Yeah, I really liked the characterisation in that article of externalities as antigoods. "There is really only one good in the universe, and it proceeds forwards and backwards through time until it has woven its way through an entire economy"?

energy harvesting referring to https://aroundtheworld.solarimpulse.com ?

Both smugglers and the Royal Navy had considerable interest in being able to predict tides; while I don't think the former ever had much influence on the development of computational technology, the latter did.