Re: Can We Survive Technology?

By way of the orange site.

"Can We Survive Technology?". Von Neumann. 1955.

Neumann is quite optimistic and claims that "technologies are always constructive and beneficial". Problems, if any, are consequences that tend to increase instability. "It's not my department as to where the rockets come down," said von Braun.

Neumann's "broader political integration", a phrase that beats around the bush of Colonialism, led to "more and cheaper energy, more and easier controls of human actions and reactions, and more and faster communications." Neumann does acknowledge a finite Earth, which puts him on a more realistic footing than the infinite growthers.†

Predictions

> "Given a decade of really large-scale industrial effort, the economic characteristics of reactors will undoubtedly surpass those of the present by far."

This has turned more into "Crouching Tiger, Hidden White Elephant" than the progress that was hoped for.

> "The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale ... only the blind, or the biased, can now think that the money has been well spent. It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible."

> — "Nuclear Follies". Forbes Magazine. 1985.

More recent news is not exactly positive, with the cancellation (NuScale), cost overruns (Vogtle), and many aging reactors. Maybe with a Carbon tax or (more likely) taxpayer loans the economics might look better?

> "Consequently, a few decades hence energy may be free".

This prediction at least is hedged with "may" instead of "undoubtedly", and a die-hard optimist could quibble that six plus decades remains within the definition of "a few". A recent report however claimed that U.S. retail electrical costs in 2022 were the highest on record, and that's without a Carbon tax (or taxpayer loans) to help nuclear compete with combined cycle gas plants. Where the "energy too cheap to meter" would come from is hard to see.

Neumann's talk of alchemy gestures to fusion reactors, which have been about two decades away since the 1950s.‡ He also speaks of "extreme and unnatural instance of fission" as to mankind's efforts to surpass nature, though probably was ignorant of natural fission reactors, predicted a year later by Paul Kuroda (1956) and first discovered in 1972. Sure, celebrate the successes, but the wise may not let the victories go to their heads.

As to automation Neumann is on the mark, for "there is no doubt that they will be used for elaborate industrial process control, logistical, economic, and other planning". Surveillance Capitalism, baby!

gemini://alexschroeder.ch/2018-06-14_Surveillance_Capitalism

"Fundamentally, improvements in control are really improvements in communicating information within an organization or mechanism"... sure, but is it really progress to have folks more efficiently screaming at one another on social media? Or is that the sort of instability we must simply learn to shrug off?

You must learn control

> "Microscopic layers of colored matter spread on an icy surface, or in the atmosphere above one, could inhibit the reflection-radiation process, melt the ice, and change the local climate."

More microplastic pollution. Just what we need. Here Neumann does admit to difficulties predicting the effects of such antics, but is on the mark with a prediction that humans will intervene in the climate on a scale difficult to imagine, only not in the sense he intended. 1955, mind you, was back when poisons were being indiscriminately sprayed around America in the name of progress, as detailed a few years later in "Silent Spring" (Rachel Carson, 1962). Maybe we've learned a little, since then?

The indifferent contradiction

> "Technologies are always constructive and beneficial" p.507.

> "Technology—like science—is neutral all through" p.515.

Technologies are not the unbridled good they were some eight pages ago, but instead are clearly neutral, possibly involving "climatic warfare as yet unimagined", which strikes me as being neither good nor neutral. More like lawful evil? Perhaps von Neumann expected some readers (the techno-optimists, politicians, etc.) not to get past the peppy opener, so reserves his reservations for later?

> The technological system retains enormous vitality, probably more than ever before, and counsel of restraint is unlikely to be heeded.

Translation: better buckle that seatbelt, as who knows what turbulence or avionics bug we will hit next. Or: oh my! That's a fine tiger tail you've caught there.

> A much more satisfactory solution than technological prohibition would be eliminating war as "a means of national policy".

How is the whole "end of history" thing coming along?

Neumann expects global climate control to become possible. Doubtless we merely need to have "a decade of really large-scale industrial effort" and then problem solved? Hey we dug ourselves into this hole. I know! More digging is exactly what we need!

Notably lacking from his otherwise fine list of "patience, flexibility, intelligence" is wisdom.

—

† Pierre Verhulst in 1838 published a modification to exponential growth to account for real-world populations; infinite growthers instead gesture at "the market" or "services" that will, somehow, allow growth to continue without consequences. Maybe someone else can explain their position better? To me it looked like magical thinking.

‡ And the flying car has been flying in dreams since at least 1917.