Optimistic science fiction does not create a belief in technological progress. It reflects it. Stephenson and Thiel are making a big mistake when they propose a vision of the good future that dismisses the everyday pleasures of ordinary people – that, in short, leaves out consumers. This perspective is particularly odd coming from a fiction writer and a businessman whose professional work demonstrates a keen sense of what people will buy. People are justifiably wary of grandiose plans that impose major costs on those who won’t directly reap their benefits. They’re even more wary if they believe that the changes of the past have brought only hardship and destruction. If Stephenson wants to make people more optimistic about the future and more likely to undertake difficult technological challenges, he shouldn’t waste his time writing short stories about two-kilometer-high towers.
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Let’s cheer up about technologyOctober 9th, 2014 |
 10 comments to Let’s cheer up about technology |
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Three — three! — billionaires are running their own space programs. Space is so popular among his peers that Bill Gates, whose own modest goals run to conquering malaria and other tropical scourges, finds himself telling interviewers that “it’s not an area that I’ll be putting money into.” If there’s public malaise about progress, it isn’t because nobody is doing anything bold.
I’m a little concerned about this statement and what it implies, although I laud private investment in space programs, the reality today is it achieves little more than what has already been done and employs a somewhat rent-seeking opportunity by getting subsidised by contracts from government and international organisations.
Gates is doing the modest low hanging fruit but it’s what should have been done decades ago by the same governments who chose instead to play the cold war game of “who has the biggest dick” in space, no wonder the Apollo generation are wise to it now and a bit more down to earth.
Bingo.
The second half of the twentieth century featured a relentless campaign of pointing to the empty half of the glass of technology. (“Half” meant metaphorically, not literally.) By the late 70s, most of my peers were convinced that they would always be less well-off than their parents, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The Club of Rome had made limits to growth the unquestioned assumption on which all “serious” debate was built. That loss of confidence is intimately connected to the west’s inability to translate the abject failure of communism into the success of liberal democracy. (The success of anything more than that would have been too much to hope for.)
On the other hand, articles such as this one discussing how technology benefits the environment seem to be more common now. It’s still built on the premise that environmental impact is the measure of all things, but at least it’s looking at the other part of the glass. I can only hope that among the things post Gen-Xers reject will be that glass-half-empty view of technology. (Based on personal experience, I would say that it’s already too late for Gen X, and way too late for Boomers.)
So there really IS a Virginia Postrel!!! I was wondering if she was like Big Brother, someone once real but convenient to have around. When will she next be issuing quotes from the Mountain?
I like this bit: “The trick is not to confuse pessimism with sophistication or, conversely, to demand that optimism be naive.” You could easily replace pessimism with cynicism, too.
Tedd is right that the “limits to growth” idea needs to be killed. I remember a guest speaker of some sort coming into my secondary school science class to peddle it, and I almost bought it, too. At some point I need to figure out who he was and how he got into the school.
The infusion of pseudo-scientific/technical comment or analysis into politics is something scientists, real scientists (not “environmental studies” majors) need to start countering. Publicly and loudly.
Ground penetrating radar discovers big, new features of Stonehenge and some people are worried about the impact of such radar on the ground? Are they concerned about the poor defenseless dirt, the bugs living in it, or what? Why do we even give these comments space in a newspaper, or electrons in this venue?
I’d like to see a study on idiot penetrating radar!
And why worry about the impact of such radar on dirt when the likely path forward is excavation (right?!)?
These same bozos who worry about such inanities, don’t question for a second that a Prius costing $30K (before the USG kickbacks) and getting 50 mpg (with no passengers or cargo!) is loads better than me driving my old Civic (which cost me $8K used, gets 35 mpg, and has 200K miles left to go!). They have no problem mining more metal, making ginormous batteries, building a new Prius factory alongside the Civic factory, etc without any thought of the real, full life cycle cost of their green tech. Don’t get me wrong, I want clean air and safe, 100 mpg cars that go 100 mph (when I need to) and can haul all my crap. But I want solid scientific and technical information informing how I pursue such goals.
Example: our local newspaper once ran a headline: “Water dumped over dams for salmon valued at $2M [in lost hydro generation]”. That’s perfect. Give us the facts and let us decide (politics!) if a few salmon are worth $2M. I suspect some folks think they are and depending on how many salmon we’re talking about and their spawning (or not) impact is on the health of the overall salmon population in the Columbia River, I may agree.
But leave your Gaia love-rhetoric at the door!
Sorry, drifted off topic a bit.
Sorry…poor editing of my previous post. Should have read: “…and depending on how many salmon we’re talking about and what their spawning (or not) impact is on the health…”
The advance of the technology is the reason that the expansion of the statism (in size and scope) had not reduced us to mass starvation – with the size (and scope) of government we now have the population of the West would soon have been reduced to mass starvation a century ago. And if they had had the technology we have, they would have had living standards many times our level.
However, there is a limit to what technology can do – it can not do the impossible, And our credit bubble economy is becoming impossible to sustain – both on the monetary side (the credit bubble financial system) and on the out-of-control Welfare State fiscal side.
Also remember this……..
Had it not been for the expansion of statism then technology would have expanded much more (the idea that government helps technological development is sometimes true – but it is generally the reverse of the truth).
Had the size and scope of government not expanded over the last century (and more) we would presently have settlements on Mars (and perhaps even have interstellar space travel) and humanity itself would be different – treatments for the ageing process would have advanced.
And much would have been done in other fields – which I can not see.
Following on from Paul, one of the hardest things to explain about laissez faire is the opportunity cost of politicized regulation. The city that I live in had a very clever transportation business pop up nearly twenty years ago — not unlike Uber, but with more centralized communication due to technological limitations of the time. It was summarily shut down by the municipal government, bowing to pressure from the taxi industry. When you consider the cumulative effect of centuries of that kind of constraint on innovation, it’s hardly surprising that we have transportation “problems.” But it is by definition impossible to describe how a free market would have prevented those “problems” because the opportunities were missed. So there is an element of faith to laissez faire that many people will never be comfortable with.
Taxi companies are a highly regulated business with an artificial barrier to entry to keep the prices up. City governments get big revenue from selling the right to operate; they limit the number of such they will issue, and thus make the right to operate artificially rare. In turn, those who have one of the operating licenses are able to keep their rates high… which is one of the reasons they hate jitney services so much. So it is no surprise that both parties find it in the interest to use State power to squash any gate crashers to their private party.
Tedd,
Very astute observation. This is one of the things that people seem to miss. “Who will build the roads?” Taking it further, “If no State infrastructure, then constant stops for tolling on the roads will result in congealed traffic. Effectively stopping traffic, mobility, freight haulage, etc. Like the toll stops every 3 miles along the Rhine River before the Treaty of Westphalia.” And so forth.
But there is no more reason to assume that such conditions would have persisted to today in the absence of state appropriation of authority over infrastructure … which by massive and numerous historical examples doesn’t always work out so well. No one would have come up with a version of “open-road tolling” if the government weren’t running the tollways?
And after all, it took government something on the order of 50 years to find and institute this system itself.