Here is the reason I started blogging, ever since 2010 began, oh sorry the dawn of next decade, I have been hearing our achievements of past decade. But none (if I missed please correct me) came with the shortfall of achievements. Its 2010 shouldn’t we be more technologically advanced than it was projected; flying cars, space colonization, commutation, AI robots, curing cancer (it’s a myth anyway), hydrogen fuel and what about hunger and poverty. This has been lingering in my mind for few past months.
Now this doesn’t seem to be such a great reason for blogging after all, right? Today I was reading Time magazine and found more or less similar thoughts I have been going through but only to be published by someone else. As a scientist what would I do if someone scoops me, put together all your data and try to publish it somewhere else in a lower tier journal. That’s exactly what I am doing now and in future I will try to put crazy thoughts of mine, without delay.
Before continue reading this blog, I strongly recommend reading the article “The Boring Age” by Michael Lind;
http://bit.ly/dAR0CL
since the article is more clearly and nicely written, than my thoughts. And I liked the last sentences of the article, to quote; “I know, that's a boring vision of the future compared with a Chinese century in which everybody is a genetically modified immortal who rides monorails and eats algae grown in skyscrapers. But hey, in the future, phones will be really cool”
I am going to extend it further and reason why is this case and disagree with the pessimistic view of the article.
The article claims that we live in an era of innovative stagnation and whatever technology we are using is an extension or improvisation of 19th and mid-20th century innovations. This argument somewhat makes sense, the last true innovation in couple of decades is Internet which has reached, helped and affected masses.
Improvisations of existing technologies are natural and essential so that society can use them and benefit. But maybe we are content with what we have and living in a very comfortable zone and moreover we don’t have a need. Which is not true anyway, we still haven’t achieved technological advances to eradicate hunger, poverty and still climate change is a big challenge we face. So what has been holding back, is it the right commitment, perhaps we are not focusing the right issues?
I was once told that, the money it was invested in computers had been in invested in automobile we would be commuting to moon. But I am not sure whether commuting to moon on daily basis would have improved common people lives. Rather the money invested in computers has given us the power of networking and connection the Internet. Last decade we found new verbs googling, social networking, tweeting (I am not sure the bird is aware that we do tweet) and connection. These are the products of innovation and the innovative stagnation we see now is just lag phase for next big thing. Internet is great; perhaps Internet is the key, the industrial revolution equivalent. The issues we address in blogs and social networks will be the drive force in bringing on more needs to invest more money and best brains to tackle the issues.
Final note to aerospace scientists and engineers please help me to see Earth from Mars or at least moon, in return I promise to find a cure for cancer.
- MiSi
