The Hindu Business Line : Techno-mapping the future

Five Regions of the Future offers `a geography of technology' to help better map the future, because we are moving into `the most technologically sophisticated century in our planet's history'. Ideal weekend read, to connect with th e unfolding reality, says D. Murali.

STOP fretting about problems. The real issue is that "we are at one of those rare times in history when we have more solutions than we have problems," aver Joel A. Barker and Scott W. Erickson, in Five Regions of the Future, from Penguin (www.penguin.com).

The authors, who have "more than sixty years of combined experience in the study of the future," see `high-tech' as a thing of the past, a phrase that is `so broad as to be virtually meaningless', and exhort businesses, therefore, "to look at the interplay of technology, business, and daily life."

The book offers `a geography of technology' to help better map the future, because we are moving into "the most technologically sophisticated century in our planet's history". The five `TechnEcology Regions' are ST, LMT, LOT, NT and HT, where the first letter stands for super, limits, local, nature and human.

But what is TechnEcology? "A complex ecosystem of technology," the authors define. "Technology is a set of tools, techniques and knowledge that can be used in combination or separately to solve problems," and "an ecosystem is a complex, integrated system made up of diverse living organisms that operate in competition and collaboration within the system's boundaries."

Though TechnEcologies are the result of human discoveries, inventions and innovations, they are complex owing to the irrelevance of natural time and forces. "They are driven by the creative will of the human species and are capable of evolving at an amazing speed," point out the authors. They cite the example of how computers moved in less than fifty years "from initial emergence as a very primitive fifty-ton, water-cooled, building-sized machine to a three-pound portable device that is a million times faster and at least a million times more complex." Things are happening at `tech time', that is, "the time it takes to give birth to next generation of technology."

The authors rue that many companies are launching products and services without understanding the connection these might have with one or more of the five regions. Also, "National policies are written that support one region over another for no good reason." Worse still, policies are drawn so awkwardly that they interfere with "the forces of a free market that are trying to help these technological regions develop and compete."

Super Tech

Let's begin the tour with the Super Tech region. This has the advantage of long history, and high media coverage, as evidenced by popular words like Super man, superpower, supercomputer and superstar. Theme here has been `better, bigger, faster, and stronger.' Super Techers consider that superabundance makes it irrelevant to recycle or to worry about resource depletion; `science and technology, given enough time and money, can solve all problems,' they think; and they bet on robots and "mechanical hearts, artificial kidneys, and electronic eyes."

To affirm their faith, there is `extensive articulation' in science fiction and also works by Herman Kahn, R. Buckminster Fuller, Julian Simon, Gerard O'Neill, Earl Joseph, and Bjørn Lomborg.

Where do we get the materials to sustain the Super Tech ambition? Asteroid belt! "In an asteroid just one kilometre in diameter you would find 30 million tons of nickel, 1.5 million tons of cobalt, and 7,500 tons of platinum. And, according to NASA studies, there are at least one million asteroids of that size."

Catch up with `transmission over the Solar Web System', timeline 2050, for a glimpse of the Super Tech ecosystem!

Limits Tech

In contrast with the Super Techers, proponents of Limits Tech focus on "overpopulation, increasing pollution, ozone depletion, destruction of fisheries and estuaries, and global warming." The world has physical limits, remind the Limits Techers. For instance, antibiotics were thought to be good in any quantity, but now we know that overuse can create superresistant bugs! Advocates of Limits Tech thinking cited in the book are Rachel Carson who `pointed out that birds at more insects than any insecticide could kill'; Paul Ehrlich who computed `the carrying capacity of the planet'; Garrett Hardin whose 1968 essay `Tragedy of the Commons' described the dilemma of the environment; Donella and Dennis Meadows who wrote the definitive book `The Limits to Growth'; Daniel Quinn who examines `the unthinking behaviours of humans'; Stuart L. Pimm whose book is `an audit of the natural world'; and Amory Lovins, the founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Learn in the Limits chapter about `negawatts', which is "the measurable equivalent of watt of energy not used"; superinsulation of homes using SIPS or stranded particle board and polyurethane foam; aerogel's ability to reduce energy use; superconducting cable to help create a `global energy grid'; microlaser lights which can give the same light, and last a thousand times longer, while only using 10 per cent of power that incandescent lights use; and TDP or thermal depolymerisation process to make waste products into energy assets. Birth control, high-mileage automobiles, substitution, co-products, and anti-antibiotics are also discussed. E-book is a Limits Tech book. Ever heard about the idea of sending a swarm of `pico' satellites, which weigh less than one kilogram?

Local Tech

Move on then to the third region. The chapter begins by talking about a little book, Small Is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher, who coined phrases such as intermediate or appropriate technology, and `Buddhist economics' to emphasise that "production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life."

For Local Techers, `village' is the model for human settlement, note Barker and Erickson. "Villages or communities should not be too big, or they will be dehumanising. But they should not be too small either, or they may miss the richness of variety in life."

Other supporters of the Local Tech notion are Lester R. Brown and Hazel Henderson. Also, David Morris who authored `The Carbohydrate Economy'.

Energy for Local Tech region comes from windmills, waves, photovoltaic (PV) panels, solar chimneys, and run-of-the-river hydro. "In the late 1970s the biggest turbines could generate only about 10 kilowatts each. But now the scale has increased to produce 2.5 and 3.6 megawatt turbines," chronicles the book about developments in the windmill technology. Solutions for Local Techers include `fog nets' to extract moisture from air, as Chile has demonstrated; and TWIKE, which is `a combination car and bike', in use since 1997, in Switzerland. Read also about rollerblades `for decent speed, exercise, and joy'; Segway, `going 12 miles an hour'; light rail built with `lightweight materials like carbon fibre'; the Zeppelin, which has `reentered the airship market'; clivus multrum, `a waterless toilet'; and stereolithography, which works by `putting down thin layers of material that build up into a three-dimensional object'.

Nature Tech

Enter the fourth region, with tools that are not human-made. Advocates of Nature Tech are much less well known because "this region has really been camouflaged by the explosive birth of biotechnology," opine the authors. They study how James Watson and Francis Crick deciphered `the double-helix structure of DNA in 1954'; James Lovelock and Lyn Margulis, according to whom "the individual living organisms that make up the 106 different ecosystems so far discovered are, in a sense, the organs, muscles, and nerve tissues of the largest living system - Planet Earth"; Michael Rothschile, author of `Bionomics: Economy as Ecosystem'; William McDonough and Michael Braungart, who said that humans can interact with nature without destroying her; and Janine M. Benyus, whose biomimicry idea was about copying and adapting `solutions developed by living organisms to solve our own problems'.

Energy examples in this region are hydrogen (as from green algae chlamydomonas reinhardtii); and ethanol (using, say, "a fungus that has been engineered to convert cellulose in corn waste to sugars"). Coloured cotton, spider silk, polylactide polymer (PLA), glue inspired from mussels that `anchor themselves to rocks, pipes, and boat hulls', and coral reefs are among possible materials.

Human Tech

The last of the five regions operates `inside our skin', and is the most important, say the authors. "Human TechnEcology is the ocean from which the other four, like interlinked islands, arise." Guidelines for Human Tech are: "The real needs of humans are not material needs. Science is only now learning how to measure human technology. God or nature has endowed us with extraordinary capabilities. Our true work is to know ourselves."

The authors talk about Elmer Green, whose "quantitative research with a master yogi from India proved that a human being could actually control certain autonomic processes of the body". Other advocates of Human Tech are Thomas Bourchard who researched on twins separated at birth; Franz Halberg who discovered an array of body rhythms; Randy Thornhill, "the first to see and measure the connection between human symmetry and attractiveness to the opposite sex"; James Thomson, who isolated and cultured a human embryonic stem cell line; Martin Seligman, the author of `Learned Optimism'; W. Edwards Deming, the quality guru; and Peter Drucker, whose theory of management contributed to humanisation. Catch up with the examples on topics ranging from skin colour to tears, earwax to mother's milk, placebos to antibiofilm secretions.

Wanted, Universal Tech

Because of the overlapping nature of the five regions, what we need are Universal Technologies, reason the authors. Like a Swiss Army knife, such a technology will have to be "so handy and flexible that almost everyone finds a dominant use for it". Lesson for business, therefore, is that a provider of a Universal Technology has market in all the regions. Aerogel, thermal depolymerisation, computers, chronobiology, hydrogen fuel, holography, and nanotubes, are included in the dozen examples of Universal Tech the book ends with.

"As citizens of this new world, we all need to begin to think more systemically. Our technologies are bigger than our nations," urge the authors, inviting an open and public discussion on technologies. Ideal weekend read, to help connect yourself with unfolding reality.

Economics@TheHindu.co.in