Wired news is awash with old style futurism (some of it near term) today. First off is an article from Wired 11.04: How Hydrogen Can Save America. This is an outline of how fuel cells could obsolete fossil fuels (think: Mass poverty on the Arabian Peninsula. No war with Iraq). There are some terrible costs of deployment of fuel-cell energy to replace the current fossil-energy infrastructure, but the prices are coming down, and the technology is (as promised so many times) almost there.

The article hasn't got much news. In fact I think the most significant news here is that the mere possibility of this technology has made ultra-green politicians in the worlds most technologically advanced state (that's California) force the major automakers to actually invest in this technology if they want a slice of this very rich market.