[This is Chapter 2 of Murphey’s book The
Emerging Crisis of Economic Displacement.]
Chapter
Two
THE SCIENTIFIC-TECHNICAL
EXPLOSION
A
school assembly made so strong an
impression on me as a high school student in
Today
we are living through a similar chain reaction in the exponential increase of
science and technology--except that there is no reason to expect it will be
over in a quick flash. The beginnings
occurred a long time ago with each new invention over the millennia, starting
probably well before the harnessing of fire and the invention of the
wheel. The accretion of knowledge and
technique was already immense by the end of the nineteenth century, but it was
at least possible to trace the history of most subjects by focusing on a series
of individual people, each adding something to what was already known (or, as
sometimes happens, checking out a blind alley).
The
best example I know of comes in the book I read some time ago by L. T. Woodward
entitled The History of Surgery (1963).
Woodward was able to follow the contributions of individual surgeons
until World War I. Then when that war
brought together unspeakable carnage and modern medical technique it caused
surgery to take a giant leap forward.
After that, with new work being done by many surgeons across a broad
spectrum and increasingly within specialties and sub-specialties, Woodward
could tell the history mostly by reference to schools of surgery and major
areas of development. Complex history
swamped out the telling. Imagine what a
currently-written history has to contend with, now that microsurgery,
computerized prosthetics, organ transplants, joint replacements, laser surgery,
and other innovations so numerous and so startling that most people will not
even have heard of them have come into being.
Imagine, too, what is in the offing for the near future, much less for
the medium and long-term futures. A
figurative ping-pong ball has by now been dropped into the cage, and we are
witnessing the explosive chain-reaction.
Even writing more than thirty years ago, Woodward said that "surgery
moves swiftly to transform one generation's miracle into another generation's
commonplace event" and that "the word ‘impossible' is never spoken
aloud any more." There is still
much that surgery and other medicine cannot do, but to emphasize that is to see
only the part of the glass that is still partly empty. The larger fact is that liquid is pouring
into the glass in a torrent; and the glass, all the while, is expanding and
growing larger.
Although
this exponential increase in knowledge and technique is possible today because
of the foundation laid over many centuries, the most remarkable progress has
occurred in the last five. In the
sixteenth century Andreas Vesalius revolutionized medicine with his clandestinely-conducted
empirical studies of anatomy. Modern
anesthesia first began in 1772 with the first use of "laughing gas"
and was expanded with ether in 1842. A
surgeon performed
the first appendectomy as recently as
1880. Remarkably, it was no longer ago
than 1901 that Karl Landsteiner "discovered that there were different
types of human blood, and blood of one type was incompatible with blood of
another"--a discovery that made transfusions possible. These details do no more than hint at the fascinating
content of Woodward's account. But he
says the pace picked up most after 1880.
"In retrospect, the story of surgery from about 1880 to the present
date seems like a chronicle of an age of miracles." In the twentieth century "the story
becomes formidably complex. The
incredible forward march of surgical ability in the past several generations is
without parallel in history...."[i]
The
surgery example is simply one
"small" illustration of a general scientific and technological
expansion proliferating at a speed unlike anything the human race has ever
experienced. Milton Friedman has spoken of "a major industrial revolution
comparable to the one that occurred two hundred years ago,"[ii] but as
knowledge and technique multiply he will almost certainly come to consider even
this a monumental understatement. The
current revolution owes its existence to the first, which was itself vastly
significant, but stands in relation to it as a raging forest fire to a
campground bonfire. Walter Wriston says
"scientific knowledge is currently doubling about every fifteen
years" [an apt description for which we should allow him poetic license
even if it is a fallacious quantification].
In his 1992 book he says "at least 80 percent of all the scientists
who have ever lived are now alive. In
our country at least half of all scientific research done since the
An
essay by Mark Cantley in a recent book about biotechnology says that "the
scientific method is one of the supreme achievements of human culture over the
past five centuries. It is the direct
lineal descendant of Renaissance humanism, in its self-reliant dependence on
human observation and deduction. It is
the most effective societal learning instrument ever developed."[iv]
Daniel
Bell tells how "the organization of scientific work begins largely in the
seventeenth century with the rise of academies, or scientific societies,...
outside the universities..." and adds that "the institutionalization
of scientific work, however, develops only with the formalization of national
academies...and the absorption of science into the university, beginning in
Science
and technology advance together, interdependent and hardly separable. In his Post-Capitalist Society Peter
Drucker gives a fascinating overview of the development of technology in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; there was during that time a
"dramatic shift from skill to technology," and "the great
document" of that shift was Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedie,
"one of the most important books in history" that "attempted to
bring together in organized and systematic form the knowledge of all
crafts." The industrial revolution
caused one thing to feed on another: "technical change created demand for
capital" and this "required concentration of production," which
in turn "required large-scale energy, whether water power or steam power...."[vi]
Danger
lurks in giving examples of today's innovations and
those expected for the future. Within a
short time, those that come into being will be considered commonplace or, if
supplanted by something later, merely elementary. The things we mention that don't eventuate
will seem in hindsight to have been foolish pipedreams. Just the same, the reader may find value in
knowing of some of the things I've come upon in my studies. Future readers can find amusement in my sense
of wonder about it all.
Technological
miniaturization is well underway. A news
report in March 1997 says engineers "are developing tiny aircraft"
called "micro air vehicles."
They will carry "cameras, chemical and biological sensors, radio
transmitters and antennas," not to mention "sophisticated computer
systems, using advanced artificial intelligence techniques." "To provide power, AstroPower Inc. of
It
is no wonder that a July 1997 news report says that "many future [space]
flights will use miniature spacecraft, weighing barely 10 pounds and launched
by rockets the size of a 5-gallon gasoline can." A poetic touch is added: "They will be
guided by tiny thrusters with the power of ‘a butterfly sneeze'...."[viii]
In
a totally different area, there is "a global boom in photovoltaics,"
with the market, still tiny, growing 30 percent a year. Semiconductors called photovoltaic cells are
embedded into building materials to turn sunlight into electricity. The price is falling sharply, making such
things as solar roof shingles and opaque glass facades affordable. The
A
mathematical development that Business Week says "experts believe will
revolutionize engineering just as quantum mechanics has transformed physics"
[my emphasis] involves "nonlinear equations." The equations "are used for precisely
describing the behavior of things with an unpredictable facet," which is
to say, almost everything. They will be
usable in widely varied areas: aerospace engineering, where they allow the
simulation of the aerodynamics of the full airplane and not just the wings;
biotechnology, where "geneticists are getting a better handle on the
complex behavior of
Another
revolution (among the many simultaneous revolutions) is taking place in
materials science. Harald Malmgren
contrasts the traditional science that "used to process materials found in
the earth" (which is what most of us no doubt think of as the manner of
obtaining resources) with the new science that builds materials atom-by-atom to fill needs as they
arise. The newly-created materials serve
many uses: ceramics, "in extreme temperature applications such as
high-performance, high-heat engines, packaging of integrated circuits and
various types of sensors, and containment of space vehicle systems"; and
other new materials for use as "optical fibers, superpolymers, and
superconductors." The refrain is
becoming familiar: "The materials revolution is transforming the
fundamental landscape of our industrial structure."[xi] An important example of this is reported in Insight
in August 1997 when it tells about an entrepreneur who has invented a way to
make "ordinary concrete into a space-age material...incredibly strong and
inexpensive" [and also reducing pollution]. The new process in effect makes cement into
pourable limestone that can be used for lightweight building materials. An additional use will be to make possible
much safer long-term disposal of nuclear wastes than can be accomplished with
cement.[xii]
Scientific
and technical research is progressing on a
scale that involves ever-larger projects alongside the smaller-scale but still
extremely innovative work such as that done by the entrepreneur just
mentioned. (The science possessed by
small American biotechnology firms is said by a Swiss researcher to be
"fantastic" and "far better than what the [established]
pharmaceutical industry has."[xiii]) A billion dollars is required to develop a
new memory chip for computers, and $3 to 6 billion to come out with a new
automobile platform. Clyde Prestowitz
Jr. of the Economic Strategy Institute reminds us that this kind of spending is
possible only because of vast product sales in a world market.[xiv]
Despite
controversy over government's becoming involved in the economy through
"industrial policy," the
There
has also been a shift, in the
Information
technology
A
benefit from our earlier look at the history of surgery
is that it gives us to understand that science, not computers, lies most
broadly at the base of the accelerating increase in knowledge. And yet, computers and other information
technology (such as satellites and fiber optics) have become central to where
we are headed in most areas.
The
central thing today is "information."
Michael Porter says in The Competitive Advantage of Nations that
"most industries are, or will become, high-technology or
knowledge-intensive industries.
Electronics, advanced materials, information systems, and other
manifestations of modern technology are changing the product and the value
chain in virtually every industry."[xix] In manufacturing, the innovation is in the
areas of both product and process technology, leading to a vast expansion of
the products coming onto the market and ever-greater sophistication in how
those products are produced.[xx] The implications are far-reaching: a 1993
book says "the technologies alone are not enough. The technologies will have to be integrated
into organizational frameworks that fully utilize the knowledge...Even this is
not enough. Industrial enterprises must
have access to generic social resources--an appropriately educated workforce,
adequate communication and information networks, a supportive political, legal,
and economic climate."[xxi]
Recent
developments include such things as
"just in time inventory management," "statistical quality
control," expert systems, artificial intelligence, computer-aided design
(CAD), and computer-aided manufacturing (
The
rapid advance of information technology is illustrated by a December 1996 news
report that Corning Inc. "churns out more than 5 million miles of optical
fiber each year."
"Already," it says, "more than 60 million miles of fiber
have been installed worldwide." The
number of phone conversations that can be carried has gone from 24 over a
digital copper cable to 200,000 on just one optical fiber. In the laboratory, it is 20,000,000![xxiii] The Economist puts this in different
terms: "In 1960 a transatlantic telephone cable could carry only 138
conversations simultaneously. Now a
fibre-optic cable can carry 1.5m conversations.
And very soon a fibre the diameter of a human hair will be able to transmit,
in less than a second, the contents of every issue The Economist has
ever printed in its 153-year history."[xxiv]
The
near-term future will multiply these and
other developments. Bill Gates and Craig
McCaw have set up Teledesic Corp. for a $9 billion project that will put 840
satellites into orbit 435 miles from the earth beginning in the year 2000. The purpose will be to bring "fast
Internet access to the entire world."
We are seeing the "beginnings of mass-produced satellites."[xxv] In medicine, according to John Carey in Business
Week, something called "telemedicine" will soon connect eight
rural hospitals "through high-speed networks to a regional medical
center." "Using video and
computers, specialists...will [from a distance] read x-rays, conduct heart
exams, and even do psychiatric tests...."[xxvi] Fiber optics will continue to advance, with
uses from "zapping tumors and gallstones to betraying an
intruder...detecting minute defects in bridges, guiding cars along an
interstate, even performing surgery by phone to remote regions (with help from
robotics, perhaps)," according to the same news report that told us of the
expanding miles of optical fiber installation.
Digital television will replace the original analog TV, beginning in
1998.
Further
into the future--said to be more
"hypothetical and decades away from practicality"--major developments
are expected in "nanotechnology," which is presently occupying more
than 400 firms in the
Computers
The
erstwhile large size and bulkiness of computers began to disappear in 1958 with
the invention of the silicon chip. But The
Economist says "the computer revolution did not begin in earnest until
Intel introduced the microprocessor in 1971." It adds that "the
Here
are some aspects to be aware of:
. Parallel
processing. A Business Week
discussion of "The Information Revolution" says this is "the key
technology pushing the power curve on upcoming generations of large-scale
computers." It combines anywhere
from two to hundreds of computers to work together. "In the not-too-distant future, parallel
machines may be the only form of supercomputers, mainframes, or high-end
network servers that survive."
Eventually, even desktop computers, linked to a single chip, will use
it.[xxxi]
. Object
technology. First developed in the
1980s, this breaks computer programs into building blocks named
"objects." The objects can
then be combined to make larger programs.
Programmers don't have to recreate all elements of a program each time;
they can use objects from other programs.
It has several advantages over previous programming, not the least of
which is that it makes programming much easier and faster.[xxxii]
. Speech
recognition. I mentioned earlier
that predictions will soon seem either "old hat" or ludicrous, and we
run that risk when I mention that speech recognition is expected to replace the
computer keyboard within a relatively short time; i.e., by the middle of the
first decade of the 21st century.
Computers with limited speech-recognition vocabularies existed in 1994,
but it was said then that "with every improvement in microprocessing
power, scientists come closer to full speech recognition." Many more people will become involved when
typing is no longer essential to computer use.[xxxiii]
. Programmable
automation; CIM. This refers to
"a family of technologies that lie at the intersection of computer science
and manufacturing engineering." To
say a machine is programmable is to say that it can be redirected easily from
task to task. There is more flexibility
for customized batch production than with "dedicated machinery" that
performs a single task. The automation
portion of the term refers to the fact that little human involvement is
required. Cohen and Zysman in their 1987
book said "the real potential of the new production equipment comes from
its integration. Imagine a fully
integrated system linking design to manufacturing, permitting an automatic
shift from one product to the next."
This is called "computer integrated manufacturing" (CIM).[xxxiv]
. The
"virtual office." In more
and more companies, employees are not given offices of their own; they operate,
instead, out of their homes or out of office space they reserve as they need it
(a process called "hoteling").
An employee who operates from home is "provided with a mobile
office, complete with laptop, fax, and cellular phone," according to
Jeremy Rifkin. He tells us that the
accounting firm of Ernst and Young has moved to "hoteling," with only
senior managers having a desk.[xxxv]
. Electronic
money. In a 1995 article entitled
"The Future of Money," Business Week said "a rash of
companies are developing their own forms of electronic money, known as
E-cash." It reported that Citicorp
is working on an "Electronic Money System" for computer-money that
will originate with several banks.
E-cash will make possible direct and instantaneous payments by computer
without going through the banking system.[xxxvi]
. "Virtual
retinal display." This may be
the most startling innovation I have mentioned so far. A news report in January 1997 told how
MicroVision is working on a device that uses fiber optic cables and "tiny,
rapidly moving mirrors" to paint picture elements, called
"pixels," onto the rear of a viewer's eye at the rate of
approximately 18 million times a second.
The result is "computer-generated images that users would perceive
as real as the real world." The
images "appear to hang a few feet in front of the viewer, strangely solid,
though translucent." We can imagine
many uses, but the report suggests one in surgery where "surgeons using
minute cameras to guide their work inside the body would have the images float
in front of them." As usual, the
devices will be quite expensive at first.[xxxvii]
This
tells, of course, just a small fraction of what is happening. The purposes of this book are served,
however, even if we do no more than come to appreciate the scope and depth of
the many simultaneous scientific-technological revolutions.
Robotics
There
has been difficulty defining exactly what a "robot" is. The definition that was adopted by the Robot
Institute of America (RIA) and became internationally adopted is that "a
robot is a reprogrammable multifunctional manipulator designed to move
material, parts, tools, or other specialized devices through variable
programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks." Hunt and Hunt say that, accordingly, a robot
"can perform the same task...repetitively; it can perform different tasks
on the same workpiece; or it can be reprogrammed to perform entirely new
tasks."[xxxviii]
Robotics
started slowly with the first industrial robot in the
Robots
are performing a wide variety of tasks:
. For all welding
and painting in the automobile industry.[xli]
. For deploying
cameras and mechanical claws to do repairs and maintenance in offshore oil
drilling in deep water.[xlii]
. For harvesting
cotton, wine grapes and almonds.[xliii]
. For fine-tuning
television sets before they are sent to the buyer.[xliv]
. For assisting
banks with data storage.[xlv]
. For finding
buried land mines.[xlvi]
. For drilling
cavities in femurs as part of hip replacement surgery.[xlvii]
. For driving
subway trains, digging mine shafts, cleaning up after nuclear accidents, mowing
alfalfa and lawns, and even for military surveillance through robotic
helicopters.[xlviii]
. For cutting
cloth with a laser.[xlix]
. For making
molds.[l]
Even
these are merely suggestive. Leontiff
and Duchin say that "increasingly, the stand-alone robot will be
integrated with machine tools and other equipment into a computer-controlled
system that is capable of combining product design...with production planning
and implementation...."[li] This is to be expected, as the world moves
into computer integrated manufacturing.
The preceding list illustrates, however, that there are many uses
outside of manufacturing.
As
we've seen, the trend is toward miniaturization. A Japanese researcher says "the future
lies in micromachines."[lii] In February 1996, Business Week told
of "tiny factories being built by scientists at
Biotechnology
The
selective breeding of animals and use of organisms to make food and drink such
as wine, cheese and bread have been with us a long time.[liv] What we today call "biotechnology,"
however, comes "from the discovery of two important new technologies in
the 1970s, recombinant
In
late 1994, Business Week reported that there were by then 1,000 biotech
companies, either public or private, with a total of $20 billion invested. Nevertheless, it said, investors were
increasingly skittish, worrying that biotech was "still peddling
dreams."[lvii] Biotechnology in both
In
all of these matters, though, things change quickly. Biotech already does a great deal even though
it may not yet live up to the true-believers' most radical expectations; and
the potential for the future is amazing.
"What
it does already" is a large
subject.
In
medicine, "the development of monoclonal antibodies is providing precise
and effective diagnostic tools, and the basis for delivering drugs to precisely
targeted cells in the body."
Progress is being made vis a vis cancer: "Since 1982 an
extraordinary amount of progress has been made in our understanding of the
molecular basis of cancer through the discovery of oncogenes. This period has seen the introduction by
pharmaceutical companies of alpha-interferon products for leukaemias and
Karposi's sarcoma...A completely different approach to cancer therapy is the
use of monoclonal antibodies to target chemotherapeutic drugs, toxins or
radionuclides to tumour cells."[lviii] Business Week reports that human
trials are being done on over 100 products, which "include new childhood
vaccines, several anti-cancer agents, a herpes vaccine, multiple-sclerosis
treatments, and neurological agents for conditions such as Lou Gehrig's
disease." It says three drugs
produce revenues of more than $1 billion: "erythropoetin to fight anemia,
alpha interferon to treat cancer and hepatitis, and human insulin for
diabetes."[lix]
In
agriculture, according to Pascal Bye, productivity has been rising because of
"new varieties of seeds; advances in animal genetics and stockbreeding,
complemented by the use of growth hormones...; an increase in the protein,
carbohydrate or lipid content of plants; improvements in fermentation
processes; and the extraction of greater value from by-products."[lx] World food production has been almost doubled
since 1973. In late 1996, it was
reported that "today, the 5.8 billion people on Earth have, on average, 15
percent more food per person than the population of 4 billion did two decades
ago."[lxi] Rifkin speaks of pest resistant genes to
ward off the effects of drought and extreme temperatures. He tells how hens are induced to lay more
eggs by eliminating their prolactin hormone, thereby reducing their
"brooding instinct."[lxii] Monsanto Co. is selling a type of corn that
is genetically engineered to fight off the European corn borer, which until now
has cost growers damage of about $1 billion per year.[lxiii] A development which saves farmers
considerable costs and is at the same time environmentally helpful is that
"global positioning satellites" are being used to divide farm fields
into square-foot grids and then, using computers, to inform the farmer about
what parts of the field need more fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide or water.[lxiv] This has been given the name "precision
farming."[lxv] Tomatoes are genetically altered so that they
are slower to spoil; and "genes can be moved directly between the plant
and animal kingdoms...For example, tobacco plants have been made to glow after
a firefly gene was inserted into them."[lxvi] Biotechnology is used not just to increase
yields, but also to improve foods' desirability and nutritional value.[lxvii]Because
strawberries and ornamental plants are attacked in
What biotechnology offers for the
future goes far beyond the things just mentioned. A news report in late 1996 said "scientists
in
In
agriculture, the "factory farm" portends actually to replace outdoor
farming, as radical as that no doubt seems.
Rifkin says laboratory cultures will replace land cultivation, and cites
an example of how 70,000 farmers on