Will Progress Stagnate 3

[haggis]

Discoveries, Inventions, Improvement and Progress have been on an acceleration curve over the span of a hundred years or so which is quite staggering.

Part of the Rice Stadium Moon Speech by JFK in 1962 brought this home to me then and although man has made further progress in many areas in the 43 years since, will the curve keep going at the same rate, level out, or will we stagnate. What will some of us see in our lifetimes that as of now we can't imagine.

Oh yes, the speech.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them.
Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.
Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

Let's here from all those active imaginations.

Haggis

 

[quark]

Well JAE, what other causes of the systematic suppression of scientific advancement are there?

False ideologies. For example, differential and integral calculus was suppressed from Archimedes to Leibnitz(or Newton?) because world was thought to be made up of definite mathematics by some great minds. Though Archimedes did some preliminary work in calculus, he didn't dare to investigate it further.

Any organization prefers the status quo to changes that might disrupt the power structure.

If that's agreed upon, then religious orgs are no different than any other org and there's no special reason to single them out.

That is the sad part of it. This shouldn't have happened had those organizations really thought that religion was apart from the materialistic world.

"As much as I love being part of a knowledge-expanding profession, I would trade it all for some true advances in peace and brotherhood."

I think it's possible to do both. Don't you?

That was the purpose of all the inventions and discoveries. Ask Einstein, Nobel or Kalashnikov and they echo the same thing, ironically. We lesser mortals are misusing the things.

Some advancements in science

1. Intelligent camouflaging (yeah, it is only peace after killing your enemy)

2. Three dimensional virtual screens by air ionization.

3. Zero transportation a la star trek way.

4. Producing food from air by changing structure of molecules in air(A nanotech consortium led by GE is working on it, if I have to believe the news papers. I found no clue on Internet)

5. Time travel - If it is possible (beyond all the paradoxes) I can get a better proof to think that this world is an illusion.

6. Living on Moon and Mars. Perhaps Martians are making films about Earth invaders, by now.

7. Brainitter[©]- My idea of a device which can change our brain wavelength frequency so that communication can be done via telepathy(no ESP required). I didn't patent this idea yet

Regards,

 

[JAE]

quark - Your number 5 - probably a most fascinating subject to toy with in your mind - many authors have penned some fantastic stories based upon the idea of going back (or forward) in time - even the movies (Back to the Future).

I think it amazing that time has been one of history's most imagined subjects and yet most difficult to even get a grasp of.

 

[25362]

While reflecting, speculating and pondering the future of technology, I prepare a partial list of some more immediately needed breakthroughs that came to mind, in:

1. Making more food, probably by engineering a way for
humans to digest and metabolise cellulose as animals do,
and lactose as infants do.

2. Achieving longer useful lifes, by correcting congenital
defects, and providing cures for cancer in all its
forms, AIDS, and all illnesses brought about by
microorganisms, probably by inducing the formation of
new or mutated body enzymes and other molecules.

3. Introducing safer and quicker surgical methods, probably
at home, rather than in infection-plagued hospitals.

4. Effectively warning for protecting lives and property
from natural events, of which the last tragic tsunami
disaster is but one example. Earthquakes, landslides,
hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, etc., also to mention
some more.

5. Lessening environmental pollution by harnessing new
forms of energy in a safe and clean manner. Possibly
nuclear.

6. Increasing the supplies of more and safe drinking water,
probably by limiting and changing altogether the
numerous chemical substances used in agriculture.

7. Modifying metabolism to enable humans to produce in
their bodies vitamins presently obtained from food, in
particular, vitamin C. The same concerning essential
aminoacids.

8. Finding new ways, additive-free, to protect food against
spoilage by oxidation, thermal effects, or
microorganisms.

9. Developing natural ways for human bodies to become
insensitive to the toxins and carcinogens present in
natural plant- and fish-originated foods. After all,
with eons of evolution behind them, and unlike animals,
plants can't run from their predators; they can protect
themselves only by poisoning them. So do some fish.

10. Perfectioning instrumentation to prevent traffic
accidents in all types of communication.

11. Finding more and more applications for nano-technology,
and new chemicals.

As for science, physicists and cosmologists will continue in searching for the grand unifying theory, discovering what are black holes really made of, whether quarks, leptons amd other particles are indivisible, or themselves formed by even smaller ones.

 

[JAE]

25362 - Making more food is not a current necessity - there is already plenty of food to feed everyone in the world. Most hunger is caused by man/governments/tyranies getting in the way of food production and/or delivery/sales. It's not a lack of food that's the problem.

 

[quark]

What I liked about Back To The Futire is that the time machine is much simplified(you don't need to learn driving and no special license required) and the title itself. But the story is more like a family soap.

The main drawback, as far as I am concerned, can be decelerating and breaking the time machine from 3x10⁸m/s to rest instantly once you go to past time.

What I feel is that we can see the frozen time frames only but we can't be a part of them. The Grand Father Paradox is one classical barrier to time travel. I think the author of Grand Father Paradox might have considered a Factor Of Safety of 2 or morally strong not to kill one's father.

Regards,

 

[25362]

JAE, Nature's insufficient rainfalls on typically non-fertile soils may create unpredictable aridness.

I'm afraid that even liberal policies and better distribution systems wouldn't solve the problems confronted by african and other peoples in some areas of our globe.

Let's ask ourselves, why should they depend on others to supply food ? Why shouldn't they be self-sufficient in matters of nutrition ?

Well-fed, healthy third-world populations are bound to increase in number. What happens then ?
To keep up (unrelentingly) new crop-growing technologies should be devised. Don't you agree ?

 

[IRstuff]

I'm not convinced that being able to grow your own food is either a necessary nor sufficient condition.

The amount of resources required to sustain farming in marginal climes competes with using the resources to do other things such as industrialization. Wouldn't it be better for a more efficient food producer to produce the food and find something else to be efficient at in the marginal climes?

Population growth is not a certainty. If everyone on the planet could be instantly transformed into upper-lower class or lower-middle class, population growth through births would cease in less than 2 generations. Almost all the industrialized countries have stagnant or declining birth rates.

Therefore, it's imperative to distribute food more efficiently, but it's mandatory to figure out a way to increase the standard of living, since that's the only proven way to reduce population growth.

TTFN

 

[haggis]

I rally wanted to stay out of this thread after I seen the responses although I started it. I'm surprised it has'nt been pulled! It turned into political and religous slinging match which has no place here.

Curious though, is there any other way for population growth except through births and what does class have to do with stagnating or reducing it?

Must have been off that day we had sex education.

 

[IRstuff]

The typical explanation is that humans have evolved such that marginal conditions result in higher births, presumably to increase the chance of propagating genes and competing with other small groups of humans in similar conditions.

That may or may not have worked 100,000 yrs ago, but in today's environment, high birth rates are horribly burdensome to poor countries. Even in the US, lower classes tend to have high birth rates, even though it's obviously economically disadvantageous, since any income from a job must feed more mouths than it can really support. Poor countries have compounded problems; with low incomes, increased competition for limited resources, burdensome health care costs for diseases and malnutrition due to the inability to feed all the children, etc.

The rest is simply observational. Middle and upper classes in the US and other industrialized nations tend to have fewer children. My parents came from a generation where 6 children per family was normal. They only had two kids and I only have two kids. Many other families have one or fewer.

TTFN

 

[DrillerNic]

In terms of food and famines, most of the recent famies (especially in Africa) have been largely caused by human action. So the Ethiopian famine in the 80s (Band Aid and all that) was sparked off by a nasty little civil war, where both sides tried to use hunger as a weapon. Even now, pseudo marxist theories in the horn of africa are causing problems: peasants in Ethiopia and Eritrea aren't allowed to own the land, so there's no incentive to improve the land, so no increase yields.

Or look at Southern Africa- politically motivated seizures of productive land have resulted in shortages of food...

And then theere's the lack of access to western markets for cash crops (the EU and USA are busy protecting their own farmers behind tariff walls, subsidies etc). So for example, a huge amount of sugar in the EU is produced by sugar beet farmers in Eastern England- vast prarie style farms rolling across the fens. Why not import sugar from sugar cane growers in Brazil or Mozambique or Angola? Cheaper suger for the EU consumer, better income for the farmer in the developing world, and the East Anglian farmer can grow wheat...

 

[JAE]

Stalin used hunger to kill millions as well.

 

[EddyC]

I think that we'll see as much, if not more, technological progress in the coming years than we've had in the past. Progress will also not be limited to technological progress, but will also be progress in all types of human activity. The human mind is a bottomless well of creativity, otherwise there would not be so many engineers and scientists. Like anything else it touches, the human mind is capable of immense technological creation as well as destruction. That the bipolar nature of humans. I suggest that the folks reading this take a look at some of the scientific magazines that are available at common bookstores. They certainly were a source of inspiration to me when I was a boy, and can be so once again in adulthood. And as far as religion goes, it too can be used for good as well as evil, just like anything else humans are involved in. Its our choice.

 

[PSE]

I think we are beginning to learn about how much we do not know.

Regards

 

[lewtam]

It seems that most fields of endeavour follow the growth curve taught in most manufacturing theory classes. After initial invention, a product is rapidly improved on as a result of competition and more recently mass production. This improvement tapers off due to the law of diminishing returns until it plateaus. Then another breakthrough in the field makes the initial product obselete. A simple example is the vacuum tube replacement by solid state transistor.

For those of us that haven't seen too much progress in their industry may think it is due to stagnation and even decline, the bigger picture perspective may be we are experiencing the plateau of the curve. Soon enough (maybe not in our lifetime though) there will be a breakthrough that changes our industry in a manner that could not have been predicted.

As mentioned above, it appears that humans stand at the cusp of the next amazing breakthrough in many fields.

Sub-particle and quantum physics has amazing potential. Of the 4 fundamental forces in nature, we have so far learned to manipulate and control only one (electromagnetic force) and look how far we have gone with it. We derive benefits from the strong nuclear force but are yet to truely control it. The possible applications (and ramifications) of fully manipulated strong nuclear and gravitational forces are unimaginable. We regularly see a new theory for very large capacity data transmission and ultra fast computers due to advances in quantum theory. (But will we alter the data by observing it?)

Genetics is another field that we will see amazing advances in our lifetime.

A quick brainstorm in our office saw the following possible applications in general industry:
-Additive enzymes genetically programmed to break down contaminants in oil. Similar applcations abound in chemical processes, piping, refining etc.
-Self repairing circuitry due to nanotechnology.
-Gene therapy to employees in order to improve resistance to contaminants.

The quick brainstorm also included less applicable ideas such as:
-Gene therapy to make the QA inspector's eyes and mouth close over.

 

[vonbad]

I thought that this thread was going to be a religion and political debate and wanted to stay out of it, but some really good issues were mentioned.

I had to give IRstuff a star for his rational and explanation on class status. I could not have written it better. I will probably be burned on this, but class status is a useless divider people use. I think it's up to each individual to make and create their own opportunities for self advancement in order to reach their desired ‘status’ of happiness. Granted some have it harder and some have it easier, some just have just plain luck. Some are just plain lazy and do not want to do anything for themselves but would rather have it handed to them.

This thread covered basically all the big issues; government, religion and progress.

I was surprised when many of the advancements that cloning and stem cell research was omitted. These issues involve all the above and arguments could be made for both pro and con. For example, a religious response would be “we should not play God”, advancement would respond with “look how we could improve the human condition” and government outlawed it.

Lastly, from a strictly engineering observation the world has finite resources. Many of us spend our days trying to make our limited resources go as far as possible. For instance, how much time is devoted to Lean Manufacturing? If the facility had inventory for production on one side of the building and production on the other; Lean (logic) would dictate moving the inventory as close as possible to minimum wasted repeated effort in getting parts for production. Thereby, reducing cost and operating in a more efficient manner. If we take a look at the world, Silicon Valley is a tremendous waste of resources that could be used in the production of food. Whereas, the deserts of the world are not capable of supporting a agriculture industry, but could be used for other industries such as industries located in the Silicon Valley. Just an observation.

 

[JayMaechtlen]

From some points of view, the world has limited resources.
From another, we have unlimited resources.

We can make as much power as we need with nukes, wind, solar, and so forth.

With the power, we no longer have a shortage of fresh water.

With water and power, we have no shortage of arible land, hence no shortage of food.

With the power, we also have no shortage of materials.

Of course, there are a few intermediate steps to cause concern...

Jay


Jay Maechtlen

http://home.covad.net/~jmaechtlen/