Tyler Cowen, the US economics writer, ponders – in the course of responding to a column by the US leftist economist Paul Krugman – whether modern industrial development would have reached its current pitch had it been forced to deal with today’s levels of regulation. On the face of it, had the Industrial Revolution, starting in the 18th Century, had to deal with 21st century levels of state bureaucracy, health and safety rules, and the rest, we’d still be using horses and carts and there’d be no blogging. Or would there? The trouble with these kinds of assertions is that there is no counterfactual universe against which to check it. The best we can reasonably do is to look at those societies that have imposed heavy restrictions on entrepreneurship and technology, and those that have not done so, and see if there are any consistent patterns to give us an idea. I suppose one good example is what happened in China about 600 years ago, when the rulers of that nation decided they’d had enough of all that exploration business and turned inwards. Another might be the extraordinary rise of Hong Kong in the 1940s under the benign laissez faire policy of UK colonial administrator, Sir John Cowperthwaite.
The other point that Cowen and Krugman deals with is the idea that the pace of development in the field of energy and industry has slowed down. Well, up to a point. When the late Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 was made in to a film by Stanley Kubrick, people who watched in the 1960s were led to think that travel from Earth would soon be a relatively normal event. We have not got there yet. Maybe the problem is that there are sometimes periods of history of enormous change compressed into short periods, followed by longer stretches of time when not a lot appears to happen, but actually the incremental changes are quite big. We just need to get used to this rather than become unduly depressed that we are in a holding pattern rather than moving forward.
Note: I appreciate that not everyone accepts that the Industrial Revolution “started” in the 18th Century, but from my own readings, that century is when the critical mass of scientific, technological and economic forces came together, starting in the UK. For a marvellous account of the men who helped shape that revolution, I recommend this by Jenny Uglow.
On the pace of scientific advance in the West, and how it has arguably slowed since about 1950, this Charles Murray book of a few years back is a good read and is absolutely packed with statistics. I am not a professional statistics man so I am not sure I can comment all that intelligently on the rigour of his methods, but they look pretty robust.
Technology is less visible than it used to be. I think that change is happening is happening at least as fast as it used to, but a lot of the change is under the hood, so to speak. The law of diminishing returns also is a factor and a more important one than regulations. Really important inventions, or network effects such as the WWW, are made or just happen before regulators can even realize what is going on or politicians can come up with new regulations.
By the way, just the other day I read an article about a project that aims to make the frequencies between microwaves and infared light, about 300 gigahertz to 3 terahertz, available for data transmission. Think WLAN with dozens to hundreds of GBit/s. It won’t happen overnight and it isn’t as spectatular as technology you can hear, smell and touch, but this quantitative advance will lead to enormous qualitative changes.
http://www.tcl.tu-bs.de/mission.htm
As to spave travel: The technology in 2001 and other science fiction classics shouldn’t be regarded as being technology as such, but rather as metaphors. SF authors do not claim to predict the future, just one of many possible futures (and mostly they just want to tell a compelling story anyhow, good stories lead to sales, prophecies usually don’t, outside the religious set). A movie rocket that brings a crew into Earth orbit is just a stand-in for any future technology that brings people and cargo into space at reasonable cost. It might be an actual rocket (unlikely), a space plane, electomagnetic cannon, laser-propulsion or whatever.
We don’t have those yet, at least not on the required scale, but it is only a matter of time and economic incentive.
Yes it has been slowing for some time. If you consider for example the technological advances 1800 – 1850; 1850-1900, 1900-1950 and 1950-2000, that fourth half-century produced very little, most of the things that have improved our lives have been refinements and roll-outs of established technology eg jet aeroplanes, computers, synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, television, solid-state electronics. The good news is that these refinements, roll-outs, and even more importantly synergies (GPS = space satellites plus solid-state electronics) can enrich our lives hugely even if genuine new technology is slow to emerge.
Hmm.
My take on the matter is that technology is all about moving humanity closer and closer to physical limits i.e. what the laws of physics say we can achieve.
For example, the speed of light is a physical limit. We’ve moved from bipedal locomotion to horse-carried wheeled transport to horseless carriages to powered air travel to rockets. But the next step, which would probably be some kind of nuclear-powered relativistic drive/engine, can take us probably up to 0.1c and that would probably be that.
Similarly, Moore’s Law can be practicable until we reach the quantum limits where the state of the individual electron is no longer determinable (or likely to flip). What then?
Similar effects are being found in biology, because now, DNA having been sequenced, you need to understand what drives what before you can proceed.
It may be just that we’re moving into a point of consolidation. There is no point in pushing scientific and technological frontiers without taking a breather every now and then and just asking ‘what the hell do we do with what we know?’ Much like most successful empires grow rapidly for a while, then stop and perform internal reorganisation, and thereafter grow again, although not necessarily as rapidly as before.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame is all hot for nanotechnology. So am I. I believe there is a great deal of potential there, if we can iron out and foolproof the technology that goes into them.
Well if speed of change is what is being talked about.
Have a look at this piece from National Geographic over on Counting Cats site.
Scroll down till you hit the pic of the lizard
http://www.countingcats.com/
It is more probable that advancement is broadening out as more applications are found for particular innovations.Steam power is a good example.
Then just as one innovation is perfected and refined to its utmost another comes along and takes its place.The “buggy whip principle”
Man technological feats are simply “old hat”,nobody swoons at a tunnel under the Channel or colossal bridges.
As was posited above much innovation is taking place at a micro level.
The answer depends upon which technology.
The web has certainly advanced in the last decade, notably without any State regulation.
Another project I’m involved in, the use of a new alloy by Airbus for them to make wings with. Been in the testing approval process for that same decade.
Slowing down? Are you nuts? The main technology of growth during 1950-2000 was digital electronics, which doubled in efficiency every one or two years during that era — a greater rate of growth than has ever been seen before.
Yeah, regulation slows some technologies down. I suspect we could be a lot further down the bioengineering road road if it was not for idiot media studies graduates labelling GM foodstuffs ‘frankenfoods’, and the like.
However, science and tech development is a bit like squeezing a half filled toothpaste tube with the cap still on. If you constrict it in one place with regulation people will just go work in some other area, causing something unexpected to pop up. Of cause, if you releive pressure somewhere else, by, say, shovelling in loadsamoney, you will get a lot popping up. Look at the massive research being dome on climate science these days, and the inconvenient (to Al Gore) information which is coming out as a result.
Regulation almost assuredly slows down technological growth — and it’s the reason I think most Sci-Fi expectations are off on their time frame.
Cellphone technology, for example, has been around for decades but was not able to really take hold until regulatory changes in the 1990s.
In fact, I am firmly convinced we have reached the takeoff point. I have stated here in the past that I believe we will see as much technological change over the next ten years as as we have seen in the past twenty five.
Yes, the low hanging fruit has been picked, but we are now about to experience India, China and East Asia adding their populations to the pool from which researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs are drawn, adding their TWO THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED MILLION people to the eight hundred million in Europe/USA/Japan who currently support the tech backwork. (yes, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, etc all exist, but they are small).
If, for ethical reasons or restrictions imposed because some people say yuk, biotech is restricted in the west, it will just move to China, and we will do something else. Over the next couple of decades we are in for a really wild ride. I hope you are up for it.
Rather apposite in the circumstances EU regulation of pesticide potentially disastrous
If Britain in the late 1700’s or eary 1800’s had the level of regulations or the level of government spending that we have now, not only would there have been no industrial revolution – there would have been total economic collapse and mass starvation.
The level of regulation and government spending that existed at the time was bad enough (due to the struggle with Revolutionary France – and no war is not good for the economy), higher levels would have broken their backs.
The situation was even worse in Ireland, were previous government interventions had created conditions where most people (not every county but most) were engaged in small scale subsistance (rather than large scale commercial) farming.
Small scale subsistance farming is always just one knock away from collapse – as was shown by the blight of the 1840’s.
Indeed I sometimes wonder what would have happened in Scotland if it had not been for the “Highland Clearances” of the late 18th century and early 19th centuries. True they were not so dependent on the potato, but having large numbers of people dependent on little plots is very dodgy indeed.
Of course nothing worked in the Highlands – as the very landlords who engaged in the clearances ended up going bankrupt themselves.
Still back today……
Technology not advancing on all fronts as predicted.
True.
But with these levels of government spending and regulation (and the funny money financial system) it is a wonder of wonder how even an advanced economy manages to avoid collapse.
And you are asking for progress, on all fronts, under these conditions?
CountingCats, I hope you’re right. I (for one) am up for it.
Perceptions of rates of motion, including rates of change, are relative to the rate of motion or rate of change of the observor(s).
Charles Murray’s book, “Human Accomplishment” is a great read. He makes a great case fo the overwhelming superiority of the west in almost all areas of learning; this is the best antidote to multi-culti foolishness around. Check it out. I don’t think you’ll be sorry.
The expression ‘Laissez-Faire’ (leave to do) was used by French would-be industrialists centuries ago, because the French state was issuing regulations in every direction, under the false impression that this was helping people. When asked what more could be done, the governing powers were surprised to be told they’d done too much- ‘Leave us to do things!’
This can be taken as the closest thing to a parallel universe- a parallel country, which never did like the industrial revolution, and which liked to regulate things, as it still likes to do today. The French state has never really stopped intruding, has it?
I think you spot on regarding regulations stiling progress. They are effectively an expensive millstone round the neck of progress and must slow it to some extent.
Re Space exploration. One wonders if the fact that it was a state monopoly has anything to do with it’s slow progress. It will be interesting to see what happens as private enterprise starts to get a chance to run with the ball.
It’s not that the “pace of development in the field of energy” has slowed down.
The problem is that these guys don’t like what we have in the field of energy and would like some fantastic, unrealistic, idealistic “solutions” – such energy that costs next to nothing, and has no hazardous by-products.
Since their fantasies aren’t realized they moan about “slow pace of progress”. Thay have no grasp of the laws of physics and the limitations they impose.
Same with space travel. The rate of space exploration is too slow for people who use SF as the measuring stick and have no grasp of the physical and economical problems involved.
No, the pace of scientific and technological progress has accelerated, not slowed down.
Cellphone technology, for example, has been around for decades but was not able to really take hold until regulatory changes in the 1990s.
If you mean that it was the introduction by regulators of the GSM standard in Europe which allowed for international roaming agreements then yes. Sure. But I don’t think that’s what you were getting at.
The GSM standard was launched in 1989. The first network started in 1991. By 1991 there were a million users. At 3GSM in Cannes in 2003 we celebrated 1 billion users. This year, it was over 2 billion. That’s dramatic growth.
Then consider all the technologies that are common now that didn’t exist 20 or, in some cases, 10 years ago.
Music: In the last 20 years we’ve gone from Vinyl to CD to MP3 – with a couple of dead ends along the way with Mini-Disks.
Movies: VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray – and that last one will give way to HD downloads.
Digital Cameras
It’s a huge list, the problem is people don’t notice that technology changes when you’re in the middle of it.
I took my car in to have the timing belt looked at. It was on 80,000 miles. Apparently they don’t need to do anything until 140,000 these days.
My mother had her Gallblader out (on the NHS) and 24 hours later was out having a curry with me at her local Indian.
I still suspect the Singularity, whatever form that takes, is still coming.
Re-reading a few of the posts and the main problem seems to be that many of us, myself included, read far too much Heinlein, and others, as kids and assumed that there would be a pretty linear development of space from the 1960s onwards.
I’ve become something of a space cynic over the years, not about space itself – lots of business opportunities are being currently exploited, but that we’ll see economically viable space access and colonisation of the “High Frontier”.
Space is just too hard sadly. Much too hard. Like many things that are cool.
Space is hard, Daveon, no doubt about it. But I still believe that now that a lot of private companies are starting to work on commercial applications, progress will start to come. NASA is a collossal waste and a dead end; bringing big-government procedures to the problem allowed us to meet the short-term objective (landing a man on the moon before the Russians did) at the expense of doing it right. If NACA (the agency from which NASA sprang) had approached air travel in the same way NASA has approached space travel, today there would be no private carriers and about one coast-to-coast flight per week (at a cost almost nobody could afford). As always, government is the problem.
Perhaps some of the rocket scientists who inhabit these parts could share their insights.
(And I plead guilty to having read too much Heinlein!)
That’s true, but I’m more of a cynic than that. I doubt that space colonization is possible at all, or useful in any way. What we have now is near-earth, or earth related space applications. I doubt we will ever move beyond that. Maybe I’m guilty of not reading enough Heinlein.
Laird, I wish you were right but I just don’t think so. There just isn’t a sensible evolutionary route from rocket planes to a space vehicle through the slurry that we call an atmosphere. We might find one, but then there’s a problem with bulk carrying the infrastructure you’ll need to put in place just to start using the local resources.
I suspect there might be a “sweet” spot around the 5,000kg mark, where you could build something fairly cheap and fairly reliable as a reusable to Orbit vehicle, but imagine trying to build a base and ore handling system somewhere inhospitable where everything had to be delivered by helicopter. Even if you could do a drop every few days it’ll still be a pain.
Even then, when you’ve assembled your space hotel, or whatever, I don’t think there will be much of a second hand market because after 5-10 years the core structure will be wrecked and need replacing.
I would like to be wrong on this and look forward to seeing if the likes of Bigelow, Carmack, Bezos and others can do it. But, the engineer in me says no.
Similarly I’d like a faster way to travel. I fly north of 150,000 miles a year and have done for the last 4-5 years, and it would be nice to spend less time in the air. But practically speaking, the engineering is hard and expensive.
If you’re a senior exec these days and your company will spring for a private jet or First on a serious carrier then you don’t have to worry about down time. I flew Hong Kong – London in First on Cathy Pacific a couple of years ago (an upgrade) and I had an internet connection, a large workspace, a 6’6″ long bed, amazing food, terrific booze… I arrived refreshed having had a decent night’s sleep and also got through a bunch of email. Add phone connectivity, or VOIP and you don’t really need to get paces faster. The equation has always been about the cost of the hours of the people who have to be there and that’s not an issue anymore. On a decent long haul airline, you won’t be out of the loop.
there was only 8 years between the ‘everything has been invented’ quote of 1899 and Einstein spotting the atom – and now where we are 100 years later.
technology is not fast when you are looking at it move – but when u realise that most improvements are based on past ideas – Einstein was playing with a theory which was at least 50 years old – with more people entering the future, there are more minds around to revisit old ideas.
tomorrow is already here while you are looking through yesterdays paper!