10 ms·

Why We Can't Solve Big Problems

147 points by andrewl 14y ago

parfe 14y ago
www.technologyreview.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for the following names: acquia-sites.com , victory.mittromney.com , secure.mittromney.com , www.mittromney.com , mittromney.com , m.mittromney.com , secure.gop.com , collab.net , www.collab.net , bentley.edu , www.bentley.edu , acuvue.ca , www.acuvue.ca , acuvue.com , www.acuvue.com , barnard.edu , www.barnard.edu , api.mittromney.com , www.babymed.com , secureforms.bentley.edu , www.housingwire.com , securefroms.bentley.edu , www.utsystem.edu , theoverflow.com , www.theoverflow.com , acuvueprofessional.com , www.acuvueprofessional.com , romneyvictory.com , www.romneyvictory.com , americascomebackteam.com , www.americascomebackteam.com , www.jnjvisioncare.com , jnjvisioncare.com , ssl.marketplace.org , veterancentral.com , www.mywell-being.com , www.givingcomfort.org , givingcomfort.org , www.givingcomfort.com , givingcomfort.com (Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain) ----- Definitely one of the stranger SSL issues I've had. MittRomney.com?
- ck2 14y ago
  May be some kind of edge cache that has it's own certs for sites it mirrors? Either that or a lazy developer reusing the ssl cert instead of generating a new one.
- mcguire 14y ago
  I get a similar certificate, but it includes www.technologyreview.com. They're all being hosted by https://www.acquia.com/ https://www.acquia.com/, maybe? (Using one certificate seems...suboptimal.)
jules 14y ago
Going to Mars is currently not a good use of resources. It's like spending billions to travel to the middle of the Sahara. Sure, there will be technologies invented as a side effect, but that will also be the case if we spend those resources on something that's also directly useful (like solving the energy problem, quantum computing, self sufficient robots, AI, etc.). Arguably, going to the moon wasn't a good use of resources either.
- debacle 14y ago
  Removing the greatest current single point of failure for human existence isn't a good use of resources?
  - CKKim 14y ago
    I don't understand this comment, but I would like to. Could you elaborate, please?
    - clebio 14y ago
      I suspect it's the Intergalactic Highway idea: the Earth is a single point of failure for the entire species.
      - clebio 14y ago
        a.k.a. the Deathstar Dilemma
    - ChuckMcM 14y ago
      He is referring to the inevitable extinction event that will cause humans to be wiped out. The history of the planet suggests that it periodically wipes the slate nearly clean. And while there are human reasons we might get wiped out (war, warming, techno catastrophe) even being ideal stewards will eventually result in the loss of the human race. The only survival option is to not be on planet when the 'bad thing' (what ever it happens to be) happens.
      - CKKim 14y ago
        Ah, got it. Thanks, that was a really clear explanation.
      - narag 14y ago
        If the extinction event is caused by asteroids, that's not the only option. That doesn't mean that the alternatives wouldn't need spacial technology anyway.
marknutter 14y ago
Going to the moon was not a "big problem". It was an admirable goal, and it captured the imagination of the world, but having not visited the moon wasn't a "problem" for the U.S. or any other country.
- potkor 14y ago
  Definition of PROBLEM 1 a : a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution b : a proposition in mathematics or physics stating something to be done [other meanings elided]
- stan_rogers 14y ago
  No, but it was a proxy to something that was a "big problem": having an enemy that had (or was very near to having) the ability to insert dirigible, manned weapons (think about the era) into essential indefensible areas. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo may have had a feel-good element and some incidental scientific co-projects, but they were as much about military deterrence and public confidence as anything else. (Do you remember nuclear raid drills? I do.)
pron 14y ago
I'd like to offer one more partial cause. It is certainly incomplete and possibly simplistic, but let's put it out there: Big-idea technological innovation has been led for years by the US, and for some time by the USSR as well. But the Soviet Union is gone, and there may be a cultural shift in America: going at it alone and distrust of government. The libertarian streak that has long been present in American culture seems to be taking hold of more and more people. Even Democrats seem to have a distrust of government, and some even partially accept right-wing axioms about the benefits of small government and spending cuts. But some undertakings are simply too big for private corporations, and require government funding and control. Only Americans increasingly distrust the gov't. This sentiment is not bad necessarily, but it's becoming pervasive and might be spreading beyond just distrust of government. Americans (or, rather, well-to-do Americans, or those born to the right parents in the right neighborhoods) don't want to be a small cog in a big machine. They prefer going at it alone, or in a small team and encourage individual expression. So this is not wrong, and it certainly doesn't apply to everyone everywhere, but it might just be one more reason in the decline of huge undertakings, that might require collaboration on a national or international scale, where talented people must be content to contribute their small part to a very large and non-individual expression.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  That's a large part of it. We have a harder and harder time solving Big Problems because all truly Big problems are partly or largely social as well as technical. The more we refuse to act together or insist on purely technological "solutions", the less actually solvable our Big Problems get.
  - pdonis 14y ago
    all truly Big problems are partly or largely social as well as technical Very true, and the TR article makes this point. However, the article doesn't even talk about how to solve the social aspects of the problems. For example, when talking about how famines are the result of political problems, not technical ones, it dismisses the political part with this comment: "famines will still occur because there will always be bad governments." What a cop out. MIT has whole departments devoted to economics and political science because it understands that intellectual tools need to be developed and applied in those disciplines just as much as in physics or engineering; why can't its magazine recognize that? (Full disclosure: TR seemed to me to be a much better magazine when I was at MIT, so I tend to rant when I see evidence of its decline.)
roc 14y ago
> "if we once did big things but do so no longer, then what changed?" Our definition of "big", I think. I can't be sure because the article leaves it so loosely defined that one could cherry pick data to suit their mood. Is no space project acceptably "big" simply because it doesn't include humans or habitats? We've been to Mars a few times lately, by robot. We're going to earth orbit far more efficiently these days. We're launching satellites at a furious clip. And for this, even though poor nations languish without proper electricity, they do have cell phones. Not to downplay the problems that remain, but that one seems "big" to me; at least worth mentioning. To say nothing of computer vision. Processing power advancements have turned this long-suffering field into something of a white-hot ball of promise lately. The applications being developed will be at least as transformative as anything the automobile delivered. Is this not "big" because the applications will first be delivered to wealthy nations, because some of them look like "toys", or because it lacks the old-school wonder of a big-ass rocket launch? I have no idea from the article; I can only infer the author disqualifies it by its complete omission. And the author is similarly imprecise on who "we" even are. After identifying many of the problems they consider "big" as primarily international political problems, in many cases a result of international poverty, they then point fingers at the US political situation [1] when looking for answers. Is it reasonable to expect that the national feeling that fed support for a US-centric space program is lacking because there isn't similar contemporary support for solving problems overseas? Not that the US couldn't do more on some of those problems [2]. But aside from the military removal of despots, the US has no real history of possessing the national will -- or even the capability -- to solve political and poverty problems overseas. Even if we had that Cold War-era national spirit today, I'm not sure it logically follows that it would unite behind e.g. a massive political/research/development effort to light Africa. [1] A mess no doubt. And one doing grievous harm to our national R&D. [2] We could even "do more" by doing less in some cases: stopping support for programs that aren't helping, but are instead warping markets and political structures.
- ArbitraryLimits 14y ago
  > The applications being developed will be at least as transformative as anything the automobile delivered. Are you serious? I'm having a hard time seeing a disruptive innovation in CV anywhere.
Gravityloss 14y ago
As an amateur space historian, I view that the Apollo project is widely misunderstood by most people. It was basically a stunt: create something as quickly as possible with money as no object. It is extremely obvious in hindsight that the capabilities and solutions it created were not directly sustainable or efficient in the long term. We should not clamor for some similar projects or similar technical solutions, just "because Apollo did it". Instead we should objectively strive for reliable, flexible and affordable spacefaring. Some of the project practices and technologies that Apollo used might be good for spacefaring unchanged as they were, some might serve as basis that needs development and others are negative examples. We just shouldn't say "look they went to the moon with solution X" as the only justification for solution X. Solution X could be for example building a single huge rocket.
- chubbard 14y ago
  In many ways this article is just pining for other big hard made up problem for us to solve. Apollo was and is still a huge achievement, but it sure wasn't a practical solution to any real problem we faced. As much as you can say how amazing it was there are plenty of things you can say how wasteful it was too. In a lot of ways you can say the same thing about the internet. I wonder if the big problems we know we have ever really get solved or we just distract ourselves by solving made up problems. Funny thing is life seems to get better when we solve the made up problems because we solve things we didn't know we had. Oh that probably doesn't bode well for Global Warming and Cancer.
- kamaal 14y ago
  But they did it, and guess what- 4 decades later no one gives a damn about the money spent because adjusted to inflation and comparative to other pointless spending(wars) its the cost of chicken feed. The whole point is stunt or other wise they achieved something through brute force. The point is we aren't even attempting a brute force solution.
  - Gravityloss 14y ago
    But why should we try brute force solutions? I have much bigger dreams than 12 guys walking on the moon. Routine daily commercial flights to orbit with reusable vehicles that fly many times in one week, NEO exploration, in situ resource usage. One day many of the people who comment on Hacker news can have visited space, some may even live and work there. That requires longer and more many sided and organic development than a brute force government crash program. That just would not be good resource usage.
jackfoxy 14y ago
Might be a good article, but that font hurts my eyes.
batgaijin 14y ago
I think the government needs to start creating fiefdoms that implement redundant services, a la Amazon. I think that is an amazing policy for large organizations when predicting future technological improvements is out of consideration. Use whatever technology you want and any architecture as long as you follow blah basic tenets. No bureaucracy, a simple API to be responsible for, and the ability to subsume any patented/copyrighted material ;) http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/sovimm.htm http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/sovimm.htm
kds 14y ago
Big problems - sometimes before even to be formulated and asked - require big fundamental and applicative science research programmes and the respective advancement. These are not something to be expected from venture capital. They are something resulting from deliberate state scientific and industrial policy, longterm goals, and adequate funding. Examples from 1950s-1970s: DARPA/USA, and the resp. space and rocketry programmes in the former USSR. Private capital - be it venture or not - comes later (and this is not a bad thing) when the new technologies are relatively well understood , "tameable", and can be applied to mass human consumers' or corporate needs (perceived or not, new or old) yet to be satisfied. Private capital doesn't like fundamental scientific research risks - even in the pharmacy industry. It tries to bear mostly the market-related and implementational risks. A thought experiment: Think on what funds and in what conditions happened the development of packet switching, TCP/IP protocols suite, HTTP, (examples of fundamental breakthrough). Then think the same about Facebook, for example. My point summarized => States/Governments shouldn't worry about entrepreneurship programmes, clusters, tech-business climat, etc. If adequate funding is provided for breakthrough scientific research and to the universities in general (so there are also the high-quality scientists to do it), breakthrough technology business solving big problems will happen inevitably.
- MordinSolus 14y ago
  On the pharmaceutical industry: part of the problem is the government and the enormous number of regulations and necessary steps to bring a drug (which still could harm people regardless of how many trials are done) to market. As such, while someone may want to research some new but unproven idea, the time and cost and risk involved would be far too great as a result of regulations. I do agree with your point though. The government should invest in research, not companies.
marshallp 14y ago
Big problems are quite easily solvable if more X prize and darpa challenges were promoted. Some big problems easily solvable today - Create artificial general intelligence - Create an immortal mice using focused ultrasound technologies (non-invasive surgery and localized drug delivery) - flying cars (drones) including air traffic control for everyone on earth (+ cargo drones, so 1 trillion air vehicles or more) (That's in addition to the important prizes already like x tricorder and darpa humanoid) Up the prize money to $1 billion each (that's nothing compared to the bailouts) and you'll see all of the above done within 1 year, they really aren't difficult if you put a little thought to it. There's more than enough money and the technological pieces are in place. It just requires some bold thinking. No one holds people to account for opportunity costs. The robocar challenge showed that robocars were possible. Governments and car companies should be held to account to account (sued in court) for not working on it sooner. That delay is millions of deaths. The same is true for other techs as mentioned above. Some economic indicators need to be put in place for tech development that isn't being done (opportunity cost accounting).
- arethuza 14y ago
  I don't think I'd regard "artifical general intelligence" as "easily solvable" - unless I've missed some developments in the field I don't think we are much closer to understanding how to engineer a general human-level intelligence than we were 20 or 30 years ago.
  - marshallp 14y ago
    Machine learning has cracked any problem put in it's path. AI hasn't been done yet because no one's actually tried. There's the Loebner Prize but it's too easy (needs to be multi-month and with difficult challenges like write an essay or computer program) and there's no heavyweight turing tests with heavyweight teams (in the ballpark "heavweightness" are search engines and ibm watson).
    - arethuza 14y ago
      "AI hasn't been done yet because no one's actually tried." Researchers have been trying to create some kind of framework for general intelligence since the 1950s with multiple governments (notably the US, EU and Japanese) throwing billions at it, with relatively little results - resulting in things like the great AI Winter. We have lots of clever focused systems now that are made feasible by the enormous capacity of modern hardware, but I'm not convinced that we have made much fundamental progress on real human level general intelligence. Note that I do think that general AI is possible - it's what motivated me to get postgrad AI research, I just think that it is a long way off. YMMV.
loup-vaillant 14y ago
[…] On a larger scale, the Council inaugurated a set of projects ambitious both in scope and name, intended to be Manhattan Projects for a new age: Project Eden sought clinical immortality, Project Janus sought FTL travel, and Project Icarus sought to use solar satellites to harvest the light of the sun, making energy not just cheap, but free. With these accomplishments, the Council sought to win eternal loyalty from its citizenry. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7406866/15/To-the-Stars http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7406866/15/To-the-Stars Now we're talking grandiose programs that could very well have the support of the population. (Even project Eden: give people actual hope of escaping Death, and most will cease to object.) If a governance actually successfully triggers such accomplishments, I'm sure going to like it more. Now if we stay down to earth, Friendly AI is probably the best bet: it looks less impossible, and would have much more impact.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  You another Methods of Rationality reader?
  - loup-vaillant 14y ago
    Actually, I studied the conspiracy's¹ Scrolls² before reading it, but… yeah. [1] http://lesswrong.com/ http://lesswrong.com/ [2] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences
droithomme 14y ago
Arg this article is infuriating. His conclusion is that only government taking the initiative will fix things: "political leaders and the public must care to solve a problem". He mentions SpaceX, but only in the context that its founder is one of the members of Founders Fund. Not a word about SpaceX building ships to go to Mars. Because that doesn't fit the narrative that only government can solve problems. A big problem now is energy. The solution is nuclear. Right now in the US government and the public's main role in nuclear is to ban the solution, which is what has created the problem. In France though the public and government didn't ban the solution to the problem and so 78.8% of their electricity comes from nuclear, without any disasters in over 30 years of operation, and a nationwide system of incredibly cheap high speed electric trains powered by this network.
- drumdance 14y ago
  I'm generally pro-nuclear, but a geoligist friend of mine who worked at Yucca mountain (where the government wants to sequester waste) said there was no way they could guarantee long term safety. I don't know what the exact risk is, but when you're working on ten-thousand-year timescales it's worth being a little cautious.
  - adrianN 14y ago
    The solution to nuclear waste is burning it up in breeder reactors. Who don't have to store the stuff for aeons if we risk producing weapons grade material in between.
- zerostar07 14y ago
  - Government solved the problem of building rockets first. - The falling costs of green energy make it a mid-term solution too.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard
namank 14y ago
Because back then 'big' used to mean engineering advances. Now it means people-oriented/social/feel-good advances.
- freyr 14y ago
  Now 'big' means $1B. Whatever cashes out.
  - ludovicurbain 14y ago
    Short but to the point. People have no idea how many potentially great scientists or engineers are employed by the finance industry, which comically is also the only industry that produces nothing.
digeridoo 14y ago
Much sits in the way between invention and nirvana. We have to face the fact that earth is over-crowded with global infrastructure, rules, economic barriers, borders, financial systems, controlled by a small number of distant, territorial governments. This prevents us from moving forward in some of the areas most critical to human civilization, such as transportation and energy. What I would really like to see is a revolution in governance. There is a tremendous mistake in current thinking that global problems require global solutions. As a result, government and economic power is moving in the wrong direction. Today's global problems were caused locally, by every car, every meter of asphalt, every gram of sugar, every cheap t-shirt, every plastic bag, every poor mortgage, etc. These problems require local solutions. National borders are enormous societal barriers. If one country has better governance than another, only a small percentage of people will consider moving, if even allowed. As a result, better national policy is slow to attract, slow to spread, slow to evolve, and limited in its effectiveness. Instead of empowering national or supra-national governments in a quest for global solutions, we should face global problems at their root and empower the central pillar of human civilization in the 21st century: the city. The human economy has the remarkable characteristic that greater population density and better lives can go hand in hand. If great technologists, artists, teachers, scientists, merchants, politicians, industrialists, and laborers come together, that's when great things happen. That's when ideas start to take root and become reality. National governance and poor economic policy is squeezing the city into a menial role. They do not have the economic power or independence to make different rules or undertake great projects. The benefits of the existing population density is the only thing that still makes cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles attractive. A trip to Dubai, Singapore, Macau, or Hong Kong will give you a glimpse of what cities can do once empowered, even when relatively isolated. Imagine a nation of cities trying to out-class each other and trying to attract and keep their citizens.
ludovicurbain 14y ago
It's about the people. 1) people have no ambition. If you gave me google today, I'd be pondering how to turn that into a hundred googles, not relaxing on my private island beach. And I would only make those hundred googles in order to afford much more expensive stuff, such as an orbital elevator and much much more. And I would spend a few billions right ahead on education and fusion, since both of those have major ROI anyway. 2) nobody cares about education. with dumber people it's hard to achieve bigger results. And yes, since the loss of the soviet moscow university and the decline of european education, there are no more good schools in the world (the US never counted since it merely drained and never trained, Apollo is just one of the examples) and the only bit of hope comes from self-teaching. But don't worry, I think the chinese have plans for education, and space, and quite soon I expect Athem to buy fusion for themselves since all the other countries don't care.
mercuryrising 14y ago
We no longer have leaders with the vision to collaborate on a level large enough to impress scientists today. Going to the moon - everyone can see the moon, it's a very achievable goal, we put a person on that big rock up there. It's easy to understand, but challenging enough that we still marvel at it. This was fueled by a desire to win against our competitors. The competition against another superpower created the desire to win. Net benefit to humanity: A cool line to write on a resume. Nuclear fusion (not the best example, as we have stuff like NREL, but it will work) - a little bit more challenging. Closest example: We made a sun right here! It's much more difficult to get people to understand the impact that nuclear fusion would have. And, it has the 'nuclear' word attached to it. Politicians don't understand it (and wouldn't get any money from it). The general population doesn't care about it, because to them, the outlet will always be magical. Net benefit to humanity: The possibility to reverse global warming, unlimited clean water, free power, and solving a 'real' problem. This makes me think of the superconducting super collider[1]. I know we still do amazing science and amazing things, but we choose to do them in the military, behind closed doors for the benefit of ourselves, rather than the benefit of humanity. The 'golden ages' of history have generally occurred when society turned towards mathematicians, engineers, and scientists and basically said 'we don't know what you're doing, but we know it's important'. The trouble today is that everyone has an equal say on all issues (by having one vote, you are mapping a column of varying stances into one single value), regardless of how much they understand what they're talking about. It makes me kind of wonder why an angel wouldn't come in and just fund some of the projects the government should be funding. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
sopooneo 14y ago
Can someone clue me in. "They brought back little—841 pounds of old rocks, Aldrin's smuggled aesthetic bliss". What is meant by "aesthetic bliss"? Is that a reference to something?
- mcguire 14y ago
  109:43:16 Aldrin: Beautiful view! 109:43:18 Armstrong: Isn't that something! Magnificent sight out here. 109:43:24 Aldrin: Magnificent desolation. (Long Pause) -- http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.step.html http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.step.html
  - sopooneo 14y ago
    Thank you. So during that long pause Aldrin was soaking up the scenery and thereby gaining "aesthetic bliss"? If that is the case, "smuggled" just seems a strange word choice. If that's not it, I guess I'm just being dense because I don't get it.
    - jpontin 14y ago
      I really just meant: that aesthetic bliss was a fairly unlikely emotion for an Air Force pilot and MIT-trained PhD in astronautics to bring aboard the Lunar Module and bring out on the surface of the Moon. Hence, "smuggled".
EricDeb 14y ago
I would love to see more government funded research. There are so many problems that, if tackled via the unregulated private sector, have misaligned incentives.
wissler 14y ago
The reason we don't achieve lofty visions is that those who would pursue them are being smothered by nationalism. It is ironic that the Apollo mission success is being held out as the ideal (as it always is) because its success is what heralded this crushing nationalism to be brought down upon all our heads. But I know, no one wants to hear this. That's because they're nationalists. All they can see is nationalist solutions to problems, and since that IS the problem, nothing will change.
andyl 14y ago
Part of the issue IMHO is that we need a big enemy to tackle big projects. ALCAN highway - 1800 miles long - done in 9 months during WW2. MoonShot - done in 9 years during the cold war. Big enemies unify the people.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
InclinedPlane 14y ago
We still do, but we're no longer in an existential war with a major world power so we tend to avoid blank-check crash-development programs. Let me take a moment here to debunk the concept that the Apollo program was such a good thing. I love the Apollo program, I think it was a marvelous thing and a remarkable achievement. It remains deeply inspirational. But it was flawed. Deeply, deeply flawed. It was a war-time stunt more than anything. It expended vast amounts of resources for very little practical benefit, even on a basic "blue sky" research level. At the end of Apollo we had spent somewhere around a hundred billion dollars (in today's money) and yet we were little closer to the moon than before. It still cost us a tremendous billion dollars a passenger or more to put a man on the moon for at most a few days. Because Apollo was a race. We didn't build infrastructure, we didn't build systems that made spaceflight easier. And then afterward when we attempted to build infrastructure with the Shuttle and the ISS we screwed up so badly that it ended up being even more expensive to get to LEO than it had been to get to the Moon with Apollo. We spent a quarter of a trillion dollars building the ISS and it hasn't provided as much benefit toward exploring or colonizing the solar system as you'd expect spending that much money should. The idea that we need big government projects to solve "big" problems is part of the problem. What we need is merely basic research and sound engineering. As it turns out, we are starting to solve big problems. It's happening right under our noses. In space exploration SpaceX is rapidly leading the way to a new renaissance of commercial spaceflight and exploration (both manned and unmanned). They have already built the most cost effective launch vehicle in existence and are in the midst of building a reusable launch vehicle, a heavy lift launcher, and a super heavy lift launcher that will dwarf the Saturn V. All of which should facilitate the creation of a great deal of industrial infrastructure in Earth orbit which will reduce the barrier to exploration of the solar system. Let's look at other projects which could be considered "big problems" or engineering marvels. In many cases it's been a matter of engineering marvels becoming commonplace. Enormous bridges, tunnels, transoceanic cables, etc. all of these things are no longer marvels they are just ordinary engineering. The channel tunnel was a tremendous engineering marvel, but today it has become just an accepted matter of engineering, and many similarly audacious tunnel projects have been completed since, to relatively minor fanfare. The same goes for bridges. And today there is always at least one transoceanic fiber optical cable in the midst of being laid down. Meanwhile, let's look at the big problems of our age, such as cancer, disease, poverty. In the last half century several countries have pulled themselves out of poverty and become developed countries (South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) And several other countries are on the same path. A smaller percentage of the world is in poverty today than throughout history. Several types of cancer today have 80-90% or higher average survival rates. Major diseases (smallpox, rinderpest) have been eradicated. And major advances against diseases such as malaria and AIDS are being made by the day. In some cases due to extensive amounts of resources being brought to bear and in other cases merely due to the ordinary workings of trade and industry. There are many big problems that remain unsolved, of course, but we should not wallow in the mistaken notion that we are any less capable of tackling such problems or that we need to mobilize heaven and Earth in order to make progress.
khitchdee 14y ago
To solve larger problems, you need to strategize over longer periods of time. As our attention spans are getting shorter, so is our longer term corporate focus. Look at Intel as an example of an established corporate player of over 40 years -- probably amongst the oldest in the high tech industry. Most of their energy right now is consumed in defining a strategy for supplying chips to the mobile sector. This, when they are the established leader on PC chips. If such a large and old corporation is not impervious to market pressures, where's all the industry's momentum going?

147 points by andrewl 14y ago

parfe 14y ago

www.technologyreview.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for the following names: acquia-sites.com , victory.mittromney.com , secure.mittromney.com , www.mittromney.com , mittromney.com , m.mittromney.com , secure.gop.com , collab.net , www.collab.net , bentley.edu , www.bentley.edu , acuvue.ca , www.acuvue.ca , acuvue.com , www.acuvue.com , barnard.edu , www.barnard.edu , api.mittromney.com , www.babymed.com , secureforms.bentley.edu , www.housingwire.com , securefroms.bentley.edu , www.utsystem.edu , theoverflow.com , www.theoverflow.com , acuvueprofessional.com , www.acuvueprofessional.com , romneyvictory.com , www.romneyvictory.com , americascomebackteam.com , www.americascomebackteam.com , www.jnjvisioncare.com , jnjvisioncare.com , ssl.marketplace.org , veterancentral.com , www.mywell-being.com , www.givingcomfort.org , givingcomfort.org , www.givingcomfort.com , givingcomfort.com (Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain) ----- Definitely one of the stranger SSL issues I've had. MittRomney.com?

ck2 14y ago
May be some kind of edge cache that has it's own certs for sites it mirrors? Either that or a lazy developer reusing the ssl cert instead of generating a new one.
mcguire 14y ago
I get a similar certificate, but it includes www.technologyreview.com. They're all being hosted by https://www.acquia.com/ https://www.acquia.com/, maybe? (Using one certificate seems...suboptimal.)

jules 14y ago

Going to Mars is currently not a good use of resources. It's like spending billions to travel to the middle of the Sahara. Sure, there will be technologies invented as a side effect, but that will also be the case if we spend those resources on something that's also directly useful (like solving the energy problem, quantum computing, self sufficient robots, AI, etc.). Arguably, going to the moon wasn't a good use of resources either.

debacle 14y ago
Removing the greatest current single point of failure for human existence isn't a good use of resources?
- CKKim 14y ago
  I don't understand this comment, but I would like to. Could you elaborate, please?
  - clebio 14y ago
    I suspect it's the Intergalactic Highway idea: the Earth is a single point of failure for the entire species.
    - clebio 14y ago
      a.k.a. the Deathstar Dilemma
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    He is referring to the inevitable extinction event that will cause humans to be wiped out. The history of the planet suggests that it periodically wipes the slate nearly clean. And while there are human reasons we might get wiped out (war, warming, techno catastrophe) even being ideal stewards will eventually result in the loss of the human race. The only survival option is to not be on planet when the 'bad thing' (what ever it happens to be) happens.
    - CKKim 14y ago
      Ah, got it. Thanks, that was a really clear explanation.
    - narag 14y ago
      If the extinction event is caused by asteroids, that's not the only option. That doesn't mean that the alternatives wouldn't need spacial technology anyway.

marknutter 14y ago

Going to the moon was not a "big problem". It was an admirable goal, and it captured the imagination of the world, but having not visited the moon wasn't a "problem" for the U.S. or any other country.

potkor 14y ago
Definition of PROBLEM 1 a : a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution b : a proposition in mathematics or physics stating something to be done [other meanings elided]
stan_rogers 14y ago
No, but it was a proxy to something that was a "big problem": having an enemy that had (or was very near to having) the ability to insert dirigible, manned weapons (think about the era) into essential indefensible areas. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo may have had a feel-good element and some incidental scientific co-projects, but they were as much about military deterrence and public confidence as anything else. (Do you remember nuclear raid drills? I do.)

pron 14y ago

I'd like to offer one more partial cause. It is certainly incomplete and possibly simplistic, but let's put it out there: Big-idea technological innovation has been led for years by the US, and for some time by the USSR as well. But the Soviet Union is gone, and there may be a cultural shift in America: going at it alone and distrust of government. The libertarian streak that has long been present in American culture seems to be taking hold of more and more people. Even Democrats seem to have a distrust of government, and some even partially accept right-wing axioms about the benefits of small government and spending cuts. But some undertakings are simply too big for private corporations, and require government funding and control. Only Americans increasingly distrust the gov't. This sentiment is not bad necessarily, but it's becoming pervasive and might be spreading beyond just distrust of government. Americans (or, rather, well-to-do Americans, or those born to the right parents in the right neighborhoods) don't want to be a small cog in a big machine. They prefer going at it alone, or in a small team and encourage individual expression. So this is not wrong, and it certainly doesn't apply to everyone everywhere, but it might just be one more reason in the decline of huge undertakings, that might require collaboration on a national or international scale, where talented people must be content to contribute their small part to a very large and non-individual expression.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago
That's a large part of it. We have a harder and harder time solving Big Problems because all truly Big problems are partly or largely social as well as technical. The more we refuse to act together or insist on purely technological "solutions", the less actually solvable our Big Problems get.
- pdonis 14y ago
  all truly Big problems are partly or largely social as well as technical Very true, and the TR article makes this point. However, the article doesn't even talk about how to solve the social aspects of the problems. For example, when talking about how famines are the result of political problems, not technical ones, it dismisses the political part with this comment: "famines will still occur because there will always be bad governments." What a cop out. MIT has whole departments devoted to economics and political science because it understands that intellectual tools need to be developed and applied in those disciplines just as much as in physics or engineering; why can't its magazine recognize that? (Full disclosure: TR seemed to me to be a much better magazine when I was at MIT, so I tend to rant when I see evidence of its decline.)

roc 14y ago

> "if we once did big things but do so no longer, then what changed?" Our definition of "big", I think. I can't be sure because the article leaves it so loosely defined that one could cherry pick data to suit their mood. Is no space project acceptably "big" simply because it doesn't include humans or habitats? We've been to Mars a few times lately, by robot. We're going to earth orbit far more efficiently these days. We're launching satellites at a furious clip. And for this, even though poor nations languish without proper electricity, they do have cell phones. Not to downplay the problems that remain, but that one seems "big" to me; at least worth mentioning. To say nothing of computer vision. Processing power advancements have turned this long-suffering field into something of a white-hot ball of promise lately. The applications being developed will be at least as transformative as anything the automobile delivered. Is this not "big" because the applications will first be delivered to wealthy nations, because some of them look like "toys", or because it lacks the old-school wonder of a big-ass rocket launch? I have no idea from the article; I can only infer the author disqualifies it by its complete omission. And the author is similarly imprecise on who "we" even are. After identifying many of the problems they consider "big" as primarily international political problems, in many cases a result of international poverty, they then point fingers at the US political situation [1] when looking for answers. Is it reasonable to expect that the national feeling that fed support for a US-centric space program is lacking because there isn't similar contemporary support for solving problems overseas? Not that the US couldn't do more on some of those problems [2]. But aside from the military removal of despots, the US has no real history of possessing the national will -- or even the capability -- to solve political and poverty problems overseas. Even if we had that Cold War-era national spirit today, I'm not sure it logically follows that it would unite behind e.g. a massive political/research/development effort to light Africa. [1] A mess no doubt. And one doing grievous harm to our national R&D. [2] We could even "do more" by doing less in some cases: stopping support for programs that aren't helping, but are instead warping markets and political structures.

ArbitraryLimits 14y ago
> The applications being developed will be at least as transformative as anything the automobile delivered. Are you serious? I'm having a hard time seeing a disruptive innovation in CV anywhere.

Gravityloss 14y ago

As an amateur space historian, I view that the Apollo project is widely misunderstood by most people. It was basically a stunt: create something as quickly as possible with money as no object. It is extremely obvious in hindsight that the capabilities and solutions it created were not directly sustainable or efficient in the long term. We should not clamor for some similar projects or similar technical solutions, just "because Apollo did it". Instead we should objectively strive for reliable, flexible and affordable spacefaring. Some of the project practices and technologies that Apollo used might be good for spacefaring unchanged as they were, some might serve as basis that needs development and others are negative examples. We just shouldn't say "look they went to the moon with solution X" as the only justification for solution X. Solution X could be for example building a single huge rocket.

chubbard 14y ago
In many ways this article is just pining for other big hard made up problem for us to solve. Apollo was and is still a huge achievement, but it sure wasn't a practical solution to any real problem we faced. As much as you can say how amazing it was there are plenty of things you can say how wasteful it was too. In a lot of ways you can say the same thing about the internet. I wonder if the big problems we know we have ever really get solved or we just distract ourselves by solving made up problems. Funny thing is life seems to get better when we solve the made up problems because we solve things we didn't know we had. Oh that probably doesn't bode well for Global Warming and Cancer.
kamaal 14y ago
But they did it, and guess what- 4 decades later no one gives a damn about the money spent because adjusted to inflation and comparative to other pointless spending(wars) its the cost of chicken feed. The whole point is stunt or other wise they achieved something through brute force. The point is we aren't even attempting a brute force solution.
- Gravityloss 14y ago
  But why should we try brute force solutions? I have much bigger dreams than 12 guys walking on the moon. Routine daily commercial flights to orbit with reusable vehicles that fly many times in one week, NEO exploration, in situ resource usage. One day many of the people who comment on Hacker news can have visited space, some may even live and work there. That requires longer and more many sided and organic development than a brute force government crash program. That just would not be good resource usage.

jackfoxy 14y ago

Might be a good article, but that font hurts my eyes.

batgaijin 14y ago

I think the government needs to start creating fiefdoms that implement redundant services, a la Amazon. I think that is an amazing policy for large organizations when predicting future technological improvements is out of consideration. Use whatever technology you want and any architecture as long as you follow blah basic tenets. No bureaucracy, a simple API to be responsible for, and the ability to subsume any patented/copyrighted material ;) http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/sovimm.htm http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/sovimm.htm

kds 14y ago

Big problems - sometimes before even to be formulated and asked - require big fundamental and applicative science research programmes and the respective advancement. These are not something to be expected from venture capital. They are something resulting from deliberate state scientific and industrial policy, longterm goals, and adequate funding. Examples from 1950s-1970s: DARPA/USA, and the resp. space and rocketry programmes in the former USSR. Private capital - be it venture or not - comes later (and this is not a bad thing) when the new technologies are relatively well understood , "tameable", and can be applied to mass human consumers' or corporate needs (perceived or not, new or old) yet to be satisfied. Private capital doesn't like fundamental scientific research risks - even in the pharmacy industry. It tries to bear mostly the market-related and implementational risks. A thought experiment: Think on what funds and in what conditions happened the development of packet switching, TCP/IP protocols suite, HTTP, (examples of fundamental breakthrough). Then think the same about Facebook, for example. My point summarized => States/Governments shouldn't worry about entrepreneurship programmes, clusters, tech-business climat, etc. If adequate funding is provided for breakthrough scientific research and to the universities in general (so there are also the high-quality scientists to do it), breakthrough technology business solving big problems will happen inevitably.

MordinSolus 14y ago
On the pharmaceutical industry: part of the problem is the government and the enormous number of regulations and necessary steps to bring a drug (which still could harm people regardless of how many trials are done) to market. As such, while someone may want to research some new but unproven idea, the time and cost and risk involved would be far too great as a result of regulations. I do agree with your point though. The government should invest in research, not companies.

marshallp 14y ago

Big problems are quite easily solvable if more X prize and darpa challenges were promoted. Some big problems easily solvable today - Create artificial general intelligence - Create an immortal mice using focused ultrasound technologies (non-invasive surgery and localized drug delivery) - flying cars (drones) including air traffic control for everyone on earth (+ cargo drones, so 1 trillion air vehicles or more) (That's in addition to the important prizes already like x tricorder and darpa humanoid) Up the prize money to $1 billion each (that's nothing compared to the bailouts) and you'll see all of the above done within 1 year, they really aren't difficult if you put a little thought to it. There's more than enough money and the technological pieces are in place. It just requires some bold thinking. No one holds people to account for opportunity costs. The robocar challenge showed that robocars were possible. Governments and car companies should be held to account to account (sued in court) for not working on it sooner. That delay is millions of deaths. The same is true for other techs as mentioned above. Some economic indicators need to be put in place for tech development that isn't being done (opportunity cost accounting).

arethuza 14y ago
I don't think I'd regard "artifical general intelligence" as "easily solvable" - unless I've missed some developments in the field I don't think we are much closer to understanding how to engineer a general human-level intelligence than we were 20 or 30 years ago.
- marshallp 14y ago
  Machine learning has cracked any problem put in it's path. AI hasn't been done yet because no one's actually tried. There's the Loebner Prize but it's too easy (needs to be multi-month and with difficult challenges like write an essay or computer program) and there's no heavyweight turing tests with heavyweight teams (in the ballpark "heavweightness" are search engines and ibm watson).
  - arethuza 14y ago
    "AI hasn't been done yet because no one's actually tried." Researchers have been trying to create some kind of framework for general intelligence since the 1950s with multiple governments (notably the US, EU and Japanese) throwing billions at it, with relatively little results - resulting in things like the great AI Winter. We have lots of clever focused systems now that are made feasible by the enormous capacity of modern hardware, but I'm not convinced that we have made much fundamental progress on real human level general intelligence. Note that I do think that general AI is possible - it's what motivated me to get postgrad AI research, I just think that it is a long way off. YMMV.

loup-vaillant 14y ago

[…] On a larger scale, the Council inaugurated a set of projects ambitious both in scope and name, intended to be Manhattan Projects for a new age: Project Eden sought clinical immortality, Project Janus sought FTL travel, and Project Icarus sought to use solar satellites to harvest the light of the sun, making energy not just cheap, but free. With these accomplishments, the Council sought to win eternal loyalty from its citizenry. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7406866/15/To-the-Stars http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7406866/15/To-the-Stars Now we're talking grandiose programs that could very well have the support of the population. (Even project Eden: give people actual hope of escaping Death, and most will cease to object.) If a governance actually successfully triggers such accomplishments, I'm sure going to like it more. Now if we stay down to earth, Friendly AI is probably the best bet: it looks less impossible, and would have much more impact.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago
You another Methods of Rationality reader?
- loup-vaillant 14y ago
  Actually, I studied the conspiracy's¹ Scrolls² before reading it, but… yeah. [1] http://lesswrong.com/ http://lesswrong.com/ [2] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences

droithomme 14y ago

Arg this article is infuriating. His conclusion is that only government taking the initiative will fix things: "political leaders and the public must care to solve a problem". He mentions SpaceX, but only in the context that its founder is one of the members of Founders Fund. Not a word about SpaceX building ships to go to Mars. Because that doesn't fit the narrative that only government can solve problems. A big problem now is energy. The solution is nuclear. Right now in the US government and the public's main role in nuclear is to ban the solution, which is what has created the problem. In France though the public and government didn't ban the solution to the problem and so 78.8% of their electricity comes from nuclear, without any disasters in over 30 years of operation, and a nationwide system of incredibly cheap high speed electric trains powered by this network.

drumdance 14y ago
I'm generally pro-nuclear, but a geoligist friend of mine who worked at Yucca mountain (where the government wants to sequester waste) said there was no way they could guarantee long term safety. I don't know what the exact risk is, but when you're working on ten-thousand-year timescales it's worth being a little cautious.
- adrianN 14y ago
  The solution to nuclear waste is burning it up in breeder reactors. Who don't have to store the stuff for aeons if we risk producing weapons grade material in between.
zerostar07 14y ago
- Government solved the problem of building rockets first. - The falling costs of green energy make it a mid-term solution too.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard

namank 14y ago

Because back then 'big' used to mean engineering advances. Now it means people-oriented/social/feel-good advances.

freyr 14y ago
Now 'big' means $1B. Whatever cashes out.
- ludovicurbain 14y ago
  Short but to the point. People have no idea how many potentially great scientists or engineers are employed by the finance industry, which comically is also the only industry that produces nothing.

digeridoo 14y ago

Much sits in the way between invention and nirvana. We have to face the fact that earth is over-crowded with global infrastructure, rules, economic barriers, borders, financial systems, controlled by a small number of distant, territorial governments. This prevents us from moving forward in some of the areas most critical to human civilization, such as transportation and energy. What I would really like to see is a revolution in governance. There is a tremendous mistake in current thinking that global problems require global solutions. As a result, government and economic power is moving in the wrong direction. Today's global problems were caused locally, by every car, every meter of asphalt, every gram of sugar, every cheap t-shirt, every plastic bag, every poor mortgage, etc. These problems require local solutions. National borders are enormous societal barriers. If one country has better governance than another, only a small percentage of people will consider moving, if even allowed. As a result, better national policy is slow to attract, slow to spread, slow to evolve, and limited in its effectiveness. Instead of empowering national or supra-national governments in a quest for global solutions, we should face global problems at their root and empower the central pillar of human civilization in the 21st century: the city. The human economy has the remarkable characteristic that greater population density and better lives can go hand in hand. If great technologists, artists, teachers, scientists, merchants, politicians, industrialists, and laborers come together, that's when great things happen. That's when ideas start to take root and become reality. National governance and poor economic policy is squeezing the city into a menial role. They do not have the economic power or independence to make different rules or undertake great projects. The benefits of the existing population density is the only thing that still makes cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles attractive. A trip to Dubai, Singapore, Macau, or Hong Kong will give you a glimpse of what cities can do once empowered, even when relatively isolated. Imagine a nation of cities trying to out-class each other and trying to attract and keep their citizens.

ludovicurbain 14y ago

It's about the people. 1) people have no ambition. If you gave me google today, I'd be pondering how to turn that into a hundred googles, not relaxing on my private island beach. And I would only make those hundred googles in order to afford much more expensive stuff, such as an orbital elevator and much much more. And I would spend a few billions right ahead on education and fusion, since both of those have major ROI anyway. 2) nobody cares about education. with dumber people it's hard to achieve bigger results. And yes, since the loss of the soviet moscow university and the decline of european education, there are no more good schools in the world (the US never counted since it merely drained and never trained, Apollo is just one of the examples) and the only bit of hope comes from self-teaching. But don't worry, I think the chinese have plans for education, and space, and quite soon I expect Athem to buy fusion for themselves since all the other countries don't care.

mercuryrising 14y ago

We no longer have leaders with the vision to collaborate on a level large enough to impress scientists today. Going to the moon - everyone can see the moon, it's a very achievable goal, we put a person on that big rock up there. It's easy to understand, but challenging enough that we still marvel at it. This was fueled by a desire to win against our competitors. The competition against another superpower created the desire to win. Net benefit to humanity: A cool line to write on a resume. Nuclear fusion (not the best example, as we have stuff like NREL, but it will work) - a little bit more challenging. Closest example: We made a sun right here! It's much more difficult to get people to understand the impact that nuclear fusion would have. And, it has the 'nuclear' word attached to it. Politicians don't understand it (and wouldn't get any money from it). The general population doesn't care about it, because to them, the outlet will always be magical. Net benefit to humanity: The possibility to reverse global warming, unlimited clean water, free power, and solving a 'real' problem. This makes me think of the superconducting super collider[1]. I know we still do amazing science and amazing things, but we choose to do them in the military, behind closed doors for the benefit of ourselves, rather than the benefit of humanity. The 'golden ages' of history have generally occurred when society turned towards mathematicians, engineers, and scientists and basically said 'we don't know what you're doing, but we know it's important'. The trouble today is that everyone has an equal say on all issues (by having one vote, you are mapping a column of varying stances into one single value), regardless of how much they understand what they're talking about. It makes me kind of wonder why an angel wouldn't come in and just fund some of the projects the government should be funding. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider

sopooneo 14y ago

Can someone clue me in. "They brought back little—841 pounds of old rocks, Aldrin's smuggled aesthetic bliss". What is meant by "aesthetic bliss"? Is that a reference to something?

mcguire 14y ago
109:43:16 Aldrin: Beautiful view! 109:43:18 Armstrong: Isn't that something! Magnificent sight out here. 109:43:24 Aldrin: Magnificent desolation. (Long Pause) -- http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.step.html http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.step.html
- sopooneo 14y ago
  Thank you. So during that long pause Aldrin was soaking up the scenery and thereby gaining "aesthetic bliss"? If that is the case, "smuggled" just seems a strange word choice. If that's not it, I guess I'm just being dense because I don't get it.
  - jpontin 14y ago
    I really just meant: that aesthetic bliss was a fairly unlikely emotion for an Air Force pilot and MIT-trained PhD in astronautics to bring aboard the Lunar Module and bring out on the surface of the Moon. Hence, "smuggled".

EricDeb 14y ago

I would love to see more government funded research. There are so many problems that, if tackled via the unregulated private sector, have misaligned incentives.

wissler 14y ago

The reason we don't achieve lofty visions is that those who would pursue them are being smothered by nationalism. It is ironic that the Apollo mission success is being held out as the ideal (as it always is) because its success is what heralded this crushing nationalism to be brought down upon all our heads. But I know, no one wants to hear this. That's because they're nationalists. All they can see is nationalist solutions to problems, and since that IS the problem, nothing will change.

andyl 14y ago

Part of the issue IMHO is that we need a big enemy to tackle big projects. ALCAN highway - 1800 miles long - done in 9 months during WW2. MoonShot - done in 9 years during the cold war. Big enemies unify the people.

deleted 14y ago

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InclinedPlane 14y ago

We still do, but we're no longer in an existential war with a major world power so we tend to avoid blank-check crash-development programs. Let me take a moment here to debunk the concept that the Apollo program was such a good thing. I love the Apollo program, I think it was a marvelous thing and a remarkable achievement. It remains deeply inspirational. But it was flawed. Deeply, deeply flawed. It was a war-time stunt more than anything. It expended vast amounts of resources for very little practical benefit, even on a basic "blue sky" research level. At the end of Apollo we had spent somewhere around a hundred billion dollars (in today's money) and yet we were little closer to the moon than before. It still cost us a tremendous billion dollars a passenger or more to put a man on the moon for at most a few days. Because Apollo was a race. We didn't build infrastructure, we didn't build systems that made spaceflight easier. And then afterward when we attempted to build infrastructure with the Shuttle and the ISS we screwed up so badly that it ended up being even more expensive to get to LEO than it had been to get to the Moon with Apollo. We spent a quarter of a trillion dollars building the ISS and it hasn't provided as much benefit toward exploring or colonizing the solar system as you'd expect spending that much money should. The idea that we need big government projects to solve "big" problems is part of the problem. What we need is merely basic research and sound engineering. As it turns out, we are starting to solve big problems. It's happening right under our noses. In space exploration SpaceX is rapidly leading the way to a new renaissance of commercial spaceflight and exploration (both manned and unmanned). They have already built the most cost effective launch vehicle in existence and are in the midst of building a reusable launch vehicle, a heavy lift launcher, and a super heavy lift launcher that will dwarf the Saturn V. All of which should facilitate the creation of a great deal of industrial infrastructure in Earth orbit which will reduce the barrier to exploration of the solar system. Let's look at other projects which could be considered "big problems" or engineering marvels. In many cases it's been a matter of engineering marvels becoming commonplace. Enormous bridges, tunnels, transoceanic cables, etc. all of these things are no longer marvels they are just ordinary engineering. The channel tunnel was a tremendous engineering marvel, but today it has become just an accepted matter of engineering, and many similarly audacious tunnel projects have been completed since, to relatively minor fanfare. The same goes for bridges. And today there is always at least one transoceanic fiber optical cable in the midst of being laid down. Meanwhile, let's look at the big problems of our age, such as cancer, disease, poverty. In the last half century several countries have pulled themselves out of poverty and become developed countries (South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) And several other countries are on the same path. A smaller percentage of the world is in poverty today than throughout history. Several types of cancer today have 80-90% or higher average survival rates. Major diseases (smallpox, rinderpest) have been eradicated. And major advances against diseases such as malaria and AIDS are being made by the day. In some cases due to extensive amounts of resources being brought to bear and in other cases merely due to the ordinary workings of trade and industry. There are many big problems that remain unsolved, of course, but we should not wallow in the mistaken notion that we are any less capable of tackling such problems or that we need to mobilize heaven and Earth in order to make progress.

khitchdee 14y ago

To solve larger problems, you need to strategize over longer periods of time. As our attention spans are getting shorter, so is our longer term corporate focus. Look at Intel as an example of an established corporate player of over 40 years -- probably amongst the oldest in the high tech industry. Most of their energy right now is consumed in defining a strategy for supplying chips to the mobile sector. This, when they are the established leader on PC chips. If such a large and old corporation is not impervious to market pressures, where's all the industry's momentum going?