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rfmcdonaldJust now an annoying essay by noteworthy science fiction author Neal Stephenson, "Innovation Starvation", has been circulating my corner of the Internet. The title of James Nicoll's brief commentary, "The pain of an affluent, middle-aged white American denied his boyhood fantasies", isn't unfair.
In brief, Stephenson argues that society has become less risk-averse as a rule, hence less innovative, China's growth is not innovative because it is just copying the West, the Internet allows for the sort of rapid fact-checking that discourages innovation (I know), etc.
My comments? They're slightly modified and expanded from my comments over at the post.
***
I have to admit to a lack of understanding as to how the transformation of China--and so much of the rest of the world--into a reasonably postmodern state in the relatively short time that it has is symptomatic of a world society that can't get big things done, is symptomatic of a lack of innovation. It's certainly radical innovation in the Chinese context, and this innovation certainly has wrought huge unprecedented impacts on the rest of the world.
I'm also pretty confused as to why the current American and human presence in space, with dozens of space probes scattering across the solar system to chart the major and minor worlds in detail, is supposed to be less innovative than a half-dozen brief sample-retrieval missions that rank among the least malign uses of the Cold War's ICBM technologies. If manned space travel hasn't taken off as contemporaries might have hoped, then maybe it's because it proved to be less useful--more expensive, at the very least--than people imagined and more conditioned on Cold War rivalries. Less emotionally satisfying, sure, but why was manned space travel supposed to be so cheap in the first place? Futurologists frequently get things very wrong, after all. Me, I'm pleased by detailed surveys of the surface of Vesta and mp3s of the wind on the surface of Saturn and Kepler's culling of Earth-like worlds.
I agree with commenter David that my generation's radically innovative technological project is the increasingly dense global skein of interactive, individual computer-mediated networks that has managed to transform the entire planet. I'd happily argue it's been more radically transformative than inexpensive space travel would have been in its place. The entire world is getting online, and using the online world to do things with other people and places. Only a very few people, in comparison, could have gotten to space. (Don't forget the magic biotechnology that we're developing, too. That makes two radical innovations that have changed human lives, though, so I won't overly complicate things with a second disproof.)
I have to disagree with the commenters here who blames the failure of manned spaceflight on people preferring to spend their money on different things or on corrupt democratic societies which just! do not! get! Things! Done! or on overly diverse and non-conservative and--thus--unimpressive national cultures. I'd suggest that the failure has much more to do with the lack of any obvious and attractive reason for people to live in space apart from the sheer coolness of it, combined with the high costs--high absolutely, but especially high relative to the smaller national economies of a generation ago. It's no coincidence that it's the Soviet Union, with a command economy notoriously unresponsive to individual demands and needs, that arguably had a more prolific manned space program than the United States. As time progresses, and economies expand while technologies become less expensive, the barriers to developing space will fall done worldwide. Hopefully by then we'll come up with reasons to move there that don't necessarily involve tourism.
Islands, it should be noted, are microcosms which foster diversity within themselves, but are also microcosms which are insanely vulnerable to outside interventions. Isolated islands, because of their compact and accessible topographies and their relative shortages of resources, are vulnerable to all kinds of catastrophic shocks--ecological, economic, military, demographic--in ways that larger landmasses are not. The Galapagos themselves, brought into the orbit of humanity less than two centuries ago, would have seen their biological diversity disappear if not for sustained efforts to (so far) prevent the otherwise inevitable. Islands provide niches; continents give the space necessary for vast things to thrive.
My lifespan encompasses the era when the United States of America was capable of launching human beings into space. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on a braided rug before a hulking black-and-white television, watching the early Gemini missions. This summer, at the age of 51—not even old—I watched on a flatscreen as the last Space Shuttle lifted off the pad. I have followed the dwindling of the space program with sadness, even bitterness. Where’s my donut-shaped space station? Where’s my ticket to Mars? Until recently, though, I have kept my feelings to myself. Space exploration has always had its detractors. To complain about its demise is to expose oneself to attack from those who have no sympathy that an affluent, middle-aged white American has not lived to see his boyhood fantasies fulfilled.
Still, I worry that our inability to match the achievements of the 1960s space program might be symptomatic of a general failure of our society to get big things done. My parents and grandparents witnessed the creation of the airplane, the automobile, nuclear energy, and the computer to name only a few. Scientists and engineers who came of age during the first half of the 20th century could look forward to building things that would solve age-old problems, transform the landscape, build the economy, and provide jobs for the burgeoning middle class that was the basis for our stable democracy.
In brief, Stephenson argues that society has become less risk-averse as a rule, hence less innovative, China's growth is not innovative because it is just copying the West, the Internet allows for the sort of rapid fact-checking that discourages innovation (I know), etc.
My comments? They're slightly modified and expanded from my comments over at the post.
***
I have to admit to a lack of understanding as to how the transformation of China--and so much of the rest of the world--into a reasonably postmodern state in the relatively short time that it has is symptomatic of a world society that can't get big things done, is symptomatic of a lack of innovation. It's certainly radical innovation in the Chinese context, and this innovation certainly has wrought huge unprecedented impacts on the rest of the world.
I'm also pretty confused as to why the current American and human presence in space, with dozens of space probes scattering across the solar system to chart the major and minor worlds in detail, is supposed to be less innovative than a half-dozen brief sample-retrieval missions that rank among the least malign uses of the Cold War's ICBM technologies. If manned space travel hasn't taken off as contemporaries might have hoped, then maybe it's because it proved to be less useful--more expensive, at the very least--than people imagined and more conditioned on Cold War rivalries. Less emotionally satisfying, sure, but why was manned space travel supposed to be so cheap in the first place? Futurologists frequently get things very wrong, after all. Me, I'm pleased by detailed surveys of the surface of Vesta and mp3s of the wind on the surface of Saturn and Kepler's culling of Earth-like worlds.
I agree with commenter David that my generation's radically innovative technological project is the increasingly dense global skein of interactive, individual computer-mediated networks that has managed to transform the entire planet. I'd happily argue it's been more radically transformative than inexpensive space travel would have been in its place. The entire world is getting online, and using the online world to do things with other people and places. Only a very few people, in comparison, could have gotten to space. (Don't forget the magic biotechnology that we're developing, too. That makes two radical innovations that have changed human lives, though, so I won't overly complicate things with a second disproof.)
I have to disagree with the commenters here who blames the failure of manned spaceflight on people preferring to spend their money on different things or on corrupt democratic societies which just! do not! get! Things! Done! or on overly diverse and non-conservative and--thus--unimpressive national cultures. I'd suggest that the failure has much more to do with the lack of any obvious and attractive reason for people to live in space apart from the sheer coolness of it, combined with the high costs--high absolutely, but especially high relative to the smaller national economies of a generation ago. It's no coincidence that it's the Soviet Union, with a command economy notoriously unresponsive to individual demands and needs, that arguably had a more prolific manned space program than the United States. As time progresses, and economies expand while technologies become less expensive, the barriers to developing space will fall done worldwide. Hopefully by then we'll come up with reasons to move there that don't necessarily involve tourism.
Islands, it should be noted, are microcosms which foster diversity within themselves, but are also microcosms which are insanely vulnerable to outside interventions. Isolated islands, because of their compact and accessible topographies and their relative shortages of resources, are vulnerable to all kinds of catastrophic shocks--ecological, economic, military, demographic--in ways that larger landmasses are not. The Galapagos themselves, brought into the orbit of humanity less than two centuries ago, would have seen their biological diversity disappear if not for sustained efforts to (so far) prevent the otherwise inevitable. Islands provide niches; continents give the space necessary for vast things to thrive.
