Tradition says that Diogenes walked the streets of Athens with a lantern, “looking for an honest man”. We don’t know if Diogenes ever discovered a man he considered “honest”. But if the political world of his time resembled that of the United States today, it’s safe to say it would have taken a while.
In our current political times Diogenes would also have needed a very bright light and unlimited years to find the technology breakthroughs that a number of our politicians imply will occur imminently. For example, according to these politicians a battery technology breakthrough is very close, one that will enable affordable electric vehicles with the power and range of today’s cars and trucks (and railroad engines and airliners?). It is to wonder if the new batteries will also be so capable and so cheap that they can store sufficient energy to make up for those nighttime hours when solar electric generators produce zero watts and wind generators produce almost none.
However, I long ago legitimately acquired a skepticism about “imminent technology breakthroughs” . For the major part of my career in information technology my job was to seek out and stay abreast of potential technology advancements that might affect my company’s competitiveness. A part of that effort involved regular visits to the various research and development labs of computer and communications technology leaders.
In many cases our company was a long-standing customer (or potential valuable customer) of these technology giants. So there was always an underlying, but usually very subtle, sales and marketing appeal which we took in stride. But in return for our access to these scarce and valuable technology researchers (I met at least five Nobel Laureates in those years), we provided a first-hand assessment of the technology improvements which we thought would most help our company—accurate and targeted market research which the manufacturer could not obtain any other way.
While occasional technology reviews included pure research areas, the majority focused on applied research projects. Pure research tidbits usually involved some interesting phenomenon of physics, recently discovered by the research scientists, which might have interesting product possibilities some day. Applied research projects which were demonstrated and described, however, represented potential near-term products we might readily use.
Across those years of trying to stay abreast of practical state-of-the-art technology, there were quite a number of “imminent technology breakthroughs” implied or hinted at by our hosts. But eventually we learned not to hold our breath for very long. In fact, the single most important technology advance of all those years was in a somewhat obscure area of computer manufacturing—not particularly sexy or intriguing to the average person.
It should be pointed out that computers and communications, and especially their underlying solid state electronics technology, are not the only areas where imminent technology breakthrough seductions occur. The airline I worked for paid dearly for at least two “breakthrough” airliners which never met their predicted performance levels (anybody remember the Convair 990 or the BAC 111?). The oil company I worked for lost millions and millions when it decided that a chemical process technology was sufficiently close that it could skip a pilot plant trial, and go directly to full-scale production. The successor to that oil company had a division that was the world’s largest producer of photovoltaic solar cells; the company invested untold millions in anticipation of an imminent breakthrough which would make solar cells so cheap they could be used as the roofing materials for homes and businesses.
Nowadays I am hard-pressed to take the politicians too seriously when they tell us that it will only take a few trillion or so in government “investments” to realize quick breakthrough results from “green” energy technologies. I also can’t forget our government’s bungling of the Super Collider particle accelerator project about twenty years ago. It was at that time the leading edge of particle research in physics, an effort that might lead the way toward the holy grail of energy: controlled nuclear fusion. But after 12 to 15 billion dollars had been expended in the construction of this facility the project was scrapped. The cause of the sudden termination was an essentially intra-party squabble between Congress and the President, likely over distribution of pork between certain states. Recently the European Union brought online a similar type of accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, with about a third of the power planned for the now-abandoned Super Collider.
My U. S. Congressman is a Blue Dog Democrat who takes the “trillion here, trillion there…” seriously, and his approval of boondoggle projects is not likely to be easily bought by the House leadership. Our two U. S. Senators are also fiscally alert and not likely to be seduced into wasting more of our money. Even so, I will periodically remind them to continue to look out for our tax money (trying my best not to be condescending or preachy about whatever imminent technology breakthrough is being used as bait for gullible citizens). I recommend you also diplomatically nag your Congressman and Senators from time to time.
