Technological Progress
Posted in Unfounded Speculation
on December 20th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball
One's view of scientific and technological progress depends on the time in which one lives. In the ancient world, progress plainly occurred, but the way in which a person lived in general tended to differ very little from the way their grandparents lived or the way their grandchildren would end up living, so the state of human knowledge and skill must have seemed very static. As we progressed towards the end of the second millennium, the advance of science and technology was obvious and changing lives in real time, and people conceived progress as a linear process. Finally, as science and technology exploded in the 20th century, people could actually see the rate of progress itself increase in real time, and progress was conceived of by many science fiction authors as an exponential process leading to God-like and unimaginable powers for those who command it.
I remember reading a column in the Globe and Mail by science fiction writer Spider Robinson where he made the prediction that he would see the secret to immortality cracked in his lifetime. In my view this is exemplary of the latter point of view. I think in general that there is an influential strain of thought, especially among the technological and scientific elite, that once a critical mass of discoveries has been made, an exponential process of scientific and technological progress occurs, producing magnificent new powers for humanity that would seem like magic to people living today - who may nevertheless be alive to witness these miracles.
A consequence of this is the faith, common in some quarters, that the limitless potential of technological progress will solve our energy problems arising from peak oil and climate change.
A classic prediction is that we would all be driving around in flying cars by the year 2000. "Where are all the hovercars?" therefore, became a common joke, but the jocularity hides a serious and interesting question.
I think it's probably obvious from the article linked above that I am not one of the faithful. While I think there are some possible avenues to save us, I absolutely do not believe the development of these avenues is a given, that they will necessarily be sufficient to overcome the damage we will cause ourselves from the enormous stress our societies will be placed under, or that the potential of science is limitless.
I actually think that the potentials of science and technology are limited, and that therefore the best model of progress is actually something like the titration curve. Each scientific and technological progressive step depends on other scientific knowledge and technological knowhow. For a society with very little real knowledge of how the universe works, their potential is limited - it's like the Bible says, to those who have, more will be given and for those who have not, even what little they have will be taken away. So in the beginning, progress occurs but is very slow and most people experience the universe as a static place, or for the most enlightened, of a very long, slow arc of progress.
However, just like the titration curve, as knowledge builds up, it begins to reach a critical mass and key discoveries are made, where the knowledge that exists begins to support the rapid accumulation of even more knowledge. As the rate of progress speeds up, everyone can perceive it, but the dominant paradigm is to imagine progress as a linear process. So someone writing science fiction in such a time would tend in envisage the progress to travel through space, for example, as taking centuries, and the lifestyle envisioned often seems to have a curiously archaic sensibility to modern eyes.
Then as knowledge builds ever quicker, we reach the equivalence point of our titration curve of progress. To the enlightened, the exponential nature of progress is obvious, and to those inclined to revere science, the day when humanity will be literally transformed by the capabilities of science seems like it is just around the corner. Science fiction writers working in such a time might be tempted to "overshoot," and make predictions about specific times, for example our own decade, that seem extremely exotic compared to the comparatively very prosaic reality we actually inhabit.
What I think happens next is that due to the fundamental limitations of science and technology, progress then begins to slow. New discoveries, and significant improvements to existing technologies continue to occur, but progress is increasingly dominated by refinements to existing science and technology rather than radical new discoveries. As the process of refinement approaches theoretical maxima, the overall rate of progress slows. Progress seems linear again, not exponential.
This is where we are now, I think - we can see the evidence in this in all the "overshoot," where so many wondrous predictions for our time have not come to pass and with the exception of information technology, most of our lives and our interaction with technology seem remarkably similar to what they were a few decades ago. With the exception of the computer revolution and the revolution in biology coming from understanding the structure and role of DNA, practically every significant technology on which we base our lives existed before 1950 and has only been refined since then. We are far from achieving immortality, and there are no hover cars in sight.
Finally, all significant scientific knowledge will be acquired. We will have, for example, a credible Unified Field Theory in physics, and a very detailed understanding of biological processes. Refinement continues, especially in complex, empirical fields like biology and chemistry, causing continuing progress which I think goes on basically indefinitely. But the pace of change becomes so slow that to people living in that time it seems static again.
Of course, making it to that last stage is a big if. We do have the capacity to blow our civilization to kingdom come, and massive stresses are coming, soon, which will make that prospect much more likely.
Some people imagine that if civilization receives such a powerful shock, we might technologically regress to an earlier state. For example, we might be plying the seas in schooners and fighting each other with cutlasses and primitive cannon. I consider this prospect very unlikely.
Take sail. It is tempting to imagine that the schooner is the direct, lineal ancestor of the modern bunker fuel-fired container ship or aircraft carrier. For the most part, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, sailing using the wind and building wooden sailing ships is a very sophisticated technology which was only shelved because more effective technologies came along. Sailing actually achieved a very high level of refinement before that occurred. The knowledge to create these types of ships has been preserved as a sort of hobbyism, you might say, but it's a niche thing and not at all ubiquitous in our economy. If we had a major dieback, we might get lucky and the people with the right skills plus the right tools and facilities might survive (although, if they are using modern tools, the technology to make sustainable archaic tools might not survive, and the luck might be temporary), and some cultures might be able to revert to sophisticated sailing technology. But most, I think, while probably knowing that sophisticated wind-powered wooden ships are possible, might actually have to revert to very crude boats, far less advanced than anything available in 1700 A.D., or even 1700 B.C.
The same applies to a host of "primitive" technologies, which were actually very sophisticated but which were superceded by more effective mechanized technologies. If the most modern technologies could no longer be supported because the vast and sophisticated interlocking web of supports were no longer functioning, it doesn't mean that primitive technologies would be available to take their place. In a lot of ways it would be a shockingly fast and hard fall.
And it would be an "I've fallen and I can't get up" moment, for sure. Our civilization rose on the availability of easily accessed and extracted minerals and vast reserves of fossil energy. The easily extracted fossil fuels are disappearing, as are the easily extracted minerals. A rebuilding human society would have significant disadvantages compared to their ancestors rising for the first time, or rather, would lack vital advantages that their ancestors enjoyed. (At the same time, they would have some significant advantages that their ancestors didn't have, because they would at least know what's possible and would have access to eclectic remains of our civilization).
In fact, I think in the wake of a massive fall, the most defining aspect of our technology would be the pressing into service of the surviving detritus of our highly sophisticated technological society into a miserable shadow of its former self. Some piece of garbage people no longer have the capability of making, for example, might be successfully pressed into service as a crude boat. Or, of course, until all such things wore out, an actual surviving fibreglass sailboat might be used. We would then experience a comparatively slow and permanent decline as these leftovers wore out.
To me, the bottom line is this: We can't rely on technology alone to save us. At least, we can't have faith in a massive torrent of discoveries to sweep away our problems. The answers may be harder and harder to come by and require significant hard work - and also be increasingly easy to suppress and vulnerable to vested interests. The same information technology that makes information easier to disseminate might also be possible to employ to create a more perfect totalitarianism.
Also, we can't fail to get through our coming crises. We get one shot to enjoy the technological utopia at the second flat area of progress. If we screw it up significantly, there's no coming back.
But one area in which I do choose to have faith is that it is possible to maintain a sustainable society almost indefinitely at that high level of attainment - but it will require some radical changes, because our current practices simply aren't sustainable, and will actually break down in a ridiculously short time when compared against the stretch of human history, even the short portion where civilizations have existed.
For fun, I will make a prediction, returning to the example of immortality: the secret to immortality will not be discovered in the lifetime of anyone living, if it exists, which I actually somewhat doubt. If it is discovered, I think it will be useful for creating new immortal people but will not be able to save anyone already living, creating an interesting question of whether we want to create immortal children. After all, if death is good enough for us... 
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