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Small is powerful: Technology is art
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Futures Essay SMALL IS ART
IS POWERFUL:
TECHNOLOGY
The growth of supertechnologies in the 20th century J. Christopher
Jones
The author reviews recent technological developments, with their sometimes surprisingly powerful social and environthat highly centralised, mental effects. He concludes monolithic organisation is not a ‘natural’ consequence of growth. Instead, the power of new technolocgy comes from what is lighter, smaller, and more easily changed. He suggests that technology need not be a slave to necessity: machines can also be used for metaphysical or artistic purposes. is a new word with, as yet, no accepted meaning. I am using it here to refer to something that has begun to affect quite profoundly the quality of life but which has no recognised name: the recent growth of large-scale technical processes such as space flight, nuclear power, or industrialised agriculture. I believe that there is, in these new systems and industries, a new order of magnitude in their physical range, and a qualitative change in the kinds of technique employed and the effects produced. It is my purpose, in this articIe, to describe SUP~RTE~H~~~,OG~
J. Christopher Jones is a member of the Futures advisory board. This article was originally written for an Italian-language edition of The Historyof the Twentieth Century (London, Phoebus Publishing, 1980): permission from Phoebus to publish the article is gratefully acknowledged. As is evident, this essay is more a personal testimony than an historical review. The author trusts that facts and figures, which he has not always been able to check, are not so far from the truth as to invalidate what he has written.
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of the more obvious esamples ofcalling supertechnology, to ask they operate and come into being, to speculate about their effects, seen as bad, upon our habitat and ourselves. I’m
The growth
of supertechnology
I suppose we shall soon travel by air-vessels; making air instead of sea voyages; and at length find our way to the moon, in spite of the want ofatmospher~. Lord Byron, 1822 That prediction is one of the most accurate and perceptive I have found in the literature of prophecies, utopias, science fiction, and futurology. It mentions two significant things about the context in which new technologies were to develop since Lord Byron’s time: first the change from a heavier medium, water, to a fighter medium, air, and then to airless space; and second, the iikeli-
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hood that. once something is technically feasible. it is practically sure to be done, no matter how far it extends beyond the traditional scale nfhuman action. In the developments I am about to describe these two factors arc present. ‘rherc is indeed a gradual shift from heavyweight to lightweight, and, until very recently. there has been an unquestioning belief that: “Ifit’s possible. it’s good”. There is, as far as I know, no word bv which to refer to this development as a whole. I have, thcrefbre, borrowed the new word ‘supertechnolon’, which has as yet no exact meaning, to describe the newer and larger technologies of this century. (The term ‘high technology’ is. I feel. too loaded, and too recent, to refer to the technologies of the whole of the century.) In choosing this worci I am thinking particulari> of the more scientific such as ~rldustrialised technologies nucler power, and space agriculture, flight, which are large, not so much in the size of the machines employed but in the scale of their effects. The great, and by now frightening, power of these processes comes not from the use ot‘vast quantities of materials but in the precise understanding and control of chemical, electrical, and atomic reactions. Our fear of them comes from this, and also from seeing these powerful techniques applied with little regard for what they can do to our habitat and way oflife. Before proceeding with my account of the growth of supertechnology {treating it from now on as a real word), I’d like to say something about the language that has been used to describe and name these new machines and processes. It tells us much. There has been, throughout the century, a big change in what 1 call ‘machine language’: the technical terms which have become widely used outside the specialised fields in which they first appeared. In the early part of the century there are words or phrases like pressure, mass production, mass movement, generator, and concentration mechanisation,
camp, whit% speak of‘ size. power. and control. Then there are terms from the middle of the century which speak mow 01‘ complexity than size and be,+ to reveal some re,gard tbr quality as well as supersonic. quantity: *jumbojet, supercrop, supermarket. hyprrmarkct. building complex, megastructure, high rise, quality control, integrated system, aud ~n~irt)t~n~etltal impact. Lastly there is a recent crop of new speak of smallness: that words miniaturist. minicar, miniskirt, micromicroprocessor; and there minaturise, are other new tvords. like soft\varc, network, and contextual, that impl) adaptii,cAness and awareness rather than centralisation and control. It looks, from the words at least, as if‘ technolog?. has not been getting bigger and bigger hut that it started bi,q. became more c(~mplicated, and is about to become smaller and more fiexibl~ but getting more powerful all the time.
Precedents There ha\,e been many constructions in the past that were as large, if not largrr. than those of this century: the Pyramids, the Roman roads and aqueducts, the . ,7 come immediately tn Eiflel I ower, mind. ;\s a point of comparison with the technologies of the present I would like to take the example of the Gothic cathedrals of medieval times. I choose them because, although the)- are similar in size and exceed. in complexity and some of the ad\,ancrd elegance. dilfer today. they Ol structures enormously when it comes to purpose. Unlike most of my examples from this century, the cathedrals were built with a metaphyscial and social purpose but without any of the calculative utilitarianism which governs so much of what we do collectiveh today. They were built to be good ‘in themselves, to be examples of the best that can be done. There is, for instance, no ‘facade’ to a gothic cathedral, no ‘back’ or ‘topside’ that is left unfinished because it is
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Small is powerful: technolqgy is art
invisible to those on the ground. Every part, whether hidden from view or not. is finished and decorated to the highest standard as all Darts are ‘eaual in the L sight of God’. ‘RIany of the most pertinent criticisms of the technology of today hinge on this point: that we lack the ability to embody, in our works, that which is beyond the range ofmonetary value-eg the value of a person, the value of the ecosystem. It is notable that when Gothic forms were revived in the nineteenth century it was as part ofa movement ofartistic and romantic protest against the harshness and inhumanity of the coal-and-iron stage of industrialisation. It is perhaps paradoxical that the pioneers of the modern movement in architecture and industrial design in the twentieth century (eg Gropius, Gorbusier, Ft’right, Eric Gill) were themselves the children of this antiutilitarian movement and were inspired by Gothic cathedrals and medieval philosophy. But their work. in took form of this centur);. the ‘functionalist’ design and ‘fitness for purpose’. There is, I think, some underground connection between modern humanism and the ‘superstitions’ cast aside to make possible the modern age. The first quarter century Ocean liners The passenger liners of the early decades of this century were the final developments of a type of service begun in 1840 by Samuel Gunard: fast ships which sailed at scheduled times whether or not all berths were filled. Although the names of these big ships-Titanic, Lusitania, Queen Mary, Nomandie, United States-suggest that they were built as symbols of ‘greatness’ (just as the Gothic cathedrals were built as evidence of ‘the unseen’), they were, in fact, built for economy and comfort. Their size allowed them to sail at about twice the speed of smaller ships and to ride fairly smoothly all but the stormiest seas. Up to a certain point
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there is a true economy of scale, in that the water resistance ofa ship is a smaller fraction of its weight as its size is increased. These big ships, sailing at 35 knots, and competing for the Blue Riband for fast crossing of the Atlantic, changed sea travrel from being a dangerous and uncomfortable venture, taking months and years, to a luxury experience taking weeks and days. Passenger liners were overtaken in this century by jet air travel because one jetplane can carry, in a month, as many passengers (about 10 000) as an ocean liner can carry in a year. Jets have reduced journey times to days and hours while being able to escape stormy weather altogether by flying above the clouds in the rarified atmosphere five miles up. It is interesting that this latest economy of scale is towards smaller size, more concentrated power, and takes place in a lighter vehicle and in a lighter medium. The assembly line Adam Smith began his book about the sources of the wealth of modern nations (in 1749) with his famous description of division of labour in a pin factory. He shows how the technique of subdividing the work until each person makes “a tenth part offorty-eight thousand pins in a day” multiplies enormously the total output. The assembly line, which increases this effect still further by permitting the operations of production to be shared between machine-powered (instead of hand-powered) tools, is the primary source of wealth and economic growth. It is, in its form and principle, the model by which most industrial activity is organised. Division of labour and the assembly line have the powerful effects they do by ‘operating’ on time. They compress, perhaps by a ratio of one hundred to one, the time required to produce an object. Thus, in one person’s lifetime, there is as much produced by machine as was made by hand in thousands of years.
The most famous assembly line is that of Henry Ford’s production of the first mass-produced cheap car, the Model T ( 1909). Since that time, line assembly and mechanised production have developed to a point where the workers are being removed altogether as computer controls and industrial robots begin to take over the machine minding tasks tbr which, unit1 recently, it was cheaper to emplo): ‘labour’. It is a measure both of mechanical degradation of human beings and human skills. and ofour misunderstanding ofour own creation, that we use this word to describe what people do in factories. Those who work on assembly lines do not pro\,idc the energy needed for production. That is obtained from other sources z?a machines. It is a mistake. therefore, to cling to the idea that the workers and managers of‘ an industrial plant are keeping the rest of’us alive. It’s the sun that’s doing that, through lbssil fuels and photosynthesis. \Vhat the people are doirrg, both workers and managers. is to provide, in the absence of’ sufliciently cheap computers and robots, some fiiagynenta~ (and usual11 \‘cry ineflicient) Interjections of control and supervision ofwhat, potentially, is a wholly automatic high-energy process. as is the growth ofplants, or the process of’breathing. The presence of‘ people in an industrial plant is more a hurden to productivity than a source of wealth. The degree to which this profound change threatens our inherited ethic and culture has yet to he realised. Being ‘unemployed’ is, it seems, the most productive thin? one can do. The or~amsmg principle of’ the assembly lme is that of first fixing the goal and then, working backwards in time. to devise a series ofoperations by which it can he reached. This principle, of absolute riskless certain0 the economy of‘ means, is hvident throughout technolop. as we know it so Car. One of the clearest examples is the devising of a series of‘ modules and
rocket stages, of increasing power and size, bv which to reach the moon and return ii-on, it. Always, in such thinking and planning. economy is paramount. The engineer is still the one who "can do for sixpcnrc bvhat any fool cm do fi)r half-a-crown”. The second quarter century ~~dra~lec~ricschemes ~vell-interltiot~eci the most Perhaps technologies of’ the ccntuy. ha\-e been the hydroelectric schemes-m the USA, the [JSSK, and in many less developed which impoVerislird re,qinns---by economies haye been modernised and enriched. The ‘I‘ennessee \‘alley scheme of the 1930s is typical ofmany throughout the world. Beginning with a system of’ interconnected flood-control hasins (which have successfully pre\.entecl flooding since they were introduced) the scheme brought Improved nat-igation. and social planning to cheap electricity, suftcring firom economic rqgion a depression. ‘[‘he organising principle here is much more complex than that of’ the production line. It is that of‘ystems thinking’: into a smoothly workiq the linking, whole. of a numher of diverse parts (in this rase the dams, generators, canals, roads, farmlands, forests, rivers, local networks, and electricit\ The contro\.ersial co,,,rn~t~,~ties). aspects of it. which were taken to a hi& rourt and lost. Evere the centralised planning by nonlocals. and the introduction ofa monopoly in the salt of‘ electricity. Since the thirties there ha\-e been attempts to apply the same many s~sterns-planning principles to even larger regions (eg the ‘save the hleditcrranean’ scheme of the sixties) but often these fail to get started because, unlike technologies ofa simpler and cruder kind, they cannot be economic single measured by a yardstick and they tread on many toes. ,A negative view of’ such schemes is taken by the French philosopher of
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technoloCgyy?ilJaques Ellul. He suggests that the forced modernisation of older cultures and ways of living, now seen as is a form of ‘technical inefflcient, invasion’ and is a threat to what is best in life. An obvious criticism of systems is that the rational and planning conceptual models upon which the schemes are based cannot reflect the essence of what comprises human satisfaction. This, at its best, implies the unexpected, the changing of minds, as well as all sorts of intangibles that can be embodied culturally and artistically, but not in predictive calculations. Industrial&d ag&-ulture The vast wheat-growing areas of the US.4 and the lJSSR were, in the 193Os, the first parts of the world to be subjected to what is now becoming industrialising of universal: the agriculture to increase its yields (in the short term at least) by factors of up to ten. This is done through the combined equipment (eg tractors, use of sprayers) and the harvesters, development of more spetialised plants, animals, fertilisers, pesticides, and the like, in laboratories and on experimental farms. The American state colleges were given grants in the thirties, conditional upon their developing this kind of research and education, and similar pioneering occurred elsewhere. AS a result of efrorts to increase produrtivit?, the number of people employed drrectly on the land has fallen to about a twentieth ofwhat it was in the presious century. However, the number employed in the food industry as a whole has dropped by much less than that-as so many are now employed ‘off the land’, eg in food processing or distribution, and in the production of fertilisers or farm machines. Recent doubters of the very high increases in efficiency claimed by the proponents of industrialised agriculture have taken up two main points. First,they say that ifyou calculate the total energy used to make fertilisers, to
power tractors, and so on, the apparent high yields of the new supercrops (of the green revolution which was to have solved the food problems of the poor countries), you will find that there is no real gain. The total energy used is of the same order as the energy produced. Their second argument is perhaps stronger. it is that the change from mixed agriculture to monoculture (in which single crops are artificially maintained, as is a lawn, against all tending towards natural processes variety and self-maintaining balance) is very dangerous ecologically, as well as being inherently expensive. despite these new However, industrialising of the criticisms, agriculture and food production is ur~doubtedi? what keeps most of us alive, at the present time. Our bodies are indeed composed of what was, a short time ago, on supermarket shelves and in factory farms. A large proportion of the huge population of the world (four thousand million and expected to almost double in the last quarter of the rentury) would surely not be alive without this technology. The ma-jar growth ofpopulation in the and hotter, countries has poorer, depended largely on the use of DDT and other chemicals to kill the insects that used to bring diseases that killed many of the babies and children, who thus had no descendants. The millions who now survive> and would formerly have died, are caught in a tragic accident of progress. They owe their Iives to technology but are denied, largely for political reasons, the best part ofthe vast which food output industrialised agriculture is producing now. Most of this is directed at making high-protein food for westerners, who suffer from overeating, when the same effort could produce many times the quantity of lowprotein foods for people in the poor countries who are starving for lack ofit, An additional, and unexpected, outcome of the well-intentioned efforts of the pioneers of industrialised
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Small is powerful: technology is art
hundreds of less famous structures of this genera1 type around the world. So far they have been used more for intangible purposes like “making Sydney famous. and proud of itself’ than for any utilitarian reason. The Sydney Opera house is also one of the classtc cases of a big project going wrong but being completed nevertheless. (;\nother IS Concorde.) It cost several times the original estimate, took far longer to complete than was promised, and, halfway through, there was a crisis when it was found that the original roof-shell designs could not be made and would not provide the required interior spaces for grand opera. ;\nd there were many other disasters. too many to mention here. ‘I’hr final design is a compromise v.ersion which only approximates to Itzon’s elegant design (he was sacked befbre the building was finished) and is deficient in many practical aspects. Nevertheless many Australians are now happy with this most extravagant and complex structure. bungled as it was. The Opera House was the pet project of .J..J. C:ahill. Premier of New South \t’ales (known to his enemies as the Old Smoothy) without whose efforts the project would never have prevailed against the tides of money shortage, conflict, and even common sense. He did not live to see it finished. Big research machines
Radio telescopes (eg the early example build in Britain at Jodrell Bank in the 1950s) are typical of the big machines now required for research into physical reality at scales far from that of the human body. Others are cyclotrons, linear accelerators, and the ill-fated Skylab. The reason for the great size and cost of these machines is that they are used to investigate phenomena that are undetectable without exceptionally high energies, accuracies, and sensitivities. The further one gets from the human scale the more expensive, and surprising, things become, so it seems.
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Another reason for the high cost of such machines is that only one of each design is built, so they have to be made expensively, almost by hand. Like other big research machines, the Jodrell Bank telescope was built in a context of financial muddle and recrimination. It was saved from being more expensive than it was by the ingenious reuse of naval gun bearings as pivots for the steerable bowl. It would not have been made, against all odds, without the determination of Bernard Lovell, its guiding spirit. The findings of radio telescopes, and scientific satellites accelerators. continue to defy all our expectations. Black holes, radio stars, quasars, pulsars, and new subatomic particles with names like quarks and properties charm are being continually like discovered with a resulting transformation not only, in our conceptions of reality but m our conceptions of ourselves (in the case of the uncertainty and similar theories, that principle, double back on the observer and the thinker). As I write this piece there is news of the scientific satellite Ariel coming down. It has been operating since 1974, although it was expected to last for only 2 years. Carrying an X-ray telescope, it has made possible the study of a whole new area of astronomy, the X-ray stars, which were not previously known to exist. Many of the sources it has plotted are now though to be black holes. Another satellite announced today (14 March 1980) is expected to be able to take photographs of photons from 14 thousand million years ago, shortly after the supposed big bang ofcreation. What next? Supertankers
Much larger than the biggest passenger liners (and two or three times the weight), the new supertankers are used for low-cost transport of oil from the Middle East to the industrialised countries. Some are over 200 000 tons.
The)- at-e the most automated ships afloat, with very small crews, and much advanced technology for na\-igation. control. and the saf? handlins of their dangerous carg-ors. \\ hen operating as intended, supcrtankers attract no more attention than does a water supply system, being, in essence. powered oil tanks, iloating submerged. and travelting large& aimosr auton~ati[.~~ll~ between the points of oil production and demand. \Shat does attract attention is that the) occasionallp get out ofcontroi, and then, being so slow to manoeuvre, the)- often run aground, or otherwise spill their catyyoes. Then there is much damage to marine life and holiday beaches. So IBr thrre is no adequate remedy. One of the first supertankers to do this was the Torrreduced to the greatest physical and mental distress b), this public blaming on world media. I was one of those who protested at this putting of the blame on him. I remember arguing at the time that. when the scale oi a machine is much increased, one cantlot expect traditional responsibilities, and skills, to fit the new that come into being. conditions Responsibility should lie with those who initiate, and benefit horn, the new scale. not those who are drawn into it, with skills and experiences no longer tittin,q the case. A jump in scale calls. it seems, for a re\.ised morality, and a reappraisal of’the human factor’. Superouds ~~t~s~T~~~, ~u~~~~~~,motorway, expressway, thruway, interstate route, Via de1 Sol, arterial road, dual carriageway,
clo~~erleaf intersection, sphaghrtti junction . . . there are so many names, all of them descripti\,c of one feature or another of the new kind of roadway that has emerged, of‘necessity, to carry and absorb the ceaseless output of nc’w \,ehicles from the car assembly lines throughout the world. For want of* an inclusive name for all thesr I am using the term superoad. The operating principle of superoads is To exclude all the features of ordinary roads that cause one to slow down, and pre\‘ent travel at a tixed and high speed. The primart; means of doing this are the ygregation of traflic streams. the pro\zton of a continuous lay-by fbr any \.ehicles that have to stop suddenly, and the rlimination of all but the slightest cur\.es and gradients. Together thcsc features account ibr the very high cost of such roads. and for the targe amourIt of land required to build them. ‘I’he secondary principle of theit design is that of providing unobstructed vision a long way ahead, and, by carefully graded warning signs of exceptional clarit\ and visibility, removinCg unexpectedness from what reasons remain for changing speeds or changing lanes. This second principle is not always met, eg in fog, so there are still some accidents. Nevertheless under these new conditions mart); ofthe causes ofaccidents are gone, and superoads are about twice as safe as ordinary roads. while ptrrnittimg tra\.cI at about twice the speed. However, when accidents do occur, the)- in\.olve greater impacts, and man\ \,ehicles. so one gets the impression that superoads are more dangerous when. in fact, they are safer. For inter& roads this system works reasonably well (if you like taking risks when in a hut-v) but, when superoads are used as a means of remo\-ing the cotlgestiort in urban areas. they create more problems than they solve, eg noise, lead pollution, urban smog, as well as c~~r~~~stion and parking increased problems in the remaining normal streets, because of the extra tralfic an
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urban superoad attracts. Also, urban superoads are the biggest contributors to the turning of cities into concrete jungles and inhuman wastelands. It is not widely realised that the three big problems of city traffic (congestion, and parking problems), accidents, which are unsolved so far in any city, (though billions have been spent on trying to solve them by building urban superoads) are, in principle, completely soluble, by means of new and less massive technology than that of pouring concrete. Using the knowhow which, since the 1950s has been successfully applied to controlling missiles, and travelling to the moon, all three problems could, by now, have been gradually solved. The technology to do this would, however, entail much changing of our habits and expectations. Some car factories would have to be closed. car ownership would have to be replaced by very short-term rentals (for the duration of the trip) and all vehicles and roads would have to be fitted out for electronic control and guidance. Such a supertechnology system would be invisible to but could provide the passer-by, orderly, safe traffic, at reasonable speed (with no parking problem as cars would automatically drive off when one left them). This kind of invisible-butsocially-challenging technology is, I believe, the next step in many areas. One last point: the cloud of urban smog over Los Angeles was the only manmade object detectable to the naked eye of one of the astronauts who was being questioned about his experience. Jumbojets This friendly name is applied to one of the few supertechnologies ofthis century that is truly popular. The jumbo, like the ocean liner, is a passenger vehicle that really does enjoy the benefits of scale in the way that customers appreciate: cheaper fares, shorter journey times, and greater comfort, with (relatively) less noise on the ground.
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The reasons for this are that, as for the liner, physical scale effect does work to the advantage of larger planes, up to sonic speeds, and that the jumbos have a new type of engine with slower jet velocities to reduce noise. There is much use of computers in the very careful design process (the Boeing 747 IS said to be the first big plane that could not have been designed at all without computers, so great is the quantity of calculation); are used also to and computers contribute to the exceptional stability in flight. These big -jumbos are far from being the white elephants that their critics predicted. It is not at all an easy matter to and the character, the preassess environmental effects, of new machines of this scale and complexitv. This difficulty does not spring primarily from time taken to master the calculations needed. It comes in the main, I believe, from the fact that, when a new scale is most of our previous attempted. and our our morality, experience, imaginations, are too tied to the earlier scale to let us imagine accurately what it will be like. The missing element, before the event, is a way of knowing what we will be like, given the new technology. LITho, before tv, or before the motor car, was able to accurately foresee the high degree to which these devices would change us into people to whom they are practically indispensible? Perhaps Henry Ford was. There is, however, a darker side to the happy story of the jumbo. It is that airports, like roads, are in much more of a mess than are the vehicles they are meant to accommodate and carry. Such dilhculties as airport siting, airport congestion, air traffic control, crashes on take-off and landing, and airport noise comprise, like city traffic, one of the big unsolved problems worldwide. Is there a new supertechnology potentially able to solve them? Or has a limit been reached which will force some abandonment of air travel of the present kind?
\t’hcn, after the collccti\e shock of’ the dropping ofatomic bombs on,Japan, the peaceful LISC of‘ atomic energy was announced, it seerncd like a new dawn of limitless power, something altogether good. Now. after the near accident at the Three hIile Island reactor, and after manv fi-ightening predictions and angry pmtrsts a*gainst the dangers of nuclear (and the likeliho~~d that wastfs something like a police state is needed if nuclrar power is lo bc handled with seems safct?/). that initial impression \.er)- wrorig. .I second miscalculation, or surprise. is that nuclear power is turning out to bc much morr exprnsi\c than was thought. The first generation of nuclear reactors have railed to 1it.e up to their cxpectcd them being reliability, most of operational for little over haff the time (some as little as a quarter) whrreas, to product &cap power, they need to operate tbr more than three-quarters of their expected us&t1 lif of 40 years. ‘l‘his is because most of the cost of nuclear power is in paying ofI; during this period, the \‘ery heavy cost of construction. The fuel cost is a relatively small proportion of the price of the electricity produced. Some opponents of nuclear power have calculated that, in a balance of’ energy to build against energy produced, the nuclear power plant uses more ener$gy than it makes. The only good thing to emerge so far is that thcrc is a new willingness, and ability. among both experts and public, to bring into the process of assessing a new technolo
source of the heat. This electric power technology has, since its form was found in the first two quarters of the century, been an almost universally enjoyed boon, morr akin to the water supply than to the feared nuclear technolo
Thr most visible part of the new leisure culture, yet to emerge in full but surely in the process of coming into being, is packaged tourism. Its most ob\,ious are the components technical tourist hotels, villages. specialised camps, and li\,ing complexes that have appeared all along the north coast ofthe and in many other Llediterranean. scrnic, historic. sunny, or otherwise attractive places all over the world. Some of the largest of these technologies are the one-purpose megastructures, or new minitowns, devotrd entirely to the needs of beachlife, winter sports,or whatever. ‘I’hese new kinds of building and urban planning, which have happened more by accident and stealth than by public intent, seem far more successful than are city housing schemes at employing new techniques standardisation. (eg prefabrication, curtain watl, all mod cons) in organised wholes to provide cheap but modern accommodation and social satisfaction. Those of us who dislike being organised on holiday (usually because we 1laL.e either the money, or the time enern, to seek more an d youthful comfortable or more individual ways to condemning travel) find ourselves packaged tourism out of hand as being o\:erorganiscd, tame. uncomfortable, and time stressed. However. within the exceptionally low cost limits to which such holidays permit thFy+ operate, mtlhorts of’ people (who will, in their Iif’etimes, find no other way to do this) to rxplore the world and to mert strangers
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as friends. These are surely some of the principal benefits which ‘the machine’ was supposed, by its pioneers, to bring once ‘work’ had been ‘eliminated’. How much of the distrust of the new social forms they bring about originates in those who are most ‘educated’ (by now a very old-fashioned term) and are less ready to let go of ‘standards’? Standards, in this world of changes of scale brought about by seeking to apply natural energies to human ends, must surely be recognised as temporary, and be rethought in the light of each transition. \Ve inherit so much resistance to the eventual promise of technology (which may still happen) that everyone will one day be able to live like a king. And kings, for all their faults, were often, it seems, more genuinely concerned for the good of their people than many of us can find it possible to be. (End of sermon.) But once again there is a negative side. The impact ofpackaged tourism on the economies and native cultures of tourist areas is a very mixed blessing. Although, in the short term, and even in the long term, it promises to ensure the survival of ways of life, and of cultural heritages, that would otherwise die of poverty and neglect, it is already arousing strong protest, akin to that against military invasion, by those who native languages and cultures see threatened with extinction. As I write there is news that my own native culture, the Welsh, are aroused by some aspects of tourism into more violent protests than they have ever made before (the burning ofholiday cottages) SpacejZight
Easily the most beautiful and dreamlike new technology, and certainly the most pointless and questionable (by the standards of our utilitarian past), is the journey to the moon. Perhaps it is less of an accident than it might seem that the so accurate prophecy of this event, with which I began, was written by a man best known as a romatic poet.
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The space race, which led to the moon, began with the jolt to American confidence when the USSR launched Sputnik 1, and later launched Colonel Gagarin, the first man to orbit the earth Soon after, President 1961). ( in Kennedy ordered that an American be landed on the moon “before the end of the decade”. They landed in 1968. Always (it seems from this brief review of new technology) the technical that are undertaken for ventures cultural rather than utilitarian reasons spring from the energies of a few people whose wills prevail against much opposition and against common reason. The Sydney Opera House, Jodrell Bank, the first flight of the N’right brothers, else? The great cathedrals what perhaps. But this may be a superficial impression.Inventions often occur simultaneously, in different places, in the minds of people who don’t know of each other’s existence. . The technology of the moon trip included a range of techniques, some recent, some developed specially for the event: rocketry (pioneered by von Opel and von Braun in Germany and first used in the long-range rocket attacks on London), the ultralight construction of the lunar vehicles, the ingenious devices for safe reentry to the atmosphere, the complex bioengineering of the space suits and life-support systems, and, most importantly, the satellites and microcomputers electronics for and communications. The most impressive technical aspects of the trip were, to me, the accuracy of control (plus or minus a few feet over a distance of a quarter of a million miles from the control room) and the quality of the photographic and other data broadcast by electronic means. It has been said that the real difficulties of the operation were not in the visible parts, but in the computer programming, and that the leading programmer was a woman. Perhaps the craft of programming, the coping with the complexity at its greatest, was the
me part of the work that could txot hc rontained in the risk-reducing tactic (of working backwards from a preset goal) by Lvhich the operation as a whole was made to be physically feasible and so incredibly safe? There were, in this so largely surprisefree exploration, sonic unexpected lindings. One was that the moon rocks brought bark (the token scientitic ob,jectivcs of the trip) tumcd out to br djsa~po~~lti~~~l~~ similar to earth rocks and told us littip WCdid not know. \\‘h;tt captured the atte~~tj[~l~ of‘thr astronauts and the public. but which initially the space agency did not publitise very much. NXS the view of earth from afar. Once having SCCI~it, a~ we all now have, our collective consciousness. our world picture, is quite profoundly changed. Protests and alternatives This review would be orie sided ifit did not tell ofthe historically sudden shift in attitudes to tecb~l{)l~?~~ during the third quarter century. when most ofthe supertechnologies appeared. It is, I b&xx:, one ofthe greatest changes in the picture clvr to ha\.e of &man and nature’ occurred. environmental protection The movement, the new dissatisfBction with ‘the plastic world’, the antigrowth the alternative technol0.q campaign. (small is beautiful-the movement slogan ofE. F. Schumacher’s philosophy of work and energy), and the recent the once invisible awakening ol m~I~orities (from women and homoand ancient sexuals to teenagers comprise, f believe, a cultures),
worldwide change in the accepted view ofwhat is natural, what is art&&A, and what is good. Now, in the 1980s. some of these new m~~~ernents have lost much ofthcir force in face of‘ newly arganised consen~atism and a restoration of centraiised power. Rut surely that is to be expected, and does not mean that these new kinds of t~~i~lkiil~ abont t~chllolo~~ and life are Finished; J_G~ that the first wave of the new tide 1s spent. In the writing of this account I have not&d that, while some of the protests against technology are being ignored? some of the more sensible points aw being taken up, or allowed for, in the way that the latest technical decisions are being made. Iifost interesting to mr has hewn to find that,implicit in the way Lord Byron \vorded his incredible forecast, is the prediction that technolqgy, as it grows, does not get heavier and more monolithic (as was so grimly forecast in George Orwell’s fiction, f9&) but is bound, by the nature of things, to be drawn to what is Iighter, smaller, and more easily changed. So ‘small is beautiful’, the most cogent argument of the new opposition, may, perhaps, he what was implicit all along? The real dangers lie, I believe, not in the physical possibilities, but in ourselves. and particularly in an ~~ff~~~~~~ to use machines in ways that fit our feehngs (light hearted or profound) but which cannot be proved, by uc~I~taria~1caiculation, to be the things to do. It‘s surely time that technology ceased to be always a means to an end. Its root is in tech@, which ori~irlall~ meant ‘art’.
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Futures Essay SMALL IS ART
IS POWERFUL:
TECHNOLOGY
The growth of supertechnologies in the 20th century J. Christopher
Jones
The author reviews recent technological developments, with their sometimes surprisingly powerful social and environthat highly centralised, mental effects. He concludes monolithic organisation is not a ‘natural’ consequence of growth. Instead, the power of new technolocgy comes from what is lighter, smaller, and more easily changed. He suggests that technology need not be a slave to necessity: machines can also be used for metaphysical or artistic purposes. is a new word with, as yet, no accepted meaning. I am using it here to refer to something that has begun to affect quite profoundly the quality of life but which has no recognised name: the recent growth of large-scale technical processes such as space flight, nuclear power, or industrialised agriculture. I believe that there is, in these new systems and industries, a new order of magnitude in their physical range, and a qualitative change in the kinds of technique employed and the effects produced. It is my purpose, in this articIe, to describe SUP~RTE~H~~~,OG~
J. Christopher Jones is a member of the Futures advisory board. This article was originally written for an Italian-language edition of The Historyof the Twentieth Century (London, Phoebus Publishing, 1980): permission from Phoebus to publish the article is gratefully acknowledged. As is evident, this essay is more a personal testimony than an historical review. The author trusts that facts and figures, which he has not always been able to check, are not so far from the truth as to invalidate what he has written.
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of the more obvious esamples ofcalling supertechnology, to ask they operate and come into being, to speculate about their effects, seen as bad, upon our habitat and ourselves. I’m
The growth
of supertechnology
I suppose we shall soon travel by air-vessels; making air instead of sea voyages; and at length find our way to the moon, in spite of the want ofatmospher~. Lord Byron, 1822 That prediction is one of the most accurate and perceptive I have found in the literature of prophecies, utopias, science fiction, and futurology. It mentions two significant things about the context in which new technologies were to develop since Lord Byron’s time: first the change from a heavier medium, water, to a fighter medium, air, and then to airless space; and second, the iikeli-
0016-3267/81/010051-12$02.00
0 1961 IFC Business Press
hood that. once something is technically feasible. it is practically sure to be done, no matter how far it extends beyond the traditional scale nfhuman action. In the developments I am about to describe these two factors arc present. ‘rherc is indeed a gradual shift from heavyweight to lightweight, and, until very recently. there has been an unquestioning belief that: “Ifit’s possible. it’s good”. There is, as far as I know, no word bv which to refer to this development as a whole. I have, thcrefbre, borrowed the new word ‘supertechnolon’, which has as yet no exact meaning, to describe the newer and larger technologies of this century. (The term ‘high technology’ is. I feel. too loaded, and too recent, to refer to the technologies of the whole of the century.) In choosing this worci I am thinking particulari> of the more scientific such as ~rldustrialised technologies nucler power, and space agriculture, flight, which are large, not so much in the size of the machines employed but in the scale of their effects. The great, and by now frightening, power of these processes comes not from the use ot‘vast quantities of materials but in the precise understanding and control of chemical, electrical, and atomic reactions. Our fear of them comes from this, and also from seeing these powerful techniques applied with little regard for what they can do to our habitat and way oflife. Before proceeding with my account of the growth of supertechnology {treating it from now on as a real word), I’d like to say something about the language that has been used to describe and name these new machines and processes. It tells us much. There has been, throughout the century, a big change in what 1 call ‘machine language’: the technical terms which have become widely used outside the specialised fields in which they first appeared. In the early part of the century there are words or phrases like pressure, mass production, mass movement, generator, and concentration mechanisation,
camp, whit% speak of‘ size. power. and control. Then there are terms from the middle of the century which speak mow 01‘ complexity than size and be,+ to reveal some re,gard tbr quality as well as supersonic. quantity: *jumbojet, supercrop, supermarket. hyprrmarkct. building complex, megastructure, high rise, quality control, integrated system, aud ~n~irt)t~n~etltal impact. Lastly there is a recent crop of new speak of smallness: that words miniaturist. minicar, miniskirt, micromicroprocessor; and there minaturise, are other new tvords. like soft\varc, network, and contextual, that impl) adaptii,cAness and awareness rather than centralisation and control. It looks, from the words at least, as if‘ technolog?. has not been getting bigger and bigger hut that it started bi,q. became more c(~mplicated, and is about to become smaller and more fiexibl~ but getting more powerful all the time.
Precedents There ha\,e been many constructions in the past that were as large, if not largrr. than those of this century: the Pyramids, the Roman roads and aqueducts, the . ,7 come immediately tn Eiflel I ower, mind. ;\s a point of comparison with the technologies of the present I would like to take the example of the Gothic cathedrals of medieval times. I choose them because, although the)- are similar in size and exceed. in complexity and some of the ad\,ancrd elegance. dilfer today. they Ol structures enormously when it comes to purpose. Unlike most of my examples from this century, the cathedrals were built with a metaphyscial and social purpose but without any of the calculative utilitarianism which governs so much of what we do collectiveh today. They were built to be good ‘in themselves, to be examples of the best that can be done. There is, for instance, no ‘facade’ to a gothic cathedral, no ‘back’ or ‘topside’ that is left unfinished because it is
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Small is powerful: technolqgy is art
invisible to those on the ground. Every part, whether hidden from view or not. is finished and decorated to the highest standard as all Darts are ‘eaual in the L sight of God’. ‘RIany of the most pertinent criticisms of the technology of today hinge on this point: that we lack the ability to embody, in our works, that which is beyond the range ofmonetary value-eg the value of a person, the value of the ecosystem. It is notable that when Gothic forms were revived in the nineteenth century it was as part ofa movement ofartistic and romantic protest against the harshness and inhumanity of the coal-and-iron stage of industrialisation. It is perhaps paradoxical that the pioneers of the modern movement in architecture and industrial design in the twentieth century (eg Gropius, Gorbusier, Ft’right, Eric Gill) were themselves the children of this antiutilitarian movement and were inspired by Gothic cathedrals and medieval philosophy. But their work. in took form of this centur);. the ‘functionalist’ design and ‘fitness for purpose’. There is, I think, some underground connection between modern humanism and the ‘superstitions’ cast aside to make possible the modern age. The first quarter century Ocean liners The passenger liners of the early decades of this century were the final developments of a type of service begun in 1840 by Samuel Gunard: fast ships which sailed at scheduled times whether or not all berths were filled. Although the names of these big ships-Titanic, Lusitania, Queen Mary, Nomandie, United States-suggest that they were built as symbols of ‘greatness’ (just as the Gothic cathedrals were built as evidence of ‘the unseen’), they were, in fact, built for economy and comfort. Their size allowed them to sail at about twice the speed of smaller ships and to ride fairly smoothly all but the stormiest seas. Up to a certain point
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there is a true economy of scale, in that the water resistance ofa ship is a smaller fraction of its weight as its size is increased. These big ships, sailing at 35 knots, and competing for the Blue Riband for fast crossing of the Atlantic, changed sea travrel from being a dangerous and uncomfortable venture, taking months and years, to a luxury experience taking weeks and days. Passenger liners were overtaken in this century by jet air travel because one jetplane can carry, in a month, as many passengers (about 10 000) as an ocean liner can carry in a year. Jets have reduced journey times to days and hours while being able to escape stormy weather altogether by flying above the clouds in the rarified atmosphere five miles up. It is interesting that this latest economy of scale is towards smaller size, more concentrated power, and takes place in a lighter vehicle and in a lighter medium. The assembly line Adam Smith began his book about the sources of the wealth of modern nations (in 1749) with his famous description of division of labour in a pin factory. He shows how the technique of subdividing the work until each person makes “a tenth part offorty-eight thousand pins in a day” multiplies enormously the total output. The assembly line, which increases this effect still further by permitting the operations of production to be shared between machine-powered (instead of hand-powered) tools, is the primary source of wealth and economic growth. It is, in its form and principle, the model by which most industrial activity is organised. Division of labour and the assembly line have the powerful effects they do by ‘operating’ on time. They compress, perhaps by a ratio of one hundred to one, the time required to produce an object. Thus, in one person’s lifetime, there is as much produced by machine as was made by hand in thousands of years.
The most famous assembly line is that of Henry Ford’s production of the first mass-produced cheap car, the Model T ( 1909). Since that time, line assembly and mechanised production have developed to a point where the workers are being removed altogether as computer controls and industrial robots begin to take over the machine minding tasks tbr which, unit1 recently, it was cheaper to emplo): ‘labour’. It is a measure both of mechanical degradation of human beings and human skills. and ofour misunderstanding ofour own creation, that we use this word to describe what people do in factories. Those who work on assembly lines do not pro\,idc the energy needed for production. That is obtained from other sources z?a machines. It is a mistake. therefore, to cling to the idea that the workers and managers of‘ an industrial plant are keeping the rest of’us alive. It’s the sun that’s doing that, through lbssil fuels and photosynthesis. \Vhat the people are doirrg, both workers and managers. is to provide, in the absence of’ sufliciently cheap computers and robots, some fiiagynenta~ (and usual11 \‘cry ineflicient) Interjections of control and supervision ofwhat, potentially, is a wholly automatic high-energy process. as is the growth ofplants, or the process of’breathing. The presence of‘ people in an industrial plant is more a hurden to productivity than a source of wealth. The degree to which this profound change threatens our inherited ethic and culture has yet to he realised. Being ‘unemployed’ is, it seems, the most productive thin? one can do. The or~amsmg principle of’ the assembly lme is that of first fixing the goal and then, working backwards in time. to devise a series ofoperations by which it can he reached. This principle, of absolute riskless certain0 the economy of‘ means, is hvident throughout technolop. as we know it so Car. One of the clearest examples is the devising of a series of‘ modules and
rocket stages, of increasing power and size, bv which to reach the moon and return ii-on, it. Always, in such thinking and planning. economy is paramount. The engineer is still the one who "can do for sixpcnrc bvhat any fool cm do fi)r half-a-crown”. The second quarter century ~~dra~lec~ricschemes ~vell-interltiot~eci the most Perhaps technologies of’ the ccntuy. ha\-e been the hydroelectric schemes-m the USA, the [JSSK, and in many less developed which impoVerislird re,qinns---by economies haye been modernised and enriched. The ‘I‘ennessee \‘alley scheme of the 1930s is typical ofmany throughout the world. Beginning with a system of’ interconnected flood-control hasins (which have successfully pre\.entecl flooding since they were introduced) the scheme brought Improved nat-igation. and social planning to cheap electricity, suftcring firom economic rqgion a depression. ‘[‘he organising principle here is much more complex than that of’ the production line. It is that of‘ystems thinking’: into a smoothly workiq the linking, whole. of a numher of diverse parts (in this rase the dams, generators, canals, roads, farmlands, forests, rivers, local networks, and electricit\ The contro\.ersial co,,,rn~t~,~ties). aspects of it. which were taken to a hi& rourt and lost. Evere the centralised planning by nonlocals. and the introduction ofa monopoly in the salt of‘ electricity. Since the thirties there ha\-e been attempts to apply the same many s~sterns-planning principles to even larger regions (eg the ‘save the hleditcrranean’ scheme of the sixties) but often these fail to get started because, unlike technologies ofa simpler and cruder kind, they cannot be economic single measured by a yardstick and they tread on many toes. ,A negative view of’ such schemes is taken by the French philosopher of
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technoloCgyy?ilJaques Ellul. He suggests that the forced modernisation of older cultures and ways of living, now seen as is a form of ‘technical inefflcient, invasion’ and is a threat to what is best in life. An obvious criticism of systems is that the rational and planning conceptual models upon which the schemes are based cannot reflect the essence of what comprises human satisfaction. This, at its best, implies the unexpected, the changing of minds, as well as all sorts of intangibles that can be embodied culturally and artistically, but not in predictive calculations. Industrial&d ag&-ulture The vast wheat-growing areas of the US.4 and the lJSSR were, in the 193Os, the first parts of the world to be subjected to what is now becoming industrialising of universal: the agriculture to increase its yields (in the short term at least) by factors of up to ten. This is done through the combined equipment (eg tractors, use of sprayers) and the harvesters, development of more spetialised plants, animals, fertilisers, pesticides, and the like, in laboratories and on experimental farms. The American state colleges were given grants in the thirties, conditional upon their developing this kind of research and education, and similar pioneering occurred elsewhere. AS a result of efrorts to increase produrtivit?, the number of people employed drrectly on the land has fallen to about a twentieth ofwhat it was in the presious century. However, the number employed in the food industry as a whole has dropped by much less than that-as so many are now employed ‘off the land’, eg in food processing or distribution, and in the production of fertilisers or farm machines. Recent doubters of the very high increases in efficiency claimed by the proponents of industrialised agriculture have taken up two main points. First,they say that ifyou calculate the total energy used to make fertilisers, to
power tractors, and so on, the apparent high yields of the new supercrops (of the green revolution which was to have solved the food problems of the poor countries), you will find that there is no real gain. The total energy used is of the same order as the energy produced. Their second argument is perhaps stronger. it is that the change from mixed agriculture to monoculture (in which single crops are artificially maintained, as is a lawn, against all tending towards natural processes variety and self-maintaining balance) is very dangerous ecologically, as well as being inherently expensive. despite these new However, industrialising of the criticisms, agriculture and food production is ur~doubtedi? what keeps most of us alive, at the present time. Our bodies are indeed composed of what was, a short time ago, on supermarket shelves and in factory farms. A large proportion of the huge population of the world (four thousand million and expected to almost double in the last quarter of the rentury) would surely not be alive without this technology. The ma-jar growth ofpopulation in the and hotter, countries has poorer, depended largely on the use of DDT and other chemicals to kill the insects that used to bring diseases that killed many of the babies and children, who thus had no descendants. The millions who now survive> and would formerly have died, are caught in a tragic accident of progress. They owe their Iives to technology but are denied, largely for political reasons, the best part ofthe vast which food output industrialised agriculture is producing now. Most of this is directed at making high-protein food for westerners, who suffer from overeating, when the same effort could produce many times the quantity of lowprotein foods for people in the poor countries who are starving for lack ofit, An additional, and unexpected, outcome of the well-intentioned efforts of the pioneers of industrialised
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Small is powerful: technology is art
hundreds of less famous structures of this genera1 type around the world. So far they have been used more for intangible purposes like “making Sydney famous. and proud of itself’ than for any utilitarian reason. The Sydney Opera house is also one of the classtc cases of a big project going wrong but being completed nevertheless. (;\nother IS Concorde.) It cost several times the original estimate, took far longer to complete than was promised, and, halfway through, there was a crisis when it was found that the original roof-shell designs could not be made and would not provide the required interior spaces for grand opera. ;\nd there were many other disasters. too many to mention here. ‘I’hr final design is a compromise v.ersion which only approximates to Itzon’s elegant design (he was sacked befbre the building was finished) and is deficient in many practical aspects. Nevertheless many Australians are now happy with this most extravagant and complex structure. bungled as it was. The Opera House was the pet project of .J..J. C:ahill. Premier of New South \t’ales (known to his enemies as the Old Smoothy) without whose efforts the project would never have prevailed against the tides of money shortage, conflict, and even common sense. He did not live to see it finished. Big research machines
Radio telescopes (eg the early example build in Britain at Jodrell Bank in the 1950s) are typical of the big machines now required for research into physical reality at scales far from that of the human body. Others are cyclotrons, linear accelerators, and the ill-fated Skylab. The reason for the great size and cost of these machines is that they are used to investigate phenomena that are undetectable without exceptionally high energies, accuracies, and sensitivities. The further one gets from the human scale the more expensive, and surprising, things become, so it seems.
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Another reason for the high cost of such machines is that only one of each design is built, so they have to be made expensively, almost by hand. Like other big research machines, the Jodrell Bank telescope was built in a context of financial muddle and recrimination. It was saved from being more expensive than it was by the ingenious reuse of naval gun bearings as pivots for the steerable bowl. It would not have been made, against all odds, without the determination of Bernard Lovell, its guiding spirit. The findings of radio telescopes, and scientific satellites accelerators. continue to defy all our expectations. Black holes, radio stars, quasars, pulsars, and new subatomic particles with names like quarks and properties charm are being continually like discovered with a resulting transformation not only, in our conceptions of reality but m our conceptions of ourselves (in the case of the uncertainty and similar theories, that principle, double back on the observer and the thinker). As I write this piece there is news of the scientific satellite Ariel coming down. It has been operating since 1974, although it was expected to last for only 2 years. Carrying an X-ray telescope, it has made possible the study of a whole new area of astronomy, the X-ray stars, which were not previously known to exist. Many of the sources it has plotted are now though to be black holes. Another satellite announced today (14 March 1980) is expected to be able to take photographs of photons from 14 thousand million years ago, shortly after the supposed big bang ofcreation. What next? Supertankers
Much larger than the biggest passenger liners (and two or three times the weight), the new supertankers are used for low-cost transport of oil from the Middle East to the industrialised countries. Some are over 200 000 tons.
The)- at-e the most automated ships afloat, with very small crews, and much advanced technology for na\-igation. control. and the saf? handlins of their dangerous carg-ors. \\ hen operating as intended, supcrtankers attract no more attention than does a water supply system, being, in essence. powered oil tanks, iloating submerged. and travelting large& aimosr auton~ati[.~~ll~ between the points of oil production and demand. \Shat does attract attention is that the) occasionallp get out ofcontroi, and then, being so slow to manoeuvre, the)- often run aground, or otherwise spill their catyyoes. Then there is much damage to marine life and holiday beaches. So IBr thrre is no adequate remedy. One of the first supertankers to do this was the Torr
clo~~erleaf intersection, sphaghrtti junction . . . there are so many names, all of them descripti\,c of one feature or another of the new kind of roadway that has emerged, of‘necessity, to carry and absorb the ceaseless output of nc’w \,ehicles from the car assembly lines throughout the world. For want of* an inclusive name for all thesr I am using the term superoad. The operating principle of superoads is To exclude all the features of ordinary roads that cause one to slow down, and pre\‘ent travel at a tixed and high speed. The primart; means of doing this are the ygregation of traflic streams. the pro\zton of a continuous lay-by fbr any \.ehicles that have to stop suddenly, and the rlimination of all but the slightest cur\.es and gradients. Together thcsc features account ibr the very high cost of such roads. and for the targe amourIt of land required to build them. ‘I’he secondary principle of theit design is that of providing unobstructed vision a long way ahead, and, by carefully graded warning signs of exceptional clarit\ and visibility, removinCg unexpectedness from what reasons remain for changing speeds or changing lanes. This second principle is not always met, eg in fog, so there are still some accidents. Nevertheless under these new conditions mart); ofthe causes ofaccidents are gone, and superoads are about twice as safe as ordinary roads. while ptrrnittimg tra\.cI at about twice the speed. However, when accidents do occur, the)- in\.olve greater impacts, and man\ \,ehicles. so one gets the impression that superoads are more dangerous when. in fact, they are safer. For inter& roads this system works reasonably well (if you like taking risks when in a hut-v) but, when superoads are used as a means of remo\-ing the cotlgestiort in urban areas. they create more problems than they solve, eg noise, lead pollution, urban smog, as well as c~~r~~~stion and parking increased problems in the remaining normal streets, because of the extra tralfic an
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Small is ,bowe#iil: technolqg is art
urban superoad attracts. Also, urban superoads are the biggest contributors to the turning of cities into concrete jungles and inhuman wastelands. It is not widely realised that the three big problems of city traffic (congestion, and parking problems), accidents, which are unsolved so far in any city, (though billions have been spent on trying to solve them by building urban superoads) are, in principle, completely soluble, by means of new and less massive technology than that of pouring concrete. Using the knowhow which, since the 1950s has been successfully applied to controlling missiles, and travelling to the moon, all three problems could, by now, have been gradually solved. The technology to do this would, however, entail much changing of our habits and expectations. Some car factories would have to be closed. car ownership would have to be replaced by very short-term rentals (for the duration of the trip) and all vehicles and roads would have to be fitted out for electronic control and guidance. Such a supertechnology system would be invisible to but could provide the passer-by, orderly, safe traffic, at reasonable speed (with no parking problem as cars would automatically drive off when one left them). This kind of invisible-butsocially-challenging technology is, I believe, the next step in many areas. One last point: the cloud of urban smog over Los Angeles was the only manmade object detectable to the naked eye of one of the astronauts who was being questioned about his experience. Jumbojets This friendly name is applied to one of the few supertechnologies ofthis century that is truly popular. The jumbo, like the ocean liner, is a passenger vehicle that really does enjoy the benefits of scale in the way that customers appreciate: cheaper fares, shorter journey times, and greater comfort, with (relatively) less noise on the ground.
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The reasons for this are that, as for the liner, physical scale effect does work to the advantage of larger planes, up to sonic speeds, and that the jumbos have a new type of engine with slower jet velocities to reduce noise. There is much use of computers in the very careful design process (the Boeing 747 IS said to be the first big plane that could not have been designed at all without computers, so great is the quantity of calculation); are used also to and computers contribute to the exceptional stability in flight. These big -jumbos are far from being the white elephants that their critics predicted. It is not at all an easy matter to and the character, the preassess environmental effects, of new machines of this scale and complexitv. This difficulty does not spring primarily from time taken to master the calculations needed. It comes in the main, I believe, from the fact that, when a new scale is most of our previous attempted. and our our morality, experience, imaginations, are too tied to the earlier scale to let us imagine accurately what it will be like. The missing element, before the event, is a way of knowing what we will be like, given the new technology. LITho, before tv, or before the motor car, was able to accurately foresee the high degree to which these devices would change us into people to whom they are practically indispensible? Perhaps Henry Ford was. There is, however, a darker side to the happy story of the jumbo. It is that airports, like roads, are in much more of a mess than are the vehicles they are meant to accommodate and carry. Such dilhculties as airport siting, airport congestion, air traffic control, crashes on take-off and landing, and airport noise comprise, like city traffic, one of the big unsolved problems worldwide. Is there a new supertechnology potentially able to solve them? Or has a limit been reached which will force some abandonment of air travel of the present kind?
\t’hcn, after the collccti\e shock of’ the dropping ofatomic bombs on,Japan, the peaceful LISC of‘ atomic energy was announced, it seerncd like a new dawn of limitless power, something altogether good. Now. after the near accident at the Three hIile Island reactor, and after manv fi-ightening predictions and angry pmtrsts a*gainst the dangers of nuclear (and the likeliho~~d that wastfs something like a police state is needed if nuclrar power is lo bc handled with seems safct?/). that initial impression \.er)- wrorig. .I second miscalculation, or surprise. is that nuclear power is turning out to bc much morr exprnsi\c than was thought. The first generation of nuclear reactors have railed to 1it.e up to their cxpectcd them being reliability, most of operational for little over haff the time (some as little as a quarter) whrreas, to product &cap power, they need to operate tbr more than three-quarters of their expected us&t1 lif of 40 years. ‘l‘his is because most of the cost of nuclear power is in paying ofI; during this period, the \‘ery heavy cost of construction. The fuel cost is a relatively small proportion of the price of the electricity produced. Some opponents of nuclear power have calculated that, in a balance of’ energy to build against energy produced, the nuclear power plant uses more ener$gy than it makes. The only good thing to emerge so far is that thcrc is a new willingness, and ability. among both experts and public, to bring into the process of assessing a new technolo
source of the heat. This electric power technology has, since its form was found in the first two quarters of the century, been an almost universally enjoyed boon, morr akin to the water supply than to the feared nuclear technolo
Thr most visible part of the new leisure culture, yet to emerge in full but surely in the process of coming into being, is packaged tourism. Its most ob\,ious are the components technical tourist hotels, villages. specialised camps, and li\,ing complexes that have appeared all along the north coast ofthe and in many other Llediterranean. scrnic, historic. sunny, or otherwise attractive places all over the world. Some of the largest of these technologies are the one-purpose megastructures, or new minitowns, devotrd entirely to the needs of beachlife, winter sports,or whatever. ‘I’hese new kinds of building and urban planning, which have happened more by accident and stealth than by public intent, seem far more successful than are city housing schemes at employing new techniques standardisation. (eg prefabrication, curtain watl, all mod cons) in organised wholes to provide cheap but modern accommodation and social satisfaction. Those of us who dislike being organised on holiday (usually because we 1laL.e either the money, or the time enern, to seek more an d youthful comfortable or more individual ways to condemning travel) find ourselves packaged tourism out of hand as being o\:erorganiscd, tame. uncomfortable, and time stressed. However. within the exceptionally low cost limits to which such holidays permit thFy+ operate, mtlhorts of’ people (who will, in their Iif’etimes, find no other way to do this) to rxplore the world and to mert strangers
FUTURES
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as friends. These are surely some of the principal benefits which ‘the machine’ was supposed, by its pioneers, to bring once ‘work’ had been ‘eliminated’. How much of the distrust of the new social forms they bring about originates in those who are most ‘educated’ (by now a very old-fashioned term) and are less ready to let go of ‘standards’? Standards, in this world of changes of scale brought about by seeking to apply natural energies to human ends, must surely be recognised as temporary, and be rethought in the light of each transition. \Ve inherit so much resistance to the eventual promise of technology (which may still happen) that everyone will one day be able to live like a king. And kings, for all their faults, were often, it seems, more genuinely concerned for the good of their people than many of us can find it possible to be. (End of sermon.) But once again there is a negative side. The impact ofpackaged tourism on the economies and native cultures of tourist areas is a very mixed blessing. Although, in the short term, and even in the long term, it promises to ensure the survival of ways of life, and of cultural heritages, that would otherwise die of poverty and neglect, it is already arousing strong protest, akin to that against military invasion, by those who native languages and cultures see threatened with extinction. As I write there is news that my own native culture, the Welsh, are aroused by some aspects of tourism into more violent protests than they have ever made before (the burning ofholiday cottages) SpacejZight
Easily the most beautiful and dreamlike new technology, and certainly the most pointless and questionable (by the standards of our utilitarian past), is the journey to the moon. Perhaps it is less of an accident than it might seem that the so accurate prophecy of this event, with which I began, was written by a man best known as a romatic poet.
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The space race, which led to the moon, began with the jolt to American confidence when the USSR launched Sputnik 1, and later launched Colonel Gagarin, the first man to orbit the earth Soon after, President 1961). ( in Kennedy ordered that an American be landed on the moon “before the end of the decade”. They landed in 1968. Always (it seems from this brief review of new technology) the technical that are undertaken for ventures cultural rather than utilitarian reasons spring from the energies of a few people whose wills prevail against much opposition and against common reason. The Sydney Opera House, Jodrell Bank, the first flight of the N’right brothers, else? The great cathedrals what perhaps. But this may be a superficial impression.Inventions often occur simultaneously, in different places, in the minds of people who don’t know of each other’s existence. . The technology of the moon trip included a range of techniques, some recent, some developed specially for the event: rocketry (pioneered by von Opel and von Braun in Germany and first used in the long-range rocket attacks on London), the ultralight construction of the lunar vehicles, the ingenious devices for safe reentry to the atmosphere, the complex bioengineering of the space suits and life-support systems, and, most importantly, the satellites and microcomputers electronics for and communications. The most impressive technical aspects of the trip were, to me, the accuracy of control (plus or minus a few feet over a distance of a quarter of a million miles from the control room) and the quality of the photographic and other data broadcast by electronic means. It has been said that the real difficulties of the operation were not in the visible parts, but in the computer programming, and that the leading programmer was a woman. Perhaps the craft of programming, the coping with the complexity at its greatest, was the
me part of the work that could txot hc rontained in the risk-reducing tactic (of working backwards from a preset goal) by Lvhich the operation as a whole was made to be physically feasible and so incredibly safe? There were, in this so largely surprisefree exploration, sonic unexpected lindings. One was that the moon rocks brought bark (the token scientitic ob,jectivcs of the trip) tumcd out to br djsa~po~~lti~~~l~~ similar to earth rocks and told us littip WCdid not know. \\‘h;tt captured the atte~~tj[~l~ of‘thr astronauts and the public. but which initially the space agency did not publitise very much. NXS the view of earth from afar. Once having SCCI~it, a~ we all now have, our collective consciousness. our world picture, is quite profoundly changed. Protests and alternatives This review would be orie sided ifit did not tell ofthe historically sudden shift in attitudes to tecb~l{)l~?~~ during the third quarter century. when most ofthe supertechnologies appeared. It is, I b&xx:, one ofthe greatest changes in the picture clvr to ha\.e of &man and nature’ occurred. environmental protection The movement, the new dissatisfBction with ‘the plastic world’, the antigrowth the alternative technol0.q campaign. (small is beautiful-the movement slogan ofE. F. Schumacher’s philosophy of work and energy), and the recent the once invisible awakening ol m~I~orities (from women and homoand ancient sexuals to teenagers comprise, f believe, a cultures),
worldwide change in the accepted view ofwhat is natural, what is art&&A, and what is good. Now, in the 1980s. some of these new m~~~ernents have lost much ofthcir force in face of‘ newly arganised consen~atism and a restoration of centraiised power. Rut surely that is to be expected, and does not mean that these new kinds of t~~i~lkiil~ abont t~chllolo~~ and life are Finished; J_G~ that the first wave of the new tide 1s spent. In the writing of this account I have not&d that, while some of the protests against technology are being ignored? some of the more sensible points aw being taken up, or allowed for, in the way that the latest technical decisions are being made. Iifost interesting to mr has hewn to find that,implicit in the way Lord Byron \vorded his incredible forecast, is the prediction that technolqgy, as it grows, does not get heavier and more monolithic (as was so grimly forecast in George Orwell’s fiction, f9&) but is bound, by the nature of things, to be drawn to what is Iighter, smaller, and more easily changed. So ‘small is beautiful’, the most cogent argument of the new opposition, may, perhaps, he what was implicit all along? The real dangers lie, I believe, not in the physical possibilities, but in ourselves. and particularly in an ~~ff~~~~~~ to use machines in ways that fit our feehngs (light hearted or profound) but which cannot be proved, by uc~I~taria~1caiculation, to be the things to do. It‘s surely time that technology ceased to be always a means to an end. Its root is in tech@, which ori~irlall~ meant ‘art’.