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Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

worldpolicy.org

111–120 of 122 posts

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#111
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What NASA should be doing is what no private enterprise can do: highly unprofitable risky space pioneering that inspires the human race." http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112392431/spacex-sets-it... I do not know if SpaceX will make it; I'd personally bet against that timeframe, though I wouldn't bet against the goal in general. But I will guarantee this: Barring a major political turnaround in the US, SpaceX wil…

Agreed. If there's a place where I can place a cash bet that SpaceX will be the first entity to put a man on Mars, I'd do it tonight. They have the people, the vision, leadership, philosophy, and just enough of a successful track record so far to put meat into it, and de-risk it. They have momentum.

ok. you get your man on Mars .. then what? do you see anyone clamoring to live on Antarctica? Mars is even more un-hospitable. Just to look around? that's an expensive sight-seeing tour.

nobody will want to actually live there. if there is money to be made by mining Mars' resources, fine - but don't steal my money (via tax dollars).

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#112
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree for the most part. I video skyped with my mom today. It boggled her mind that we're able to do this. This is something that was only possible in cartoons in the 70s. She only just discovered Skype, whereas I've been using it for years and have seen it evolve. I imagine it's like watching your nephew grow up. Don't see him for a few years, and suddenly, it's like, whoah! You're huge! But if you see him every d…

Video skyping is a victory of hardware development, not software. The software methodologies are not fundamentally different from the 1970s -- they are faster, and (arguably) easier in certain ways, but code is still written one line at a time, building logical constructs that have been around for decades. What has changed is the amount of code that a device is capable of executing per second, and that is what has en…

> code is still written one line at a time

I take it you have never used IDEA to write Java code? :-P

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#113
post #56
post #5

I can sympathize with this. But I also think it's wrong on many points. Feynman's point that "there's plenty of room at the bottom" is extremely relevant to the modern age; most of our marvels are now Small Stuff rather than the Big Stuff that Neal calls for. I'm crazy for space exploration, but unmanned exploration really is the stronger option at this point. I get excited over large trussed structures, but cheap ha…

>Feynman's point that "there's plenty of room at the bottom" is extremely relevant to the modern age; most of our marvels are now Small Stuff rather than the Big Stuff that Neal calls for. We understand quite a bit more than we used to at that level, but there hasn't yet been a lot of tangible benefit. We haven't sped up the pace of drug development, and haven't developed nanomechanical computers (no Young Lady's Ill…

> We haven't sped up the pace of drug development

http://fold.it/portal/info/science

> haven't developed nanomechanical computers

micro:

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2007/LC/b70876...

nano:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/5229

Not that either is going to replace transistors-in-silicon when it comes to density of processing power.

> no Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Incidentally, the story describes a "Wizard of Oz" implementation. The more complex interactions of the primer are handled by a human actor behind the scenes.

> We haven't developed Drexler's universal constructors

Take your pick of DNA synthesis, chemical synthesis, nucleosynthesis, antihydrogen, 3d printing, two-photon fabrication - oh, and the 16 nm semiconductor process. Not quite magic goo, but pretty effective nonetheless.

> we do have see-through zinc oxide

Transparent aluminum:

http://www.physorg.com/news167925273.html

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. If there's a place where I can place a cash bet that SpaceX will be the first entity to put a man on Mars, I'd do it tonight. They have the people, the vision, leadership, philosophy, and just enough of a successful track record so far to put meat into it, and de-risk it. They have momentum.

ok. you get your man on Mars .. then what? do you see anyone clamoring to live on Antarctica? Mars is even more un-hospitable. Just to look around? that's an expensive sight-seeing tour. nobody will want to actually live there. if there is money to be made by mining Mars' resources, fine - but don't steal my money (via tax dollars).

First off, I didn't say anything about someone living on Mars, as in, moving there permanently. That may or may not happen -- in the long run, probable. I just bet that SpaceX is probably the lead contender for who's going to put the first human footprint on Mars. It will likely be their tech, anyway.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure there are people who would love to live on Mars. At least give it a shot. Yes, in purely practical terms, it has a lot of downsides. But so does Antarctica, and many people have travelled there and some people actually live there at least some duration.

Third, there's good reason to believe, based on past experience with similar efforts, that the net economic effect for folks back on Earth is going to be positive, due to the side effects and fallout from R&D breakthroughs and engineering optimizations. That's what happened with the US-Soviet space race and the Apollo program. Also, since we're talking about SpaceX, which is a private company, it's possible that some, though almost certainly not all, of their funding comes from non-government sources, including non-US sources. It will probably be a mix. Mr. Musk personally put in a lot of his own money, which he made privately, to bootstrap it.

Fifth, one argument for establishing a permanent human presence on Mars is so that humanity has at least one outpost off Earth. So that if some disaster happens with Earth, not all of our eggs were in one basket. Paying even $100m to buy that seems like a pretty cheap form of insurance. Much much greater sums get spent on say NFL football merchandise, or pop music albums, each year. And certainly a couple orders of magnitude more have been spent on US military operations in the last decade, most of which could be argued were unnecessary.

Ninthly, because I cannot count: there are likely many economic benefits to you, the US and the planet to both setting foot on Mars and creating a sustained outpost there, in terms of the follow-on effects of inspiration and imagination and ambition, especially in children and upcoming generations. Surely if we could tip even 1m more children world-wide over into eventually becoming engineers, scientists and inventors, rather than lawyers, accountants, brokers or rap stars, the whole of humanity would be better off, on the net.

Eleventhly, I have no eleventhly. :)

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#115
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Feynman's point that "there's plenty of room at the bottom" is extremely relevant to the modern age; most of our marvels are now Small Stuff rather than the Big Stuff that Neal calls for. We understand quite a bit more than we used to at that level, but there hasn't yet been a lot of tangible benefit. We haven't sped up the pace of drug development, and haven't developed nanomechanical computers (no Young Lady's Ill…

> We haven't sped up the pace of drug development http://fold.it/portal/info/science > haven't developed nanomechanical computers micro: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2007/LC/b70876... nano: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/5229 Not that either is going to replace transistors-in-silicon when it comes to density of processing power. > no Young Lady's Illustrated Primer Incidentally, the story d…

>> We haven't sped up the pace of drug development > >http://fold.it/portal/info/science

Yes, and where is the drug? The world seems to be overflowing with "promising drug targets", but what actually gets approved is longer lasting pecker perkers and yet another blood pressure medication.

>> haven't developed nanomechanical computers > >micro: > >http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2007/LC/b70876.... > >nano: > >http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/5229

Well, okay, there has been some progress in the lab that seems to have led to not much practical. The microfluidics holds big promise. Just like it has for decades. Use this technology to make a closed-loop artificial pancreas... that will be progress.

>> no Young Lady's Illustrated Primer > > Incidentally, the story describes a "Wizard of Oz" implementation. The more complex interactions of the primer are handled by a human actor behind the scenes.

Heh. I'd forgotten about the actor. Must read that book again. Why oh why are they charging $12 for the ebook version of a novel published in 1995? More than the paperback?

>> We haven't developed Drexler's universal constructors > >Take your pick of DNA synthesis, chemical synthesis, nucleosynthesis, antihydrogen, 3d printing, two-photon fabrication - oh, and the 16 nm semiconductor process. Not quite magic goo, but pretty effective nonetheless.

That's a long, long way from magic goo.

I wasn't trying to say there's been no progress, just that the rate of technological progress is slower than it was. Most of what you've pointed out here hasn't made it out of the lab yet.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A library of everything about everything available to anyone has been one of the human dreams, from the Library of Alexandria to the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

A library of everything about everything available to anyone But that's not Wikipedia, nor, given its deletion policy, ever likely to be.

There are more lenient wiki providers out there, like Wikia. Whether these services will be around for the duration remains to be seen.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok. you get your man on Mars .. then what? do you see anyone clamoring to live on Antarctica? Mars is even more un-hospitable. Just to look around? that's an expensive sight-seeing tour. nobody will want to actually live there. if there is money to be made by mining Mars' resources, fine - but don't steal my money (via tax dollars).

First off, I didn't say anything about someone living on Mars, as in, moving there permanently. That may or may not happen -- in the long run, probable. I just bet that SpaceX is probably the lead contender for who's going to put the first human footprint on Mars. It will likely be their tech, anyway. Secondly, I'm pretty sure there are people who would love to live on Mars. At least give it a shot. Yes, in purely pr…

it's certainly possible that private money funds this, but highly doubtful. why? because it's mostly a money-pit operation. investors have an almost zero chance of getting a return on their money in their own lifetime. spaceX is mainly competing for gov't money either in the form of seed money for R&D or as their main customer for LEO trips.

don't get me wrong, I love SpaceX (and Elon), but most of this is folly.

Even terraforming Mars isn't realistic, it's a mostly dead planet whose core has cooled and now doesn't have any protective electromagnetic belts.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#118
post #27
post #17

I'm from a different generation than Neal Stephenson. I grew up inspired by my parents' old IBM XT. The Apple II at school. My TI-83 programmable graphing calculator. Not space flight. I continue to be inspired every year by the innovations in tech startups, and that's just the field I happen to live and work in - the biomedical field in the last 10 years has made orders of magnitude of progress understanding the hum…

Of all the things you mention, I think only Google, the Human Genome Project, and maybe Wikipedia belong on a list next to the great achievements Neal is talking about (human spaceflight, the invention of the computer, nuclear power). Most of those other things we spend so much time talking about make things more convenient, or less boring, or more efficient and are the results of innovation in business process or go…

I forgot XBox Kinect - that's straight out of science fiction.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#119
post #14

Grr! I like Stephenson a lot but I find this argument highly disingenuous. In fact, I find most of the reactions I've seen to "the end of US spaceflight capability" sickeningly short-sighted and hyperbolic. Read the goddamn budget announcement: "Orszag said that in addition to research and development, NASA’s proposal invests in 'advance robotics and other steps that will help to inspire Americans and not just return…

But "send s* into LEO" was always stupid. IAMNA-NasaHistorian, but wasn't the Shuttle was built because NASA and its contractors had a massive infrastructure that none wanted to shrink? "We have to stay in space" had political plausibility, and the absence of a compelling science agenda wasn't noticeable to the Congressmen who _wanted_ a compelling agenda to justify maintenance of infrastructure in their districts.

I think Stephenson's dead right about the effects of risk aversion, but I don't understand sentences like "In a world where decision-makers are so close to being omniscient, it’s easy to see risk as a quaint artifact of a primitive and dangerous past." The Lehman Crisis is only the latest evidence of Omniscient Collapse. The safety record of the Shuttle is another.

My current guess is that part of the problem is excess compartmentalization and excess complexity. These seem related to large-scale corporate organization. Believing that risk is a real if weird economic cost, I have to wonder if these enormous corporations really deliver their promised bargains of scale economy. It's certainly plausible to imagine their capital has to include a government backstop, and that maybe our institutions would be somewhat less enormous and stupid if we would just let their risks come to the fore.

But that would lead to more chaos that our corporate leaders and politicians would like. We've got a leadership class more interested in managing than accomplishing, and it's showing up in all sorts of places.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#120
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We haven't sped up the pace of drug development http://fold.it/portal/info/science > haven't developed nanomechanical computers micro: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2007/LC/b70876... nano: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/5229 Not that either is going to replace transistors-in-silicon when it comes to density of processing power. > no Young Lady's Illustrated Primer Incidentally, the story d…

>> We haven't sped up the pace of drug development > > http://fold.it/portal/info/science Yes, and where is the drug? The world seems to be overflowing with "promising drug targets", but what actually gets approved is longer lasting pecker perkers and yet another blood pressure medication. >> haven't developed nanomechanical computers > >micro: > > http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2007/LC/b70876... . > >…

> what actually gets approved is longer lasting pecker perkers and yet another blood pressure medication

That's a problem with the industry and the government, not so much with the research. But I'd love to see improvements there.

Also, there are some fun tricks with augmented reality and chemistry.

teaching:

http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/scripps/

drug prototyping:

http://boingboing.net/2011/09/26/chemistry-of-the-future-3d-...

> there has been some progress in the lab that seems to have led to not much practical.

MEMS has only been a thing for about a decade. Fancy sensors for your cell phone are more profitable, so they get industrial support and make it out of the lab faster.

It's not easy to get adequate funding for academic research, and it's a million times easier (more, really) to MVP a SaaS startup than it is to get innovative tech out of the lab. Industry is often 10-20 years behind academic research, sometimes more. Just look at the state of nuclear power plants.

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