Thursday, November 11, 2004
Top 10 Technologies that need to Disappear... or Not!
Bruce Sterling over at Microsoft's bCentral has an article about 10 technologies that need to die.
In short form the list is as follows:
I'll skip all of his reasons and get right to the point.
He's dead wrong about both Manned Spaceflight and prisons. Both are important aspects of furthering human achievement in their own way. It can be argued that a prison isn't even a "technology". I can think of a much better technology to take its place, for instance "Biological Weapons" or "Chemical Weapons".
My biggest beef was with his "Manned Spaceflight" argument.
ONE HATES to see this dazzling technology go, but when one resolutely sets the romance aside, there's not a lot left. Thanks to decades of biological research, it's now quite clear that flying around the solar system is bad for one's health. Without the healthy stresses of gravity on one's skeleton, human bones decay just as they do during prolonged bed rest while muscles atrophy. Cosmic rays blast through spacecraft walls and human bodies, while solar flares will fry astronauts as diligently as any nuclear bomb. I won't mention the fact that spacecraft are inherently rickety and dangerous, because that's a major part of their attraction.
We have to start somewhere. We've been flying in space for a very short time, in relation to both modern history, and human history as a whole. We've come far in the past fifty years, or even a hundred. A hundred years ago we flew in a powered airplane for the first time, and less than seventy years later we landed men on the moon. It was expensive, but it was also an achievement that has brought tears to my eyes everytime I see pictures of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. Where can we go in another fifty years? Mars? Europa or Io? What about the moons of Saturn or Uranus?
I know that every single astronaut who boards the Space Shuttle knows they might not be coming back. My biggest question is this... Why can an astronaut accept that with courage and continue on when a politician who has never been anywhere near a rocket or the shuttle cannot? Instead of making more demands on NASA (and then cutting their budget), why don't the politicians work on keeping NASA well funded and staffed with the best and brightest? Sure, it's expensive, but it will most certainly keep the accident rate for space travel extremely low (which it still is by the way!)
Now before I drone on anymore about Manned Spaceflight, I'd just like to say that Bruce Sterling got most of them right... but he was by no means perfect on his selection. What are your selections? Any reasons why you picked them? Let me know by submitting a comment, or posting in the forum! ¶ 10:59 PM
Bruce Sterling over at Microsoft's bCentral has an article about 10 technologies that need to die.
In short form the list is as follows:
- Nuclear Weapons
- Coal Based Power
- Internal Combustion Engine
- Incandescent Light Bulbs
- Land mines
- Manned Spaceflight
- Prisons
- Cosmetic Implants
- Lie Detectors
- DVDs
I'll skip all of his reasons and get right to the point.
He's dead wrong about both Manned Spaceflight and prisons. Both are important aspects of furthering human achievement in their own way. It can be argued that a prison isn't even a "technology". I can think of a much better technology to take its place, for instance "Biological Weapons" or "Chemical Weapons".
My biggest beef was with his "Manned Spaceflight" argument.
ONE HATES to see this dazzling technology go, but when one resolutely sets the romance aside, there's not a lot left. Thanks to decades of biological research, it's now quite clear that flying around the solar system is bad for one's health. Without the healthy stresses of gravity on one's skeleton, human bones decay just as they do during prolonged bed rest while muscles atrophy. Cosmic rays blast through spacecraft walls and human bodies, while solar flares will fry astronauts as diligently as any nuclear bomb. I won't mention the fact that spacecraft are inherently rickety and dangerous, because that's a major part of their attraction.
We have to start somewhere. We've been flying in space for a very short time, in relation to both modern history, and human history as a whole. We've come far in the past fifty years, or even a hundred. A hundred years ago we flew in a powered airplane for the first time, and less than seventy years later we landed men on the moon. It was expensive, but it was also an achievement that has brought tears to my eyes everytime I see pictures of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. Where can we go in another fifty years? Mars? Europa or Io? What about the moons of Saturn or Uranus?
I know that every single astronaut who boards the Space Shuttle knows they might not be coming back. My biggest question is this... Why can an astronaut accept that with courage and continue on when a politician who has never been anywhere near a rocket or the shuttle cannot? Instead of making more demands on NASA (and then cutting their budget), why don't the politicians work on keeping NASA well funded and staffed with the best and brightest? Sure, it's expensive, but it will most certainly keep the accident rate for space travel extremely low (which it still is by the way!)
Now before I drone on anymore about Manned Spaceflight, I'd just like to say that Bruce Sterling got most of them right... but he was by no means perfect on his selection. What are your selections? Any reasons why you picked them? Let me know by submitting a comment, or posting in the forum! ¶ 10:59 PM
