We haven't learned how to protect ourselves from earthquakes and hurricanes, travel faster, or live longer. But that's nothing...
The 21st century turned out to be completely different from the forecasts of fifty years ago. There are no intelligent robots, no flying cars, no cities on other planets. Worse, we are not one step closer to such a future. Instead we have iPhone, Twitter and Google, but is this an adequate replacement? However, they still use the operating system that appeared in 1969.
More and more people are beginning to suspect that something wrong is happening. One gets the impression that technical progress if it didn't stop, it at least failed. Frivolous gadgets change every month like clockwork, and significant problems, the solution of which seemed close and inevitable, are somehow forgotten. Writer Neal Stephenson tried to articulate these doubts in the article "Innovation Starvation":
“One of my first memories is sitting in front of a bulky black and white television and watching one of the first American astronauts go into space. I saw the last launch of the last shuttle on a widescreen LCD panel when I turned 51 years old. I watched as space program declines, with sadness, even bitterness. Where are the promised toroidal space stations? Where's my ticket to Mars? We are unable to repeat even the space achievements of the sixties. I’m afraid this indicates that society has forgotten how to cope with truly complex problems.”
Stevenson is echoed by Peter Thiel, one of the founders of the Paypal payment system and the first outside investor in Facebook. The article he published in National Review was starkly titled “The End of the Future”:
“Technological progress is clearly falling behind the lofty hopes of the fifties and sixties, and this is happening on many fronts. Here is the most literal example of progress slowing down: the speed of our movement has stopped growing. The centuries-old history of the emergence of more and more fast species transport, which began with sailing ships in the 16th-18th centuries, continued with the development of railways in the 19th century and the advent of cars and aviation in the 20th century, was reversed when the Concorde, the last supersonic passenger aircraft, was scrapped in 2003. Against the backdrop of such regression and stagnation, those who continue to dream of spaceships, vacations on the Moon and sending astronauts to other planets solar system, they themselves seem to be aliens.”
This is not the only argument in favor of the theory that technological progress is slowing down. Its supporters suggest looking at least at computer technology. All the fundamental ideas in this area are at least forty years old. Unix will be 45 years old in a year. SQL was invented in the early seventies. At the same time, the Internet, object-oriented programming and graphical interface appeared.
In addition to examples, there are also numbers. Economists assess the impact of technological progress by the rate of growth in labor productivity and changes in the gross domestic product of countries where new technologies are being introduced. Changes in these indicators over the course of the 20th century confirm that pessimists' suspicions are not unfounded: growth rates have been falling for several decades.
In the United States, the impact of technological progress on gross domestic product reached its peak in the mid-thirties of the 20th century. If labor productivity in the United States had continued to grow at the rate set between 1950 and 1972, by 2011 it would have reached a value that was a third higher than it actually was. In other first world countries the picture is much the same.
“What is to be explained is not so much the slowdown in growth after 1972 as the acceleration that occurred around 1913, ushering in the brilliant sixty-year period between World War I and the early seventies, during which productivity growth in the United States outpaced anything seen before or since then.” times."
Gordon believes that the surge was caused by the new industrial revolution that took place during this period. The end of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries saw electrification, the spread of internal combustion engines, and breakthroughs in chemical industry and the emergence of new forms of communication and new media, particularly film and television. Growth continued until their potential was exhausted.
But what about electronics and the Internet, which have become truly widespread only in the last twenty years? In Gordon's view, they have had a much smaller impact on the economy than electricity, internal combustion engines, communications and chemicals - the "Big Four" of the Industrial Revolution of the early 20th century - and are therefore much less important:
“The Big Four were a far more powerful source of productivity growth than anything that came out of Lately. Most of the inventions we see today are “derivatives” of old ideas. VCRs, for example, merged television and film, but the fundamental impact of their introduction cannot be compared with the effect of the invention of one of their predecessors. The Internet also basically leads to the replacement of one form of entertainment with another - and that’s all.”
Peter Thiel shares the same opinion: the Internet and gadgets are not bad, but in the grand scheme of things they are still small things. This idea is succinctly expressed in the motto of his investment firm Founders Fund: “We dreamed of flying cars, but we got 140 characters on Twitter.” A Financial Times column co-written by Thiel and Garry Kasparov expands on the same idea:
“We can send photos of cats to the other side of the world using phones and watch old movies about the future on them, while being in a subway built a hundred years ago. We can write programs that realistically simulate futuristic landscapes, but the real landscapes around us have hardly changed in half a century. We haven’t learned how to protect ourselves from earthquakes and hurricanes, travel faster, or live longer.”
On the one hand, it’s hard to disagree with this. Nostalgia for a simple and optimistic retro future is completely natural. On the other hand, the complaints of pessimists, despite the numbers and graphs they cite, do not fit well with the crazy reality outside the window. It really doesn't look much like the dreams of the sixties, but resemblance to outdated dreams is a dubious criterion for determining value.
Ultimately, futuristic spaceships and flying cars are pretty simple ideas. Both are just extrapolations into the future of what existed in the past. A flying car is just a car, and some kind of starship with Captain Kirk at its head is a fantastic variation on the theme of a warship from the Second World War.
— Autonomous self-driving cars capable of driving on regular roads without human assistance are being successfully tested. Local governments in the United States are already debating what to do with them: normal rules Driverless cars do not fit well into road traffic.
— The lion’s share of exchange transactions is carried out not by people, but by special programs that make thousands of transactions per second. At this speed, they cannot be controlled, so most of the time they act on their own. Unforeseen combinations of algorithms have already led to instant market crashes, and even long investigations do not always find the cause of what happened.
— The main weapon of the United States in the Middle East has quietly become unmanned aerial vehicles controlled by satellite from another continent. And this is the technology of the nineties. Autonomous robots, both flying and ground, are being tested in laboratories.
- Google has released electronic glasses that automatically find and show the user the information that, in their opinion, is most useful to him in life. this moment. In addition, the glasses are capable of recording everything he sees at any time. Oh yes, it’s also built into them voice translator into many languages.
— 3D printers, on the one hand, have fallen in price to such a level that almost everyone can buy them, and on the other hand, they have reached a resolution at which it is possible to print objects with details about 30 nanometers in size. In order to photograph what is printed, an electron microscope is required.
“The very idea that an ordinary video cable could hide inside a full-fledged, but very small computer running Unix, would have seemed absurd just recently. Now this is a reality: it is easier for developers to take a ready-made single-chip system than to develop a specialized microcontroller.
This is not a listing of the most amazing things, but only what lies on the surface. In fact, this list can be continued indefinitely - especially if, in addition to the information technologies that are close to us, we touch upon biotechnologies, materials science and other rapidly developing, but not very understandable areas of knowledge to the person on the street.
Boring? This is because big things are seen from a distance, and we are at the very epicenter. Habit prevents us from noticing how strange things are happening around us.
To call all this trifles that do not deserve special attention, as Thiel does, will not work. Each of these inventions, even the most frivolous ones at first glance, has (or at least is capable of having) a huge impact on the way people live.
See for yourself. What consequences will the spread of Google Glass electronic glasses have? Even if we do not take into account the fact that they constantly study their owner in order to better understand what information he may need and when (and this in itself is a very interesting direction in the development of interfaces), think about the camera built into the glasses. Add to it facial recognition and Internet search - and think about how this will affect the daily life of the user of such a device. What about the possibility of creating a continuous video archive of your own life (this is also called lifelogging)? It is no coincidence that some are already sounding the alarm and calling for a ban on Google Glass - they understand that if such a device becomes popular, it will be more difficult to ignore than mobile phones today.
The self-driving car is also a blow to the traditional way of life. All the consequences that the general availability of such technology can lead to are difficult not only to list, but also to predict. Here are a couple of popular predictions. First, a self-driving car doesn't have to wait for a driver in a parking lot. It may well serve not one, but several people. This, in turn, will lead to a complete change in the very approach to car ownership. Secondly, robots behave much more carefully on the road than people. This means that hundreds of thousands of accidents a year that result in death can be forgotten. Finally, we should not forget about the time that people spent behind the wheel. It will be freed up for other activities.
Even such an ordinary thing as a cable with a built-in computer is not a trifle at all. There are no trifles in such matters at all. The effect of reducing the cost of existing technology is often completely unpredictable and can be greater than the effect of new inventions. What will be the consequences of further reductions in the cost and power consumption of single-chip computers capable of running Unix? Read about ubiquitous computing and sensor networks.
Mobile phones, which Thiel so easily dismissed, actually make it possible to “send photos of cats to the other side of the world.” But not only cats. With the same ease, they allow gigabytes of classified information to be copied and published on the Internet, causing an international diplomatic scandal. And frivolous communication tools like Facebook, Blackberry text messaging, and Twitter with its 140 characters reduce the complexity of mass communication by reducing the need for consciously organizing groups of people to act together. Even the iPhone, an exemplary symbol of mindless consumerism, on closer examination turns out to be a very important milestone: it was it that pushed the development of a new generation of computers after a quarter-century of stagnation.
Why is this not reflected in economic indicators? Most likely, it finds, but not in the way economists expect. Previous industrial revolutions led to increased productivity and the emergence of new industries. This, on the contrary, makes entire industries unviable and displaces a lot of things outside the monetary economy.
Producers of easily copyable content were the first to feel this - music industry, media, book publishers, Hollywood. Their business models are devoured on both sides by widespread illegal copying and a huge number of amateurs who suddenly have the opportunity to compete on equal terms with professionals for the attention of viewers.
Take a look at the folders where you keep pirated movies and music and calculate how much you would have to shell out for legal versions. This is an amount that economists failed to account for when calculating gross domestic product per capita. The value of the product you consumed is not diminished by the fact that you did not pay a penny for it, but it is taken outside the economic brackets.
Every successful technology company destroys the revenue potential of thousands of traditional competitors in the same market. Craigslist almost single-handedly destroyed the market for paid advertisements, from which American newspapers had depended for a hundred years. Not a single traditional encyclopedia can compete with Wikipedia, which formally is not even commercial organization. AirBnB is knocking the chair out from under the feet of the hotel industry (so far only in some niches, but there will be more to come), and Uber has made life much more difficult for traditional taxis. And so on and so forth.
Meanwhile, industrial robots, the introduction of which was delayed due to the availability of cheap work force in Southeast Asia are becoming more and more attractive. Foxconn, one of China's largest electronics manufacturers, is threatening to replace hundreds of thousands of workers with machines. If things go like this, the labor market will follow other markets that are killed by new technologies, and economists will have to invent some other economy.
At least then no one will have to complain that progress has ended. It didn't end, it just didn't go where you thought it would.
Does society need technological progress?
"Like there is no inventor who,
Damn the car, I never dreamed of it
To do good to a person
So there is no machine that did not bring into the world
The gravest poverty
And new types of slavery." (Voloshin)
Technological progress provides many interesting things. In the 19th century, these were steam locomotives, aircraft, steamships - it became possible to move more quickly in space. The age of industrial development, which, along with great advantages, also gave rise to great disadvantages. There was a surplus population in the village. And the villagers were forced to leave their homes and land, moving to the cities. The most efficient were able to survive and get rich there. And most of them became workers, and they were always under the threat of unemployment, unprotected old age, and illness. In 1830, the average life expectancy of workers in the World was 30 years. Metallurgists suffered burns, miners inhaled dust, printing workers suffered from lead disease, many textile workers inhaled thread lint and contracted tuberculosis. The workers saw the only way to change the unbearable working conditions - by destroying the machines. The village began to use fertilizers.
The progress of technology today would have amazed the imagination of people living in the 19th century. But the minus has also increased. Over the past centuries, the Earth has been rapidly dying, ahead of progress: rivers, lakes, seas, and air have been poisoned. Synthetic food products are produced. Especially European society, where technological progress is widely used, has become rich, but has not become happy. In 1999, a mammoth that lived 23 thousand years ago was found on the Taimyr Peninsula. Researchers are developing a fantastic project: they want to extract a DNA molecule from the frozen remains of an animal, and then try to clone this species. Interesting. And then they clone the person. And a little more progress and on Earth it is already a rarity to meet just a person with a living soul. But there are many clones who live like machines. So does society need technological progress? But the rocket has already taken off and cannot be stopped.
Olga Bakhareva
Does society need technological progress? I think yes it is necessary. Technological progress is what has allowed us to achieve what we have. That is, we don’t need to get up in the morning and go hunting to feed our tribe, we don’t need to sleep in a cave and keep the fire going, because if it goes out, darkness will come and a predator will come who will kill us all. And the basis of this technical progress is laziness. Although, yes, labor made a man out of a monkey, laziness helped man make a wheel, tame a horse (after all, it’s lazy to walk 20 km), and use a stick. Yes, you can say, this is bad and we are polluting the planet or there is a high level of crime, but wasn’t it even 500 years ago that people died in batches from a common cold or do you think that at that time people did not steal, did not kill, and even more than now? You can whine about the fact that our life is bad - you were not a serf in the Middle Ages. In short, we can talk about this topic for a long time, but what am I getting at? You can talk about how bad this is, but are you ready to leave your house, car, bed and go somewhere far away from people, and live alone without amenities, but without progress? Of course, you will say: yes, in words we are all good, but in reality we are 0. Although it is useless to argue (after all, I am right). And finally, I will say: laziness is even good.
Pavel Grigoriev
Of course you need it!
Otherwise, how would I now sit in a chair and write in the dark without lamps and chandeliers?
How would we buy warm jackets for the winter if it were not for looms... How would we call our friends?..
Technical progress is needed. We must move forward all the time!
Right now, at the same time as I am writing this, I am writing to my mother (a tautology, but nothing).
Of the minuses, this is, of course, dependence on games... We play in games better life(theme (scenario) depends on the game itself)… This is a way to brighten up your life, to take your mind off your problems for a while…
There are, of course, more advantages, but there are also many disadvantages.
Progress is always important, and even more important are the goals that humanity sets for itself.
Lisa Spevak
Does a person need technological progress?
To answer this question, you must first understand what Tech is. progress, and understand why it is needed. Man is by definition a very lazy creature, and historically man has developed technology only to do a little less. All Tech. progress is needed only so that you can rest more and work less. Since I am also a human being, and like everyone else I like to do nothing, then, at first glance, it seems that technological progress is something wonderful. But if you look deeper, you can find several significant disadvantages, the most basic being: land pollution, overpopulation and Morality. From Tech. With progress, some things have appeared, the appearance of which contradicts morality, natural selection and many other factors. There is a simple rule: to get 1 unit of energy, you need to spend 1.5 units of energy, that is, this means that if people continue to use the technologies that Tech gave them. progress, then someday the resources will run out, and progress will kill us. Progress also contributed to the development of medicine, which contributed to overpopulation, which disrupts natural selection, and the ecosystem. The further progress goes, the less the value of ordinary workers becomes, because a machine can do the same thing as a person, in addition, it will do it better, faster and cheaper, soon no one will need human labor, and then the person himself. Previously, hundreds of people were involved in making a kilogram of paper, but now you don’t even need one. In general this means that Tech. progress is needed in order to completely remove physical labor from our lives. And the pinnacle of all progress will be the moment when physical activity completely disappears from our lives, and only mental activity remains. In ancient times, the main thing was the one who was the most physically strong, but years and centuries passed, and progress slowly began to change everything, the process has already begun, and it can no longer be stopped, we will develop and the importance of physical strength will weaken and weaken. And if we return to the question “Is Technological progress necessary?”, then I will answer: “It is not just needed, but necessary.”
Mitya Kozlov
If we consider the need for technical progress for a small country, isolated from external influences, then we can imagine a country in which manufactures remained and bloody revolutions did not occur.
Most likely, such a country can only exist if its history does not have the infamous experience of slavery. Since it was slavery that repeatedly stratified society to the limit and because of this there are rich and poor in the country, but the middle layer is not enough to hold back the pressure of the deprived masses.
From these assumptions we conclude that such an ideal country would require a population balanced in terms of wealth. That is, we have 5 percent of the cream of society, 85 percent of the middle class, which is approximately single in terms of property, and 10 percent of the poor. Yes, in such a country there must be at least three layers of the population for people to want to get rich.
Well, so, it turns out that traders, owners of factories, and members of government make up 5% of the cream.” Workers of factories, banks, hospitals - 85% of the middle class. And 10% of the beggars we love so much.
In such a country, without wars and other strong blows to the stability of the country, we can imagine that there will be no major revolution in it. But in it, technological progress will be a useful, but not necessary, breakthrough.
Sergey Semenov
Is technical progress necessary?
Now is the time that literally every two years some new technologies and equipment appear for completely different purposes and purposes. But earlier in the 19th century, everything was different; if something new appeared, it was either the greatest discovery or useless rubbish.
Partly, technological progress is needed to move forward, because without it we would not have computers, phones, tablets, and in the end we would never fly into space, because we simply would not know how.
But if you look at progress through the eyes of a worker at a factory in the 19th century, then progress for him is simply terrible, at the beginning of the 19th century the first cars, locomotives, factories appeared, which means there was smoke and stale air, and work in factories at that time - this is absolute hell, and adults and children had to work 20 hours with an hour break for mere pennies.
Of course, the authorities tried to do something so that their progress would not stop, for example, they built so-called workhouses and tried to reduce the work time by several hours, some things worked, some didn’t.
But the conclusion is this: technical progress is needed, but not at the cost of the 19th century.
Vanya Rusanov
Technical progress is the replacement of human labor with machine labor; the end of technical progress is considered to be the end of the 19th century, when a machine began to make another machine.
Let me return to the topic of this ESSAY. Does a person need technological progress?
I believe that humanity does not need “technical progress”, but people need it. Technological progress is an integral part of the human revolution.
Another question automatically arises: why does a person need technical progress?
Humanity has two ways: the first is to move forward, and the second is to move backward (in other words, to degrade). I also consider standing still and not moving forward to be a form of degradation. I think we don’t have a certain level of development to which we could reach and not develop anymore. Our humanity is always developing and coming up with something new.
So, to avoid regression, you need to move forward and develop. Step over each step of the endless evolutionary ladder leading up.
Imagine your life without such amenities as running water, gas, electricity, etc., etc. You wouldn’t even live a day! All this was created by man. Over the years, our humanity has developed and invented new inventions, and tried to simplify our lives as much as possible.
This is why man needed technical progress. Man has always strived and, I believe, will strive to simplify his life, this is the essence of man. It's not bad! Laziness is what drives every person to some extent.
On this score there is good saying about this theme:
“laziness is the engine of progress”
Polina Peskovskaya
My computer will be 2 years old in May. Then I bought it for 50 or 55 thousand rubles (I don’t remember exactly), and it fully met all my needs. One of them was to increase the hard drive capacity from 1 to 2 terabytes. But I’m gradually starting to feel that I would like to have not 2, but, say, 4 terabytes, and better, of course, 10 or 100, so as not to think about the volume at all. It takes me more than 700 gigabytes digital library, and scans of old books usually weigh a lot. If we're talking about about an album with illustrations, then, while maintaining quality, one such pdf file can weigh a gigabyte or even more (that is, 2 terabytes - this is, relatively speaking, an electronic library of 2000 such books). It is clear that there are those who talk about all sorts of cloud services and storage on the Internet, but, firstly, they are still not intended for databases of such a volume, and if they are, then you need to fork out extra money for it. Secondly, in principle, you don’t want to depend on the Internet and third-party services, but have all the necessary files at hand.
Now I went to the website of the Kay Computer Center and saw that in two years the maximum HDD capacity has not changed at all. As it was 2 terabytes, it remains so. No, I understand that in other stores you can probably buy more powerful computers with 4 terabytes, but it will also be much more expensive, as if such a problem exists only for certain people.
In essence, we see how technological progress in last years has stopped, and some fundamental things are being replaced by image ones. The changes mainly concern the external design and the desire to confuse the user. And this regression is felt in many areas. Even spaceships They began to fly worse, and equipment began to break down more often. Operating systems for computers are also becoming worse; programs seem to be deliberately made less convenient (for example, Microsoft Word). At one time there was crazy hysteria about tablets. Everywhere they wrote that they would completely replace conventional desktop computers and completely displace them. And it doesn’t matter that working with text on a tablet is inconvenient, the main thing is the total dictate of new products (if something appears, then it should take over everything, and it’s not always the case that they try to implement this crazy plan using honest methods, preferring to aggressively impose bad new things instead of reliable ones old. In essence, this is technical totalitarianism). And how inconvenient it can be to disable all sorts of programs that for some reason are installed by default and which seem to be designed to make life easier for the user, but in fact they try to think and decide for him, arbitrarily changing words in the text, aligning paragraphs, etc. and so on.
The main task of global corporations is not to improve technology that would last as long as possible, but to ensure that people are forced to completely change their computers and smartphones every few years, and still have to figure out how to use them for a long time. Regarding the latter, science also seems to be at a standstill, because there is still no first-class affordable smartphone that does not need to be recharged every day. But this takes a lot of time, effort and nerves (think about this recharging, damn it). Or is science not to blame for this at all, and here we are again dealing with someone’s evil will, artificially holding back progress?
"TOMORROW". Today our guest is the editor-in-chief of the online newspaper “Journalistskaya Pravda” Sergei Zagatin. The topic of our conversation is technological singularity. In the West, over the past ten years, they have been very actively promoting this philosophical concept, the author of which is the American inventor and futurist Raymond Kurzweil. He once stated that soon, literally in 2030, a certain super-entity, a surrogate for an all-planetary superintelligence, should arise. Kurzweil saw such a singularity in the image of artificial intelligence, a pervasive network, a certain mind that will replace everything in the future - culture, science, history, the meaning of the future, after which humanity must retreat to some kind of secondary role, giving way to the further evolution of an artificial super-entity, like biological life itself at one time became subordinate to the human mind.
But when discussing such a singularity and its objective prerequisites, we must say something else: at this moment, a gaping void appears in the purpose of humanity. Because it turns out that artificial intelligence should not only work for us, but also “have all the goodies”: and not only in the material sense (here, most likely, no one will die of hunger), but first of all - in terms of development and evolution. It turns out that humanity, at the moment of singularity, suddenly realizes itself as secondary and unnecessary. Your opinion: how will scientific and technological progress develop in the near future, which supposedly should lead us to these yawning peaks? And how possible is Kurzweil’s singularity? Are we again inventing a false “god ex machina” for ourselves?
Sergey ZAGATIN. Let's say right away: Raymond Kurzweil was by no means the “inventor” of the technological singularity. How about her philosophical concept, they began to talk back in the 1970-80s against the backdrop of the successes of science and technology - when it became clear that each subsequent human invention requires less and less time to create, implement and widely disseminate. This is generally a feature of any nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems that develop with an evolutionary crisis. And in general, humanity is not unique here - the singularity can be described both by the process of sudden crystallization of a supercooled liquid, and by the process nuclear explosion as a result of a chain reaction. The mathematical and philosophical picture will be the same: first, exponential development, then a rupture and crisis, comparable in suddenness to an explosion, and then a transition to a different state, atypical from the point of view of the previous development of events. Therefore, having observed such an explosive growth of technology throughout the twentieth century, the concept of technological singularity was realized and described quite a long time ago, long before Kurzweil. Here he acted rather as a popularizer of “boring” philosophical ideas Prigogine, Forrester or Meadows.
"TOMORROW". But there have always been critics of the idea of singularity. I remember that in the 90s, against the backdrop of the collapse of the USSR, a different concept even prevailed in the Western world - they say, “everything has stopped, there will be no more revolutions.” Francis Fukuyama then wrote a programmatic book with such criticism - “The End of History”, in which he said that nothing else would happen in the world.
Sergey ZAGATIN. Well, I must say, no one seriously believed in the “end of history” even then. Indeed, in the 1990s, NTP did not stop at all; rather, on the contrary, it moved forward by leaps and bounds. It was then that everyone realized that Moore's law was in effect, which showed the doubling of the number of transistors in processors every few years. Everything in that period, as it should be within the framework of an evolving nonequilibrium system, developed. There were very great achievements in science and technology - despite the apparent calm in world politics. And, as a result, the end of the story turned out to be a fiction. History met all expectations - and moved forward again. Rather, the world then overestimated some other aspects of development - for example, we remember what overheated expectations there were regarding the role of the Internet in business, in sales and in everyday life.
"TOMORROW". Yes, “the refrigerator will call the iron and arrange how to iron your trousers.”
Sergey ZAGATIN. Exactly. This approach ended with the collapse of the dot-coms, about which now many fans of Apple or Elon Musk know nothing, because they literally “went to the potty” back then, this happened back in the late 1990s. And it is because of this that I will criticize the “inevitability” of the technological singularity. Because the exponential graph itself looks nice, but there are a couple of things that make this technological singularity a pipe dream. This is my main concern, that “we built and built,” but in the end we built not a singularity, but a “civilization of C students.”
"TOMORROW". So we became stupid even before the singularity arrived? But this must be proven. They will object to us: “We studied well at school, why are you telling us about C-grade students!”
Sergey ZAGATIN. Maybe everyone studied well at school, but in total we have built a civilization of C students, because many engineering solutions, say, of the 1980s, now seem to be an unattainable peak. What single scientists did, armed only with a slide rule and a simple calculator, cannot be repeated today by entire research institutes with 3D modeling programs and supercomputers. That is, the abundance of artificial intelligence rots our natural intelligence - just look at the development of programming itself, when from machine codes and assembler we reached object-oriented programming, and purely visual: “grab, drag, click.” You can put any “person on the street”, even a trained macaque, behind a visual interface - and they will be “programmers” by today’s standards. But all these would-be programmers, compared to the monsters of the 1980s, are pure C students; they wouldn’t have been allowed near the computers of that time, and they wouldn’t have understood how to work with them.
"TOMORROW". Okay, but sometimes they say: “Okay, we have a lot of C students, but overall we have become smarter, we have become more powerful. Our civilization has such superpowers that even C students are suitable for us! We will put them, like monkeys, on buttons to press, and in another place we will put creators such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk. And they will come up with everything new.” Is such a scenario even possible - or not?
Sergey ZAGATIN. Let's immediately put the situation on the “sinful earth”. None of the people you listed are any kind of “creator” - they, like Kurzweil, only took ready-made concepts and “sold” them to people, those same “C” users for whom the smartphone is a scientific and technological revolution. Therefore, let's be honest: today's Western civilization has largely lost its historical goal, having replaced it beautiful pictures and videos. Where did all the gigahertz and terabytes that became possible after the computer revolution of the 1980s-2000s go?
For example, now everyone is rushing around with the idea of a reusable first stage in a launch vehicle, which Musk is pushing to the market. But at the same time, few people asked themselves: are there any reserves at all in the very concept of launching into orbit using chemical thrust? After all, by and large, vertical takeoff on a chemical rocket exhausted itself back in the 80s; Musk today is doing what they did on the Space Shuttle, designing it in the 70s. There are a lot of alternative concepts for launching cargo into low-Earth orbit: launch platforms with electromagnetic acceleration, a “space tram” with superconducting magnets holding a tunnel through the atmosphere, there are engine projects for three environments - but these are not projects for Musk, he understands that in such projects he has no competence. He's a PR manager, not an engineer. Therefore, he takes projects from the 1970s and again sells them to “C” students. At the same time, in Russia such an engine for three environments, which operates in the troposphere, in the stratosphere and in space, has actually been created - this is the Solodovnikov engine. He is being pushed and tested - and I have no doubt that in the current situation the Ministry of Defense will “put the pressure” on him. This will be both innovation and revolution - and not all of Musk’s fashion projects.
"TOMORROW". But now the question arises: do people actually want to go into space? The same people, even if we call them “C” students, say: we need cats, we need Kardashian or Lopez bulges, go away with your space!
Sergey ZAGATIN. No, people want to go into space, people dream about space. It is these feelings that Musk exploits - after all, he understands advertising and the mass unconscious. But the problem is that he does this based on the needs of a generation that has been spoiled computer games, generations of C students with clip thinking. Who are accustomed to the fact that on every space station there is a brothel and a bar, as we are always shown in American fiction. And therefore, in Musk’s project with a brothel and bar, it is necessary to fly to Mars. He seriously wrote this in his presentation. Musk takes into account the mass unconscious and the level of consciousness of the masses - explaining to these people that there is physics, there is mathematics, there are a lot of restrictions in flight, when you will not be in the mood for a bar, is quite difficult. For example, I have a large number of friends - Tesla fans, fans of electric vehicles. I’m already tired of hearing: “electric cars will change the world, they are environmentally friendly, they charge quickly...”. I begin to explain that Tesla has more than 10 thousand AA lithium batteries, the production of which violates all conceivable environmental standards; they are made in China, pouring all the waste into the neighboring river. Not to mention how stupid the concept of such a battery of individual “fingers” looks on a production electric car.
And then I ask a simple question: guys, let's take the New York metropolitan area. Let’s say that out of 20 million residents, at least 150 thousand decided to buy an electric car. After all, a car is started to be driven. Right? And now imagine how 150 thousand users simultaneously plug their Tesla into a 40-amp outlet. We multiply 40 amperes by 150 thousand such happy owners.
"TOMORROW". And we get a completely insane number.
Sergey ZAGATIN. We find that one-time consumption in the city increases by 20%. Blackout. Not only New York is flying out, but also Canada, because there is a lot of pressure there.
"TOMORROW". Well, they promise us that Kurzweil’s superintelligence will be responsible for everything, and not the “C” dispatcher. And superintelligence will say: “you - charge, and you - wait.”
Sergey ZAGATIN. All superintelligence is broken by the fact that Manhattan and the Bronx are powered by virtually one 380-volt power line, and there is nowhere to install new generating capacities and power lines. This means that it is necessary to include the most severe administrative resources - but how to do this in modern America, which is all built on the primacy of “unlimited freedom”? There is no Stalin there, but there are a lot of well-armed, mentally unstable men who know their rights. Therefore, the question of even 150 thousand electric vehicles in one and only New York is a question of hundreds of billions of dollars. Therefore, this is not a program of action, but a simulation of moving forward. This is why I say that the technological singularity is not coming and will not come, because in modern world We see in many ways a simulation of activity, rather than the creation of something new. Remember the magazine “Technology for Youth” of the 80s?
"TOMORROW". “Technology for youth”, “ Young technician", "Chemistry and Life", "Science and Life"…
Sergey ZAGATIN. Every year, every month then in “Technology - Youth”, until the collapse of the USSR, they published a message about higher and higher temperature superconductivity. Then there was a large-scale revolution in superconducting ceramics - and we, according to all calculations, should have had superconducting ceramics at room temperature today. But the world has come up against two points: the physical limitations of the highest temperature conductivity and... the misuse of funds allocated for science. There were a lot of publications about this, where they examined the total ineffectiveness of the grant system, which they decided to “move science forward” at the end of the 1980s.
And there are a lot of such examples. There is a well-known story with the American agency DARPA, which frightened ordinary people with terrible running robots, which they created for eight years, and then closed the project due to internal problems, first of all - organizational ones. And in Russia, the same problem was solved in a year and a half with much less funding.
Or, for example, the concept of the terrible Zamvolt-class destroyers, which the Pentagon used to terrorize the world quite recently. Like, let's build 30 stealth destroyers that will approach the coast and, with the impact of electromagnetic guns, mow down everything 300 km inland. The problem here is the very concept of an “invisible destroyer” with an electromagnetic cannon that completely unmasks it, the very first shot of which can be aimed at the destroyer from the Moon or from Jupiter. The concept completely contradicts not only physics, but also common sense - and this again means billions and billions of dollars. And they made “Zamvolta” because it was “beautiful” and “cool”; someone in the Pentagon liked to shoot at Russians from over the horizon in their dreams. Such a beautiful future of the nation can be shown!
But with superconducting ceramics... What is superconducting ceramics? These are, first of all, super accumulators. What are super batteries? Large degree freedom for any individual.
"TOMORROW". And yet the question is: who ruined the superconducting ceramics: the “C” students, the misuse of funds, or some kind of “conspiracy of the elites” that you hinted at?
Sergey ZAGATIN. The premises and plot are not so important - the result is important. Today we have neither high-temperature superconductivity nor superaccumulators. But instead, people are being sold smartphones and electric cars that will not change the world in any way - because they simply cannot. And the majority scientific research now it is, in fact, a device from a Soviet joke - a “nichevometer”. Real equipment, after all, looks unsightly, so in order for the inspection commission to be filled with the importance of the moment, in the USSR such equipment was often demonstrated with a remote control with buttons and lights, and a device with arrows. And now in science only this props remains. This is sad.
"TOMORROW". Okay, let's accept that Western civilization has indeed reached a dead end. But there are the Chinese, they seem to be under strict guidance Communist Party Are China building some kind of alternative model to the Western world? They have Soviet-style five-year plans and clear objectives. To what extent is the Chinese structure of society, consciousness, ready to pick up a fallen banner? Western world, which is already lying down, and the C-grade students let it go to the “cat litter”?
Sergey ZAGATIN. This is generally difficult. In my opinion, the most creative nation in the East is, of course, the Koreans. Today, the same Samsung has moved from copying to expansion, to developing its own unique technologies. Very interest Ask, what will happen to the Korean nation if the North and the South unite and converge. Because, speaking about the South, which created Samsung, Daewoo and a huge number of other creative mega-corporations, we must not forget that the North, in conditions of complete isolation and total blockade, was able to create missile weapons and nuclear bomb- projects are no less large-scale and no less technologically advanced.
On the other hand, the Chinese, of course, have a huge potential for hard work, powerful industrial and scientific potential, which they are now actively developing, trying to catch up with almost half a century of lag behind Russia and the West. Of course, you can’t take it and grow it scientific school in two years. But they have a systematic understanding of what they will do next, a planned economy, an emphasis on science and industry, a northern ally in Russia who will help China with resources and technology - in exchange for Chinese goods.
"TOMORROW". And this northern ally... When we say that Russia has its own path, its own history, its own approach, we always count on the uniqueness of the Russian people, the Russian character. But, on the other hand, we clearly see that the new generation, which was brought up in large cities and especially, unfortunately, in both cosmopolitan capitals, is extremely westernized. It’s all in the already mentioned “seals”, in the worship of Musk and Apple, they are ideal Russian “C” students. Does Russia still have a unique identity of its own - or are there only “niche meters” lying in Russian bins on the destroyed ruins of Soviet-era mega-aggregates?
Sergey ZAGATIN. The question is that Russia has now become part of global peace. There is no point in denying this. We are so intertwined with the West that even attempts to rock the Russian boat from the Western side look quite idiotic - it is not Russia that suffers from them, but in many ways it is the West. On the other hand, there is also a danger in this for Russia: we have always had our own unique technological culture, which is now also intertwined with the Western one and absorbs not only the best of it, but also all Western vices. Here we must take into account that we historically grew up with the West on virtually the same roots, and it depends on us how critically we will perceive the branch of humanity that is related to us, but still separate from us. This is already a question of the reasonableness of the filter, which would allow all the best to pass through, but would retain vices and errors.
"TOMORROW". So, there is still hope for both the world and Russia in particular - to survive the future singularity and not slide into the “new Middle Ages”, trying to hide from the inevitable, producing a “generation of C-grade students”? After all, usually those people who criticize Kurzweil’s singularity do not believe in technological progress, they immediately say: “there is no progress,” “everything is going downhill, and especially in Russia.” They say we are sliding into a new Middle Ages, where new landlords will monitor their serfs, but through smartphone applications. What can we expect in 10-15 years?
Sergey ZAGATIN. I think we need to honor and common sense survive this inevitable crisis of the next 10-15 years, taking into account all the problems that I have already mentioned in our conversation. When the current global project collapses, Russia needs to be the winner, with people who will be ready to separate themselves from the ruins of the old world, and who will have more than a “solid C” in their competencies. There will be enough C students in the new world without them. And now we are creating the fortress of Eurasia, both politically and economically. That is, two-thirds of the planet's population will be the largest market.
"TOMORROW". But for this it will be necessary to take India and China into these “two-thirds”, right?
Sergey ZAGATIN. Yes, Russia needs to rely not only on itself, but also on other Eurasian countries, India and China. Russia may well become a super-arbiter in such a new world - precisely a “judge”, but by no means an “overseer” or “boss”. Russians have never built relationships with the outside world from a position of strength - this is our uniqueness and our chance in the world of the future. And then the singularity will come, but here we’ll think together about how to survive it. It will be interesting - that's for sure.
The conversation was conducted by Alexey Anpilogov
Alexey Anpilogov
From time immemorial, people constantly improve themselves (that is, learn) and everything that surrounds them in order to make their existence easier and improve their lives. This is the very essence of scientific and technological progress (NTP). Life constantly poses various questions both to the individual and to humanity as a whole. By answering them, people learn even more about the world around them and improve it even more.
But maybe there is a limit to this? Maybe it’s time to stop and turn “back to nature” before NTP causes irreparable harm to people and humanity? Life has shown that it is impossible to stop humanity in its development. And there are several reasons for this.
Firstly, without further progress, humanity simply will not survive; it will die out from hunger, cold and disease. Secondly, it is impossible to prohibit people from thinking, developing and creating new things. And thirdly, in our world everything is decided not by humanity and not by its best representatives, but by those who have appropriated the title of “world elite”, although, in fact, they are not such. This the mighty of the world this, for whom scientific and technological progress brings huge profits, and their enterprises provide employment to many people. Therefore, it is unlikely that both of them would suddenly give up their earnings at once. This is why it is so difficult to resolve issues related to the protection of the Earth’s nature, for example, with the reduction of dangerous emissions into the atmosphere. But they can be solved, and they are still being solved. And it is science that can suggest how to avoid the dangerous aspects of scientific and technological progress, and make human society more perfect.
But maybe there is still a line beyond which improving people’s lives will be impossible, and the problems that arise can no longer be solved? Fortunately, the world is infinite, and there are an infinite number of solutions to improve it. For example, in music there are only 7 notes. How many melodies have people composed over the centuries and how many more will they create? We know about 100 atoms alone. Their combination can create an infinite number of molecules, etc., and it is even more impossible to exhaust the infinite universe. Apparently, everything is possible, well, or almost everything that a person can imagine. That is why people have achieved enormous success in science and technology in just a few centuries, and scientific and technological progress is accelerating.
Nature (or God) endowed man with intellect, the ability to think. Man did not become Homo sapiens when he picked up a stick, but when he learned to think first, and only then to do (though not everyone and not always follows this rule). It is thinking that allows a person to understand the world around him, identify the patterns that exist in it, and then, in accordance with these patterns, plan his activities and, if necessary, adjust them in a direction that is useful for people.
And in order to make fewer mistakes and better understand reality, people must learn to use their intellect profitably, use special rules of thinking, that is, learn to do science in order to obtain objective and reliable results. Science in itself does not pose any danger. Scientists work only because they are interested in obtaining new knowledge, but those who use the achievements of scientists act because it is beneficial to them, and this is evil. In the USA, for example, research scientists receive approximately 10 times less than corporate employees who transform new knowledge into new products. As they say, a scientist has a completely different value system (if you want, a different morality).
Evil is not carried atomic bombs and industrial emissions. Evil is caused by people driven by their internal vices - stupidity, greed, selfishness, the desire for unlimited power, etc. The danger stems not from NTP, but from selfishness, which allows some people to put their personal interests above the interests of most other people, to use the achievements of NTP not only for the benefit, but also to the detriment of people. The danger comes from the cult of insane consumerism, primitive desires that obscure the voice of reason. This is what constantly leads humanity to disaster. Moreover, crazy tycoons hinder the development of science and education, bringing reliable scientific results to people in full, and improving the education of the population. It is important for them that it is easier for people to manage and manipulate, and for this it is necessary that the majority of people remain poorly educated and ignorant, unable to distinguish between truth and lies, even if the truth leaks to the media. Just look at the US leadership's attempt to ban publications on climate change.
There have already been attempts to stop scientific and technological progress in the history of mankind. In Egypt, Japan, and China there were periods when forms were preserved for almost 1000 years public life and technology. This happened because the rulers of these countries decided that the society they ruled had reached perfection, and there was no need to develop further. In England and France, artisanal weavers rebelled and tried to destroy weaving factories. There were other similar cases. What this led to is well known. The new always won.
In prehistoric times, there were many powerful civilizations on Earth. Well, where are they now? So it is useless to fight against NTP, but we need to ensure that its achievements are not used to harm people. 1,200 agricultural scientists were able to get together and make such a decision against the impending catastrophe that now most countries of the world are implementing it without any coercion, including, first of all, - the developed countries, which is especially impressive.
Well, what should we, mere mortals, do? Well, of course, use the intelligence given by nature or God to use in everyday life only what is useful to us, and not to use what is harmful (especially tobacco, drugs, alcohol, untested medicines, empty food additives, etc. and so on.). And in this matter it is better to be overcautious than to be undersafe, and doubt is interpreted in favor of the consumer. And then it will be good for us, and our health will increase. Therefore, I wish my readers health and good luck!
