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Trilogy Part 1 - | About the authors * Dr. Paul MacCready, inventor of human-powered flight, is one of the most admired engineers in America. Chairman of the Board of AeroVironment (AV), Dr. MacCready's teams provide products and technology innovation to three main markets: Unmanned & Specialty Aircraft, Distributed & Alternative Energy Systems, and Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Systems & Infrastructure. Five AV Vehicles/ models are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian: The Gossamer Condor, The Gossamer Albatross, The Solar Challenger, Quetzacoatlus Northropi, and The Sunraycer. * Thom Hartmann's award-winning books have been written about in many publications with one book selected for inclusion in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian. He has been on numerous national and international radio and TV shows, including NPR's All Things Considered, CNN, and BBC radio, and has been on the front page of The Wall Street Journal twice. A student of technology, he is also a former engineer/technician. * Bruce Sterling is famous for his role creating the cyberpunk movement, author of several best-selling novels, and co-author of The Difference Engine. This science-fiction writer and futurist offers Designfax readers an excerpt from his novel Heavy Weather, which according to one source, "provides as impressive a climax as one could want, symbolizing not only the chaos of 2031 but all the systems in which humankind is both victim and cause." |
An Ambivalent Luddite at a Technological Feast
by Dr. Paul B. MacCready, AeroVironment Inc.
Two centuries ago Luddites in England smashed new automatic machines that, with inferior products, were eliminating their hand loom jobs. With suppression of their rebellion they became a metaphor for the futility of trying to thwart technological advances.
We are now experiencing far more pervasive change -- exciting opportunity only for those willing and able to adjust. I waffle. I'm ambivalent, welcoming much technological change (and participating in some), but worried that many technological advances that may be acceptable to society will erode our humanness or lead toward a future that is either undesirable or unsustainable. Our human biological roots, physiological and psychological, evolved in a very different world from the one we now occupy. For example, TV that provides entertainment and valuable information shortens the attention span of young addicts, can be used to foster ignorance and group control, and creates couch potatoes. The time saving from fax and e-mail somehow can't be located as we all scurry faster -- and we still find ourselves doing more paperwork.
The pluses and minuses of technologies is a more serious topic than just the devices themselves and their immediate uses. The topic encompasses exploring the future of existing humans, how computers and bioengineering might change us, and dealing with past and future conflicts between humans, nature, and technology.
My interest in such topics arose from unique circumstances. Daydreaming on a 1976 vacation trip I realized that the long standing £50,000 Kremer Prize for the first sustained/controlled human-powered flight almost exactly matched a $100,000 debt I had acquired by co-signing a friend's bank loan that he could not repay. Suddenly I became interested in human-powered flight. The next summer, with the help of friends, the Gossamer Condor won the prize. The huge, fragile plane almost defines the word "impractical." However, as a catalyst for unleashing new opportunities and valuable insights, for many others as well as for me, this ugly duckling airplane turned out to be a superbly "practical" swan.
The prize-winning flight, August 23, 1977, received much more publicity than expected. Soon I was making presentations to varied audiences in several countries, and interacting with museums (the plane is still on display at the National Air and Space Museum), corporations, and education groups. New insights emerged as preparing for presentations forced me to think hard about the processes of innovation, and explore connections between human bodies, natural fliers, and technology. Having to answer questions from the audience was especially effective in forcing perspectives to broaden. The most common question was "Why did your team win while other larger teams, with greater time, talent and resources, didn't come close?" Working on answers forced me into learning a bit about how all human minds work, and realizing that the self-organizing aspect of our minds results in mental blinders -- the worst ones being we don't think we have them, and not recognizing that expertise in a field often narrows thinking. Insights grew about thinking skills, the process of pioneering, and strategies for unleashing creativity -- and how to develop life skills that conventional schooling tends to quash. Also, perspectives grew about the bigger issues of future humans, and somehow balancing technology with nature.
That initial spark lit by the Gossamer Condor also set off two decades of pioneering vehicle technology projects for land, air and sea. A recent example is AeroVironment's NASA-supported 120-foot span Pathfinder II solar powered stratospheric airplane. This "gossamer" craft climbed to over 80,000 feet altitude last summer, higher than any propeller plane had ever flown continuously. Eventually, with a fuel cell system installed, this non-polluting vehicle can fly continuously for months monitoring how civilization is modifying the stratosphere's filtering of solar radiation to which life on Earth has evolved. The vehicle can also fill the role of a communications relay, in effect an 11-mile high antenna, some 2,000 times closer than geosynchronous satellites. At the other end of the size spectrum, we have performed flight demonstrations of a tiny 2- ounce electric airplane, a surveillance drone that telemeters what its video camera sees. And work proceeds on smaller 6-inch span autonomous versions and still tinier wing flapping ones.
Few people realize the speed of change as civilization's consumption grows but the Earth's resources don't. I've found one illustration so dramatic it makes the point painfully clear. The present total weight of vertebrate life on land and in the air can be divided into two parts: the human-related (humans and their livestock and pets) is 98%, and wild nature just 2%. If you're keeping score, we have won -- but in winning may lose a grander game.
The following two sentences summarize the situation at this wonderful moment of human life on Earth:
Over billions of years, on a unique sphere, chance has painted a thin covering of life --complex, improbable, wonderful, and fragile. Suddenly we humans, (a recently arrived species no longer subject to the checks and balances inherent in nature), have grown in population, technology, and intelligence to a position of terrible power: we now wield the paintbrush.
Stimulated by my words on this painting theme, I painted the picture which appears on pages 28 and 29. It suggests the size of the Earth has not and will not change, and depicts the evolution of life on a very non-linear time scale. Emerging from the present human-dominated phase is an unknown future -- murky because my crystal ball clouded over. I sketched in natural and robotic cockroaches as a humorous warning, not a prediction. However, as I find myself working on tiny robotic fliers and considerable biomorphic systems, I begin worrying that the joke could be on us.
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It seems to me inevitable that, with new technology so rewarding, technological Luddites will simply become road kill, and the surviving intelligent life form on Earth will be silicon based (meaning computers) rather than carbon based (meaning humans). For thousands of generations, the intellectual potentials of newborn humans have been rather constant. The empirical Moore's "Law," that characterizes much computer technology and its use, has shown doubling every 18 months. It has routinely rolled over the predictions of technologists who cited fundamental physical limits that assure this explosive growth will quickly slow or stop. In many ways computers already surpass human brains. Which side would you bet on in a speed race between a tree and a gazelle? Karel Capek, who coined the word ROBOT for his 1921 play "R.V.R," wrote "War With The Newts," 1936 (ISBN 0-8101-1468-2). This classic depicts what happens as more and more is asked of servants, and they are helped to achieve greater skills -- until the inevitable switch in the roles of masters and servants.
One great feature of that crystal ball that suggested the future in the picture is the ball's cloudiness. I have no confidence in my predictions -- a comforting thought when predictions are pessimistic. We can achieve a desirable sustainable world. For any rational strategy, technology in perspective and under control provides essential tools. There is no more exciting time to be around than right now, and no more important subject than beneficial technology.
But be nice to your computer, so that in the future it may think kindly of you.
Take action. Here are 3 things YOU can do:
* See how today's Luddites take out their technological frustrations at the August Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, http://www.burningman.com
You don't want to miss this!
* Find out more about Dr. MacCready and his projects at http://www.aerovironment.com or write AeroVironment, Inc., 222 East Huntington Drive, Suite 200, Monrovia, CA 91016. 626-357-9983.
* Send email comments to sales@aerovironment.com and kchapple@design fax.net
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