I really shouldn't give the technology guys such a hard time. What they're doing is important. Even if they're individually working on some esoteric technology like developing a language to help business information systems talk to each other, or whatever, all of this development helping the tools get easier to use, smarter, and less visible.
For a lot of these guys, making our machines smarter is like a religious quest, and I can respect that. The Japanese Theory says that as long as the technology keeps getting better, we don't have to worry so much about the population explosion or resource consumption. With good technology, we'll find new ways to use resources, or make resources... let's say we can use smarter machines to help us design advanced energy systems or bacteria that can eat pollution.
I like the idea of the Japanese Theory, and if you compare the resource use of Scandinavia and, say, China, India and Ukraine, it seems to be working pretty well. Scandinavians use good technology to consume much fewer resources per capita, and even so they have a much higher standard of living than most of the rest of the world.
My only beef with the Japanese Theory is that I'm not sure it will save us in time. We're going to start to need these advanced energy systems and exotic technologies pretty soon, and I'm not sure they'll be there when we need them.
I was talking to a chemical engineer in Utrecht about this--conversation over beer kinda thing--and I asked him, with his experience in the development of new materials, if the Japanese Theory is right, if we'll get there in time. He said no, materials aren't improving nearly fast enough as we need them to.
But at least the technology guys are still trying, and who knows? We might get lucky.
Posted by case at July 13, 2004 04:13 PM