An age of technological innovation is now over
By Paul Homewood
There was a letter to the Sunday Telegraph last week that was so good I really wanted to share it. (And, no, it was not from me!)
SIR – The deaths of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, and Neil Armstrong, the astronaut, could signal the end of a remarkable era of scientific and engineering achievement. It started about 200 years ago when James Watt and Robert Stephenson harnessed coal-fired steam power to drive engines and locomotives. This was followed by electricity, diesel engines, nuclear power, the Columbia space shuttle and Apple.
During that era of innovation, we progressed from horse and buggy to supersonic flight; from wood stoves to nuclear power; and from wind-jammers sailing to the New World to rocket-ships landing on the Moon. That era brought prosperity, longevity and a richer life to millions of people while creating the surpluses that allowed them to take better care of their environment.
We are now living in the after-glow of that era, relying on past achievements while environmental doom-mongers scare our children and reject our heritage. What will today’s Green generation be remembered for?
They have re-discovered wind power, wood energy and electric cars that were largely rejected a century ago; they spurn the energy potential of nuclear power, coal, oil and gas; and they would close our airports and lock up our resources.
One branch of NASA, the once-great risk-taking body that put Neil Armstrong on the moon, is now supporting an anti-carbon culture that advocates the closure of the whole coal industry.
The legacy of today’s doom-mongers will be measured by the number of dams not built, the number of mines, factories, farms, forests and fishing grounds closed, and the number of humans living in poverty.
Viv Forbes
Rosewood, Queensland, Australia
Thank you, Viv.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Thank you for sharing this letter. I can only hope that Viv Forbes is not wholly right, and that there are still intellects out there, alive and kicking, who will help mankind forge ahead in the decades to come. Hopefully, the Green generation will go down in history as a pale wannabe reflection of the Red and Brown generations, defeated before it could do the kind of massive damage its two ideological predecessors did.
I have a sneaking suspicion that science is directly responsible for the lack of innovation.
From my research, innovation tends to be a process driven by need and combines available technology to make it happen. Aeroplanes weren’t so much invented, as “happened when the necessary technology was available”. Science was a secondary phase. Scientists would come in and be asked to model the airplanes and those models would then be used to produce better products.
What happened last century is that we got it arse about face. Instead of letting innovation lead us, we ended up with desk based “scientists” without a clue about what was needed, decide what they thought would be the great inventions of the future.
Of course, they got it totally wrong, but not before convincing most of UK and US industry and government that engineering was a dead subject of the past.
Then …. when they totally failed to drive innovation, they just started meddling in nonsense like climate change.
I suspect, we are nearing the end of the “scientific” age of pointless investment in science for the sake of science and total ignorance and downright hostility to innovation in industry and engineering.
Soon, e.g. the House of Lords committee will again be called “science and engineering”. Then “Engineering and science” and eventually “Engineering & Innovation” …. then we’ll have massive success, gain the economic wealth to invest in science, it will again take over, tell the world it invented everything in the past and will invent everything in the future, and no doubt we’ll have another global warming/cooling scare.
It is quite tragic. And according to an article in Yahoo, somehow Bill Clinton is going to take us on a trip – an interstellar spacecraft trip. How NASA implies to spend billions of dollars more, on technology we don’t have, or money we don’t have, or possibilities we don’t have, is ridiculous. People claim we’ll go to Mars. But this wishful thinking flies in the face of reality. As we have seen, not much progress has been made in science. If true, we would likely live even better lives, and such scares as AGW would not exist. The reality is, is that science is in decline, as youngsters no longer care about it (or find it “too hard”) and instead flock to the easier sectors and pseudo-scientific ones, we can only look back with nostalgia at not only the progress, but the ambition, of our ancestors.
I know I sound like Diogenes. But the truth is, I am being realistic.
Unfortunately the lessons of history agree with you. Every time a civilisation has risen up, it collapses under the weight of its internal contradictions. Its people get too lazy, greedy and no longer want to do the things that their ancestors did to build it up in the first place.
“Science” now “believes” is myths like AGW and the “Big bang”, while 100+ years ago science was creating Relativity and Quantum Physics.
Need to say more?
In addition, 100 years ago people would die for an ideal, patriotism, economic paradigm, freedom, etc. Who would die for anything now?
We’re living in a historical “bubble” that will blow as soon as it encounters any “solid” obstacle in the future. How long can such “unstable equilibrium” last?
I believe the climate is about get much colder than it’s now and that could be a first test of how strong our present stability is.
To all the discouraged and pessimistic:
There is some hope. Imagine the consequences of globally available power at <1/10 current best pricing, with no waste products, trivial real estate requirements, distributed, dispatchable, with inexpensive, non-toxic and non-radioactive fuel.
Check out LPPhysics.com or focusfusion.org for details.
What about cold fusion, control of nuclear radioactivity, etc.?
There is important new physics, I believe, in connection with the study of EM/weak interactions with implications in energy generation too.
I believe the importance of the weak interactions in human life shall greatly increase from now on.
just a “correction” on my last post: I used the expression “to die” but I don’t think it’s the most correct one, as many people out there are willing to “die” for the most strange/sinister reasons: terrorism, religion extremism, drugs, etc. A better expression would be “to give our lives for” and ideal or a strong belief, to something that brings a more profound connection with life and brings true happiness and meaning to life.
These are essentially spiritual values that we greatly need now.
The expression Paul used, that a civilization may collapse ” under the weight of its internal contradictions” seems to have good part of the explanation of our present spiritual cross-roads.
Reblogged this on Sparks ~Engineering and Science..