A PERSONAL LOOK AT THE FUTURE
It’s the fifth of November today, Guy Fawkes Night or Fire-
Soon it will be Christmas and all the kids will be looking forward to their MP3 players, the latest games (not consoles, they have been delayed a bit), the latest fast PC, their own flat screen TV or whatever. There is a whole new world of technology every year it seems.
But where did all that technology, even those fire-
There is a debate current in Britain about why so few youngsters want to become scientists and engineers. There is yet another movement, with speeches by the British Prime Minister, to try to instil some interest. By my memory this is the third such initiative in the last twenty years.
I grew up with an interest in science that has not diminished now that I am in my sixth decade and retired– the thrill of discovery is still there, whether it is discovery by another or the fact that some theory that has been bothering me for years suddenly seems clear. I will never discover a new drug (except by the remotest accident) but the discovery of new understanding is very important to me.
I used the word “accident” above, it is amazing how many discoveries have come
about because of an accident, something not working properly or whatever. Gun-
Penicillin is a very famous case of an accidental discovery. The little device that makes the hated speed camera work was because a design did not work as expected. I often wonder how many other discoveries have gone unnoticed, how many scientists and engineers threw the results into the bin without thinking, “Now, what does it really mean, can I use the results another way?”
This week the world’s largest container ship docked in a British port. It contains millions of “Christmas gifts” for the British market. Everything from crackers to sophisticated electronics it seems. In a report on the future of the English language, published in 2000, David Graddol quoted the following ratios of the world’s wealth:
in the order of Big Three : Asia : The Rest and in percentages
1990 -
I will leave it up to the readers’ imagination what this might mean in terms of the shift of world power when America has a smaller share of world wealth than China (though, perhaps, a rather different China to that today). That “Big Three” in economic terms includes Japan.
With the news of the past year, with China’s work in gaining influence in Africa being a prime example, perhaps even that pessimistic ratio might be out of date. It might happen sooner, it might have a larger separation between the “Big Three” and the rest. Whatever it does seem to indicate that the East will become the dominant culture, Chinese may become the favourite language in Western schools.
Our continuing reduction in resources in terms of “brain power” in the West will only exacerbate this problem, China and India are churning out science graduates on an assembly line process. They may not all become top scientists, or perhaps even useful ones, but out of the masses it is inevitable that top work will emerge – work that will further damage the historical Western superiority, and it is only history now.
Science may seem boring to many, but it is the very driving force of almost every kind of commerce; growing better food, making better electronic products, more interesting clothes… The list is not endless, it just seems so.
Can science save the world from its current environmental problems, or will it continue to be controlled by commerce? I don’t know and some say that science got us there in the first place (I would ague that politics, commerce and personal greed are equally to blame, but never mind). If it is possible to save the earth one thing is evident, that we must stop using the available resources like there is no tomorrow and find alternatives to fossil fuel. Science can help with each of these, providing it is given the funding, resources and authority it needs.
The only other alternative is to go back to a medieval style of life, where you only get to eat that which is seasonal and grown within a short distance of your home; where travel is only by foot or “renewable” (horses are “renewable”) means. Solar powered vehicles are limited in load and speed (unless the scientists prove otherwise…).
It is not those teenagers of today, that (according to the media) spend most of their time vandalising property, frightening old ladies and getting drunk that will suffer most, but their children will definitely feel the pinch – how do we get this through to them? Do they care?
Perhaps it will take a world wide movement, “Tomorrow’s Children” or something, to make those unthinking kids, and all the politicians and businessmen, really look up and take notice. But it must be run by the kids themselves, any adult advisors must be well in the background.
BLEAK FUTURE
(A SHORT STORY )
John checked his weather monitor: temperature minus 5, not bad for mid November;
wind 15; estimated windchill minus 25; forecast, wind dropping later but a 75% chance
of snow before mid-
John put on his Slipruf boots and checked that his personal unit was working.
Pressing the test button it cycled through the functions: satnav, satfone, life
signs -
Once through the internal corridor from his one roomed flat he opened the inner lock door, closed and latched that carefully, waited the minute for the heat economy system to stabilise, then opened the outer door. At least he had the heatlock to himself today, some of the residents saved their energy credits by not heating their washing water.
OK, there was no ice in the wind but John now wished he had put the visor on, the windchill gave the wind a razor edge. But it was only a hundred metres to the Link station and not worth opening the pack. He wished he rated a room in one of those blocks with their own station.
His work as a researcher at UKMEDIA gave him an insight into the recent history
of the weather, that was part of the reason he took it so seriously. Fifty years
ago, back in 2006, the big worry had been global warming. Deserts in southern England,
vineyards in Derbyshire, exotic fish in the seas… Many things had been predicted
that had never come to be -
There had always, in the background, those who predicted a very different future from the hot Britain the majority of experts and, unfortunately, they had been proved the better prophets. Most of the year Derbyshire was now an icy desert, reindeer farming was doing well but not much else.
The academic and intellectual base had slowly been eroded during the last years of the last century, there were a few centres of excellence but without that base of knowledge Britain was struggling and having to buy technology from the east at ever increasing prices. Even the UN had tried to intervene in global energy pricing, but the former colonies and oppressed countries were showing no sympathy for the impoverished and freezing west.
The money and commodity markets that London had been so proud of had been taken over, and then stripped, by foreign exchanges. Originally these had been European and American but now the Chinese, Koreans and Indians were increasingly becoming the worlds masters.
The United Europe was now only a name, though the Italians and the Spanish were
now growing crops where once only oregano had a chance The increasing world price
of food encouraged them to hoard more and trade their surplus with North Africa in
exchange for energy from the solar farms. Northern Italy was now suffering a small
ice-
John felt that he would much rather be going to work in shorts and a tee-
It was not surprising that the monuments to past politicians and others in the public eye were now being vandalised, some had even been removed to government “statue parks” and kept locked away from all but those who applied to see them. That was a generation that was now blamed and reviled for not making more use of nuclear energy, despite the cost of disposal of the waste – the current environment was the country costing ten times that every year, and that could not be sustained for much longer.
Money was no more, salaries were paid in energy, water, food and clothing credits on a pick and mix basis, but with a maximum ration designed to stop people overspending in one commodity to the detriment of their health – the NHS was groaning under the load and a free hospital bed was a rare thing. One percent of income was in “free” credits for the purchase of luxuries such as books and toys. There was no such thing as rich and poor now, a managerial position did not get you many extra credits, the government was maintaining a very tight hold on the economy.
John wondered what the rest of his life would bring, he might get married but would he and his wife get a license for a child? With his lowly status he doubted it. Work, eating, watching TV and sleeping; that was about all that was left.
John left the Link at work, thankful for the underground platform at the office. A random memory came into his mind, he was now under what used to be Hyde Park, now covered by a huge, monolithic, factory and office building typical of modern London. Volume equalled thermal efficiency; yeah, tell that to the dinosaurs!
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Archimedes, son of an astronomer, was one of the ancient world’s main men. Just about the most famous story about him is that of his running, wet and naked, through the streets yelling, “Eureka!” (“I have found it!”). What had he found that was so astounding that he forgot his bathrobe?
The king of the time had commissioned a new crown, supplying the gold for it himself. But His Majesty had the suspicion that the new crown was not all it seemed, he suspected that the goldsmith had kept some of the expensive gold and mixed cheaper silver in with the rest to make the weight of metal the same.
The king asked Archimedes to prove this one way or another without damaging the crown – just in case. “OK”, thought Archy, “I need a way to tell if there is silver mixed into the metal of the crown.”
“I can easily weigh the crown, and then make a lump of pure gold of the same weight, but I need to know the volume of both of them as well; if the crown contains lighter silver it will take up more space. The lump of pure gold is easy to measure, easy to find its volume, but the crown is a difficult shape, I can’t measure all these fiddly bits accurately!”
Archy puzzled over this until he felt tired and decided to have a nice soak in the bath to relax. For some reason his servant had filled the tub to the brim, and as Archy lowered himself slowly in the displaced water overflowed. Later he got out of the bath, and the water level went back down. Then the realisation hit him, the space now left in the bath was exactly the same volume as his own, submerged, body (complete with all his fiddly bits) and therefore so was the displaced water. If he were to place the crown in a full tub of water, the displaced water must be the same volume as the crown!
So happy was Archy that he forgot his state of undress and rushed of to tell the king of his idea – running wet and naked through the streets…
He had a wide “jug” with a long spout made and filled this until the water over-
The displaced water from the lump of gold did not quite reach the first mark, the gold lump had a smaller volume than the crown, was more dense than the crown. Therefore the crown was a mixture of gold and silver!
Archy had temporarily lost his head in his joy at finding his solution; we can assume the goldsmith lost his head in a more permanent way!
OK, no one knows the true story, but history has recorded the fact that Archimedes
obviously felt a real emotional lift in finding a simple solution to what he thought
was a very difficult problem. That is one of the rewards of working in science and
technology -
Archimedes’ method has remained just as important for every single moment of the
two thousand two hundred odd years since he found it. It is still used today, being
the most accurate way to measure the actual volume, and therefore find the density,
of the human body -
©2006 Dave’s Place
Well, it was never really “invented”, more sort of “developed” over a long time. The story could go like this…
Some many, many thousands of years ago two characters, let’s call them Able and Useless, were struggling along with a heavy log on their shoulders, Useless being in front. Just as they came out of the forest Useless trod on a small, round piece of branch. It rolled under his foot and he fell – with the log on top of him.
“^*&+!” said Useless (being a man of few, and usually short, words). “Hmm”, thought Able, “if Useless’ foot rolled on the bit of branch, I wonder if this log will.” So he got some more small, round bits of branches, put the log on them, and pushed. It worked, of course, and soon the whole village was enjoying rolling big logs, pet woolly mammoths and one another all over the place on little round logs; let’s call them “rollers”.
The only trouble was when these rollers hit a bump they stopped dead. Having more than his fair share of brain cells Able then had the idea of thinning out the middle bit of the roller so that it was off the ground and would go over the smaller bumps at least, and the big log would stay on better as well!
This idea suited everyone for a very long time -
Trouble was, the big logs, or whatever, still rolled off the front roller, so
you had to keep moving the rollers from the back to the front. Along came the next
genius type, Fred (not Flintstone, he died centuries ago). Fred’s big idea was to
cut those large diameter bits off the roller ends make them thinner, poke holes in
the middle of them and then fit them back onto the thin middle bit… The ends rolled,
but the middle bit did not, the log/cow/pig (woolly mammoths being well extinct by
now) stayed on -
Yes, the wheel was upon the world. But in this version of events it was not actually invented, by Fred or anyone else, he only made the final modification in a chain of development. The wheel was developed over a period of time, and through the ideas of several people.
There have been cases of pure invention, where someone has plucked a completely new idea out of his or her head, just about complete and ready to use, in a sudden flash of inspiration. However, for most people it is a case of building on previous ideas, combining and developing them, and applying lots of time and skull sweat to the problem (money is also needed, but that’s another problem).
Strangely one of the most important triggers for invention is the “hole”; the gap in the market, the need in search of a solution; that is just waiting for someone to spot it and then have an idea to fill it. If you want to make big money in this field spend a lot of time looking for these holes – a simple, cheaply made bit of plastic that serves a function not served by any other, but that everyone really needs, can make you a lot of money!
Believe it or not almost anyone can do this, you don’t need to be trained or even really clever – being observant and having the determination to push your idea are more important. Help might be needed to develop the idea, but anyone can have it in the first place.
© 2006 Dave’s Place
