Letters to the Editor
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We're still monkeys...
for all the modern knowledge so many of us have stuck into our heads, and our rather smug self-satisfied feelings that we're so much better informed than our predecessors, we're still monkeys and stuck on being lazy when it comes to challenging our understanding once we're secure in it. So experts from every corner will tell you the new is impossible. For instance I've been reading this column for quite a while and we read the same old re-hash of problems...and why not? I, and lots of others keep reading it don't we? And does the writer not recieve recompense for creating it?
So, I guess that's why there's not much effort to examine genuinely new and emergent technology as proposed by the few among us who are genuinely "out of the box" thinkers, as was Robert Bussard who's research in to Inertial Electrodynamic Fusion has been so long overlooked and/or disregarded so many of us monkeys. His google video from Nov '06 generated some interest but when the peer-reviewed paper from a grad student based on 20 year old understanding was applied, we just sort of presumed that it was yet another false alarm...again, monkey reasoning...but a few have continued to be interested and now there has been a small but steady increase in awareness. Some of todays readers might be familiar with the Daily Kos. They are running a series of reports on the state of energy technology and if you wish to find out what's gotten a growing number of energy researchers who are disenchanted with the tokomak approach, interested at the prospects of a real world workable approach to hydrogen fusion you might want to go over there and take a look. Or one can stick with the typical response, "oh, that's too much effort. We all know fusion is 20 years in the future...blah blah blah"...and continue to wring our hands while we squeeze the fear factor for the last bit of interest and revenue we can, as usual.
On any given day there's reason for optimism and pessimism...I prefer the former but who can ignore the latter as the cause of much of our human inertia?
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Science - Saviour or Daemon
I enjoyed this little nugget and have the same concerns you worry about. When I questioned Nassim Taleb recently at a Long Now Foundation lecture in SF about technology he said simply, I fear Science."
Having recently heard Craig Venter at another Long Now Foundation talk, and having read his book, it is easy to get seduced by the incredible possibilities of technology. One could posit that Venter’s microbial fuel production or Nanosolar’s film solar cell technology and other as yet unborn technologies might be our saviors. But the laws of unintended consequences are hard to figure out in advance. Look at the corn for ethanol disaster. BUT, even if we can imagine finding all the right technological solutions, we still have the really almost insurmountable problem of stopping CO2 emissions into the atmosphere before we pass some unforeseen horrendous tipping point and end up as Hansen postulates with irreversible catastrophic consequences to the planet, well, for all life currently on the planet. Oops, that includes us.
We may just be too smart for our own good, but not smart enough to know that.. Humility is a seriously lacking human trait. Hubris is our “H” word.
We, civilization, have thrown ourselves into the technological future at a rate far beyond our current ability to recognize all the problems we’re causing the planet. We will probably have to sink or learn to swim; die off as a species or figure out how to balance our technology within nature’s own systems. We’re still infants in our understanding of Nature’s complex systems. We’re really been just thrashing around, making up things without understanding their complex impacts on the planet.
Presently we’re more like Kudzu than the Guardians of Gaia.
wayne