HORIZONS: TECHNICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIETAL

By

Karl H. Puechl

September 11, 1987

When invited to give this talk, I was asked to direct my remarks toward the 21st century. Therefore, to start out, I'd like to state unequivocally that I do not know what the 21st century has in store for us; in this talk I will not attempt to be predictive (although I may sound that way at times); rather my objective is to be provocative. I'll try to emulate Ralph Waldo Emerson as expressed in his address to the Harvard Divinity School, "Truly speaking", he said, "it is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another."

While the central theme of my talk is 21st-Century technology and some of its consequences, I will first delve somewhat into economics since I believe as Karl Marx did that economics is the primary driving force for sociological development. Technology can impact society but there will be no basic change until the technology first influences economics. This makes for a rather neat beginning since I was once told that to get an audience's attention, one should either crack a joke or talk about money. Now here's a short fantasy that involves money:

Yesterday I received a check for $500 from the Ford Motor Company. Along with the check, there was the following letter:

Dear Mr. Puechl:

For the past five years through the use of our computers we have kept track of everyone in the U. S. who has purchased new automobiles. We further have looked into the backgrounds of all these individuals, and our computers know reasonably well everyone's financial capabilities, buying habits, and social status. From this information, our computer tells us that you are probably considering the purchase of a new car. The check for $500 is therefore being sent to you with no strings attached. You may do with it what you like. Of course, we hope that this gift is some inducement for you to consider purchase of a Ford product.

Very truly yours,

With regard to this matter, I understand that the Wall Street Journal is coming out on Monday with an article describing in detail this novel advertising scheme. In addition to the facts covered in the letter, the Journal article will say that Ford is cutting out all other forms of advertising and that the money saved therefrom will cover the $500 checks that have been mailed out to seven million individuals.

Ford believes that their computers have been fed sufficient facts so that at least 95% of the people who were mailed checks will indeed buy cars during the coming year. With this method of advertising, Ford hopes to finally beat out GM in the race for market share.

Let us now attempt to predict the consequences of Ford's novel action.

Ford management was indeed correct. The checks proved to be much more effective than conventional advertising. Within a month, it became apparent that Ford might capture 60% of the new car market. The other automobile corporations had, via the grapevine, received some indication of the intent of Ford, hence they were not caught completely unawares. Within two months, all car manufacturers, including the Japanese, mailed out comparable checks and discontinued other forms of advertising. Madison Avenue took on all the aspects of Wall Street at the time of the 1929 crash!

Within 3 months after Ford's action, H. J. Heinz Company mailed $25 checks to all women who had babies within the previous month. It is to be noted that for this mailing Heinz did not even require computers--they simply contacted all hospitals.

Within one year, the appliance manufacturers got into the act by sending out checks to the less affluent members of our society and newly-weds. RJR Nabisco jointly with the American Cemetary Association also sent $100 to all people over 45 who were smoking more than two packs of cigarettes per day. Sort of cooperative advertising asking that you continue smoking and also reserve your plot. The computer manufacturers were in seventh heaven since every company was buying computer power to determine who was in the market for what.

Within 18 months after the initial mailing, every area of purchasing was affected by this new method of advertising. Every family was having its income supplemented by about 10% through check mailings. A revolution was obviously taking place, and no one could as yet predict where it would lead. Everyone was getting supplementary income from food processors and clothing manufacturers; the poor were getting supplementary income for other near-necessities; the more affluent, in addition, were receiving checks from furriers and even some art dealers. Industrial organizations were also getting checks from potential suppliers.

The steam-roller started moving in full force when the United Steelworkers announced that they had reached agreement with Big Steel. Since the workers' income had in effect already been supplemented, they agreed to a 10% salary cut, provided that the money saved by the corporations be used to mail checks to potential product users, especially to those users who could use aluminum, ceramics or plastics as substitute materials. Other unions soon followed suit as it became apparent that the supplementary income was mounting at a fantastic rate.

Within 3 years, repeated wage negotiations downward and continued increase in payments to potential customers resulted in such low wages that a man's earnings through work were no longer considered to be significant. People who did not like their jobs began to stay home. They could now live quite well from the income received through the mails. Production, therefore, began to tumble. With their employees quitting in droves, the factories could not keep up with the demand for goods. It soon became apparent that some drastic action had to be taken to preserve the economy.

The President sent to Congress a bill forbidding companies to send checks to anyone who was not gainfully employed. This created a furor, the likes of which have never been seen in Washington, and luckily before the wave reached a crescendo it became apparent that other events would not make it necessary to pass this legislation.

Many of the people who had quit their jobs were becoming bored without a daily routine and without a better defined objective to life. They soon found out that this was not like being wealthy; the supplementary income was, by the computers, pegged to allow them to live only in the manner that they were accustomed to. As boredom set in, more-and-more people returned to work. Those that had been reasonably pleased with their old jobs took up where they had left off. Those that thought they had greater potential went job hunting and in most instances found something more suitable. After all, there was a severe labor shortage. Production was again on the upswing before Congress could act, and the proposed legislation died a natural death.

Since all companies were now sending out these monetary inducements for all kinds of products and services, check mailings were no longer an effective means of advertising; rather they were the vehicles that put the needed purchasing power in the consumers' pockets. Consequently, conventional advertising was becoming sanguine as more-and-more producers began to push their specific products.

Central consumer research groups were also being formed. These organizations with massive computers determined the purchasing whims of all people over a broad spectrum of products and services. Companies were funding these organizations directly, and the consumers, instead of getting many small checks, were now receiving on the average only three checks each month from the three largest consumer institutes. It soon became obvious that only one such institute would endure and that this one would be under Government auspices. After all, one organization that, in effect, controlled the entire economy could not be left in private hands.

Within 5 years after the initial announcement by Ford, the revolution had apparently run its course and the economy had once again stabilized. People were working as before. However, people were working because they wanted to--to keep from being bored and to contribute their productive abilities to society's general welfare. Voluntary non-employment was generally frowned upon, but since even the unemployed were recognized as consumers and were therefore paid, social welfare as we know the term had lost its present connotation and significance.

Is this pure fantasy or is it something that might come about? Is stability a myth? Cannot all aspects of our present condition be similarly altered, for better or for worse, through the introduction of a slight innovation or imbalance? In the terminology of a physicist, is our culture in a state of unstable equilibrium? If so, then the future is truly unpredictable unless the rather new mathematical techniques of catastrophe analysis have practical merit.

If I had really received such a mailing yesterday, could the described scenario evolve? How close are we to the described situation? Consider the recent bank write-offs of tens-of-billions of dollars. These monies were originally loaned for specific purposes, but after-the-fact it appears that they were simply payments to induce consumption in the third world. Are not these loans, now probably gifts to under-developed countries, similar to the checks to individuals that I have described? Simply put, does not the fantasy show that man's true worth is as a consumer; not as a producer? Haven't the rich always been admired because of their extraordinary consumption capability rather than their production capability? Is not doling out wages for the manufacture of weapons (which hopefully will never be used) simply a method of giving purchasing power to the individual employees? Perhaps, in the 21st century, man's true function in the scheme of things will be more clearly recognized.

While the described scenario might seem reasonable if the events occurred soon, would the scenario still seem reasonable if a similar economic upset occurred 50 years from now? Undoubtedly, by then our factories will be largely mechanized, computerized and robotized. There will be no more need for the blue collar worker. Also, there will have been developed innumerable expert systems, i.e., computer software that will make a computer as intelligent as an expert in a certain field. In medicine, for example, a personal computer that is fed a set of symptoms will either give an accurate diagnosis of the ailment and will prescribe treatment or say that a diagnosis cannot be made without additional information that can be provided by a blood test, urine analysis, x-ray, nuclear-magnetic-resonance scan, or some other procedure. After subsequently receiving the results of the specified test, the computer will be capable of making a diagnosis that is every bit as accurate as one made by a panel consisting of the most expert medical doctors in the country. In short, 50 years from now, it is highly likely that medical diagnosticians will be obsolete. The computer will make the diagnosis, prescribe the treatment and, further, if surgery is indicated, it is conceivable that the operation will be performed by a robot without the interference of human hands or minds. If manual laborers become obsolete and if medical doctors, who are currently one of the most educated group of people in our society, also become obsolete, whose productive capability will not also become obsolete? In our fantasy, people who got bored went back to work; what would have happened if their productive capabilities had not been required for society to function? Can society really exist when half of us always travels and the other half sells the travelers trinkets manufactured by robots? Or when all of us always travel and purchase, from robots, trinkets manufactured by robots?

Even if our economic fantasy is completely without foundation, man's evolution to an animal whose productive capabilities are not required is likely to continue at an ever-accelerating rate. If computers and robotics do not bring this about, mankind might decide to create a sub-human race through genetic engineering; let them perform the dirty work! One way or the other, it is reasonable to postulate that fifty or sixty years from now man might find himself to be superfluous, using the current definition of this word. How will he react? Will he be so bored with his lot that a nuclear holocaust will be looked upon, potentially, as humanity's savior? After all, a nuclear war would probably wipe out all but one-hundred-million or so people; enough to start over again but not enough to cause excessive pollution and depletion of the earth's resources. After being bored without having a purpose, just think how challenging it would be to rebuild the civilization that was almost destroyed! Who in Europe or Japan was bored immediately after World War II? Rebuilding a civilization would be a challenge even with our computers and robots, or sub-human servants. Personally, I do not think that man will take this seemingly direct approach; rather, he will muddle through as he has done in the past.

Let's look a bit more closely at man's more recent muddling and from this attempt to project his future actions.

It wasn't too long ago when men came home from a days work exhausted; also, the women were in the same physical condition from performing their daily chores. What happened when the need for strenuous manual labor diminished in the workplace? Need I elaborate. Witness the golf courses and tennis courts. Witness the health spas and elaborate exercise equipment. Witness all the joggers and cyclists. Man has found a way to keep his body in shape when this could not be done in the workplace. Since the transition from strenuous manual labor, it is almost an unwritten law that man must keep his body in condition but that this is to be accomplished only by expending energy uselessly; i.e., for no productive function other than bodily conditioning. Almost no one needing exercise offers to perform some healthy strenuous labor to a local farmer who doesn't wish to hire migratory workers. Almost no one offers his services to the town fathers to routinely help with road maintenance or to build needed housing for the street people. Such means for conditioning our bodies would expend energy usefully and therefore is tacitly prohibited.

From this observation, it is quite clear what man will do when computers make thinking in the workplace unnecessary. Man will keep his brain more-or-less conditioned by performing useless mental exercises outside of the workplace; provided that these exercises do not require substantial mental exertion. Signs of this transition are already beginning to appear. Witness the popularity of Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and other quiz games. In the light of man's historical behavior, I personally doubt that we can anticipate a great surge in creative endeavors after most men have finally achieved the freedom to engage in non-economic activity. In the environment of the 21st Century where both man's physical and mental capabilities will not be required for the production of goods and services, man will continue to exist, perhaps even to enjoy himself, to muddle through.

Now we are ready to answer questions relative to the technologies that might be available to our "superfluous" progeny.

Probably on par with man's transition away from being a producer will be his ability to control the direction of his further evolution. It will be possible to induce ova to undergo mitosis without spermatization; cloning or immaculate conception, however you wish to call the process, will be possible. One will be able to choose the gender of one's offspring. One will even be able to choose physical traits and mental capability. Certainly, the most crippling genetic defects that occur today will be capable of being exorcised from the human gene pool. On the other end of the age spectrum, it will be possible to extend human life almost indefinitely. While we can make reasonable judgments regarding the technology that will be available for these purposes, it is impossible to assess the ethical and legal developments that must take place concurrently with the introduction of the technology; non-technical decisions will undoubtedly determine the nature and timing of sociological change.

Another major factor that will differentiate the next century from this one will be the much greater employ of organic materials. Humanity has enjoyed the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and now, perhaps, it is on the threshold of the Organic Age. Even if the 21st Century does not become so characterized, it is abundantly clear that there will come into use many high-performance organic materials based upon liquid- crystal, ladder or self-reinforcing polymers. Reinforced polymers that have exceptionally high-strength, high-temperature and non-combustible characteristics will be readily available for metal replacement. Electronic polymers will exist with favorable conducting, semiconducting or electrolytic characteristics. Room temperature superconducting polymers may also be a possibility. With these electronic polymers, it should be possible to make many electrical devices smaller and/or cheaper and perhaps more efficient; e.g., computers, batteries and other electricity-storage devices, and, generators and motors. Even if this heavy reliance on organics does not come about, the visualized major improvements in devices will most certainly evolve because of the current materials research that is being carried on. Work with metal-matrix composites, rapid-solidification technology, ion-implantation, surface chemistry and physics, superalloys, intercalation compounds, superlattices and superconductors will undoubtedly point the way for major improvements.

Another characteristic of the 21st Century will be its complete refutation of the sophomoric conclusions reached by the Club of Rome. Continued exponential depletion of the earth's resources will not continue even if the world's population continues to grow. (A pure exponential time variation never lasts very long in the real world!) Energy will be plentiful and there will be no foreseeable problem in extracting the needed resources from the earth's, including the ocean's, abundant supplies. In the energy arena, there will probably come into use an economic superconductor which will make possible efficient magnetohydrodynamic electric generators, compact electrical storage devices for practical use in road vehicles, more efficient electric motors and computers, and low-loss transmission lines. While overall energy usage may stay about constant due to the introduction of the more efficient devices, electricity usage will increase substantially due to the introduction of the electric vehicles; also older electricity generation plants will have to be replaced. New central-station electricity powerplants will probably be primarily nuclear plants; fission plants at remote locations or, perhaps, even fusion plants on the moon or on artificial satellites, with the energy beamed down by microwave or laser radiation. The heavy reliance on electricity produced by other than the burning of fossil fuels will substantially reduce air pollution and associated conditions such as acid rain and the greenhouse effect. Usage of minerals will also remain about constant, or may actually decrease, because of the major substitution of tailored polymers as noted previously. However, extraction of useful minerals will be performed much more efficiently through the use of molecular sieves, powerful magnets, which may or may not be superconducting, and/or the employ of bacteria that have been genetically designed to perform specific extractions. Extraction from seawater and ocean-floor nodules will be commonplace.

By about the year 2030, the colonization of other parts of the solar system will probably begin. All the necessary technology is already available; what is needed is the incentive and allocation of the necessary monies. By the end of the 21st Century, the number of expatriates from our planet may approach the one million mark.

There are many other aspects of technology that deserve some consideration. To save time, I'll just mention some of these without much explanation. There may come about a breakthrough in photovoltaic solar-energy conversion to electricity; if this could be done with about 40% efficiency and only modest increase in the cost of present-day solar cells, a significant share of electricity requirements could be met by solar-energy conversion rather than nuclear. Also, through discovery of a long-lived phosphorescent material, it may be possible to store sunlight during the day and have it automatically re-emitted at night, thereby substantially reducing electricity requirements. Rapid and convenient transportation on earth will, almost assuredly, become a reality early in the 21st Century. Human driving of computerized and what I will call "sensorized" cars will become obsolete except for the psychological pleasure that might be derived therefrom. Speeds in excess of 100 miles-per-hour will be routine for cars, and in excess of 300 miles-per-hour for, perhaps, magnetically-levitated trains. Major intercontinental travel-time will be reduced to within an hour or two by using high-altitude, sub-satellite, trajectories. Genetic engineering will alter the characteristics of many agricultural products and fermentation agents. Rudimentary artificial intelligence, i.e., computers that can be truly creative will begin to make some contribution to our base of knowledge by about the middle of the century. This will come about when the expert systems developed for individual disciplines are wedded onto one computer and the computer is programmed to continually attempt correlation, integration and synthesis; i.e. when the computer is given facts plus a subconscious mind.

How will we get from here to there? I think it is safe to say that the transition from our current condition to that which might be characterized as the 21st-Century environment will be gradual. Recent short-sighted actions taken to ameliorate economic stresses insure that this will be so. Technological advances cannot be rapidly achieved when research has been placed on a "back-burner". This requires some explanation. In answer to the Japanese industrial expansion and possible eventual domination of world trade, both U. S. and European companies have concentrated on reducing costs by "stream-lining" their operations. Among other things, this has resulted in a severe contraction of research capabilities. The research laboratories of most of the basic metal companies have been decimated; world-class research entities of energy companies have been entirely eliminated. A substantial fraction of scientists and development engineers over the age of 55, have been layed-off or, as is more kindly stated, offered early retirement. These highly-educated individuals were not "dumped" because they had gotten behind in technology, rather they were deemed superfluous because their areas of involvement were in technologies that were too advanced to yield near-term profits. In large measure, by concentrating on near-term profitability, we may have "thrown out the baby with the bath". I realize full-well that this assessment of research does not jive with the figures given in Business Week and other business publications wherein the analysts generally show a yearly increase in research expenditures. This apparent discrepancy exists because the business writers do not assess the changing definition and quality of research. More-and-more, what is called "research" by individual companies is writing proposals to obtain grants from Government agencies and/or simple product-line maintenance; i.e., finding relatively quick fixes to satisfy customer complaints. Also. when the Government gives tax benefits for performing research, what competent CEO wouldn't broaden his definition of research to maximize his company's monetary benefit? While, as a scientist, I deplore this down-playing of long-term and more basic research, and the associated waste of technical talent; in broader context, I do not view the trend as being entirely harmful provided that all other countries, including the Japanese and the Soviet bloc follow suit. If they do not, our short-sighted actions relative to research will eventually be perceived as unilateral economic disarmament; however, if they do follow our lead, the slowing down of technological change might give the social sciences a better chance to ease current and foreseen social tensions and stresses. This does not say that technology should be disregarded as a potential solver of specific sociological problems. In fact, I am not certain that sociologists, without technical advances, can ever solve social problems. What freed the slaves: Sociologists deciding that slavery was morally unacceptable? the Civil War? Or the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney? What gave impetus to the womens' movement: Sociologists and psychologists concluding that women could effectively compete in the business world? Outspoken suffragettes, Or the pill? We can look to the future for other examples. A great deterrent to the population explosion might be a pill or shot that could produce infertility in either the male or female for 2 to 5 years or until an antidote is given. Also, a great deterrent to nuclear war might be a rapid nuclear treatment that makes plutonium and uranium-235 unsuitable for nuclear detonation. On a more provocative level, slight modification of every human-being's brain-chemistry might make for a less aggressive humanity; a more humane society. Enough technological conjecture.

I also believe that the transition to a 21st-century environment will be difficult and, perhaps, even disastrous unless man finds suitable challenges along the way. The challenges may be technological, such as the colonization of space; or they may be socio-econmomic, such as peaceful and dignified cohabitation on this planet. There must be challenges; the challenges must be taken seriously; and human energy, even sacrifice, must be appropriately directed. Nevertheless, in spite of all the obstacles, I am basically optimistic. In all likelihood man will succeed as he has in the past; not in any straight-forward fashion, but he will simply muddle through. Can we realistically expect anything more when the basis for the entire universe seems to be, simply put, the simple law of chance?

This concludes my presentation. Are you looking forward to the challenges of the next century? Are you prepared to undertake the journey? I invite your questions.