TECHNOLOGY IN A PARADIGM CENTURY

RALPH SANDERS

There is reason to believe the pace of technological
growth will be slower in the decades ahead

Throughout history, technological developments have affected the lives of human beings. The connection between hardware and behavior affects the problems that society must address. Consequently, the characteristics of any technological enterprise influence the way in which humans live. The more we understand the nature of technology and technological change, the better prepared we are for meeting current as well as future challenges.

Many would perhaps argue that the 19th and 20th centuries have witnessed an unheralded pace of technological change. Indeed, a number of seminal advances in technology have taken place. It is instructive to look at the most important of these developments, and the impact they have had on society. An equally fascinating exercise is to look ahead within the 21st century, to speculate on how rapidly technologies will change, and with what probable social consequences. In my view, the 21st century will prove a period of “paradigm growth,” where improvements in technology will be firmly based on past achievements and existing technologies will continue to be refined and adapted, but fewer seminal technological breakthroughs will occur.

PATTERNS OF GROWTH

Today, it is commonplace for people to talk in terms of technological revolutions. Such revolutions are made up of component technologies progressing at an increasingly swift pace. Growth does not progress at random, but obeys a “natural law,” the same law that governs living organisms. Growth takes place rapidly during infancy, accelerates during youth, slows down during maturity, and decelerates ever more during old age.

The 20th century saw an exuberant expansion of technological knowledge during the stages of infancy and youth. The speed of seminal technological breakthroughs appeared mind-boggling. Less than 15 years after Wilbur and Orville Wright invented the airplane, fighter aircraft battled in the skies above France; some 70 years after the first flight at Kitty Hawk, the Boeing 747 flew more than 300 passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. Yet, in its essential design, the airplane at the end of the 20th century resembled the aircraft of the 1920s and 1930s. The Super DC-8 of 1970 looked very much like the DC-3 of 1936.

During infancy and youth, technological growth experiences “quantum jumps.” In a quantum jump, a new technology’s performance exceeds that of an older one by a significant factor, usually at less cost per unit. The potential of the new outpaces that of the old. As a result, a qualitative change takes place not only in the technology itself, but also in the environment in which humans relate to altered circumstances.

In technological terms, the quantum jump is not the discovery of fundamental scientific principles on which researchers designed new technologies. Rather, it is the development of some practical hardware that has a decisive impact on the way that humans do or make things, and includes the important societal changes that result from the hardware development. In computers, for example, the quantum jump is not the direct contributions of Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Leibniz, and Charles Babbage (as these took place in science and not technology), but the development of the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) in 1942. This machine was an incredibly high-speed, electronic, digital device that soon, with several improvements, led to instruments that could do much more in more effective ways.

There were a few technological quantum jumps in the late 19th century and many more throughout the 20th century. By the end of the 20th century, inventors brought about an exponential rate in technology’s knowledge expansion, but such high rates of knowledge growth cannot be sustained indefinitely. As a result, after a period of time, a deflection always takes place. This deflection, in turn, forces inventors to seek new quantum jumps.

In simple terms, this means that researchers can improve the materials and their arrangement of a discrete technology only so much. As an example, engineers soon found that the piston engine of aircraft could not perform effectively beyond 400 to 500 mph. They thus invented the jet engine (a quantum jump) to overcome that limitation. An F-86 jet set a world speed record of 670 mph in 1948.

As a result of a quantum jump, a qualitative change takes place. The shift is so great that one no longer deals with mere increments of improvement, but with appreciably altered circumstances. In this case, a sharp qualitative change in outlook occurred with the arrival of jet aircraft. The disparity between the piston and jet engine proved so acute that the speed of advanced jets is reckoned in terms of the speed of sound (Mach), rather than in miles per hour. A business executive now thinks nothing of leaving home in New York in the morning for a meeting that afternoon in California.

Today, many people would suggest that we are living through a revolutionary technological age. By “revolutionary” they mean a swift succession of seminal breakthroughs, which require society to adapt to acutely new conditions. For instance, the rapid pace of innovations in computers means a state-of-the-art model is likely to become obsolete, or a closeout special, about a year after it went on the market.

Technological revolutions are made up of component technologies progressing at a fast rate. Although not exclusively, today’s technological change chiefly is composed of a variety of electronic devices whose impact is proving profound. In the 20th century, quantum jumps in technology have related chiefly to the fields of movement, information, and health.

MOVEMENT TECHNOLOGIES

The internal combustion engine enabled vehicles to move swiftly on land, giving rise to the age of the automobile. Piston and jet engines enabled airplanes to fly at increasingly faster speeds. To these quantum jumps we should add the rocket, which made possible aerospace flight, ushering in the space age.

Historians in the 25th century probably would select man’s landing on the moon as the most important event of the 20th century. For the first time, humans trod on a terrestrial body other than their own. It may take some centuries before exploring and colonizing in space will dramatically affect the human species. The invention of the rocket, from the time of Robert Goddard’s experimental flights in the 1920s to the achievements of the German engineers during World War II, enabled scientists to put a large variety of satellites into Earth orbit, vastly increasing our knowledge of our planet and its space environment. Among other functions, the space shuttle in the 1980s and 1990s ferried crews to and from space, hauled cargo, and recovered and deployed satellites. We still have not planned, let alone developed, a non-experimental, operational vehicle that can fly in interplanetary space and beyond.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

Quantum jumps in the technologies of information have proved as important as those of movement, and maybe more so. Four revolutionary information technologies deserve special attention: telephones; television; mainframe and personal computers (including hand-held ones); and the Internet.

Telephones
An instrument for conveying speech over distances by converting sound into electric impulses sent through wires, the telephone truly brought a communications revolution to millions. From Alexander Graham Bell’s first successful telephone transmission in 1876 and the beginnings of the long-lived American Telephone and Telegraph Company monopoly in the early 1900s, telephones have transformed the way people communicate and do business. In 1998, according to US Department of Commerce (DOC) data, the US telecommunications sector brought in $304 billion in revenues, and employed 1.8 million people.

Television
Television involves the electronic transmission of moving images with accompanying sound, usually sent in color, to dispersed screens in homes and other localities. It has become a platitude to suggest that television has changed the world in a dramatic way. Certainly, television has brought about acute changes in politics (e.g., the presidential campaign debates), education, entertainment, and other aspects of American life. The first true television system appeared in England in 1926. In 1932, the Radio Corporation of America first demonstrated all-electronic television, a formidable quantum jump for that technology. After World War II, people in many countries began to watch television on a regular basis, particularly after the arrival of color television in the 1950s. Since then, a host of innovations has appeared, the latest being digital television near the end of the 20th century.

Computers
The ability of computers to perform complex calculations rapidly and to compile, correlate, and select data has transformed the world in fundamental ways. During World War II, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania achieved a quantum jump by building a high-speed electronic computer, ENIAC, the first true modern computer. Two discoveries in the 1950s, magnetic core memory and the transistor circuit (instead of vacuum tubes), made it possible to develop highly reliable computers. A little more than a decade after the ENIAC’s development, many firms and government agencies began using mainframe computers to perform engineering and managerial functions. The ability to store and retrieve huge amounts of data added to the computer’s impact on how business is conducted.

The miniaturization revolution triggered by the invention of the silicon chip (a quantum jump) made possible the personal computer, other small information devices, and the embedding of information and commands into a large number of tools, instruments, and appliances. In the future, it is likely that there will be a growing convergence among once disparate instruments, such as personal computers, telephones, and television. In much of the industrialized world, the provision of digital information has become the fastest growing enterprise. Libraries have computerized their data and paper records have largely disappeared, prompting new archiving questions (see page 53).

The Internet
The latest quantum jump in information technologies is the Internet, an innovation achieved by arranging existing information hardware. In simple terms, the Internet is the world’s largest group of interactive computer networks. All the computers connected to this network exchange messages (see page 45 ).

The Internet’s ability to shrink the world is accelerating in the 21st century, speeding the trend toward globalization. It originated in the 1960s as a military system; by the 1980s a plethora of improvements occurred and the number of users began to soar. Most Internet growth in the 1990s revolved around the World Wide Web, pages of data using codes and linked in a uniform way. By 1998, consumers could buy almost anything on the Internet. In the fourth quarter of 1999, when DOC began tallying online sales, $5.3 billion worth of goods and services were purchased online. In 2000, according to Internet research firm Forrester Research, online shoppers will spend an estimated $45 billion.

HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES

The field of health experienced several quantum jumps in the 19th and 20th centuries. Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, Paul Ehrlich, and other scientists showed that living microorganisms caused infections, and they designed vaccines and antitoxins to combat these diseases. By 1941, Alexander Fleming introduced a novel quantum jump with the discovery of penicillin, an antibacterial agent. Researchers then produced a series of improved antibiotics. As new strains of bacteria built up resistance to antibiotics, doctors suggested not only a need for new wonder drugs, but also that patients use the available drugs more wisely.

In 1953, James Watson’s and Francis Crick’s discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the molecule that forms the genetic material of all cellular organisms, proved a quantum jump in science. The understanding of DNA and its role changed how scientists view the structure of living organisms, and has a potentially enormous impact on the health of humans in the 20th century and beyond. The discovery of DNA has opened the field of genetic engineering, which should lead to major strides in increasing the world’s food production and in combating diseases (see page 13). With the aid of computers, the genetic code is being mapped. Genetic tests are being developed for certain inherited disorders, such as cystic fibrosis. The ultimate medical use of DNA is gene therapy, delivering normal genes to cure a wide range of untreatable diseases. The full effectiveness of genetic engineering in curing disease has not yet been realized, though some major applications no doubt will be found in the future.

In fact, quantum jumps in health technologies in the 21st century might very well prove more frequent and profound than the technologies that capture our fancy today. An improved Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) might enable patients earmarked for future heart transplants to wait with greater safety for longer periods of time. Researchers might also gain further insights into the chemical processes that guide various brain functions, and discover new chemical catalysts of cancer cell growth.

THE PARADIGM AGE

For the most part, however, it seems likely that the exponential growth in the current technological revolution will abate in the 21st century. Over time, existing technological progress must enter an age of maturity and of old age, with an inevitable slackening in the number of seminal breakthroughs. The law of diminishing returns applies as much to technological revolutions as it does to economics. Individual technologies can be pushed only so far; society can accommodate itself only so much to the changes produced. As the base of technological growth broadens, it becomes increasingly difficult to add each new, larger unit of progress.

In the 21st century, thus, we live in the age of the “paradigm.” As defined by Thomas Kuhn, who applied it to science, paradigms are the new assumptions that shatter prior theories, and produce additional bodies of discrete knowledge that researchers routinely explore before arriving at new seminal breakthroughs. Adapted to apply to technology, the word “paradigm” refers to universally recognized technological achievements that for a time provide problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. For Kuhn, the practitioners are scientists; for me, they are the inventors and engineers who advance our technologies and the decision-makers who help society adapt to their consequences. The paradigm shift in science, which happens when new facts and observations make a once-useful theory obsolete, can take place well before a “new real breakthrough” invention appears.

In science, after the quantum jumps of Newton’s laws and Einstein’s laws, “normal science” (according to Kuhn’s paradigm) took hold and scientific research tended to take the form of puzzle-solving, rather than exploring the unknown. Similarly, in the technology arena, the Wright brothers first produced the seminal technology of the heavier-than-air machine, a vehicle that departed markedly from the kinds of movement that humans had known up to then. Humans could now fly through the air at speeds faster than they had experienced on the ground. Subsequently, researchers focused on improving the existing “normal hardware” of the airplane in an incremental way. Powered flight progressed from wood, cloth, and guy-wire contraptions to aluminum and steel construction. Researchers invented such technologies as the automatic pilot, retractable landing gears, and cockpit controls, as well as new, bigger, and improved airframe configurations.

One should remember that the paradigm sometimes follows not only a major technological seminal event, but also an unexpected one. During the paradigm phase, inventors have to deal with previous novelties that may have unforeseen consequences. Researchers first must discover the kinds of questions that they have to solve in the new, “normal technology,” in order to come up with even incremental improvements in that technology and its social context. As an aside, because technology is a more accessible source of facts, it has often played a critical role in the rise of a new science.

The inventions that come out of “normal technology” need not prove inconsequential. Just as many of the discoveries by scientists who toiled in explaining and elaborating “normal science” earned Nobel Prizes, many inventors produced contraptions that significantly improved the performance of existing “normal technology.” In information technology, for example, the invention of special software for graphics, laptop computers, and notebook computers proved more than marginal. Nonetheless, they did not produce a new technological breakthrough that drastically changed the way in which humans worked in a particular field.

FEWER AND LATER

I am not suggesting that seminal breakthroughs in technologies no longer will appear in the 21st century. In exploiting the “normal technology” of the 20th century, researchers have come up with significant advances. In a few cases, they produced quantum jumps (e.g., arrangements of the Internet). Our researchers have not exhausted their creative talents to the extent that they no longer can invent significantly different hardware. However, at present, it is difficult to visualize the seminal technological events that might arise late in the 21st century.

Humans will produce fewer of these exceptional changes in technology and, for the most part, those that do appear will show up later in the century. Instead, humans will use their enormous intellectual resources throughout most of the century to exploit the break-throughs that already have taken place. Not everyone will agree with this prediction, of course. Those nurtured in the 20th-century zeitgeist of endless technological change probably will reject the idea of a technological slowdown in the 21st century. Nonetheless, exactly because so many people today deeply believe in eternal technological revolution, it is necessary to emphasize the influence of the paradigm and its slowdown on breakthroughs.

A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE

What issues are likely to arise in a 21st century dominated by the paradigm? First, the slowdown of technological breakthroughs may foster greater economic equality. The last 40 years have witnessed increasing inequality of wealth in developed countries, especially in the United States. Much of this concentration of wealth has occurred as owners of the new technologies, chiefly related to the information business, have reaped great returns. However, as the pace of technological growth slows, so will the financial rewards for investing in these technologies. Furthermore, as competition for labor grows, because of the many new productive ways in which industry can use workers, in the new paradigm century this inequality is likely to be reduced. Even less affluent people will become more financially secure. Although slowdowns in technology are generally considered unfavorable, slowdowns do allow people time to adjust to some of the disruptive events that rapid change brings. In short, although the growth in technology inevitably slows down, the slowdown is not necessarily bad.

Second, a slowdown might serve as a welcome reality check. If humans insist on catering to a belief in an endless flow of those technologies that enjoyed fast growth in the 20th century, in the 21st century we stand a chance of over-investing in the wrong technological enterprises. If we cannot forecast which technologies will experience a slowdown, we could waste a lot of resources on technologies that will become increasingly less useful and profitable. In a worst-case scenario, we will pour more and more money into those technologies that will benefit humans less and less. Just as importantly, we very well could miss opportunities to invest in new developments that give a promise of producing quantum jumps.

Although information technology is now proving the engine of US economic growth, other promising technological fields very likely might develop throughout the century. It is important to search continually for potential technologies, including those not now progressing swiftly, and determine the ones likely to prove the most promising.

Third, there is a looming problem associated with the forces that advance technology. Until very recently, most seminal technological advances resulted from government sponsorship, chiefly defense (advanced weapons and their civilian applications), space (man-on-the-moon, Earth satellites), and health (yellow fever cure). Today, the private sector has become the heaviest investor in our most rapidly growing hardware, i.e., information technology.

In a way, we should welcome this trend. It means that the most promising technologies are tied to markets and, thus, to economic realities. Yet, a danger might arise if American society becomes so mesmerized by private-sector funding that it neglects those technologies for which the public sector remains the natural sponsor. Obviously, threats to national security would stimulate government spending for weapons and ancillary equipment. However, other promising technologies might appear that initially will earn no profits and, therefore, might not attract adequate funding by the private sector. At present, genetic engineering shows no sign of earning quick profits, yet if we believe in its long-term future, the public sector might have to make early investments. Such technologies might come into being in the fields of education and health, and have an important impact on the quality of life.

Fourth, in this age of rapidly growing technology, the focus is largely on one chief consequence— globalization. Catering to markets worldwide has become a hallmark of doing business. Enterprises now seek to sell their products abroad, or open subsidiaries in other countries. Today, what happens in one nation can have a profound impact on others (see page 79). Of importance to this discussion, all nations, including the United States, have limited technological resources. Consequently, they no longer can achieve self-sufficiency across a wide range of technologies, but rather tend to specialize in certain technologies. The United States no longer manufactures television sets, but concentrates on such products as high-tech commercial airplanes and specialized computers.

Given the growing importance of globalization, we confront the danger of overestimating the power of the market and underestimating the continued enormous vitality of politics and the potency of the nation-state. Such a mistake could prompt erroneous decisions. For example, while globalization would seem to dictate that nothing can stop the movement of products in international trade, under particular circumstances the nation-state can stop specific movements with a consequent slowdown in associated technological growth.

During the Cold War, the United States prevented certain technological exports or imports to communist countries. Such controls remain in place today for China, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and other countries. Not only will nations continue to exercise political power, but people, especially in organized movements, will do likewise. The anti-globalization demonstrations in Seattle in 1999 and in Washington, DC, in 2000 showed that people will not let politics die or even become feeble. We must assume that politics will continue to exert its influence despite the rapid growth of technology and its marriage to markets. Economics will not become omnipotent.

Last, if any information technology seems to defy the slowdown called for in a paradigm age, it is the Internet. In 1998, 23 percent of American households were connected to the Internet, a small share compared to the 98 percent of American households that owned at least one television set. With several new Internet products and services coming onto the market, it seems likely that this figure will climb considerably during the 21st century. However, the Internet, including the World Wide Web, is now growing so fast that a slowdown by the middle of the century seems likely. The growth rate of new Internet users as well as the networks’ hardware and software improvements cannot continue indefinitely. After a while, it is likely that the basic structure of the Internet, networks of interconnected computers, will not change markedly.

An age of technological slowdowns might unleash a number of consequences. Those who own stock in the buoyant market that usually accompanies technological growth could suffer major losses if a slowdown occurs. In another downside, too many students might be studying information-related disciplines and the country might invest too heavily in associated education and training programs. In addition, unemployment in information industries and social unrest appear possible.

A FINAL WORD

It is time to jettison the belief that the 21st century will witness an endless continuation of the dramatic, seminal breakthroughs in technology that characterized the 20th century. Instead, we have to adjust to the paradigm nature of the 21st century. If my assessment that a slowdown will occur is correct, as a society we might experience more breathing room and, thus, confront fewer crises. If that is the case, we should be better prepared to deal with issues that do appear.

Ralph Sanders (CC ‘99) is the J. Carlton Ward Jr. Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the National Defense University/Industrial College of the Armed Forces. He has published and lectured frequently on the subjects of national security policy, science and technology, and executive decision-making.

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