Technology will not bring a utopian society
Ray Kurzweil is a well-known futurist who often paints rosy pictures of a utopian future just around the corner. Unfortunately, while technology changes, humanity remains essentially the same. The problems we deal with today are the same basic problems the ancients dealt with. The stage and the props and the characters and the deities have all been updated, but the same basic plot remains.
Technology, of course, is the new god. It brings a wealth of information and extends human life. In fact, it’s done far more for humanity than any god in history has. Indeed, glowing predictions are to be expected as human knowledge grows. In his latest book, Kurzweil points out that technology is expanding exponentially, and thus linear thinking cannot accurately describe what the future will be like. He may well be right from a superficial point of view.
What technology will not change is bigotry and prejudice, and any number of other negative adjectives that can be used to describe human nature. Conflict will still be present, and the politics will revolve largely around the same basic issues that it does today, though the faces and individual issues may change. America may be supplanted by an up-and-comer willing to take more risks, or it may not be. As always, innovation will be integrated seamlessly complicating and simplifying all at the same time, and this will be normal. While I agree that the coming years might usher in a new era of advancement unlike any ever seen, it will not solve the fundamental problems of society. Nothing will. Yes, it is my firm belief that society will never “fix” itself, only the set and the players on the stage will change.
Science and technology is wonderful, but it will never solve our most basic, deep-seated problems. Human problems.
On quicksand
It’s funny that I would come across a story about quicksand a few days after watching Blazing Saddles, wondering if quicksand was really the way it’s always portrayed in movies. It always seemed difficult for me to imagine sand which could collapse quick enough to trap someone.
Discovery News is running an article on the physics of quicksand, and it’s interesting.
On the other hand, it loses this viscosity very quickly in response to stress. A moving object in the sand causes it to liquefy swiftly, as the sand heads towards the bottom and the upper layers become runny.
The settling sand then becomes so compact that it is impossible for material with the density of a human body to become completely submerged.
So an ensnared cowboy should take solace in that he won’t drown, the study suggests. On the other hand, he is likely to stay there for a long time, for even the most muscular help won’t get him out.
The dense sand so clumps around the lower limbs that just to haul out a foot requires a force of 100,000 Newtons, about the same as that needed to lift a medium-sized car.
Holy cow. The whole article is worth a read. (It’s brief.)
The Shuttle program under the microscope
I’m not going to recap this article, except to quote one thing, and say that it’s really good, and that if you’re a space/NASA fan, it’s well worth your time to read.
Future archaeologists trying to understand what the Shuttle was for are going to have a mess on their hands. Why was such a powerful rocket used only to reach very low orbits, where air resistance and debris would limit the useful lifetime of a satellite to a few years? Why was there both a big cargo bay and a big crew compartment? What kind of missions would require people to assist in deploying a large payload? Why was the Shuttle intentionally crippled so that it could not land on autopilot? 1 Why go through all the trouble to give the Shuttle large wings if it has no jet engines and the glide characteristics of a brick? Why build such complex, adjustable main engines and then rely on the equivalent of two giant firecrackers to provide most of the takeoff thrust? Why use a glass thermal protection system, rather than a low-tech ablative shield? And having chosen such a fragile method of heat protection, why on earth mount the orbiter on the side of the rocket, where things will fall on it during launch?
It’s cynical, funny, educational, and engaging. In short, it’s well worth reading. I learned a great deal from it, and was highly entertained. Lest you think that it’s merely one person’s opinion, NASA chief Michael Griffin agrees. Check it out.