie ourselves up in knots all we like, but I find that keeping this point in focus along with my judgement from meeting them (until genuine proof comes our way) cuts through the clutter and allows me to say with confidence the things I say.
The summary document I promised is now available and linked at the right of the main page. It is written with the newcomer in mind so, if you know of anyone who wants to be brought up to speed, please direct them there. Alternatively, you may distribute the unaltered document or quote from it freely, with appropriate attributes given. If you have any comments or suggestions about improving it, I would welcome them. I hope it's useful.
Labels: density, energy, megawatt, ORBO, power, Steorn, Summary
posted by Paul Story at
17:22
6 Comments:
This is my last post as I have just grown tired with the whole thing. We are all chasing our tails intellectually and the discussions have descended into the philosophical. My prediction is that Steorn also spent the next ten year chasing their tails to achieve over unity...I say this based on my own logic, experience and fact that Steorn talks the talk but have yet to produce basic proof - which would be easy to do. When the first DVD player went on sale, they just sold it. It did what it did, everyone could see that and they bought it. They didnt care why. Produce a box with a socket in it which produces electrical output endlessly and and no one will care why. We would just use it. All this smoke-and-mirrors stuff with Steorn has convinced me they have nothing. Goodbye.
Hi Anthony,
At least you are doing the sensible thing and walking away. I have never understood all those people hanging around something they don't believe in just to argue.
Paul, thank you for the summary. I will use it.
However, I suggest that you put it into PDF format as that is considered "safer." If you like, I can email you a copy if you have no means to make your own. You have my address.
Hi WP,
Good idea and done. Thanks.
Something Prof X said on-line recently got me thinking about Steorn's public face. I believe that it is possible to deduce what Steorn may have developed/discovered from his well articulated suggestion in conjunction with Steorn's peculiar go-to-market strategy. In short I think Steorn have discovered an interesting anomaly, of potential interest to science, who could investigate it further and PERHAPS one-day find a way to commercialize it, but I don't think they have developed a load bearing unit (e.g. that can say power a household light bulb). I think they set out to achieve load bearing and have failed and are now looking for an exit strategy to recoup their investor's money.
Here are some of my observations.
1. The publicity Steorn have generated through the press to date has been rather pathetic. Most people who know anything about Steorn know of them because of half a dozen blogs and forums. If they have got what they claim to have, then their expensive publicity machine should frankly not only be fired but stoned to death and then cremated.
2. Their secrecy and stealth suggests to me that they only want a certain type of publicity. Selective deleting of negative but truthful posts in their own forum is not the action of a firm that knows they are sitting on a demonstrable technology to rival the discovery of fire. Neither is exageration and misdirection on numbers. People with a load bearing continous motion machine would possess such unshakable confidence in what they had under their arm that stealth and secrecy and control-freakery would not be necessary. For such people the right PR strategy would be "Countdown to Independence Day" (Only 25 days to go). Those who scoffed or presented negative opinions during that countdown would be of no threat and therefore no consequence. They would simply be digging their own pits of flat-earth ignorance to fall into post-demo and make Steorn's glory even greater when they were utterly vindicated as marvels.
Steorn's behaviour appears to me to be more in line with a business plan that hangs by a thread. A thread that is threatened and a thread they cannot afford to have cut until enough licences are sold.
3. If Steorn had a load bearing, self sustaining machine there would be no sense in anything but candidness and openness. They would be holding an unbeatable hand in the game of life. They would simply place their device in the window of Macy's and Harrods, constantly spinning and lighting a household bulb and human curiosity and human interest would do the rest. The media would beat a path to their door and licences would sell like hot cakes. They could sell the devices on-line, money up front with a 9 month delivery window. After all the first people to receive them could sell them at a 100% profit.
Prof X has suggested that while Steorn may have a self-sustaining device, they don't have a constant load-bearing self-sustaining device. He has suggested that the power output of 0.5 w/cc is not constant, but peak, and would drop significantly under constant load. I don't know much about the physics but I do know a lot about business, venture capital, start-up's thinking and human psychology. Prof X's comments got me thinking about Steorn's business plan.
Steorn have constantly stated that they are "not manufacturers" and that they will licence the technology. But imagine for a moment that you're an investor in Steorn and have backed them for part of the 14m Euros of funding. Picture yourself at one then the other of these board meetings.
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Scenario A: "We've got a self-sustaining device. We can apply a load to it and construct a device not much bigger than the alternator on your car which will power a 100W light bulb, 24 x 7. This technology appears to scale and we have reason to think there is even more juice in the tank, which further R&D will allow us to extract. Our business plan is to sell licences over the web, because, y'know, we're not really manufactures".
Your response. "What? Are you f$$$ing crazy? Let's find a Wall Street investor to buy an existing factory complex in China, fund 5 more years of R&D if necessary and make the devices ourselves. We are sitting on something here that could make us each richer than Bill Gates. (Show a device like that to Wall Street under NDA and they would be throwing money at you on terms you could dictate). That is what Wall Street do. They have money sitting around WAITING to be invested in good ideas.
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Scenario B: "We have got a self-sustaining device, which appears to be putting more energy out than goes in. We've been working on it for a long time, made revision after revision, but we cannot make it do any useful work past overcoming its own friction. It should interest physicists when they get round to examining it but commercializing it appears to be impossible and we've fiddled with it for close to three years. We can perhaps make toys and scientific curiosities and perhaps power wrist watches so that they don't need batteries (no big deal as they already have self-winding movements). Our business plan is to sell licences over the web to enthusiasts and hopefuls who think they can develop this in their garden shed. We think there are enough people like that that we can recoup your investment and even turn a healthy profit.
Your response. "OK, we've tried and we can now recoup some or all of our losses. In a population of 6 billion there must be enough enthusiasts and hopefuls (small companies) to sell 10,000-20,000 licences. Perhaps this way I can get some of my investment back and even a return. Have your private forum, your inner circle of disciples, act as our salespeople who will spread the word (at zero cost to us) and manufacture 100,000 curiosity devices to sell at a small profit to seed this market. So we will sell the "How To" manual to many people who might hope to further develop it in their sheds."
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Validation Day by the Jury is not going to be. "Yes, Steorn have categorically done it". It is much more likely to be. "There are some anomalies we cannot explain". To some people these words will sound like "We cannot categorically say that there is not gold in the Klondike".
And selling licences is Steorn's publicly stated business plan. Post validation they will offer a "how to" manual on-line for a nominal fee. Let's assume $1000-$10000 dollars depending on whether you're a hobbyist or an enterprise. They'll always be a steady flow of interested parties who want to buy their magnetic "chemistry set" and dick around until they give up or crack the code. They'll always be people putting their wobbly videos of machines they have built that are powering their bicycle or car or fan. In the gold rush the merchants who sold the picks and shovels, train tickets and maps got a LOT richer than the miners.
If I turn up to Kinetica this week and see a load bearing self-sustaining device then the above hypothesis is clearly wrong. But if I turn up and see a self-sustaining machine that overcomes friction but other than that does no useful "work" then I'll think they are planning to make the money from selling "How To" manuals of the story of the film so far, rather than "licences" for a commercial technology.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope we see an impressive load bearing self-sustaining device on Thursday, but I firmly suspect we won't when I stand back and analyse Steorn's behaviour.
Hi Anon,
Thanks for such considered feedback. This was one of my favourite candidates when I was in my 'it must be something else - anything but what they say' mode. It won't surprise some readers to learn that one of the clinchers for me is that it would imply that they are lying. If that was the case then all my observations about them being honest are void. If they are not truthful, I would probably assume they have nothing of worth because anything less than the very specific claims they make will seem pathetic.
On the media front:
They have been refusing interviews for most of the past year because there was little to say. The story would have gone round and round until it fizzled out and the conjecture would not have moved on. The Economist advert did its job. It got enough publicity for them to attract the scientists, a range of geeks, forum followers and enough people for them to understand and finesse their responses to various types of public reaction.
As you say; until we see the demo, there is little left to say. We need something more to talk about and I think we are about to get it.
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