Our study made the first known attempt to combine these various costs and benefits into one analysis to estimate what recycling rate is best. Our conclusion was that recycling up to 10% appears to reduce social costs, but any recycling over 10% costs the environment and the economy more than it helps. The environment and economy suffer as we transport some recycled materials to destinations as far afield as China.
These provocative results certainly require confirmation from future independent and objective research before broad policy goals can be adjusted. Also, many of the benefit and costs associated with waste disposal and recycling vary across regions of the country and world, and thus optimal recycling rates may also vary. For example, we used municipal cost data from Japan for this study because the United States and most European countries do not keep such data.
But if these results hold for other developed countries, then society should collectively rethink how to approach recycling.
And
But the substantial environmental benefits outlined above of using recycled materials in production vary substantially across materials. Aluminum and other metals are environmentally costly to mine and prepare for production. Paper, too, is costly to manufacture from raw sources. But glass and plastic appear relatively easy on the environment when manufactured from raw materials.
These differences are vital. Although the optimal overall recycling rate may be only 10%, the composition of that 10% should contain primarily aluminum, other metals and some forms of paper, notably cardboard and other source of fiber. Optimal recycling rates for these materials may be near 100% while optimal rates of recycling plastic and glass might be zero. To encourage this outcome, a substantial subsidy offered only on those materials whose life cycles generate positive environmental benefits should be applied.
The article illustrates once again that whether we are talking tax cuts, living wages, rent control, tariffs, or recycling, good intentions unsupported by empirical evidence can be counterproductive.
New York Times reporter Eduardo Porter has an excellent piece about how ideology shapes our embrace/rejection of science. The left loves to harangue about the "anti-science" right when in fact the left participates just as much in the same anti-science behavior, and the left's anti-science behavior is every bit as destructive.
“The left is turning anti-science,” Marc Andreessen, the creator of Netscape who as a venture capitalist has become one of the most prominent thinkers of Silicon Valley, told me not long ago.
He was reflecting broadly about science and technology. His concerns ranged from liberals’ fear of genetically modified organisms to their mistrust of technology’s displacement of workers in some industries. “San Francisco is an interesting case,” he noted. “The left has become reactionary.”
Still, liberal biases may be most dangerous in the context of climate change, the most significant scientific and technological challenge of our time. For starters, they stand against the only technology with an established track record of generating electricity at scale while emitting virtually no greenhouse gases: nuclear power.
Only 35 percent of Democrats, compared with 60 percent of Republicans, favor building more nuclear power plants, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.
It is the G.O.P. that is closer to the scientific consensus. According to a separate Pew poll of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 65 percent of scientists want more nuclear power too.
He goes on to note:
Research suggests that better scientific knowledge will not be sufficient, on its own, to overcome our biases. Neither will it be mostly about improving education in STEM fields. To defeat our scientific phobias and taboos will require understanding how the findings of science and their consequences fit into the cultural makeup of both liberals and conservatives.
Explaining in more detail:
It is not hard to figure out the biases. People on the right tend to like private businesses, which they see as productive job creators. They mistrust government. It’s not surprising they will play down climate change when it seems to imply a package of policies that curb the actions of the former and give a bigger role to the latter.
On the left, by contrast, people tend to mistrust corporations — especially big ones — as corrupt and destructive. These are the institutions bringing us both nuclear power and genetically modified agriculture.
“When science is aligned with big corporations the left immediately, intuitively perceives the technology as not benefiting the greater good but only benefiting the corporation,” said Matthew Nisbet, an expert on the communication of science at Northeastern University.
So when assessing the risks of different technological options, the left finds the risk of nuclear energy looming the highest, regardless of contrary evidence.
This doesn’t affect only beliefs about climate change and energy policy. The research identified similar distortions in people’s beliefs about the scientific consensus on the consequences of allowing concealed handguns. Biases also color beliefs in what science says and means across a range of other issues.
In the context of climate change, this heuristic presents an odd problem. It suggests that attitudes about climate change have little to do with education and people’s understanding of science.
Fixing it won’t require just better science. Eliminating the roadblocks against taking substantive action against climate change may require somehow dissociating the scientific facts from deeply rooted preferences about the world we want to live in, on both sides of the ideological divide.
And it is the last sentence that is key. How do we do that! It seems to me we have to create spaces for productive conversations. No matter how emotionally satisfying it may be to engage in tribal disdain for those of another tribe for being "anti-science," it is precisely this behavior that entrenches those we may wish to persuade. And the glaring truth is that very very few of us are pro-science. We are pro-ideology and pro-heuristics, and happy to embrace science when it meets these prior concerns. The reality is that there are multiple ways to frame an agenda. So another piece of the puzzle is to enter the mind of opponents and to figure out how to frame concerns in a way that resonates with things they value. But research shows, unsurprisingly, that we nearly always attempt persuasion from the angle that is most persuasive for us, projecting our values on to others. It usually has the effect of driving the opponent in further away.
I think the answer lies with these considerations. I didn't say it was an easy answer. What thoughts do you have?
I just read Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages by Frances & Joseph Gies. The book focuses on technological development during the 1,000 years from 500-1500 C.E. The Middle Ages were once cast as an age of regression from the golden age of Greece and Rome until the Renaissance and the Enlightenment saved the day. Furthermore, capitalism is often seen as a product of the last two or three centuries. Modern scholarship debunks these characterizations. This book does a great job at showing the cultural and technological ferment of the Middle Ages, as well as showing how many of the key components of the modern economic world (companies, risk management, double-entry bookkeeping, finance, technological innovation, labor specialization, factories, to name a few) were already coming to flower by 1500. Here are two insights from the end of the book:
… “Asian priority in a wide range of [technological] innovations is established. Asia, however, showed little inclination to borrow, and so, after giving much to others, allowed its own technology to wither, as demonstrated in the history of the two epoch-making inventions of printing and firearms. Each originated in China, but each was allowed to languish, while Europe seized them in both hands to make them major instruments of change. An authority [Timo Myllyntaus] on technology transfer in the modern world asserts that the process ‘is not just a matter of moving some piece of hardware from one place to another… A material infrastructure is not enough. There must also be sufficient nonmaterial infrastructure.’ In the ‘nonmaterial infrastructure’ of medieval Europe was a spirit of progress whose ingredients included intellectual curiosity, a love of tinkering, an ambition ‘to serve God’ and also ‘to grow rich as all men desire to do.’
A sense of progress implies a sense of history, something missing among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. ‘Lacking any objective understanding of the past – that is, lacking history,’ says [D. S. L.] Cardwell, ‘the hierarchical and slave-owning societies of classical antiquity failed to appreciate the great progress that had been achieved by and through technics.’ On the contrary, the ancients were fond of looking back to what they conceived as a vanished ‘golden age,’ a conception the reverse of progress. The Christian Church, whose pioneering monastic orders made many practical and material contributions to medieval technology, also supplied a noncyclical, straight-line view of history that allowed scope for the idea of progress.” (287-288)
The book concludes with this paragraph:
“’Technology,’ says Melvin Kranzberg, founder of the Society for the History of Technology, ‘is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.’ It is what each age and each society make of it. The Middle Ages used it sometimes wisely, sometimes recklessly, often for dubious purposes, seldom with a thought for the future, and with only a dim awareness of the scientific and mathematical laws governing it. But operating on instinct, insight, trial and error, and perseverance, the craftsman and craftswoman, the entrepreneurs, the working monks and the clerical intellectuals, and the artist-engineers all transformed the world, on balance very much to the world’s advantage.” (291)
I've read a number of books on the history of technology. This is one of the best short surveys I have read, reading more like a novel than a history book.
The printing press was nominated by 10 of our 12 panelists, five of
whom ranked it in their top three. Dyson described its invention as the
turning point at which “knowledge began freely replicating and quickly
assumed a life of its own.”
2. Electricity, late 19th century
And then there was light—and Nos. 4, 9, 16, 24, 28, 44, 45, and most of the rest of modern life.
3. Penicillin, 1928
Accidentally discovered in 1928, though antibiotics were not widely
distributed until after World War II, when they became the silver bullet
for any number of formerly deadly diseases ...
... In my case, as somebody always on the look-out for under-reported good news stories, it also served to alert me to just how dramatic the fall in “demand” for firefighters has been. Intrigued by the strike, I looked up the numbers and found to my amazement that in 2011, compared with just a decade before, firefighters attended 48 per cent fewer fires overall; 39 per cent fewer building fires; 44 per cent fewer minor outdoor fires; 24 per cent fewer road-traffic collisions; 8 per cent fewer floods — and 40 per cent fewer incidents overall. The decline has if anything accelerated since 2011.
That is to say, during a period when the population and the number of buildings grew, we needed to call the fire brigade much, much less. Most important of all, the number of people dying in fires in the home has fallen by 60 per cent compared with the 1980s. The credit for these benign changes goes at least partly to technology — fire-retardant materials, self-extinguishing cigarettes, smoke alarms, sprinklers, alarms on cookers — much of which was driven by sensible regulation. Fewer open fires and fewer people smoking, especially indoors, must have helped too. There is little doubt that rules about such things have saved lives, as even most libertarians must concede.
But this is not the whole story. I was stunned to find that the number of deliberate fires has been falling much faster than the number of accidental fires. The steepest fall has been in car fires, down from 77,000 in 2001-2 to 17,000 in 2010-11. This echoes the 60 per cent collapse in car thefts in G7 countries since 1995. Deliberate fires in buildings have more than halved in number; I assume this is also something to do with crime detection — CCTV, DNA testing and so forth, which make it much less easy to get away with arson. Only deliberate outdoor fires show little trend: perhaps because not until he is deep in the woods does an arsonist feel safe from detection.
Behind the firefighters’ strike, therefore, lies a most unusual policy dilemma: how to manage declining demand for a free public service. NHS planners would give their eye teeth for such a problem, since healthcare demand seems to expand infinitely, whatever the policy. ...
... Fire was an abiding terror to our ancestors, consuming not just many of their lives, but much of their property. Almost all of us have family stories of devastating fires. Although we will always need this essential service , thankfully, that experience is becoming steadily rarer. Sir Ken Knight found it likely that this decline would continue, remarking: “I wonder if anyone a decade ago would have predicted the need for fire and rescue services to attend 40 per cent fewer emergency incidents.” The fire service will undoubtedly have to shrink. ...
Every new invention is supposed to be the "next big thing" – and some
are. The cellphone, the PC, the plane: all inventions that
revolutionized the way we live our lives and far surpassed their initial
hype. But some inventions don't quite measure up to the fanfare that
precedes their release. These end up in the scrap bin of history. Check
out what inventions we all though would revolutionize our world... but
only ended up on this website list.
1. The Segway
2. One Laptop Per Child
3. The Bluetooth Headset
4. The Tablet PC
5. The Electric Car
6. The e-card
7. The Car Phone
Read the article to get the analysis. Learning from mistakes is as important (more important?) than case studies about successes
More than $1 trillion has been spent on biomedical research over the past 20 years. These investments should soon start yielding longevity dividends.
The number of scientists working on extending the life span worldwide has increased exponentially as computer and communications technologies have entered the mainstream and China and India have joined the race.
The life spans of some laboratory animals have already been extended more than tenfold.
Innovations have already started: vital organs have been grown from patients’ own cells and several stem-cell therapies are being proven.
Cancer survival rates have increased steadily over the past few years. A diagnosis is no longer a certain death sentence.
Advances in laboratory diagnostics and biometrics are already providing valuable insight into disease prevention.
Fast-food outlets have started offering healthier dishes and displaying caloric content and smoking rates in developed countries have declined.
Many people would not interpret these seven facts as a single trend leading to dramatic increases in life expectancy because the long-term effects are so unpredictable. But just two decades ago, nobody could imagine the possibility of the technology we use daily now. ...
University of Adelaide researchers have developed a process for turning waste plastic bags into a high-tech nanomaterial.
The innovative nanotechnology uses non-biodegradable plastic grocery
bags to make 'carbon nanotube membranes' – highly sophisticated and
expensive materials with a variety of potential advanced applications
including filtration, sensing, energy storage and a range of biomedical
innovations.
"Non-biodegradable plastic bags are a serious menace to natural ecosystems and present a problem in terms of disposal," says Professor Dusan Losic, ARC Future Fellow and Research Professor of Nanotechnology in the University's School of Chemical Engineering.
"Transforming these waste materials through 'nanotechnological
recycling' provides a potential solution for minimising environmental
pollution at the same time as producing high-added value products." ...
(Nanowerk News) Drexel University nanotechnology researchers
are continuing to expand the capabilities and functionalities of a
family of two-dimensional materials they discovered that are as thin as a
single atom, but have the potential to store massive amounts of energy.
Their latest achievement has pushed the materials storage capacities to
new levels while also allowing for their use in flexible devices. ...
BELLEVUE, Wash. — In a drab one-story building here, set between an
indoor tennis club and a home appliance showroom, dozens of engineers,
physicists and nuclear experts are chasing a radical dream of Bill
Gates.
The quest is for a new kind of nuclear reactor that would be fueled by
today’s nuclear waste, supply all the electricity in the United States
for the next 800 years and, possibly, cut the risk of nuclear weapons
proliferation around the world. ...
... But now Net Power, based in the US state of North Carolina, believes
it can redesign the power plant so it can still run on coal or natural
gas, but without releasing harmful fumes.
Rodney Allam, chief technologist at 8 Rivers Capital, which
owns Net Power, says: "The perception has been that to avoid emissions
of [carbon dioxide] CO2, we have to get rid of fossil fuels.
"But unfortunately, fossil fuels represent over 70% of the
fuel that's consumed in the world and the idea that you can get rid of
that in any meaningful sense is a pipe dream."
The Net Power system is different from currently operating power plants
because carbon dioxide, normally produced as waste when making
electricity, would become a key ingredient when burning the fuel. ...
MOFFETT FIELD, California (AP) — NASA is preparing to launch a 3-D
printer into space next year, a toaster-sized game changer that greatly
reduces the need for astronauts to load up with every tool, spare part
or supply they might ever need.
The printers would serve as a
flying factory of infinite designs, creating objects by extruding layer
upon layer of plastic from long strands coiled around large spools.
Doctors use them to make replacement joints and artists use them to
build exquisite jewelry.
In NASA labs, engineers are 3-D printing
small satellites that could shoot out of the Space Station and transmit
data to earth, as well as replacement parts and rocket pieces that can
survive extreme temperatures. ...
... In the '90s computers invaded our homes. In the 2000s computers invaded our pockets. This decade, all our clothing, accessories, vehicles, and everything (?!) appear on the verge of computerization.
Welcome to the Internet of Things (IoT).
Currently the idea of the IoT has many definitions. Most include a
world in the not-too-distant future where most objects are computerized
and seamlessly integrated into our information network, creating "smart"
grids, homes, and environments. ...
... This presents a big opportunity for someone who can devise a tasty and
affordable plant-based substitute for meat. That is exactly what Ethan
Brown, the founder and chief executive of a California-based startup
called Beyond Meat,
aims to do, and he has persuaded some smart people to put their money
behind him. Beyond Meat makes vegan "chicken-free" strips that it says
are better for people's health (low-fat, no cholesterol), better for the
environment (requiring less land and water), and better for animals
(obviously) than real chicken; most important, if all goes according to
plan, they will cost less to produce than chicken. Fortune has
learned that Bill Gates is an investor; he sampled the product and said
he couldn't tell the difference between Beyond Meat and real chicken.
"The meat market is ripe for invention," Gates wrote in a blog post
about the future of food. Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture
capital firm, made Beyond Meat its first investment in a food startup.
"KP is looking for big ideas, and this qualifies as a big idea," says
Amol Deshpande, a former Cargill executive and a partner at the venture
firm. "The single biggest inefficiency in agriculture is how we get our
protein." Other investors include Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the
founders of Twitter; Morgan Creek Capital Management; and the Humane
Society of the United States, an animal-welfare group. ...
Globalizationandtechnology is often referred to like a monolithic
thing. A new study shows they're very separate. Globalization increases
joblessness. Computers increase inequality.
... Here's the bumper sticker version of their conclusion: Globalization increases unemployment; technology increases inequality.
Globalization:
The authors found that metros with more exposure to Chinese trade --
mostly concentrated in the swoosh of states extending
from Indiana down to the Gulf of Mexico and up through North Carolina
-- saw significant job losses, both in manufacturing and overall. For
every $1,000 increase in imports per worker, the share of people with
jobs declined by 0.7 percentage points -- and more for non-college
grads. As manufacturing jobs declined, demand for local services would
decline, and thus job losses could extend into areas like retail and
hotels.
Technology: The computerization of certain
tasks hasn't reduced employment, the authors find. But it has reduced
the availability of decent-paying, routine-heavy jobs. Middle-class
jobs, like clerks and sales people and administration support, have
disappeared as computers gradually learned to perform their routines
more efficiently. But as those jobs disappeared, cities saw an increase
in both high-skill work and lower-paid service sector work, leading to
little overall change in employment. ...
Much of the debate over taxing the wealthy focuses on taxing giant salaries.
But a new study from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that the
real money for the wealthy is made from investments and business
income—not compensation. ...
In their paper, Kaplan and Rauh conclude “it’s the market” rather than some class-wafaresque malfeasance at play. Here’s why:
1.The increase in pay at the highest income levels is broad-based:
Public company executives, private company executives, hedge fund and
private equity investors, Wall Street bankers, lawyers, and pro athletes
have all experienced big jumps in pay over the past few decades. ...
2. Typical measures of high-end income inequality are incomplete.
Inequality alarmists typically point to data from Thomas Piketty and
Emmanel Saez which show the share of taxable income accruing to the top
1% up markedly since 1980 and at levels not seen since the Roaring ’20s.
Yet once you add back transfer and taxes, as the Congressional Budget
Office does in its analysis, you find that government policy — including
the tax code — has already been restraining the rise inequality. Kaplan
and Rauh: “In the most recent data from 2009, the
aftertax, after-transfer income share of the top 1 percent was around
the same level as in 1987–1988, 1996, and 2001.”
3. The superrich are getting that way through effort and
education — particularly in industries where tech and globalization play
a big role — rather than through inheritance: ...
It has long been my suspicion that at central player in the
rise of inequality is due to the ongoing race between technological innovation
and development of human capital. During times of rapid increase in
productivity through technological changes, owner of the technology race ahead.
Worker education and formation human capital is slower to adapt. But technology
can only go so far before it must have plentiful workers who have adapted. As
this the gain from technology runs its course the demand for new workers
increases labor begins to race ahead. I'm no expert on these matters but it
seems to that something like that is happening today. It isn't just the U.S.
that experiences this, but the whole industrialized world. Something more
systemic seems to be afoot.
1. The United States had its financial bubble. Europe is having one too. Is China next? If it is, it could reshape the global economy and radically reshape Chinese government. Here is an interesting piece about China's real estate bubble.
... I like the idea of a breaking the Industrial Revolution into stages,
but I would define them in more fundamental terms. The first Industrial
Revolution was the harnessing of large-scale man-made power, which began
with the steam engine. The internal combustion engine, electric power,
and other sources of energy are just further refinements of this basic
idea. The second Industrial Revolution would be the development of
interchangeable parts and the assembly line, which made possible
inexpensive mass production with relatively unskilled labor. The Third
Industrial Revolution would not be computers, the Internet, or mobile
phones, because up to now these have not been industrial tools;
they have been used for moving information, not for making things.
Instead, the rise of computers and the Internet is just a warm-up for
the real Third Industrial Revolution, which is the full integration of information technology with industrial production.
The effect of the Third Industrial Revolution will be to collapse the
distance between the design of a product and its physical manufacture,
in much the same way that the Internet has eliminated the distance
between the origination of a new idea and its communication to an
audience. ...
... Eventually all of the creative ferment of the industrial revolution pays
off in a big “whoosh,” but it takes many decades, depending on where
you draw the starting line of course. A look at the early 19th century
is sobering, or should be, for anyone doing fiscal budgeting today. But
it is also optimistic in terms of the larger picture facing humanity
over the longer run.
5. What are the contours of income inequality in the United States? This 40 minute video by Emmanuel Saez offers some important insights.
6. Futurist Ray Kurzweil is a little too sensationalist for my taste but this vid offers interesting food for thought about nanotechnology and the future sports. We will even be able to have meaningful sports competition?
The recovered wealth - most of it from higher stock prices - has been
flowing mainly to richer Americans. By contrast, middle class wealth is
mostly in the form of home equity, which has risen much less.
1. Conventional wisdom says wearing the red shirt in Star Trek will get you killed. Not so fast. Statistical analysis in Significance Magazine disagrees. (Keep your redshirt on: a Bayesian exploration)
"... In spite of wearing a redshirt, there is
only an 8.6% chance of a member of the operations or engineering
departments becoming a casualty. These personnel should ensure that
their life insurance plans are based on their departments and not their
uniform color.
Although Enterprise crew members in
redshirts suffer many more casualties than crew members in other
uniforms, they suffer fewer casualties than crew members in gold
uniforms when the entire population size is considered. Only 10% of the
entire redshirt population was lost during the three year run of Star Trek.
This is less than the 13.4% of goldshirts, but more than the 5.1% of
blueshirts. What is truly hazardous is not wearing a redshirt, but being
a member of the security department. The red-shirted members of
security were only 20.9% of the entire crew, but there is a 61.9% chance
that the next casualty is in a redshirt and 64.5% chance this
red-shirted victim is a member of the security department. The remaining
redshirts, operations and engineering make up the largest single
population, but only have an 8.6% chance of being a casualty.
Red uniform shirts are safe, as long as the wearer is not in the security department."
2. Interesting piece on automation in the Economist: Robocolleague
Robots are getting more powerful. That need not be bad news for workers. ...
... Historically, technological advances have been relatively benign for
workers. Labour-market trends through the 19th and 20th centuries show
surprising continuity, according to Lawrence Katz of Harvard University
and Robert Margo of Boston University. In recent decades, for example,
computerisation and automation have displaced “middle-skilled” workers
at the same time as employment among high- and low-skilled workers has
increased. This “hollowing out” is not new, Messrs Katz and Margo note.
Early industrialisation had similar effects. Middle-skilled artisans,
like trained weavers, were put out of work by industrial textile
production, but the fortunes of less-skilled factory workers and
white-collar factory managers steadily improved. Mechanisation’s
insatiable appetite for routine work of all types has yet to create mass
unemployment. Quite the opposite.
The worry is that technology now has its sights set on non-routine
tasks as well as mundane ones. Yet Mr Autor notes that just because a
skilled job can be automated does not mean it will be. The number of
workers used to build Nissan vehicles varies a lot between Japan, where
labour is expensive, and India, where it is abundant and cheap. The
relative cost of different types of workers matters for firms as they
choose how to deploy new technologies. ...
Indie Capitalism has three foundational principles:
• Creativity generates economic value.
Creativity is the source of profit. Yes, efficiency can squeeze more
out of what exists, but creativity gives us originality, which
translates into a market advantage and big margins.
• Creativity drives capitalism.
These past few years we have been victimized by the disastrous results
of “creativity” applied to the financial sector (mortgage-backed
securities, for starters). What we lost sight of is that the scaling of
creativity to actually make things of value sold in the marketplace is
the true heart of our economic system. It is the true generator of net
new jobs, wealth, and tax revenue.
• Creative destruction is crucial to economic growth.
Crony capitalism, which relies on monopoly and political power, is
antithetical to entrepreneurial capitalism. A faster cycle of birth,
growth, and death of companies boosts creativity, economic value, and
growth.
The bottom line: For the first time in decades, several key economic drivers have created a competitive advantage for the U.S. that will encourage corporate strategic decisions on capital allocation and acquisitions for generations to come.
Here's why:
1. Cheap and abundant natural gas. ...
2. Innovation. Despite talk of a brain drain, the U.S. remains the global innovation leader, maintaining a position enjoyed for 50 years. ...
3. Rule of law. Without the means to protect intellectual property, it cannot be exploited for competitive advantage. ...
4. Human capital. The wage gap between the U.S. and China has been shrinking. ...
5. De-complexity. Western multinationals continue to struggle with management of operations in developing countries. ...
6. Public policy and abundance. The federal government appears to be seizing the opportunity to promote job growth at home.
7. Credit, currency and the coming wave of mergers and acquisitions.
"Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo. ..."
Throughout history, war and innovation have gone hand in hand,
whether it’s breakthroughs out of heavily funded R&D programs
or makeshift contraptions thrown together with spare parts. Soldiers are
trained to use the technology on hand to get the job done, one way or
the other.
But how would military operations change if soldiers on the
battlefield could have the best of both worlds: access to expert
engineers able to fabricate custom-designed fixes right on-the-spot and
in very little time? ...
"It may sound strange and far out, but it’s actually quite simple. 4D
printing is being billed as a process where synthetic objects can change
and adapt themselves to the environment. In a recent TED interview, Tibbits compared the process of 4D printing to the process of natural adaptation:
Natural systems obviously have this built in — the
ability to have a desire. Plants, for example, generally have the desire
to grow towards light and they generate energy from the translation of
photosynthesis, carbon dioxide to oxygen, and so on. This is extremely
difficult to build into synthetic systems — the ability to “want” or
need something and know how to change itself in order to acquire it, or
the ability to generate its own energy source. If we combine the
processes that natural systems offer intrinsically (genetic
instructions, energy production, error correction) with those artificial
or synthetic (programmability for design and scaffold, structure,
mechanisms) we can potentially have extremely large-scale
quasi-biological and quasi-synthetic architectural organisms."
The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the
digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year
for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought
recovery might have begun.
The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5
billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at
its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the
record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday
by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide
significant encouragement.
8. Teleworking: The myth of working from home from the BBC. "Yahoo has banned its staff from "remote" working. After years of many predicting working from home as the future for everybody, why is it not the norm?"
"Reasons for high unemployment among the young include ineffective education systems (the share of early school dropouts is 20% in Italy and 30% in Spain) and dual labour markets with highly protected jobs for older employees. The good performance of Germany is not least a result of the German apprenticeship system, which facilitates labour market access for school leavers by lowering the company’s costs for employing them. The OECD’s latest “Going for Growth” report recommends reforms to strengthen the vocational training systems as one of the most effective ways to fight structural youth unemployment. This would also be a reasonable starting point for the EU’s youth employment programme."
"What’s most revealing about this study is that, like earlier research,
it suggests that students’ preference for printed textbooks is reflects
the real pedagogical advantages they experience in using the format:
fewer distractions, deeper engagement, better comprehension and
retention, and greater flexibility to accommodating idiosyncratic study
habits. Electronic textbooks will certainly get better, and will
certainly have advantages of their own, but they won’t replicate the
particular advantages inherent to the tangible form of the printed book."
The Catholic Church has struggled to bring in young members in the
United States. Less than half of U.S. Hispanics between 18 and 29
identify as Catholic, compared with the 60+ percent of Hispanics older
than 50.
The narrative of decline in the mainline church underestimates the continuing influence of its members, says a religion researcher.
16.Some interesting observations by NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He says we tend to process our social world through three lenses: Social distance, hierarchy, and disgust. Conservatives tend to have a lower threshold of revulsion while liberals, and praticularly libertarians, have a higher threshold.
Andrew McAfee explains that the resurgence in American manufacturing doesn't mean the creation of new jobs. There is global decline in manufacturing jobs, even as manufacturing grows, due to automation. He ends with this:
... Even if total manufacturing employment goes down because of automation,
he [Ron Atkinson] writes, other industries will pick up the slack by employing more
people. This is because:
"...most of the savings [from automation] would flow back to
consumers in the form of lower prices. Consumers would then use the
savings to buy things (e.g., go out to dinner, buy books, go on travel).
This economic activity stimulates demand that other companies (e.g.,
restaurants, book stores, and hotels) respond to by hiring more
workers."
Fair enough, but what if those other companies are also automating?
One of the most striking phenomena of recent years is the encroachment
of automation into tasks, skills and abilities that used to belong to
people alone. As we document in Race Against the Machine,
this includes driving cars, responding accurately to natural language
questions, understanding and producing human speech, writing prose,
reviewing documents and many others. Some combination of these will be
valuable in every industry.
Previous waves of automation, like the mechanization of agriculture
and the advent of electric power to factories, have not resulted in
large-scale unemployment or impoverishment of the average worker. But
the historical pattern isn't giving me a lot of comfort these days,
simply because we've never before seen automation encroach so broadly
and deeply, while also improving so quickly at the same time.
I don't know what all the consequences of the current wave of digital
automation will be — no one does. But I'm not blithe about its
consequences for the labor force, because that would be ignoring the
data and missing the big picture.
Seriously, technological innovation always creates dislocations. Fear of machines replacing humans goes back to the beginning of the industrial revolution. The economy has always adapted and expect it will again.
Alas, that won't help, as this graph
compiled by statistician Simon Hedlin shows. The total dependency ratio
(children and retirees, compared with those of working age) fell in all
G20/OECD nations bar Germany and Sweden between 1960 and 2010. In the
next fifty years, it will rise in all those nations, bar India and South
Africa. In most nations, the ratio will rise by 40% or more; there are
huge increases in dependency in parts of Asia (China and South Korea)
and in eastern Europe. Britain and America are towards the bottom of the
table, but their problems are big enough.
There are many implications. With more dependents to care for, it is
very hard to imagine how we will pay down our debts. And it is also very
hard to imagine how one can possibly expect government spending to
shrink significantly.
"... BiblioTech, a $1.5 million Bexar County paperless
library will have scores of computer terminals, laptops, tablets, and
e-readers – but not a dog-eared classic or dusty reference book in
sight.
“Think of an Apple store,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who led his county’s bookless library project, told NPR when describing the planned library.
The 4,989-squre-foot, digital-only library, one of the first of its
kind, will feature 100 e-readers available for circulation, 50 e-readers
for children, 50 computer stations, 25 laptops, and 25 tablets for
on-site use. Patrons can check out e-readers for two weeks or load books
onto their own devices.
“A technological evolution is taking place,” Wolff says. “And I think we’re stepping in at the right time.” ..."
"UCLA's survey of incoming
college freshmen shows fewer identify as liberals and an increasing
number saying the economy significantly affected their college choice."
"In some ways, this shift isn’t as dramatic as it might first appear.
Even though younger evangelicals are increasingly walking away from the
religious right, they are still self-identifying as Republicans (54 percent) more than Democrats (26 percent). Younger
Christians still agree with the religious right on the issues but
reject the movement’s tactics, tone, and narrow focus on social issues."
8. Scientific American: The Liberals' War on Science. How politics distorts science on both ends of the spectrum.
"Surveys show that moderate liberals and conservatives embrace science
roughly equally (varying across domains), which is why scientists like
E. O. Wilson and organizations like the National Center for Science
Education are reaching out to moderates in both parties to rein in the
extremists on evolution and climate change. Pace Barry Goldwater,
extremism in the defense of liberty may not be a vice, but it is in
defense of science, where facts matter more than faith—whether it comes
in a religious or secular form—and where moderation in the pursuit of
truth is a virtue."
... To better understand
the impact of technology on jobs, The Associated Press analyzed
employment data from 20 countries; and interviewed economists,
technology experts, robot manufacturers, software developers, CEOs and
workers who are competing with smarter machines.
The
AP found that almost all the jobs disappearing are in industries that
pay middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. Jobs that form
the backbone of the middle class in developed countries in Europe, North
America and Asia.
In the United States, half
of the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession paid
middle-class wages, and the numbers are even more grim in the 17
European countries that use the euro as their currency. A total of 7.6
million midpay jobs disappeared in those countries from January 2008
through last June.
Those jobs are being replaced in many cases by machines and software that can do the same work better and cheaper.
"Everything
that humans can do a machine can do," says Moshe Vardi, a computer
scientist at Rice University in Houston. "Things are happening that look
like science fiction." ...
... So machines are
getting smarter and people are more comfortable using them. Those
factors, combined with the financial pressures of the Great Recession,
have led companies and government agencies to cut jobs the past five
years, yet continue to operate just as well.
How is that happening?
-Reduced
aid from Indiana's state government and other budget problems forced
the Gary, Ind., public school system last year to cut its annual
transportation budget in half, to $5 million. The school district
responded by using sophisticated software to draw up new, more efficient
bus routes. And it cut 80 of 160 drivers. ...
... -In South Korea, Standard Chartered is
expanding "smart banking" branches that employ a staff of three,
compared with an average of about eight in traditional branches. ...
... -The
British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced plans last year to
invest $518 million in the world's first long-haul, heavy-duty
driverless train system at its Pilbara iron ore mines in Western
Australia. The automated trains are expected to start running next year.
The trains are part of what Rio Tinto calls its "Mine of the Future"
program, which includes 150 driverless trucks and automated drills.
Like
many technologically savvy startups, Dirk Vander Kooij's
furniture-making company in the Netherlands needs only a skeleton crew -
four people ...
... -Google's driverless car and the Pentagon's
drone aircraft are raising the specter of highways and skies filled with
cars and planes that can get around by themselves. ...
... "Trying to keep it from happening would have
been like the Teamsters in the early 1900s trying to stop the
combustion engine," Lavin says. "You can't stand in the way of
technology."
The upside of emerging technology is that most will make goods and services
less expensive. That improves our living standard. The downside is that much of
the work we used to do in order to earn the wages to buy goods and services is
rapidly changing. As the last sentence of the article notes, this is not the
first time we have been in these circumstances. Years ago I read that in 1885,
approximately 80% of everything we consumed in the U.S. was produced at home.
By 1915, 80% was produced outside the home. It created massive economic
dislocations. Each time these disruptions occur it has been hard for the people
living at that time to foresee what the new economic order would look like.
It is critical that Christian thinkers wrestle with the challenges of technological
innovation. Creative destruction (the market dynamic where jobs and industries
are destroyed in the wake of creating new ones) has always been a difficult one
for ethics. It is painful but the social cost of other alternatives is also
quite high. Anti-technological calls to abandon consumerism or, conversely,
just saying that “the market will sort it all out,” are not legitimate
responses. I think topics like this should be at the center of our theological
reflection about human labor and the economy.
1. I don't know much about Common Good RVA but I like their vision. Christianity Today published a piece featuring them, Why the Rest of Your Week Matters to God
"In general, the church has done a fine job equipping Christians for the "private" areas of their lives: prayer, morality, family life, and so on. However, in general, the church has done a poor job equipping people for the "public" parts of their lives: namely, their work, their vocation. The reality is, most people spend the majority of their time in this latter, "public" area."
2. Can we Survive Technology? Written 57 years ago, Fortune resurrected this article by John von Neumann. The editor's note begins:
Editor's note: Every Sunday, Fortune publishes a favorite story from our magazine archives. This week, to mark our FutureIssue,
we turn to a feature from June 1955 by John von Neumann tackling the
profound questions wrought by radical technical advancement—in von
Neumann's day the atomic bomb and climate change. von Neumann was one of
the twentieth century's greatest and most influential geniuses. The
polymath and patron saint of Game Theory
was instrumental in developing America's nuclear superiority toward the
end of World War II as well as in framing the decades-long Cold War
with the Soviet Union. In his time, von Neumann was said to possess "the world's greatest mind." Here is his characteristically pessimistic look on what the future holds.
It is amazing how much of what he wrote remains true today!
"CONCLUSION: Although "materialists' perceptions that
acquisition brings them happiness appear to have some basis
in reality," that happiness is short-lived, Richins concluded. As such,
"The state of anticipating and desiring a product may be inherently more
pleasurable than
product ownership itself.""
5. One of the most difficult topics to understand in economics is comparative advantage, especially why outsourcing jobs to other countries often is advantageous for both countries. Forbes has a creative piece this week, Is Outsourcing American Jobs Wrong?. However, as the BBC reports American manufacturers come back home, a trend that has been true for a few years now.
"In order to fight that perception and reclaim capitalism and business as
positive words, businesses have to find a purpose beyond just making money. Profit is necessary for business, Mackey said, but it's necessary in the same way that his body has to produce red blood cells. It's needed, but it's not the sole purpose."
"Most business leaders don't understand what makes innovation so different from everything else they do at work -- and they haven't adjusted their behavior to accommodate these differences."
"The science fiction vision of stars flashing by as streaks when spaceships travel faster than light isn't what the scene would actually look like, a team of physics students says.
Instead, the view out the windows of a vehicle traveling through hyperspace would be more like a centralized bright glow, calculations show. ..."
That's all for this week. Like the Kruse Kronicle at Facebook.
1. Too often Westerners perceive African economy as a monolithic basket case. There are actually many regions of that are very hopeful. Ozwald Boateng explains Why entrepreneurs are back in Africa
3. Lots of recent talk about whether or not e-books will ever actually totally supplant hard copy books. This week Mashable explores Why Are People Still Buying CDs? (And people are still buying them.)
7. I almost didn't link this article because I could swear I've linked it before. Why Does Deja Vu Happen?
8. Several months ago I saw a speech expert interviewed has offered voice training to a number of famous figures. One was Margaret Thatcher. They showed her speaking in the 1970s and then in the 1980s, after receiving voice training. A big piece of the change was lessening the modulation in tone and pitch, which tends to vary more widely with female voices. The changes were intended to make her sound more authoritative, which both men and women, unjustified as it may be, more often associate with male vocal traits. But apparently, the thing that really triggers gender detection in our language is the way we use S's. Change Your Perceived Gender by Pronouncing S's Differently
I know. You own a slim titanium ultrabook computer, an eye popping
LCD 3D HD television, an iPhone with a custom-designed carbon fiber
cover, and a sports car with 360 horsepower under the hood. You don’t
have anything in common with the Amish.
It’s possible. But there are a lot of us who are beginning to adopt
some practices that are pretty close to the Amish. No, I’m not talking
about the Amish belief in adult baptism or the importance of farming in
daily life. I’m talking about the decisions the Amish make about
technology. More and more of us have begun to think about the impact
that technology has on our relationships with others and we’ve begun to
alter our practices.
Contrary to many stereotypes, the Amish actually use a lot of
technology. I’ve seen Amish ride in cars, use power tools, and fire up a
600 horsepower Rolls-Royce generator. But the Amish won’t use just any
technology that is developed. And they don’t allow technologies to be
used by anybody whenever they want. They have developed a complex set of
unwritten rules that guide their daily decisions.
... In short: We can now estimate, based on observations, how sensitive the temperature is to carbon dioxide. We do not need to rely heavily on unproven models. Comparing the trend in global temperature over the past 100-150 years with the change in "radiative forcing" (heating or cooling power) from carbon dioxide, aerosols and other sources, minus ocean heat uptake, can now give a good estimate of climate sensitivity.
The conclusion—taking the best observational estimates of the change in decadal-average global temperature between 1871-80 and 2002-11, and of the corresponding changes in forcing and ocean heat uptake—is this: A doubling of CO2 will lead to a warming of 1.6°-1.7°C (2.9°-3.1°F).
This is much lower than the IPCC's current best estimate, 3°C (5.4°F).
Mr. Lewis is an expert reviewer of the recently leaked draft of the IPCC's WG1 Scientific Report. The IPCC forbids him to quote from it, but he is privy to all the observational best estimates and uncertainty ranges the draft report gives. What he has told me is dynamite.
... That is an extraordinary claim and clearly requires extraordinary
evidence to support it. Much as I like Ridley (we swap stories and
information regularly) I’m not going to accept it on the basis of one
newspaper column. And Ridley wouldn’t expect me or you to either.
But if it is true then climate change stops being a looming diaster
threatening all we hold dear and becomes instead just a minor background
effect. One that we really don’t have to do anything particularly
active about at all: the advancing technologies of low or non-carbon
energy generation will take care of it all for us. ...
I share Worstall's caution but I also think that to
acknowledge that the earth is warming and humans play a contributing role,
something for which there seems to be strong agreement, doesn't tell you the
magnitude of the impact or what policy options are optimal. As I've pointed out
in early posts, the global average temperature has plateaued for more than a
decade. Violent hurricane activity has not increased. Arctic ice is melting,
although, as I understand it, it is summer ice not winter ice where the change
is being observed. Dueling scientists publish studies with partisans
cherry-picking the elements that are most supportive of their narrative. I do
not doubt that human behavior is having impact on the climate. But I am uncertain
of how robust climate models are and how serious the challenges are likely to
be.
... But Kloor isn’t really talking about politics. Rather, I think, it’s how
we conceive of the environment and environmentalism. The message of the
modernist greens is: in a world of 7 billion plus people, all of
whom want (and deserve) to live modern, consuming lives, we need to be
pragmatic about how we use—and how much we protect—nature. We don’t have any other choice, so we’d better start dealing with the realities on the ground.
The realist in me thinks the modernist greens are right. There are simply too many of us,
and we want too much, for our footprint on the Earth to get anything
but bigger. And I’m cheered by the scientists and thinkers who suggest
that we might be able to have it all—a huge, thriving human population,
and an environment that can support it—as long as we plan right. What’s
more, I’m very conscious that industrialization and globalization have
largely been forces for good, expanding human access to wealth, health
and longevity. There’s no better time in history to be human being.
Industrialization is not going to be rolled back—and it shouldn’t be.
There’s also a larger social shift at work that’s altering our concept of nature. Today more human beings live in cities
than live in the countryside, and that proportion will only grow in the
future: by 2050, as many as three-quarters of the estimated 10 billion
people on Earth will live in urban areas. This is a historic change—as
recently as 1800 just 2% of the world’s population lived in cities—and
it’s a sign that humanity, inevitably, is decoupling from nature. I
suspect that’s true even of environmentalists, who are just as likely as
anyone else to come into contact with what passes for wilderness these
days more in a managed park than untrammeled rainforest or woodland.
For a lot of us, “environmental issues” increasingly have to do with
improving urban life—think cleaner mass transit or access to organic
food in farmer’s markets. As the writer Emma Marris argued in her book Rambunctious Garden,
environmentalism needs to stop drawing simplistic lines between what’s
natural and what’s manmade—with the former always good and the latter
always bad—and learn to celebrate the biodiversity that’s in our
backyards. ...
AP has a story summarizing Global Trends 2030, a report put out by the U.S. Intelligence community.
... The study said that in
a best-case scenario, Americans, together with nearly two-thirds of the
world's population, will be middle class, mostly living in cities,
connected by advanced technology, protected by advanced health care and
linked by countries that work together, perhaps with the United States
and China cooperating to lead the way.
Violent
acts of terrorism will also be less frequent as the U.S. drawdown in
troops from Iraq and Afghanistan robs extremist ideologies of a rallying
cry to spur attacks. But that will likely be replaced by acts like
cyber-terrorism, wreaking havoc on an economy with a keystroke, the
study's authors say.
In countries where there are declining birth rates and an aging population like the U.S., economic growth may slow.
"Aging
countries will face an uphill battle in maintaining living standards,"
Kojm said. "So too will China, because its median age will be higher
than the U.S. by 2030."
The rising populations
of disenfranchised youth in places like Nigeria and Pakistan may lead
to conflict over water and food, with "nearly half of the world's
population ... experiencing severe water stress," the report said.
Africa and the Middle East will be most at risk, but China and India are
also vulnerable.
That instability could lead
to conflict and contribute to global economic collapse, especially if
combined with rapid climate change that could make it harder for
governments to feed global populations, the authors warn.
That's
the grimmest among the "Potential Worlds" the report sketches for 2030.
Under the heading "Stalled Engines," in the "most plausible worst-case
scenario, the risks of interstate conflict increase," the report said.
"The U.S. draws inward and globalization stalls." ...
Here is the overview from the report:
Over the next two decades, the relative power of major international
actors will shift markedly. Around 2030, after nearly a century as the
preeminent global economic power, the United States will be surpassed
by China as the world’s largest economy. With its trade in goods
expected to nearly double that of the U.S. and Europe, China’s
international economic clout will reach new heights. By 2030, India
will become the world’s most populous country and third-largest economy,
while Brazil’s economy will rank fourth in size. India and Brazil will
join China at the high table of 21st century international
politics alongside the United States, even as the relative weight of
Russia and Japan diminishes. The European economy will remain in the
top tier, but it is not clear whether Europe will be able to act with
common purpose to leverage this source of strength.
With its enhanced economic base, Beijing could rival Washington in
overall military spending, even as a slowing Chinese economy and
internal political conflict complicate China’s ability to lead
internationally. The United States will remain primus inter pares
in light of its continued advantages across the full spectrum of
national power and the legacy benefits of its leadership. It will,
however, be operating in a post-Western world in which the bulk of
global economic power is held by countries whose per capita incomes are
far below those of the traditional great powers. This reality will
leave China, India, Brazil, and other players focused on internal
development and domestic challenges, torn between their desire to be
global powers and their interest in free-riding on Western management of
the international system.
How will the rise of the rest impact the international system? The National Intelligence Council’s draft Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds maps out three broad scenarios:
Reverse Engines. Under this scenario, the
international system would consist of several powerful countries — but
no single state or bloc of states would have the political or economic
leverage to drive the international community toward collective action.
Such a world, characterized by a global vacuum of power, assumes that
the United States will no longer be willing or capable of sustaining the
predominant leadership role it has assumed since 1945. With no other
country able to step in to replace the U.S. as a global leader, the
resulting divergence of interests would lead to fragmentation and the
inability of great powers to work cooperatively to solve global issues.
Mercantilism and protectionism could lead economic globalization to go
into reverse, constraining technological breakthroughs required to
manage scarce global resources. Conflict and disorder would follow.
Great Power Convergence. An alternative scenario is
what the NIC calls a “fusion” world, in which major powers work
together to adopt and enforce a set of globally accepted rules and
norms. As U.S. predominance over the international system recedes, other
emerging powers would step in to assume greater responsibility for the
management of international affairs commensurate with their swelling
economic might. Emerging powers emerge as full stakeholders in a global
order that is transformed by power shifts but remains liberal and
pluralistic. Great power concert (perhaps enabled by democratization in
China) to meet global challenges increases the stability of the
international system even as power is diffused within it. U.S.
resilience enables it to create enduring partnerships with rising powers
to sustain the basis of liberal order. Technological advances create
new possibilities for joint management of key global challenges,
rewarding positive-sum behavior by the great powers.
Multipolar Divergence—U.S. Primacy. A third
scenario, one the NIC calls “fragmentation,” involves a multipolar
system characterized by a divergence of views among great powers that
challenges global governance. The United States would continue to
maintain disproportionate global influence and leverage that influence
to address global challenges by working through coalitions of
like-minded states. A multispeed global economy accelerates the
diffusion of power but an alternative coalition to the West does not
form, with developing giants consumed by their domestic challenges –
even as the global middle class explodes in ways that transform politics
within the rising powers. With inclusive global institutions
effectively stalemated, the United States instead turns to its old and
new allies in Europe and Asia, who would continue to see Washington as
their partner of choice in advancing the norms and rules of a liberal
order. The risk of conflict increases with the continued rise of new
powers like China and the rapid pace of technological change.
One key conclusion of the NIC study is that the future role of the
United States in the international system is a decisive variable in
determining what kind of “alternative world” will exist in 2030. The
choices U.S. leaders make – about how to marshal (and preserve) domestic
resources, how vigorously to assert U.S. military and economic
leadership overseas, and how much to invest in alliances old and new –
will be central to determining which of the above pathways the
international system will follow over the coming 20 years. To a certain
extent, the answer to the question of how the “rise of the rest”
impacts the U.S.-led international system is that it is not up to them…
so much as it is up to us.
Futurists always get it wrong. Despite the promise of technology, our world looks an awful lot like the past.
Close your eyes and try to imagine your future surroundings in, say,
five, 10 or 25 years. Odds are your imagination will produce new things
in it, things we call innovation, improvements, killer technologies
and other inelegant and hackneyed words from the business jargon. These
common concepts concerning innovation, we will see, are not just
offensive aesthetically, but they are nonsense both empirically and
philosophically.
Why? Odds are that your imagination will be
adding things to the present world. I am sorry, but this approach is
exactly backward: the way to do it rigorously is to take away from the future, reduce from it, simply, things that do not belong to the coming times.
I
am not saying that new technologies will not emerge — something new
will rule its day, for a while. What is currently fragile will be
replaced by something else, of course. But this “something else” is
unpredictable. In all likelihood, the technologies you have in your mind
are not the ones that will make it, no matter your perception of their
fitness and applicability — with all due respect to your imagination. ...
... So, the prime error is as follows. When asked to imagine the future, we
have the tendency to take the present as a baseline, then produce
speculative destiny by adding new technologies and products to it and
what sort of makes sense, given an interpolation of past
developments. We also represent society according to our utopia of the
moment, largely driven by our wishes — except for a few people called
doomsayers, the future will be largely inhabited by our desires. So we
will tend to over-technologize it and underestimate the might of the
equivalent of these small wheels on suitcases that will be staring at us
for the next millennia. ...
... Technology is at its best when it is invisible. I am convinced that
technology is of greatest benefit when it displaces the deleterious,
unnatural, alienating, and, most of all, inherently fragile preceding
technology. Many of the modern applications that have managed to survive
today came to disrupt the deleterious effect of the philistinism of
modernity, particularly the 20th century: the large multinational
bureaucratic corporation with “empty suits” at the top; the isolated
family (nuclear) in a one-way relationship with the television set, even
more isolated thanks to car-designed suburban society; the dominance of
the state, particularly the militaristic nation-state, with border
controls; the destructive dictatorship on thought and culture by the
established media; the tight control on publication and dissemination of
economic ideas by the charlatanic economics establishment; large
corporations that tend to control their markets now threatened by the
Internet; pseudo-rigor that has been busted by the Web; and many others.
You no longer have to “press 1 for English” or wait in line for a rude
operator to make bookings for your honeymoon in Cyprus. In many
respects, as unnatural as it is, the Internet removed some of the even
more unnatural elements around us. For instance, the absence of
paperwork makes bureaucracy — something modernistic — more palatable
than it was in the days of paper files. With a little bit of luck a
computer virus will wipe out all records and free people from their past
mistakes. ...
Taleb is always thought provoking.
I find myself frequently wondering if the consumerism of
late and post-industrial capitalism isn't transitional phenomenon on the way to
a new order of things. Industrialism created wide spread abundance of material
things. The production of that abundance continues to explode, using less and
less energy and resource per unit. At some point do we get to the point where
the added satisfaction of the next thing is not very satisfying? The availability
of things, even if I don't own them at the moment, is so abundant that there is
no drive to keep acquiring? Does focus return to less cluttered existences
while still incorporating the technology and innovation that created stuff in
the first place? I don't expect this will play out globally in my lifetime
(maybe in the West?), but might it play out over the next century or two? Just
something I wonder about.
"What if all objects were interconnected and started to sense their
surroundings and communicate with each other? The Internet of Things
(IoT) will have that sort of ubiquitous machine-to-machine (M2M)
connectivity. Since there are estimates that between 50 billion to 500 billion devices will have a mobile connection to the cloud by 2020, here’s a glimpse of our possible future.
Your alarm clock signals the lights to come on in your bedroom; the
lights tell the heated tiles in your bathroom to kick on so your feet
are not cold when you go to shower. The shower tells your coffee pot to
start brewing. Your smartphone checks the weather and tells you to wear
your gray suit since RFID tags on your clothes confirm that your
favorite black suit is not in your closet but at the dry cleaners. After
you pour a cup of java, the mug alerts your medication that you have a
drink in-hand and your pill bottle begins to glow and beep as a reminder.
Your pill bottle confirms that you took your medicine and wirelessly
adds this info to your medical file at the doctor’s office; it will also
text the pharmacy for a refill if you are running low.
Your smart TV
automatically comes on with your favorite news channel while you eat
breakfast and browse your tablet for online news. After you’ve eaten,
while you are brushing your teeth, your dishwasher texts your smartphone
to fire up your vehicle via the remote start. Because your “smart” car can talk to other cars and the road, it knows what streets to avoid due to early morning traffic jams. Your phone notifies you
that your route to work has been changed to save you time. And you no
longer need to look for a place to park, since your smartphone reserved
one of the RFID parking spaces marked as "open" and available in the cloud.
Don’t worry about your smart house because as you exited it, the doors
locked, the lights went off, and the temperature was adjusted to save
energy and money.
Does it sound too farfetched for 2020? It shouldn’t since a good part of that is in the works now. ..."
4. Speaking of computers, technology lovers will appreciate that the World’s Oldest Computer Gets a Reboot.
"The Congressional Budget Office has a new study
of effective federal marginal tax rates for low and moderate income
workers (those below 450 percent of the poverty line). The study looks
at the effects of income taxes, payroll taxes, and SNAP (the program
formerly known as Food Stamps). The bottom line is that the
average household now faces an effective marginal tax rate of 30
percent. In 2014, after various temporary tax provisions have expired
and the newly passed health insurance subsidies go into effect,
the average effective marginal tax rate will rise to 35 percent.
What struck me is how close these marginal tax rates are to the marginal
tax rates at the top of the income distribution. This means that we
could repeal all these taxes and transfer programs, replace them with a
flat tax along with a universal lump-sum grant, and achieve
approximately the same overall degree of progressivity."
7. What are the conservative streams and thinkers that are likely to influence the evolving future of conservatism in the United States. David Brooks has some interesting insights into The Conservative Future.
"Data visionary Hans Rosling has given nine TEDTalks
over the years, focusing on global trends in health, economics and
population growth. His favorite talks, naturally, keep an eye toward
these global themes — from business in Africa to youth culture in China."
I've only seen a couple of the five he lists. I'm looking forward to viewing the others. Here are two of my favorite Rosling videos.
A primary interest of mine is a theology of work. What would it mean to have radical abundance where no one needed to work? Kaku raises some important theological and sociological questions.
On issues ranging from genetically modified crops to nuclear power, environmentalists are increasingly refusing to listen to scientific arguments that challenge standard green positions. This approach risks weakening the environmental movement and empowering climate contrarians.
From Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
to James Hansen’s modern-day tales of climate apocalypse,
environmentalists have long looked to good science and good scientists
and embraced their findings. Often we have had to run hard to keep up
with the crescendo of warnings coming out of academia about the perils
facing the world. A generation ago, biologist Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb and systems analysts Dennis and Donella Meadows’ The Limits to Growth
shocked us with their stark visions of where the world was headed. No
wide-eyed greenie had predicted the opening of an ozone hole before the
pipe-smoking boffins of the British Antarctic Survey spotted it when
looking skyward back in 1985. On issues ranging from ocean acidification
and tipping points in the Arctic to the dangers of nanotechnology, the
scientists have always gotten there first — and the environmentalists
have followed.
And yet, recently, the environment movement seems to have been turning
up on the wrong side of the scientific argument. We have been making
claims that simply do not stand up. We are accused of being
anti-science — and not without reason. A few, even close friends, have
begun to compare this casual contempt for science with the tactics of
climate contrarians.
That should hurt.
Three current issues suggest that the risks of myopic adherence to
ideology over rational debate are real: genetically modified (GM) crops,
nuclear power, and shale gas development. The conventional green
position is that we should be opposed to all three. Yet the voices of
those with genuine environmental credentials, but who take a different
view, are being drowned out by sometimes abusive and irrational
argument. ...
The environmental movement is a diverse coalition of people. You can't make
a blanket statement about any movement this large. There are two significant
groups that make up this coalition that I expect explain this inconsistency
between embracing science on some things and not on others.
First, I think there is a segment that is simply anti-technological,
anti-21st Century living. They have a natural aversion to much of 21st Century
existence and want to return to a far less technological (read
"natural") existence. That climate science (and the frequently
attached moralism about the evils of consumerism) would dovetail with their
ideology of bucolic bliss is a welcomed happenstance. It gives legitimization
to their cause against those who embrace the modern socio-economic order. GM crops
and nuclear power do just the opposite. These would enable the current despised
structures to continue and grow. Thus, their embrace of climate change science
has little to do with a rigorous understanding and commitment to science.
Second, there is another segment that sees economic freedom as unjust and destructive
and wants more centralized control over the global economy. Climate science can
be effectively be used to support that vision. The case is made that our
current competing economies are leading us to global catastrophe. Political and
economic freedom need to be curtailed on a global scale by centralized
authorities who will rationally manage world affairs. GM crops and nuclear
power offer the opportunity to adapt to current challenges without a
significant reordering of the world order. Once again, the commitment is not so
much to science as it is to using science as debate tool to achieve an
ideological end.
I'm not saying that these are by any means the only two groups backing
environmental measures. I am saying that these are two groups that do have
meaningful influence on what happens within the environmental movement.
An author who makes a case in book length form, similar to what Fred Pearce
is making here, is Seymour Garte in Where
We Stand: A Surprising Look at the Real State of Our Planet. He is another
scientist who is fully persuaded about anthropogenic global warming. He is optimistic
about solutions but sees the anti-science, anti-technology, crowd as a real
problem.
Each week I spend considerable time scanning headlines as I look for stories to blog about at the Kruse Kronicle. I clip them into an Evernote Notebook and usually twice a day I select one or two to link and discuss. A number of interesting stories never make it on to the blog.
So this week I'm beginning what I hope will be a regular Saturday feature. Each Saturday I will post links I did not use the previous week. For now I will call it "Saturday Links." Happy clicking!
3. Icon of the American Libertarian movement, Murray Rothbard, once asked, "Why won't the left acknowledge the difference between deserving poor and
undeserving poor. Why support the feckless, lazy & irresponsible?" Chris Dillow gives a libertarian response affirming the need to Support the undeserving poor.
"I can easily imagine my graph in a Julian Simon or Steven Pinker chapter
on human progress and the decline in violence. Even though I have no
philosophical objection to the death penalty, it's hard not to interpret
this 400-year pattern as a strong sign of human betterment."
Open source shouldn't just stop at the world of software. In fact, more and more manufacturers are warming up to the cause.
FORTUNE -- The term "open source" was first coined in response to
Netscape's January 1998 announcement that the company would make freely
available the source code for its web browser, Navigator. Since then,
the philosophies of universal access and free redistribution of source
code have revolutionized the software industry.
While we have seen how open source communities can foster creativity
and collaboration in software (think of the Android app store), open
source has not ventured too far beyond this space. This is partly
because software is inherently modular, instantly accessible from
anywhere, and easily altered.
Yet open source ideas have tremendous potential beyond
software. All you need to create a successful open source community are
participants who both contribute to, as well as benefit from, shared
content. Such networks of transparency, collaboration, and trust can be
tremendously beneficial in other industries as well, from
pharmaceuticals to manufactured goods. ...
... Although the open source model has not yet been broadly applied to
manufactured goods, there are promising emerging examples --
particularly in the not for profit sector. One nonprofit group, Open
Source Ecology, is experimenting with ways to cheaply construct from
scratch over 50 crucial machines, from bakery ovens to back hoes, with
basic materials. Founder Marcin Jakubowski publishes all the blueprints
and schematics for each piece of his Global Village Construction Set
(GVCS) on a Wiki for contributors from all over the world to access and
tweak. Groups throughout the country have developed blueprints for Open
Source Ecology, while machines are prototyped and improved on the Factor e Farm
in rural Missouri. According to the group's website, 12 of the 50
machines are in their prototyping and documentation phase, including a
microtractor, backhoe, and CNC circuit mill. Through this construction
kit, Open Source Ecology aims to lower barriers to entry for farming,
building, and manufacturing in rural communities, urban neighborhoods in
need of renovation, and developing nations. ...
Despite early signs of success, there are, admittedly, real challenges
to implementing open source principles to for-profit manufacturing. ...
If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?
... Bill Joy's question deserves therefore not to be ignored: Does the
future need us? By this I mean to ask, if machines are capable of doing
almost any work humans can do, what will humans do? I have been getting
various answers to this question, but I find none satisfying.
A typical answer to my raising this question is to tell me that I am a
Luddite. (Luddism is defined as distrust or fear of the inevitable
changes brought about by new technology.) This is an ad hominem attack
that does not deserve a serious answer.
A more thoughtful answer is that technology has been destroying jobs
since the start of the Industrial Revolution, yet new jobs are
continually created. The AI Revolution, however, is different than the
Industrial Revolution. In the 19th century machines competed with human
brawn. Now machines are competing with human brain. Robots combine brain
and brawn. We are facing the prospect of being completely out-competed
by our own creations. Another typical answer is that if machines will do
all of our work, then we will be free to pursue leisure activities. The
economist John Maynard Keynes addressed this issue already in 1930,
when he wrote, "The increase of technical efficiency has been taking
place faster than we can deal with the problem of labour absorption."
Keynes imagined 2030 as a time in which most people worked only 15 hours
a week, and would occupy themselves mostly with leisure activities.
I do not find this to be a promising future. First, if machines can
do almost all of our work, then it is not clear that even 15 weekly
hours of work will be required. Second, I do not find the prospect of
leisure-filled life appealing. I believe that work is essential to human
well-being. Third, our economic system would have to undergo a radical
restructuring to enable billions of people to live lives of leisure.
Unemployment rate in the US is currently under 9 percent and is
considered to be a huge problem.
Finally, people tell me that my
concerns apply only to a future that is so far away that we need not
worry about it. I find this answer to be unacceptable. 2045 is merely a
generation away from us. We cannot shirk responsibility from concerns
for the welfare of the next generation. ...
Vardi's point?
We cannot blindly pursue the goal of machine intelligence without pondering its consequences.
One of the challenges of creative destruction is that we can
see what is being destroyed but it is exceedingly difficult to see what is
being created. As we have moved through the industrial era into the modern age,
this fear that change was about impoverish the masses has been a recurring
them. Futurists like Gene Rodenberry saw a day where most goods would be so
plentiful or easily created that there would be little need for money or
possessions. You wouldn’t need a job as a means to survival.
What do you think? Do Yardi’s concerns worry you? Or is the
arrival of AI a godsend?
Many have been inspired by Star Trek to become scientists, and some are starting to make its gadgetry a reality.
Destination Star Trek London has kicked off at the ExCeL exhibition centre,
and I'm willing to bet that among those heading down for a weekend of
pointy-eared fun, there'll be a high proportion of scientists and
engineers.
Many have been inspired by Star Trek to take up a career in science, technology or engineering.
I think the franchise deserves more respect as a science popularisation
medium – how many other prime-time TV shows would allow their
characters to toss out phrases like "I performed a Fourier analysis on
the harmonics, Captain"?
Since its inception in 1966, Star Trek
has familiarised us with the lingo and applications of science. At
least, that was the case for me. I felt pretty disenfranchised from
science at school: it wasn't until I discovered science fiction that I
realised I could understand "difficult" technical concepts.
Since
the show began, many of us have become more tech-savvy than we could
possibly have imagined at school. More than that, we're now seeing
emergent technology here on Earth that was once little more than a Star
Trek scriptwriter's dream. To get you in the mood for this weekend's
festivities, here's a roundup of some of the best Star Trek-inspired
technology.
Replicators - ... Three-dimensional printers have been on the open market commercially for most of the 21st century. ...
Transporters - Earlier this year, Nature reported that photons had been teleported 89 miles, between La Palma and Tenerife. OK, it wasn't exactly transportation ...
Bioneural circuitry - ... And in February of this year, the Scripps Research Institute published details of a DNA-based biological computer based on an original design by Alan Turing. ...
Nanites - ... They've constructed a set of nanorobots, with inbuilt chemical sensors, that can silence genes within cancerous cells. ...
Androids - Japanese scientists have created some remarkably human-looking androids,
though they wouldn't beat Data in a game of three-dimensional chess. ...
Of course, we all ready have personal communication devices. But as someone recently pointed out, while we all have communication devices, we don't see people in Star Trek constantly looking down at them and running into things. ;-) Warp drive would be pretty cool. Any other Trekkie devices that you want to see?
The
outputs or products of an economy can be divided into services products
and goods products (due to manufacturing, construction,
agriculture and mining). To date, the services and goods
products have, for the most part, been separately mass produced.
However, in contrast to the first and second industrial
revolutions which respectively focused on the development and the
mass production of goods, the next — or third — industrial
revolution is focused on the integration of services and/or goods;
it is beginning in this second decade of the 21st Century.
The Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) is based on the confluence
of three major technological enablers (i.e., big data
analytics, adaptive services and digital manufacturing); they underpin
the integration or mass customization of services and/or
goods. As detailed in an earlier paper, we regard mass customization
as the simultaneous and real-time management of supply and
demand chains, based on a taxonomy that can be defined in terms
of its underpinning component and management foci. The
benefits of real-time mass customization cannot be over-stated as goods
and services become indistinguishable and are co-produced —
as “servgoods” — in real-time, resulting in an overwhelming economic
advantage to the industrialized countries where the
consuming customers are at the same time the co-producing producers.
When Karl Marx predicted a
revolution putting the means of production in the hands of the workers,
he probably didn't imagine it to be fought by an army of DIYers.
But increasingly tinkerers and hobbyists are proving they are
more than equal to the corporate world, and their efforts are
challenging the traditional methods of manufacturing.
From the 15-year-old high school student who created a
pancreatic cancer test using Google as a research tool, to people making
money from home-made electronic devices, citizens are most definitely
doing it for themselves.
The availability of cheap components, from microcontrollers
such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, coupled with the plethora of
crowdsourcing models to allow the sharing of everything from ideas to
funding, means that production can move out of the factory and into the
home.
Garage band
"Things that 10 years ago you needed to be in a big company to
make are now possible from individuals," said Dale Dougherty, founding
editor of Make Magazine and the Maker Faire.
Make Magazine has become the Das Kapital of the maker
movement showcasing what people are making while the fair offers a
real-life meeting point for what is often a very diverse community -
"from embroidery to robotics" as Mr Dougherty puts it.
Started in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, the Maker Faire has
now grown to 60 events around the world each year in locations as
diverse as India, Tokyo and Newcastle.
There is also an independent African Maker Faire, and this is
a continent where the maker movement can have real impact thinks Mr
Dougherty.
"They are realising that they don't need things that a large
Western company has. In the past they have got hand-me-downs from the
West which are difficult for them to maintain or repair," he said.
Instead they can make their own devices, custom-made for medical, communication, farming or other needs.
Laser cutters
Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, is so
convinced that the maker movement will bring about the next industrial
revolution, that he has written a book about it.
The parallels between the current phenomenon and the
beginnings of the digital revolution are remarkable, he told the BBC
ahead of the launch of his book: Makers, The New Industrial Revolution. ...
One of the first essays I ever read about economics in college was Leonard Read's I, Pencil written in the year before I was born. While a little outdated in some ways it still does a wonderful job of illustrating the wonder and complexity of the market process. The Institute for Faith Work and Economics has just released a four minute clip that updates "I, Pencil" in a compelling and entertaining way.
Now let me add a caveat, especially for those of my readers who are skeptical of markets and free enterprise. Markets are not a quasi-deity. They do not solve every problem. They aren't perfect. They don't prevent evil people from doing evil things. But what they do, by historical measure, is astounding. Until very recently, human beings were trapped in low productivity labor. There was minimal ability to trade with others beyond the immediate community. There was no way for us to coordinate with, and mutually benefit from, the work of countless strangers from across the globe. Markets make that possible. Markets made this very conversation possbile that you an I are having right now because without it there would be no computers and no internet to enable this interaction. And for that reason markets can be celebrated, even as we wrestle with many implications that have arisen because of emergence of well-coordinated markets.
... In his presentation, Diamandis offered a rebuttal filled with optimism. We’re looking at our problems the wrong way, he argues: While we do have serious, urgent issues to be dealt with on a global scale, contextually, we’re still doing better than we ever have in human history.
It’s simply a matter of context. “In America, the majority of people under the poverty line have things like electricity, water, toilet access,” Diamandis says. “Scarcity is contextual.”
Think of a human’s life centuries ago; our average lifespan has more than doubled since then. Costs of essentials like food, water and electricity have plummeted. Instead of looking at how far we’ve come as a people, Diamandis says, we’re setting our expectations far too high.
And our savior, of course, is in the technology. “Tech is a resource liberating force,” says Diamandis. ...
... But whatever is to come, Diamandis and Gilding seem to agree on one thing. “I have very little confidence in governments and large corporations,” Diamandis says, echoing some of Gilding’s pessimism. “I have extraordinary confidence in the innovators that are out there.”
Both also agree that progress (the constructive sort) is possible, albeit through very different spurs to action. Gilding believes that pain will be our great motivator; first, our situation will get ugly, and only then will humanity be fearful enough to change its consumption habits.
Diamandis thinks otherwise — through our fervor for technology and our increasingly connected society accessing the internet at a faster pace, we will find our way. By 2020, Diamandis projects, we will have 3 billion more global users connected to the internet than we have today, a surge in users that increases the possibilities of collaborative innovation. “Rather than economic shutdown, we’ll have the biggest economic injection ever,” he says. ...
For those who do research on the sustainability of cities, there's a tantalizing puzzle. Per capita, cities are greener than other places; urban residents have a much smaller ecological footprint.
In our current models, we understand only about half of that difference, perhaps even less. To be sure, some of the greenness of cities is not so hard to explain. For example, people drive less in bigger cities because it's harder to drive, and because it's easier to get around without a car. Other factors are small in themselves, but add up: the closer spacing of buildings results in lower transmission losses and pumping energy; there's less embodied energy in roads and other infrastructure; urban residences tend to be more compact and energy-efficient.
But the most intriguing reason may be the one we understand the least: people in cities actually interact and use resources in a more efficient pattern. When we look at individual factors in isolation, we miss the synergetic effects of this network.
There are other models that might help us unravel this, especially those that explain the dynamics of networks. In particular, there is a phenomenon in economics that's known as a "Knowledge Spillover." It is one of the reasons that cities are such powerful economic engines. Within a city, if you are making x, and I am making y, then our combined knowledge might allow us to make z together, but only if we are physically close enough that our knowledge can spill over from one sort of enterprise to another.
In practice, many such spillovers gradually connect and reinforce each other, creating a kind of virtuous circle of economic activity, and whole new industries. (Think of the automotive industry centered in Detroit, or the personal computer industry centered around Palo Alto.) This pattern is a classic kind of "network," familiar to those who work with metabolic processes in biology.
Scientists have long known that a similar dynamic helps to explain how a body or an ecosystem can have high metabolic efficiency, creating new chemicals or structures, and re-using the resources to do so again and again in a sustainable pattern.
It seems very likely that something similar happens in cities, and in what we might think of as resource spillovers. ...
We have now reached the heart of what is distinctive about the role of government in societies that are rich in nonrenewable natural, assets. The exploitation of the natural asset is intrinsically unsustainable. At some stage the oil well is going to run dry, the vein copper ore will be exhausted, and the revenue stream will cease.
That word "unsustainable" sends shivers down the spine every environmentalist. But just because the exploitation of a natural asset is unsustainable does not mean that it should be avoided. The only sustainable rate of use of a nonrenewable natural asset zero. But were we never to use any nonrenewable assets they might as well not be there in the first place: the baby has disappeared with the bathwater. So, literal sustainability sets the bar absurdly high. Here economics is helpful in imagining a more meaningful conception: sustainability does not imply preservation. The world has sustained overall economic growth, albeit with hiccups, for two centuries yet virtually no Single economic activity has been sustained. Growth has not been a matter of everything getting bigger. Rather, it has been like running across ice flows: if you stand still you fall in and drown; if you keep going - even if each individual step is unsustainable - you survive. In the nineteenth century the British government was worried that it was going to run out of tall trees for the masts of ships. What happened, of course, is that at a certain point ships no longer needed trees.
The decision to deplete a nonrenewable natural asset is therefore not intrinsically an economic sin. The ethics of depletion depend upon how the money generated gets used. I have suggested that it is ethically incumbent on us to respect the rights of future generations. We may not be the curators of natural assets, but we are the custodians of their value. We are not obliged to turn the earth into a gigantic museum, with nature neatly preserved in its display case. Nonetheless, we have a responsibility not to plunder natural resources because we do not own them in the way that we own created assets. We can fulfill our ethical obligations by bequeathing to the future other kinds of assets of an equivalent value. This boils down to whether to consume the revenues or save them. We have a responsibility to save.
This represents the golden rule for the ethical use of revenue from nonrenewable natural assets. It implies that the use of this revenue should be quite unlike that of normal tax revenue. Normally, tax revenue can be presumed to rise as the economy grows: it is sustainable and thus can be spent on consumption. A good test of whether the government of a resource-rich country is being ethically responsible is whether it has a higher savings rate of its revenues from natural-asset depletion than from other tax revenues. As it depletes the natural asset is it accumulating man-made assets in its place?
Do you have a higher savings rate of unsustainable income than income you expect to continue? Perhaps you have not consciously thought about it; you just have an overall savings rate out of your total income. It might equally be difficult for a government to identify which part of its overall savings is attached to which part of its income. However, we might reasonably expect that those governments whose revenues are largely generated by the depletion of natural assets should have higher savings rates than those whose revenues are fully sustainable. For example, Africa, where so much revenue comes from resource extraction, should tend to have a higher savings rate than "Developing Asia," where revenues are linked to industry. In fact, the opposite is the case. Africa's savings rate averages around 20 percent of national income, whereas that of Developing Asia has been approximately double. (98-99)
And this helps illustrate my skepticism with trusting government programs to innovate better solutions to our problems in terms of things like renewable energy and healthcare.
... A feature of innovation is that the greatest impact of a new idea comes not when the light bulb goes on over the geek's head, but when the resulting technology eventually becomes cheap enough for many people to use—perhaps decades later. The first plane at Kitty Hawk had zero impact on the world economy, but budget airlines have a huge impact; the first computer was a curiosity, but cheap laptops changed the world.
With some technologies, the cheapening happens almost immediately. The Post-it note springs to mind. With others, the cheapening takes a surprisingly long time: Lasers remained the preserve of labs for five decades before suddenly showing up in consumer goods. With some technologies, like helicopters, the cheapening has never happened at all.
Most of us consider the original idea rare and noble, the later cheapening inevitable and dull. Who would imagine today that Napoleon III of France reserved his newfangled aluminum cutlery for only his most honored guests, leaving commoner folk to eat with silver?
We also disrespect the people who achieve the cheapening. The robber barons of the late 19th century generally made their fortunes by drastically cheapening new technologies, grabbing market share by undercutting rivals—and ending up with terrible reputations. Cornelius Vanderbilt cut the price of rail freight 90%, Andrew Carnegie slashed steel prices 75% and John D. Rockefeller cut oil prices 80% between 1870 and 1900. Malcom McLean, Sam Walton and Michael Dell did roughly the same for container shipping, discount retailing and home computing a century later, and were also unloved for it.
Yet it's the cheapening that raises the world's living standards. And cheapening is often mighty hard work. ...
There are two ways our standard of living improves. Our earnings rise and the cost of what we consume goes down. Walmart stores and big box stores drive prices down through their volume business model. This makes many of the things that would otherwise be affordable only for the upper-middle class available to those with lower incomes. For everyday goods, like food and clothing, Walmart has been so effective at keeping prices low that economists from across the political spectrum say that Walmart has been the single biggest contributor to the improving standard of living for the poor compared to all other contributors combined. Yes, there are losers. It typically is other small chain retailers (not mom and pop locally owned businesses). Yes, there can be a slight downward pressure on wages but the impact on the overall regional economy is negligable. The opening of a Walmart in a depressed neighborhood can also serve as an attraction for other businesses and services, leading to economic renewal. When a Walmart opens there are always far more applicants than jobs being offered. The greatest oppostion comes from unions and from upper class folks whose aesthetic sensibilities violated by the presence of such stores. Poor neighborhoods generally show 80-90% support for such retailers.
It is a bit maddening to hear people who say they side with the poor vilify the cheapeners as archenemy purveyors of consumerism. Without the cheapeners, the standard of living for the poor would be far worse and we would not have most of the goods we take for granted today (including the device on which you are reading this post) available to us.
For nearly three decades, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert W. Fogel and a small clutch of colleagues have assiduously researched what the size and shape of the human body say about economic and social changes throughout history, and vice versa. Their research has spawned not only a new branch of historical study but also a provocative theory that technology has sped human evolution in an unprecedented way during the past century.
Next month Cambridge University Press will publish the capstone of this inquiry, “The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World Since 1700,” just a few weeks shy of Mr. Fogel’s 85th birthday. The book, which sums up the work of dozens of researchers on one of the most ambitious projects undertaken in economic history, is sure to renew debates over Mr. Fogel’s groundbreaking theories about what some regard as the most significant development in humanity’s long history.
Mr. Fogel and his co-authors, Roderick Floud, Bernard Harris and Sok Chul Hong, maintain that “in most if not quite all parts of the world, the size, shape and longevity of the human body have changed more substantially, and much more rapidly, during the past three centuries than over many previous millennia.” What’s more, they write, this alteration has come about within a time frame that is “minutely short by the standards of Darwinian evolution.”
“The rate of technological and human physiological change in the 20th century has been remarkable,” Mr. Fogel said in an telephone interview from Chicago, where he is the director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago’s business school. “Beyond that, a synergy between the improved technology and physiology is more than the simple addition of the two.”
This “technophysio evolution,” powered by advances in food production and public health, has so outpaced traditional evolution, the authors argue, that people today stand apart not just from every other species, but from all previous generations of Homo sapiens as well.
“I don’t know that there is a bigger story in human history than the improvements in health, which include height, weight, disability and longevity,” said Samuel H. Preston, one of the world’s leading demographers and a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Without the 20th century’s improvements in nutrition, sanitation and medicine, only half of the current American population would be alive today, he said. ...
On a side note, there is an interesting aspect to this evolution. Ask yourself "What height do you have to be to be tall?" For an American male living today, I'm just about average at 5'11." But 150 years I would be tall. Though being taller than than my great-great-grandfathers, do I experience myself as tall? No. Because while I'm taller than my ancestors, so is everyone else taller than their ancestors. I experience myself as average just as most of my ancestors did but my objective quality of tallness most certainly has improved (assuming taller is better, as implicated here.)
The same problem applies to poverty. The poor in America are substantially better off in absolute terms than even many of the well-to-do of three generations ago but they see no improvement in comparison to their contemporaries. And this is one of the oddities about economic development. Observers correctly note the economic growth does not increase the overall happiness of society (once a certain minimal threshold is passed). That is because people do not experience a change in their realtive positions. But these observers incorrectly conclude that economic development is not making life better for members of society. Witness the findings of Fogel, et al, about techno-physio evolution. Despite not making people happier, economic growth does considerably improve people's lives over time.
"Trade is, in some ways, a form of technology. When a country exports wheat and imports textiles, it is as if it had invented a form of technology for turning wheat into textiles. A country that eliminates trade restrictions will, therefore, experience the same kind of economic growth that would occur after a major technological advance."
"It is sometimes argued that although free trade technological progress has some victims, its benefits exceed its costs, so it is possible for its winners to compensate its losers out of their gains, everyone thereby coming out ahead in the end. ...
Read the whole thing. A thought provoking way of making the point.
China has been one of the world’s most dynamic economies in recent decades, but how did it fall so far behind? This column argues that the industrial revolution occurred in Europe rather than China because European entrepreneurs were eager to adopt machines to cut down on high labour costs. China didn’t “miss” the industrial revolution – it didn’t need it.
One of the big debates in economics is about the causes of the arguably most dramatic change in development trajectory in (recent) world history, the industrial revolution.
Before about 1800, growth did occur, but it was mainly “extensive”, leading to more people but almost no growth in income per capita.
After about 1800 this changed, and growth became (increasingly) “intensive”, focused on an almost continuous growth of GDP per head.
There is consensus about the fact that this change in growth pattern started in northwestern Europe, and gradually spread to large parts of the western and, after a lag, eastern and southern world.
Why this happened, and where it happened are topics of heated debate among historians. The recent “Chinese miracle” – fabulous growth since about 2000 – has had an important impact on this debate.
How could the Chinese economy, which is clearly capable of dramatic economic change (in view of what happened since 1979), manage to “miss” the industrial revolution of the 19th century?
How developed was China in the 18th century, when it was (under the Qing) experiencing a long period of economic stability and development? ...
... Mixed modernity
This detailed comparison results in a very mixed picture of Chinese economic modernity compared with that of Western Europe. Yes, the Yangzi delta had a relatively advanced economy, with high levels of agricultural productivity and urbanisation and a high degree of structural transformation; we can accept this part of Pomeranz’s thesis. But this did not imply that it was “ready” for an industrial revolution.
The industrial revolution was a process of mechanisation in which expensive labour was substituted for by machines driven by coal – as Bob Allen (2009) has demonstrated. Chinese factor costs were not at all conducive to such a change.
Whereas entrepreneurs in Europe were very eager to develop new technologies that increased labour productivity via the capital-labour ratio, Chinese businesses barely had any incentive to do so. That the industrial revolution emerged in England was therefore not accidental or the result of luck, but the long-run effect of its fundamentally different factor prices, reflecting its different economic and institutional trajectory.
Watching friends learn kite-surfing last week, equipped not only with new designs of inflatable kites shaped like pterodactyls but new kinds of harnesses shaped like medieval chastity belts and even new helmets shaped like Elizabethan sleeping caps, it occurred to me that nothing becomes obsolete so fast as something new. For it is pretty clear that the rise of kite-surfing, invented in the late 1990s, is slowly killing wind-surfing.
Wind-surfing, invented in the 1970s, is not yet as moribund as the fax, which was invented at about the same time, but it may be heading that way. As recently as 2005, wind-surfers were scoffing at the upstart kite-surfers, arguing that their pastime was slower, more cumbersome and more dangerous. (I remember scoffing at email's inferiority to fax in the days when you had to call to alert somebody to check for an incoming email.)
Now kite-surfing equipment packs smaller and costs less than wind surfing's, the skills are easier to learn, the speed is as great—greater in light winds—and it can be done on land in the form of kite-karting. People have already crossed hundreds of miles of ocean by kite-surfing, from the Canaries to Morocco, for example, and from Tasmania to Australia.
My point is that new technologies threaten young technologies more than they threaten ancient ones. Kite-surfing may kill wind-surfing, but it will not affect sailing. Email eclipsed fax more than it did letter-writing. Social networking is overtaking telephoning, but not partying. In the era of Kinect, Space Invaders is dead, but poker is thriving. In competition with jets, airships have largely died out, but ships have not. Refrigeration killed the newfangled ice trade, but old-fashioned pickling, smoking and curing continued. ...
... It follows that obsolescence more probably beckons for the things that have changed our life most recently, rather than for the things that are already old. My generation finds it hard to believe that email will die, but the young barely touch it, preferring Facebook, Twitter and text. I suspect rather than go extinct, email will evolve into something more compatible with text and social networking. And perhaps we may be permitted a wry smile at the certain prospect that the young will in turn be marooned with obsolete habits and terms like Facebook, Twitter and text.
The last ten years have brought us a windfall of new gadgets and gizmos, and with them, a new way of life.
Since 2000, we've gained iPods and iPads, Travelocity and Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, BlackBerry smartphones and Android devices, Xboxes and Wiis, among many other new services, sites, and electronics. We're now poking, tweeting, Googling, and Skyping.
But in that time we've also changed our habits and lost a few things, too. As we look forward to 2011, HuffPostTech has taken a look back at the things that have become obsolete (some of the these items were originally featured on an earlier list here) .
What other items or practices would you add to the list? Submit your own ideas by clicking "Add a Slide" below. ...
