Have We Picked the Low Hanging Fruit in Science?

 

To: Bob MacDonald and Producers, Quirks and Quarks, CBC

Topic: Russell Funk and the low-hanging fruit

Your show always has some good factual stuff that counterbalances the excesses and distortions of the news entertainment industry. But Russell J. Funk caught my attention. I automatically thought of the science and tech scammer Elizabeth Holmes, venture capitalism in a lab coat. When Funk started, I expected a classic discussion about Kuhnian paradigms and progress. (Like this one: ) https://stmuscholars.org/misunderstood-or-mistake-paradigms-shifts-and-the-growth-of-science/

The first clue that some different game was afoot was the straight-faced use of the term "disruptor", a word that is usually a joking term, as in the recent dark satirical comedy "Glass Onion". "Disruption" is a trendy compression of the concepts nicely laid out by Andy Kessler in his "Running Money". https://www.amazon.ca/Running-Money-Honchos-Monster-Markets/dp/0060740655. In the comments, Mercenary Trader gets to the real purpose of disruption in his last paragraph, defending rarely-deserved sudden wealth in terms of a social good. That framing that is echoed in Funk's own words:

"These trends (diminishing innovations) have attracted increasing attention from policymakers, as they pose substantial threats to economic growth, human health and wellbeing, and national security, along with global efforts to combat grand challenges such as climate change. "

So the Q&Q discussion with Funk seemed to be about science and knowledge on the surface, but underneath, it is promoting ideologies of elitism and growth. Just look who signs his paycheck: a department devoted to promoting myths about entrepreneurship and management. Myths? Yeah. There's a bookshelf of good material debunking the misuse of these terms. Matthew Stewart comes to mind first: https://mwstewart.com/books/the-management-myth/

I would argue that for almost all periods in history, the limiting factors on overall human well-being are almost never pure technological innovation, they are political and social . ( Bob's own "The Future is Now" or Wengrow and Graeber's "The Dawn of Everything") Simplistic relationships between science and quality of life - like the ones put forward by Funk - are misleading.

I have a strong personal interest in the details of social progress and technology. In 2021, I had surgery that gave me more years of active life. But without progressive social change to make that expensive technology available to billions of people, I'd be in deep medical trouble. Everyone has a half-dozen similar stories to tell about technology that was - or was not - there to make their lives better.

Setting ideology aside, Funk caught my attention with the discussion about the iPhone. If you really know the history and details of the technology and what went on at Apple, you understand that the iPhone is revolutionary the way a plate of nachos is revolutionary: not much. All you are really looking at are tasty ingredients that sell like a hot damn when combined. The "real" disruptor (if there is one) is arguably cellular phone towers or the concept of all-purpose portable computing/communication devices, a concept that goes back to Alan Kay's 1968 Dynabook or the 1983 TRS-80 Model 100.

A quick look at his body of work tells us that Funk is no black-hat bad guy. But I do see someone captured by a narrative that I have seen before. Example: see the thread of logic supporting growth-centric industrial capitalism that runs through John Brockman's "What Should We Be Worried About?". https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18090165-what-should-we-be-worried-about-real-scenarios-that-keep-scientists-up

If we set aside the ideological framing, we are left with the core question: have scientific and technological progress really picked most of the low hanging fruit and does each apple in our picker's apron almost always cost us more in effort and risk?

Clearly, yes. Just ask Elizabeth Holmes how challenging it is to deliver real-life "disruptive" technology. At a deeper level, take a look at one of the other threads that runs through "What Should We Be Worried About?", the thread that connects physicists working out at the edge of knowledge. Or schedule an interview with Lee Smolin. http://leesmolin.com/the-trouble-with-physics/

From another perspective, if you look back through the history of speculative fact and fiction, you see imaginative concept after concept that stalled completely or slowed to a crawl on the detailed difficulties of implementation. There is one exception, of course. We just lived through the arrival of cheap and massive computing power, so at this point in history it is easy to buy the rhetoric of endless technological change driven by inspired genius. But when we look carefully and in detail at recent progress in information technology a different picture emerges: one of punctuated incremental progress by teams.

That's why I think Google's Project Aristotle deserves to be more well known. Like Funk, Dubey and Rozovsky used research to look at technological progress, but their work was more directly hands-on, designed to be applicable, not to frame a narrative. https://www.inc.com/michael-schneider/google-thought-they-knew-how-to-create-the-perfect.html .

I am a huge fan of innovation in medical technology, but when you look at the global public health data, the science and technology we have right now could deliver improved quality of life for the billions of us who live very difficult and sometimes tragically short lives. And it would be great to have better carbon capture, but existing technologies are also sufficient to halt the runaway environmental problems we face. The limiting factor is not tech: we need better human sciences, where sociologists don't have to shill for venture capitalists. So what is "better" ? How about: what is it going to take to give Homo Sapiens long-term viability? To give your kids a future?

When the weather warms up a little, please put your jackets on and go have a lunch outside with some of the team from What on Earth and Ideas. See what you can come up with.

Best of luck,

Hugh Tayler 

header image: elizabeth holmes