When we are dazzled by the special effects in Star Wars Star Wars or or Star Trek, Star Trek, we immediately envision a huge, futuristic starship bristling with all the latest high-tech gadgets. Yet another possibility lies in using nanotechnology to create tiny starships, perhaps no larger than a thimble, a needle, or even smaller. We have this prejudice that a starship must be huge, like the we immediately envision a huge, futuristic starship bristling with all the latest high-tech gadgets. Yet another possibility lies in using nanotechnology to create tiny starships, perhaps no larger than a thimble, a needle, or even smaller. We have this prejudice that a starship must be huge, like the Enterprise, Enterprise, and capable of supporting a crew of astronauts. But the essential functions of a starship may be miniaturized by nanotechnology so that perhaps millions of tiny nanoships might be launched to the nearby stars, only a fraction of which actually make it. Once they arrive on a nearby moon, they might create a factory to make unlimited copies of themselves. and capable of supporting a crew of astronauts. But the essential functions of a starship may be miniaturized by nanotechnology so that perhaps millions of tiny nanoships might be launched to the nearby stars, only a fraction of which actually make it. Once they arrive on a nearby moon, they might create a factory to make unlimited copies of themselves.
Vint Cerf, one of the original creators of the Internet, envisions tiny nanoships that can explore not just the solar system but eventually the stars themselves. He says, "The exploration of the solar system will be made more effective through the construction of small but powerful nano-scale devices that will be easy to transport and deliver to the surface, below the surface, and into the atmospheres of our neighboring planets and satellites.... One can even extrapolate these possibilities to interstellar exploration."
In nature, mammals produce just a few offspring and make sure that all survive. Insects produce large quant.i.ties of offspring, only a tiny fraction of which survive. Both strategies can keep the species alive for millions of years. Likewise, instead of sending a single, expensive starship to the stars, one can send millions of tiny starships, each costing a penny and requiring very little rocket fuel.
This concept is patterned after a very successful strategy found in nature: swarming. Birds, bees, and other flying animals fly in flocks or swarms. Not only is there safety in numbers but the swarm also acts as an early warning system. If a dangerous disturbance happens in one part of the swarm, such as an attack by a predator, the message is quickly relayed to the rest of the swarm. They are also quite efficient in energy. When birds fly in a characteristic V pattern, the wake and turbulence created by this formation reduce the energy necessary for each bird to fly.
Scientists characterize a swarm as a "superorganism," one that appears to have an intelligence of its own, independent of the abilities of any single individual. Ants, for example, have a very simple nervous system and a tiny brain, but together they can create complex anthills. Scientists hope to incorporate some of these lessons from nature by designing swarm-bots that might one day journey to other planets and stars.
This is similar to the hypothetical concept of smart dust being pursued by the Pentagon: billions of particles sent into the air, each one with tiny sensors to do reconnaissance. Each sensor is not very intelligent, but collectively they can relay back mountains of information. The Pentagon"s DARPA has funded this research for possible military applications, such as monitoring enemy positions on the battlefield. In 2007 and 2009, the Air Force released position papers detailing plans for the coming decades, outlining everything from advanced versions of the Predator (which today cost $4.5 million apiece) to swarms of tiny sensors smaller than a moth costing pennies.
Scientists are also interested in this concept. They might want to spray smart dust to instantly monitor thousands of locations during hurricanes, thunderstorms, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, forest fires, and other natural phenomena. In the movie Twister, Twister, for example, we see a band of hardy storm chasers risking life and limb to place sensors around a tornado. This is not very efficient. Instead of having a handful of scientists placing a few sensors during a volcanic eruption or tornado to measure temperature, humidity, and wind velocity, smart dust can give you data from thousands of different positions at once over hundreds of miles. When fed into a computer, this data can instantly give you real-time information about the evolution of a hurricane or volcano in three dimensions. Commercial ventures have already been set up to market these tiny sensors, some no larger than the head of a pin. for example, we see a band of hardy storm chasers risking life and limb to place sensors around a tornado. This is not very efficient. Instead of having a handful of scientists placing a few sensors during a volcanic eruption or tornado to measure temperature, humidity, and wind velocity, smart dust can give you data from thousands of different positions at once over hundreds of miles. When fed into a computer, this data can instantly give you real-time information about the evolution of a hurricane or volcano in three dimensions. Commercial ventures have already been set up to market these tiny sensors, some no larger than the head of a pin.
Another advantage of nanoships is that they require very little fuel to send them into s.p.a.ce. Instead of using huge booster rockets that can reach only 25,000 miles per hour, it is relatively easy to send tiny objects into s.p.a.ce at incredible velocities. In fact, it is easy to send subatomic particles near the speed of light using ordinary electric fields. These nanoparticles carry a small electric charge and can be easily accelerated by electric fields.
Instead of using enormous resources to send a probe to another moon or planet, a single probe might have the ability to self-replicate, and thus create an entire factory or even moon base. These self-replicating probes can then blast off to explore other worlds. (The problem is to create the first self-replicating nanoprobe, which is still in the distant future.) In 1980, NASA took the idea of self-replicating robot probes seriously enough to convene a special study, called Advanced Automation for s.p.a.ce Missions, which was conducted at the University of Santa Clara and looked into several possibilities. One explored by NASA scientists was to send small, self-replicating robots to the moon. There, the robot would use the soil and create unlimited copies of itself.
Most of the report was devoted to the details of constructing a chemical factory to process moon rocks (called regoliths). The robot, for example, might land on the moon, disa.s.semble itself, then rearrange its parts to create a new factory, much like a toy transformer robot. For example, the robot might create large parabolic mirrors to focus sunlight and begin melting the regoliths. It would then use hydrofluoric acid leeching to begin processing the regoliths to extract usable minerals and metals. The metals could then be fabricated into the moon base. Eventually, the robot would construct a small moon factory to reproduce itself.
Building on this report, in 2002, NASA"s Inst.i.tute for Advanced Concepts began funding a series of projects based on these self-replicating robots. One scientist who has taken seriously the proposal of a starship on a chip is Mason Peck of Cornell University.
I had a chance to visit Peck in his laboratory, where you could see his workbench filled with components that may eventually be sent into orbit. Next to his workbench was a small, clean room, with walls draped in plastic, where delicate satellite components are a.s.sembled.
His vision of s.p.a.ce exploration is quite different from the one given to us by Hollywood movies. He envisions a microchip, one centimeter in size and weighing one gram, that could be accelerated to 1 percent to 10 percent of the speed of light. He takes advantage of the slingshot effect that NASA uses to hurl s.p.a.cecraft to enormous velocities. This gravity-a.s.sist maneuver involves sending a s.p.a.cecraft around a planet, like a rock from a slingshot, thereby using the planet"s gravity to increase the s.p.a.cecraft"s speed.
But instead of gravity, Peck wants to use magnetic forces. His idea is to send a microchip s.p.a.ceship whipping around Jupiter"s magnetic field, which is 20,000 times greater than the earth"s field. He plans to accelerate his nanostarship with the magnetic force that is used to hurl subatomic particles to trillions of electron volts in our atom smashers.
He showed me a sample chip that he thought one day might be hurled around Jupiter. It was a tiny square, smaller than your fingertip, crammed with scientific circuitry. His starship would be simple. On one side of the chip, there is a solar cell to provide energy for communication. On the other side, there is a radio transmitter, camera, and other sensors. The device has no engine, since it is propelled using only Jupiter"s magnetic field. (NASA"s Inst.i.tute for Advanced Concepts, which funded this and other innovative proposals for the s.p.a.ce program since 1998, was unfortunately closed in 2007 due to budget cuts.) So Peck"s vision of a starship is a sharp departure from the usual one found in science fiction, where huge starships lumber into s.p.a.ce piloted by a crew of daring astronauts. For example, if a base were set up on a moon of Jupiter, then scores of these tiny chips could be fired into orbit around that giant planet. If a battery of laser canons were also built on this moon, then these chips could be accelerated by hitting them with laser light, increasing their velocity until they reached a fraction of the speed of light.
I then asked him a simple question: Can you reduce your chips to the size of molecules using nanotechnology? Then, instead of using Jupiter"s magnetic fields to accelerate these chips, you could use atom smashers based on our own moon to fire molecular-sized probes at near the speed of light. He agreed that this would be a real possibility, but that he hadn"t worked out the details yet.
So, we took out a sheet of paper and together began to crank out the equations for this possibility. (This is how we research scientists interact with one another, by going to the blackboard or taking out a sheet of paper to solve a problem by writing down the equations.) We wrote down the equations for the Lorentz force, which Peck uses to accelerate his chips around Jupiter, but then we reduced the chips to the size of molecules and placed them into a hypothetical accelerator similar to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. We could quickly see that the equations allowed for such a nanostarship to accelerate to nearly the speed of light, using only a conventional atom smasher based on the moon. Because we were reducing the size of our starship from a chip to a molecule, we could reduce the size of our accelerator from the size of Jupiter to a conventional atom smasher. It seemed like this idea was a real possibility.
But after a.n.a.lyzing the equations, we both agreed that the only problem was the stability of these delicate nanostarships. Would the acceleration eventually rip these molecules apart? Like a ball whipping around on a string, these molecules would experience centrifugal forces as they were accelerated to near light speed. Also, these molecules would be electrically charged, so that even electrical forces might rip them apart. We both concluded that nanoships were a definite possibility, but it might take decades of more research to reduce Peck"s chips to the size of a molecule and reinforce them so that they don"t disintegrate when accelerated to near light speed.
So Mason Peck"s dream is to send a swarm of chips to the nearest star, hoping that some of them actually make it across interstellar s.p.a.ce. But what do they do when they arrive?
This is where the work of Pei Zhang of Carnegie Mellon University in Silicon Valley comes in. He has created a fleet of minihelicopters that may one day wind up on another planet. He proudly showed me his fleet of swarm-bots, which resemble toy helicopters. But looks are deceptive. I could see that at the center of each was a chip crammed with sophisticated circuitry. With one push of a b.u.t.ton, he released four swam-bots into the air, where they flew in all directions and sent back information. Soon, I was surrounded by swarm-bots.
The purpose of these swarm-bots, he told me, is to provide crucial a.s.sistance during emergencies, like fires and explosions, by doing reconnaissance and surveillance. Eventually, these swarm-bots could be outfitted with TV cameras and sensors that can detect temperature, pressure, wind direction, etc., information that may prove critical during an emergency. Thousands of swarm-bots could be released over a battlefield, a fire, or even an extraterrestrial terrain. These swarm-bots also communicate with one another. If one of them hits an obstacle, it radios the information to the other swarm-bots.
So one vision of s.p.a.ce travel might be that thousands of cheap, disposable chips devised by people like Mason Peck are fired at the nearest star at nearly the speed of light. Once a handful of them reach their destination, they sprout wings and blades and fly over the alien terrain, just like Pei Zhang"s fleet of swarm-bots. They would then radio information back to earth. Once promising planets are found, a second generation of swarm-bots might be sent to create factories on these planets that then create more copies of these swarm-bots, which then fly to the next star. Then the process continues indefinitely.
EXODUS EARTH?.
By 2100, it is likely that we will have sent astronauts to Mars and the asteroid belt, explored the moons of Jupiter, and begun the first steps to send a probe to the stars.
But what about humanity? Will we have s.p.a.ce colonies to relieve the world population by finding a new home in outer s.p.a.ce? Will the human race begin to leave the earth by 2100?
No. Given the cost, even by 2100 and beyond, the majority of the human race will not board a s.p.a.ceship to visit the other planets. Although a handful of astronauts will have created tiny outposts among the planets, humanity itself will be stuck on earth.
Given the fact that earth will be the home of humanity for centuries to come, this raises another question: How will civilization itself evolve? How will science affect our lifestyle, our jobs, and our society? Science is the engine of prosperity, so how will it reshape civilization and wealth in the future?
Technology and ideology are shaking the foundations of twenty-first-century capitalism. Technology is making skills and knowledge the only sources of sustainable strategic advantage.
-LESTER THUROW
In mythology, the rise and fall of great empires depended on the strength and cunning of one"s armies. The great generals of the Roman Empire worshipped at the temple of Mars, the G.o.d of war, before decisive military campaigns. The legendary exploits of Thor inspired the Vikings into heroic battles. The ancients built huge temples and monuments dedicated to the G.o.ds, commemorating victories in battle against their enemies.
But when we a.n.a.lyze the actual rise and decline of great civilizations, we find an entirely different story.
If you were an alien from Mars visiting earth in the year 1500 and viewed all the great civilizations, which would you think would eventually dominate the word? The answer would be easy: any civilization but the European one.
In the east, you would see the great Chinese civilization, which had lasted for millennia. The long list of inventions pioneered by the Chinese is without parallel: paper, the printing press, gunpowder, the compa.s.s, etc. Its scientists are the best on the planet. Its government is unified and the mainland is at peace.
In the south, you have the Ottoman Empire, which came within a hairbreadth of overrunning Europe. The great Muslim civilization invented algebra, produced advances in optics and physics, and named the stars. Art and science flourish. Its great armies face no credible opposition. Istanbul is one of the world"s great centers for scientific learning.
Then you have the pitiful European countries, which are racked by religious fundamentalism, witch trials, and the Inquisition. Western Europe, in precipitous decline for a thousand years since the collapse of the Roman Empire, is so backward that it is a net importer of technology. It is a medieval black hole. Most of the knowledge of the Roman Empire has long since vanished, replaced by stifling religious dogma. Opposition or dissent is frequently met with torture or worse. Moreover, the city-states of Europe are constantly at war with one another.
So what happened?
Both the great Chinese and Ottoman empires are entering a 500-year-period of technological stagnation, while Europe is beginning an unprecedented embrace of science and technology.
Beginning in 1405, the Yongle emperor of China ordered a ma.s.sive naval armada, the largest the world had ever seen, to explore the world. (The three puny naval ships of Columbus would have fit nicely on the deck of just one of these colossal vessels.) Seven ma.s.sive expeditions were launched, each larger than the previous one. This fleet sailed around the coast of Southeast Asia and reached Africa, Madagascar, and perhaps even beyond that. The fleet brought back a rich bounty of goods, delicacies, and exotic animals from the far reaches of the earth. There are remarkable ancient woodcuts of African giraffes being paraded at a Ming Dynastyzoo.
But the rulers of China were also disappointed. Was that all there was? Where were the great armies that could rival the Chinese? Were exotic foods and strange animals all that the rest of the world could offer? Losing interest, the subsequent rulers of China let their great naval fleet decay and eventually burn. China gradually isolated itself from the outside world, stagnating as the world lunged forward.
A similar att.i.tude settled in the Ottoman Empire. Having conquered most of the world they knew, the Ottomans turned inward, into religious fundamentalism and centuries of stagnation. Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia, has said, "The great Islamic civilization went into decline when Muslim scholars interpreted knowledge acquisition, as enjoined by the Qur"an, to mean only knowledge of religion, and that other knowledge was un-Islamic. As a result, Muslims gave up the study of science, mathematics, medicine, and other so-called worldly disciplines. Instead, they spent much time debating on Islamic teachings and interpretations, on Islamic jurisprudence and Islamic practices, which led to a breakup of the Ummah and the founding of numerous sects, cults, and schools."
In Europe, however, a great awakening was beginning. Trade brought in fresh, revolutionary ideas, accelerated by Gutenberg"s printing press. The power of the Church began to weaken after a millennium of domination. The universities slowly turned their attention away from interpreting obscure pa.s.sages of the Bible to applying the physics of Newton and the chemistry of Dalton and others. Historian Paul Kennedy of Yale adds one more factor to the meteoric rise of Europe: the constant state of war between nearly equal European powers, none of which could ever dominate the Continent. Monarchs, constantly at war with one another, funded science and engineering to further their territorial ambitions. Science was not just an academic exercise but a way to create new weapons and new avenues of wealth.
Soon, the rise of science and technology in Europe began to weaken the power of China and the Ottoman Empire. The Muslim civilization, which had prospered for centuries as a gateway for trade between the East and the West, faltered as European sailors forged trade routes to the New World and the East-especially around Africa, bypa.s.sing the Middle East. And China found itself being carved up by European gunboats that ironically exploited two pivotal Chinese inventions, gunpowder and the compa.s.s.
The answer to the question "What happened?" is clear. Science and technology happened. Science and technology are the engines of prosperity. Of course, one is free to ignore science and technology, but only at your peril. The world does not stand still because you are reading a religious text. If you do not master the latest in science and technology, then your compet.i.tors will.
MASTERY OF THE FOUR FORCES.
But precisely how did Europe, the dark horse, suddenly sprint past China and the Muslim world after centuries of ignorance? There are both social and technological factors in this remarkable upset.
When a.n.a.lyzing world history after 1500, one realizes that Europe was ripe for the next great advance, with the decline of feudalism, the rise of a merchant cla.s.s, and the vibrant winds of the Renaissance. Physicists, however, view this great transition through the lens of the four fundamental forces that rule the universe. These are the fundamental forces that can explain everything around us, from machines, rockets, and bombs to the stars and the universe itself. Changing social trends may have set the stage for this transition, but it was the mastery of these forces in Europe that finally propelled it to the forefront of world powers.
The first force is gravity, which holds us anch.o.r.ed to the ground, prevents the sun from exploding, and holds the solar system together. The second is the electromagnetic force, which lights up our cities, energizes our dynamos and engines, and powers our lasers and computers. The third and fourth forces are the weak and strong nuclear forces, which hold the nucleus of the atom together, light the stars in the heavens, and create the nuclear fire at the center of our sun. All four forces were unraveled in Europe.
Each time one of these forces was understood by physicists, human history changed, and Europe was ideally suited to exploit that new knowledge. When Isaac Newton witnessed an apple fall and gazed at the moon, he asked himself a question that forever changed human history: If an apple falls, then does the moon also fall? In a brilliant stroke of insight when he was twenty-three years old, he realized that the forces that grab an apple are the same that reach out to the planets and comets in the heavens. This allowed him to apply the new mathematics he had just invented, the calculus, to plot the trajectory of the planets and moons, and for the first time to decode the motions of the heavens. In 1687, he published his masterpiece, Principia, Principia, arguably the most important book of science ever written, ranking among the most influential books in all human history. arguably the most important book of science ever written, ranking among the most influential books in all human history.
More important, Newton introduced a new way of thinking, a mechanics by which one could compute the motion of moving bodies via forces. No longer were we subject to the whims of spirits, demons, and ghosts; instead objects moved because of well-defined forces that could be measured and harnessed. This led to Newtonian mechanics, by which scientists could accurately predict the behavior of machines; this in turn paved the way for the steam engine and the locomotive. The intricate dynamics of complex steam-powered machines could be broken down systematically, bolt by bolt, lever by lever, by Newton"s laws. So Newton"s description of gravity helped to pave the way for the Industrial Revolution in Europe.
Then in the 1800s, again in Europe, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and others harnessed the second great force, electromagnetism, which ushered in the next great revolution. When Thomas Edison built generators at the Pearl Street Station in Lower Manhattan and electrified the first street on earth, he opened the gateway to the electrification of the entire planet. Today, from outer s.p.a.ce, we can view the earth at night, with entire continents set ablaze. Gazing at the earth from s.p.a.ce, any alien would immediately realize that earthlings had mastered electromagnetism. We dearly appreciate our dependence on it any time there is a power blackout. In an instant, we are suddenly thrown over 100 years back into the past, without credit cards, computers, lights, elevators, TV, radio, the Internet, motors, etc.
Last, the nuclear forces, also mastered by European scientists, are changing everything around us. Not only can we unlock the secrets of the heavens, revealing the power source that fires the stars, but we can also unravel inner s.p.a.ce, using this knowledge for medicine through MRI, CAT, and PET scans; radiation therapy; and nuclear medicine. Because the nuclear forces govern the immense power stored within the atom, the nuclear forces can ultimately determine the fate of humanity, whether we will prosper by harnessing the unlimited power of fusion or die in a nuclear inferno.
FOUR STAGES OF TECHNOLOGY.
The combination of changing social conditions and the mastery of the four forces propelled Europe to the forefront of nations. But technologies are dynamic, changing all the time. They are born, evolve, and rise and fall. To see how specific technologies will change in the near future, it is useful to see how technologies obey certain laws of evolution.
Ma.s.s technologies usually evolve in four basic stages. This can be seen in the evolution of paper, running water, electricity, and computers. In stage I, the products of technology are so precious that they are closely guarded. Paper, when it was invented in the form of papyrus by the ancient Egyptians and then by the Chinese thousands of years ago, was so precious that one papyrus scroll was closely guarded by scores of priests. This humble technology helped to set into motion ancient civilization.
Paper entered stage II around 1450, when Gutenberg invented printing from movable type. This made possible the "personal book," so that one person could possess one book containing the knowledge of hundreds of scrolls. Before Gutenberg, there were only 30,000 books in all Europe. By 1500, there were 9 million books, stirring up intense intellectual ferment and stimulating the Renaissance.
But around 1930, paper hit stage III, when the cost fell to a penny a sheet. This made possible the personal library, where one person could possess hundreds of books. Paper became an ordinary commodity, sold by the ton. Paper is everywhere and nowhere, invisible and ubiquitous. Now we are in stage IV, where paper is a fashion statement. We decorate our world with paper of all colors, shapes, and sizes. The largest source of urban waste is paper. So paper evolved from being a closely guarded commodity to being waste.
The same applies to running water. In ancient times, in stage I, water was so precious that a single well had to be shared by an entire village. This lasted for thousands of years, until the early 1900s, when personal plumbing was gradually introduced and we entered stage II. After World War II, running water entered stage III and became cheap and available to an expanding middle cla.s.s. Today, running water is in stage IV, a fashion statement, appearing in numerous shapes, sizes, and applications. We decorate our world with water, in the form of fountains and displays.
Electricity also went through the same stages. With the pioneering work of Thomas Edison and others, in stage I a factory shared a single lightbulb and electric motor. After World War I, we entered stage II with the personal lightbulb and personal motor. Today, electricity has disappeared; it is everywhere and nowhere. Even the word "electricity" has pretty much disappeared from the English language. At Christmas, we use hundreds of blinking lights to decorate our homes. We a.s.sume that electricity is hidden in the walls, ubiquitous. Electricity is a fashion statement, lighting up Broadway and decorating our world.
In stage IV, both electricity and running water have become utilities. They are so cheap, and we consume so much of them, that we meter the amount of electricity and water that runs into our home.
The computer follows the same pattern. Companies that understood this thrived and prospered. Companies that didn"t were driven almost to bankruptcy. IBM dominated stage I with the mainframe computer in the 1950s. One mainframe computer was so precious that it was shared by 100 scientists and engineers. However, the management of IBM failed to appreciate Moore"s law, so they almost went bankrupt when we entered stage II in the 1980s, with the coming of the personal computer.
But even personal computer manufacturers got complacent. They envisioned a world with stand-alone computers on every desk. They were caught off guard with the coming of stage III, Internet-linked computers by which one person could interact with millions of computers. Today, the only place you can find a stand-alone computer is in a museum.
So the future of the computer is to eventually enter stage IV, where it disappears and gets resurrected as a fashion statement. We will decorate our world with computers. The very word computer computer will gradually disappear from the English language. In the future, the largest component of urban waste will not be paper but chips. The future of the computer is to disappear and become a utility, sold like electricity and water. Computer chips will gradually disappear as computation is done "in the clouds." will gradually disappear from the English language. In the future, the largest component of urban waste will not be paper but chips. The future of the computer is to disappear and become a utility, sold like electricity and water. Computer chips will gradually disappear as computation is done "in the clouds."
So the evolution of computers is not a mystery; it is following the well-worn path of its predecessors, like electricity, paper, and running water.
But the computer and the Internet are still evolving. Economist John Steele Gordon was asked if this revolution is over. "Heavens, no. It will be a hundred years before it fully plays out, just like the steam engine. We are now at the point with the Internet that they were with the railroad in 1850. It"s just the beginning."
Not all technologies, we should point out, enter stages III and IV. For example, consider the locomotive. Mechanized transportation entered stage I in the early 1800s with the coming of the steam-driven locomotive. A hundred people would share a single locomotive. We entered stage II with the introduction of the "personal locomotive," otherwise known as the car, in the early 1900s. But the locomotive and the car (essentially a box on rails or wheels) have not changed much in the past decades. What has changed are refinements, such as more powerful and efficient engines as well as intelligence. So technologies that cannot enter stages III and IV will be embellished; for example, they will have chips placed in them so they become intelligent. Some technologies evolve all the way to stage IV, like electricity, computers, paper, and running water. Others stay stuck at an intermediate stage, but they continue to evolve by having incremental improvements such as chips and increased efficiency.
WHY BUBBLES AND CRASHES?.
But today, in the wake of the great recession of 2008, some voices can be heard saying that all this progress was an illusion, that we have to return to the simpler days, that there is something fundamentally flawed with the system.
When taking the long view of history, it is easy to point to the unexpected, with colossal bubbles and crashes that seem to come out of nowhere. They seem random, a by-product of the fickleness of fate and human folly. Historians and economists have written voluminously about the crash of 2008, trying to make sense out of it by examining a variety of causes, such as human nature, greed, corruption, lack of regulation, weaknesses in oversight, etc.
However, I have a different way of looking at the great recession, looking through the lens of science. In the long term, science is the engine of prosperity. For example, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History cites studies that "attribute 90 percent of income growth in England and the United States after 1780 to technological innovation, not mere capital acc.u.mulation." cites studies that "attribute 90 percent of income growth in England and the United States after 1780 to technological innovation, not mere capital acc.u.mulation."
Without science, we would be thrown back millennia into the dim past. But science is not uniform; it comes in waves. One seminal breakthrough (for example, the steam engine, the lightbulb, the transistor) often causes a cascade of secondary inventions that then create an avalanche of innovation and progress. Since they create vast amounts of wealth, these waves should be reflected in the economy.
The first great wave was steam power, which eventually led to the creation of the locomotive. Steam power fed the Industrial Revolution, which would turn society upside down. Fabulous wealth was created by steam power. But under capitalism, wealth is never stagnant. Wealth has to go somewhere. Capitalists are ceaselessly hunting for the next break, and will shift this wealth to invest in even more speculative schemes, sometimes with catastrophic results.
In the early 1800s, much of the excess wealth generated by steam power and the Industrial Revolution went into locomotive stocks on the London Stock Exchange. In fact, a bubble began to form, with scores of locomotive companies appearing on the London Exchange. Virginia Postrel, business writer for the New York Times, New York Times, writes, "A century ago, railroad companies accounted for half the securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange." Since the locomotive was still in its infancy, this bubble was unsustainable, and it finally popped, creating the Crash of 1850, one of the great collapses in the history of capitalism. This was followed by a series of minicrashes that occurred nearly every decade, created by the excess wealth sp.a.w.ned by the Industrial Revolution. writes, "A century ago, railroad companies accounted for half the securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange." Since the locomotive was still in its infancy, this bubble was unsustainable, and it finally popped, creating the Crash of 1850, one of the great collapses in the history of capitalism. This was followed by a series of minicrashes that occurred nearly every decade, created by the excess wealth sp.a.w.ned by the Industrial Revolution.
There is irony here: the heyday of the railroad would be the 1880s and 1890s. So the Crash of 1850 was due to speculative fever and the wealth created by science, but the real job of railing the world would take many more decades to mature.
Thomas Friedman writes, "In the 19th century, America had a railroad boom, bubble and bust.... But even when that bubble burst, it left America with an infrastructure of railroads that made transcontinental travel and shipping dramatically easier and cheaper."
Instead of capitalists learning this lesson, this cycle began to repeat soon afterward. A second great wave of technology spread, led by the electric and automotive revolutions of Edison and Ford. The electrification of the factory and household, as well as the proliferation of the Model T, once again created fabulous wealth. As always, excess wealth had to go somewhere. In this case, it went into the U.S. Stock Exchange, in the form of a bubble in utility and automotive stocks. People ignored the lesson of the Crash of 1850, since that had happened eighty years earlier in the dim past. From 1900 to 1925, the number of automobile start-up companies. .h.i.t 3,000, which the market simply could not support. Once again, this bubble was unsustainable. For this and other reasons, the bubble popped in 1929, creating the Great Depression.
But the irony here is that the paving and electrification of America and Europe would not take place until after the crash, during the 1950s and 1960s.
More recently, we had the third great wave of science, the coming of high tech, in the form of computers, lasers, s.p.a.ce satellites, the Internet, and electronics. The fabulous wealth created by high tech had to go somewhere. In this case, it went into real estate, creating a huge bubble. With the value of real estate exploding through the roof, people began to borrow against the value of their homes, using them as piggy banks, which further accelerated the bubble. Unscrupulous bankers fueled this bubble by giving away home mortgages like water. Once again, people ignored the lesson of the crashes of 1850 and 1929, which happened 160 and 80 years in the past. Ultimately, this new bubble could not be sustained, and we had the crash of 2008 and the great recession.
Thomas Friedman writes, "The early 21st century saw a boom, bubble and now a bust around financial services. But I fear all it will leave behind are a bunch of empty Florida condos that never should have been built, used private jets that the wealthy can no longer afford and the dead derivative contracts that no one can understand."
But in spite of all the silliness that accompanied the recent crash, the irony here is that the wiring and networking of the world will take place after the crash of 2008. The heyday of the information revolution is yet to come.
This leads to the next question: What is the fourth wave? No one can be sure. It might be a combination of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, telecommunications, and biotechnology. As with previous cycles, it may take another eighty years for these technologies to create a tidal wave of fabulous wealth. Around the year 2090, hopefully people will not ignore the lesson of the previous eighty years.
WINNERS AND LOSERS: JOBS.
But as technologies evolve, they create abrupt changes in the economy that sometimes lead to social dislocations. In any revolution, there are winners and losers. This will become more evident by midcentury. We no longer have blacksmiths and wagonmakers in every village. Moreover, we do not mourn the pa.s.sing of many of these jobs. But the question is: What jobs will flourish by midcentury? How will the evolution of technology change the way we work?
We can partially determine the answer by asking a simple question: What are the limitations of robots? As we have seen, there are at least two basic stumbling blocks to artificial intelligence: pattern recognition and common sense. Therefore, the jobs that will survive in the future are, in the main, those that robots cannot perform-ones that require these two abilities.
Among blue-collar workers, the losers will be workers who perform purely repet.i.tive tasks (like autoworkers on the factory line) because robots excel at this. Computers give the illusion that they possess intelligence, but that is only because they can add millions of times faster than we can. We forget that computers are just sophisticated adding machines, and repet.i.tive work is what they do best. That is why some automobile a.s.sembly-line workers have been among the first to suffer from the computer revolution. This means that any factory work that can be reduced to a set of scripted, repet.i.tive motions will eventually disappear.