Cockroaches and pigeons seem to do quite well for themselves. Any visit to an urban center of appreciable size should be sufficient to confirm this observation. Common belief seems to hold that these, and other species considered urban vermin, prosper due to inherent durability and resourcefulness, or to some other difficult-to-qualify fitness for life -- hence the frequently repeated quip that after nuclear war, the roaches will inherit the Earth.
While I do not wish to speak ill of the cockroach or the common rock dove (Columba livia) or their tremendous success, it is worth pointing out that one-fourth of all food produced for human consumption is wasted [3], and so, inherent fitness notwithstanding, our pests suffer no shortage of nourishment. Taking into account that increased food supplies generally correlate to population growth, the abundance of pests in and around areas of concentrated human habitation is more likely due to our own wastefulness than to any of the species' individual hardiness. Phrased another way, our prosperity is so tremendous that we in the developed world somehow afford to feed not only ourselves but a large population of animals in which we have no agricultural or economic interest. While this may be prosperity, it is prosperity of a very strange and negligent kind. Arguably, this strangeness and wastefulness it not particular to the production and consumption of food, but to many other facets of our economy as well.
It is a favorite charge of American conservatism that 'poverty' in America is no longer objective destitution, but merely an economic position of relatively less affluence. [7] This claim does have a factual basis; Americans, in general, do not suffer from "extreme poverty", meaning the inability to meet the basic needs of food, water, shelter, sanitation, and healthcare necessary to sustain life. Such arguments correctly address the factual matter of whether or not Americans suffer severe, life-threatening privation (they do not), but do nothing to answer the question of whether our tremendous material surplus is well-spent. It is well and good that our poor do not starve, but should we really settle for an American Dream or a Human Aspiration that looks no further than a full stomach?
The same pundits who belittle American poverty are also quick to note that ninety-seven percent of households classified as 'poor' own a television. [ibid] Television ownership among Americans generally hovers around this figure. The average American spends four hours a day watching television (a figure offered both by A. C. Nielsen and satellite provider Dish Network), which readily translates into 1460 hours (about two round-the-clock months) of television viewing in a given year. Given that a typical Energy Star certified television set consumes about 208 watts of power [4], and that ninety-seven percent of the roughly 115 million households in America own at least one set, it is readily calculated that approximately 40 terajoules (4 * 10^13 J) of energy are expended each year just to receive and view television broadcasts.
In perspective, the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima released approximately 60 terajoules[6]. What this means is that the United States annually spends two thirds the energy-yield of the first nuclear weapon on such intellectual pursuits as the choice of a new "American Idol".
We humans have reached a point in history where at least some of us can afford to watch over 1400 hours of television apiece each year. (Anecdotally, but more currently relevant, time spent online is now on the same order of magnitude.) We are the beneficiaries of a superabundance so profound that we live out our lives largely free from thirst, hunger, most disease, or even the threat of bodily harm through physical violence (unless you happen to live in certain parts of certain urban centers). Please do not underestimate the significance of this point. If you live in the developed world, you live a life of luxury that would be unimaginable if you were not already experiencing it. What are we doing with all the time we are not spending in fear of drought, famine, and pestilence?
Early technologists prophesied that the work-week in the industrialized world would gradually dwindle, or perhaps even vanish altogether. Norbert Wiener prognosticated that automation would usher in an epoch of unemployment so severe that the Great Depression of the 1930s would appear as a "pleasant joke". The distinguished R. Buckminster Fuller foresaw the day when a "research fellowship" would be granted to each and every citizen, to do with as he or she saw fit. It is now 2010, and to the best of my knowledge, neither of these things, nor anything like them, has happened. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that employed persons still work a roughly 8-hour day [9], and the United States Congress is presently engaged in an ugly, ideology-poisoned debate over whether Federal unemployment insurance benefits should be extended -- which would seem to indicate that anything so generous as a "research fellowship" is out of the legislative question. Meanwhile, "retail salespersons" and "cashiers" accounted for 1 out of every 17 employed positions in 2009 [10], with "office clerks, general" and "combined food preparation" following closely behind -- which is to say that, technological advance and intellectual liberty notwithstanding, the presently constituted economy sees fit to employ the largest portion of our citizens selling things and doing paperwork. A large fraction of us are employed in roles custodial to institutions whose relation to material or intellectual production is secondary at best. We would be right to question the operation of such an economy; it may be that the remaining sectors produce enough to sustain the material status quo, but does such an arrangement represent an efficient use of human potentials and the real wealth they represent?
We as a nation, perhaps even as a whole species, are now free to do as we please with a fairly large portion of our time, and to do so with the informational and material support of high technology. A popular slogan of the Linux community is: "put enough eyes on it, and no bug is invisible." This slogan was picked up by Robert David Steele's Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) initiative [8], which bases itself upon the philosophy that bottom-up organization of ordinary citizens in the task of information gathering and analysis is vastly more effective than reliance upon a small corps of expert analysts. (As an aside, I had the good fortune to meet and speak with Mr. Steele at this year's HOPE in New York City, and I can honestly say that this meeting impressed upon me considerable personal respect for him.) If broad public participation can benefit such diverse endeavors as operating system implementation and national security information gathering, it can surely be of service other problem domains as well. The building blocks of high technology are now cheaply, commercially available to anyone. It amazes me that I can walk into a Radioshack store and purchase an assortment of prefabricated transistors, along with the tools to wire them into a useful circuit, for just a few dollars. It amazes me that production quality compilers are freely available for all major programming languages -- even complex, cutting-edge languages like Haskell -- and are easy to use. One often hears of how "information technology" has revolutionized our economy and our culture, but the most important fact is the one least remarked upon: the essential building blocks of this revolution are readily available and perfectly usable by anyone who takes the proper initiative.
Economist W. Brian Arthur recently remarked that all technologies are assembled from other technologies. [1] While this may at first glance appear an innocuous observation, it has tremendous consequences for a society in which the products of high technology are widely, cheaply available in modular, readily usable forms. By virtue of sheer combinatorial magnitude, the number of useful technologies waiting to be discovered among the almost endless arrangements of commercially available parts and pieces is astounding. Although, as Americans, we have been largely conditioned to believe in "making a living" by any means available, Fuller's constituents of wealth are worth recollecting: wealth is the product of time, energy, and knowledge. Thanks to industrial technology, energy is plentiful. Thanks to prosperity, time is abundant. Thanks to the global communications network, knowledge is now ubiquitous. But how much of the available knowledge is actually being harnessed and put to work? Are ordinary Americans -- honest and capable people all -- using anything close to 40 terajoules of energy to understand and solve tomorrow's problems? Can our so-called "knowledge" economy be said to be using its time and energy in accordance with the best available knowledge when so many of its employees must condescend to be mere functionaries of non-producing institutions?
It is the top-down mode of developing and deploying technology that is responsible for the exclusion of ordinary citizens from the evolution and application of humanity's greatest powers, and failures of the top-down approach to technological use and development have become painfully evident. The current hundred-day fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico is, once again, highly instructive. When an oil well under development began to freely spew oil into the Gulf after the Deepwater Horizon's catastrophic explosion, all U.S. Federal agencies stood by, largely helpless by their own admission [2] to stop the leak. Despite many theatrical reproaches, the task of cleaning up the spill and stopping the leak were left primarily to British Petroleum, the very entity whose gross negligence was the original cause of the disaster. This heavy reliance upon BP's resources and technical knowledge opened the way for BP's indiscriminate application of untested and highly toxic [5], oil dispersants, in an apparent attempt by BP to conceal the full extent and severity of the spill by reducing the amount of detectable oil on the water's surface. The lesson in this episode is painfully clear: even the experts sometimes fail. More importantly, when the experts do fail, they have a material interest in hiding that fact from the people they purport to serve, often with very damaging consequences.
If people are empowered to create solutions to the problems that they see, they will. When I say "people" here, I do not mean particular experts or persons situated in any particular professional context; I mean anyone. Moreover, those people who do take it upon themselves to solve a problem will generally factor their own personal and communal welfare into the solution as basic constraints on the problem space. Given enough information, individuals generally know what is in their own best interest and act accordingly. Large institutions, whether private or government, purport to act according to common interests, but also act in their own interests, with primacy tacitly given to the latter over the former. This is an important distinction, especially in the context of high technology, its powers and its dangers. Although it continues to be fashionable in some quarters to cast technology as a malevolent force that "controls" or "dominates" our modern lives (I think particularly of Neil Postman's somewhat old, and rather error-ridden, but still widely read "Technopoly"), it is only our alienation from technology that allows for domination or control to take place. We live in a very extraordinaty time in history, when ordinary citizens are able to understand and apply technology according to their own needs and purposes -- provided they take it upon themselves to do so. The neo-agrarianism of the "sustainability" movement is arguably a reclamation of the very earliest technologies, and the discovery that they are within the grasp and purview of any and all ordinary citizens. However, the lesson of sustainability is not that we are better off returning to an agrarian society (a thesis that I personally disagree with), but that we are better off when we take full ownership of humankind's technological heritage, as individuals whose wills and purposes will shape its development and use.
Prosperity need not be expensive or difficult -- but it is not inevitable either. We should not delude ourselves into believing that affluence is simply the product of some vaguely defined virtues inherent to ourselves, nor should we should suppose that if the big system should all come crashing down, we will somehow persist in spite of catastrophe. The material ease and luxury we enjoy now is indeed the result of increasingly uncomfortable and tenuous dependence, but it is also a success that we can take full responsibility for -- if only we are willing to entrust our most powerful tools to ourselves and to all our fellow citizens alike.
[1] W. Brian Arthur. "The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves", The Free Press, 2009.
[2] public comments made by Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen, speaking at a White House briefing on May 25, 2010.
[3] "Estimating and Addressing America's Food Loses", Economic Research Service, USDA 1997.
[4] ENERGY STAR Program Requirements for TVs, Version 3.0.
[5] "EPA Response to BP Spill in the Gulf of Mexico", accessed here.
[6] John Malik, The yields of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear explosions, Los Alamos National Laboratory report LA-8819, September 1985. Available here
[7] "Understanding Poverty in America", Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson, Heritage Foundation, 2004, available here
[8] "Human Intelligence: All Humans, All Minds, All the Time", Robert David Steele. Available in full here.
[9] American Time Use Survey -- 2009 Results, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
[10] "Occupational Employment Statistics Highlights", U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
