Vaclav Smil argues that, despite the onslaught of popular techno critics who argue otherwise, immense rapid progress in one area means immense rapid progress in the world. It’s a reminder that it’s not. all Realm.
Let’s get this out of the way first. Smil is Bill Gates’ favorite author. He wrote his 40 books, all about energy, China or a combination of food, agriculture and ecology. his latest book Invention and Innovation: A History of Hype and Failure, which touches on all of this, with some deviations. Mostly, it’s a story of thwarted promises.
Smil is very intentional about the types of flops it emphasizes. He doesn’t care about nasty design failures (Titanic, Betamax, Google Glass) or the unwanted side effects of the inventions we all use (prescription drugs, cars, plastics). Rather, it focuses on selected categories to show the limits of innovation. The staggering rapid progress in electronics and computing over the last 50 years or so has meant that we are now in a golden age of unprecedented, disruptive and transformative growth. It doesn’t mean that there are. every day field.
The Different Ways Invention Could And Did Go South
First, Smil says the promise was undermined by huge but unforeseen or perfectly foreseen but neglected and neglected downsides. He then describes a promise that did not materialize as much as was expected and hyped. Then comes the promise that we are still waiting to fulfill. And finally, he mocks the now exaggerated but ridiculously impracticable promises (and those who promise them). This last part is the crux. He hopes that he will learn from all the relevant histories and evaluate these claims so that we are not taken in. He gives his three examples from each category. I gave it, but said there are many other examples that could have been used instead.
The first group are inventions that were wildly successful to fiasco, such as leaded gas, DDT, and chlorofluorocarbons. Smil describes the important technical and social problems these developed to solve, and their rise and eventual consequences as the risks they posed became known decades after their introduction. Indicates phase out. The harm of lead additives in gases is an exception and has been known since the beginning.Lead has been known to be a neurotoxin since ancient Greece.However, GM has dismissed these concerns. . Because (a) lead is very effective in (a) making engines run more efficiently on lower quality fuels and (b) lead production can be controlled.
Examples of his successful inventions are airships, nuclear fission, and supersonic flight. All three were destined to dominate their respective market niches, but all failed. Airships, or light flying machines as Smil puts it, are just an easy way to tell if the fiction book you’re reading is steampunk. (If airships are on the cover, yes.) Nuclear fission is commercially deployed and generating electricity, but “its current share of the global market is not what was expected of this complex nascent technology.” Its stage of enthusiastic adoption: nothing but completely dominated by the end of the 20th century!” And supersonic jets are too noisy.
A potentially world-changing innovation we haven’t reached yet is traveling in (almost) a vacuum, often (but erroneously, Smil points out) called hyperloop locomotion. Nitrogen-fixing cereals and nuclear fusion. These have been promised, promised, promised, but always seem to be only five years away.
“We know what to do and what to do”
Some of Smir’s bitterness and frustration come out as irony in the final chapter, called “Techno-Optimism, Exaggeration, and Realistic Expectations,” but “Why Moore’s Law Can Happen to Our Senses.” What’s the worst? perspective. “This is where Smir writes that physical reality, known constants, available speed and capacity are now largely irrelevant and are being outmaneuvered by ever-accelerating innovation.” But there are no signs of such a significant acceleration.”
He laments our general technological optimism and blames it on the truly staggering advances in electronics and computing that many adults living today have witnessed in real time. completely betrayed the We now believe that all sectors will move forward quickly if there is sufficient evidence that it has not and will not.
He sums up the breathtaking views of today’s techno prophets: material abundance. He then said that this message was “heard in the Evil Empire elementary school, when our rulers were promising a similar kind of earthly nirvana as soon as they finished building communism.” Point out how similar things are. ah.
Smartphones are cool, but most innovations in areas such as agriculture, transportation, energy use and storage, and drug discovery that could meaningfully improve the lives of many people have made incremental progress. Not only that, but we don’t really need radical new inventions to provide clean water, micronutrients, or decent education for children in developing countries. This will radically improve their quality of life. Only if we choose to do so will we be able to mitigate existing inequalities by fine-tuning the technology we have. Instead, we get poetic and spend tons of money trying to achieve the singularity.
the book ends with a maxim Nihil Novi Subsole— nothing new under the sun.The surprisingly dark final words of the book entitled invention and innovation.
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