Jarred Diamond wrote a wonderful book about progress and civilizations. It was called Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed . My favourite part is the comparision between Tikopia and Easter Island. Both had polynesian societies. One survives even now after over 3000 years. The other has collapsed. But it is the different choices, the different goals each society created for themselves that show the stark contrast.
Easter Island had 5 clans on it. They ate dolphins which they hunted in dug out canoes made from large trees. They ate birds which nested in trees. They ate fruits which grew from trees, or berries and vegetables which grew in the shade of trees. At some point in time, the 5 clans got into a competition to see who could build the biggest statue. To move the ever increasingly larger statues, they needed to cut down ever larger trees. To erect these larger statues, they needed more trees. After they had cut down all of the trees in order to move and erect these enormous statues, they had nothing to build dugout canoes from, nowehere for birds to nest, no fruit from trees, and burned out and dried berry and vegetable plants that could not survive in the direct sunlight. When they eurpeans arrived, they were astounded by the technological accomplishments of these people.
Tikopia set for themselves a different set of goals. A small island with about 1200 people spread amongst 20 some odd villages. Realizing that they had to preserve their limited resources for survival, they gave themselves the first goal of eliminating competitirs (pigs) for their food supply, ensuring there was zero population growth so they wouldn't overrun their food supply, and developing a form of agricuture (a type of forest gardening or permaculture) which would ensure the island produced the maximum amount fo food for the small amount of arable land. When the portugese arrived, they thought they had found a group of simple hunter-gathers who had the good fortune to be living on an island so abundant in food.
Easter Island's monolithic statues look impressive. They were a big goal achieved at the cost of a civilization. Tikopia's goals look modest in comparision, but in the end, served them far better for the long term.
The goals set by our children may not look big or impressive, at least not to the eyes of the older generations, but they may be far more important than anything ever undertaken before.
Overall I have been pleased with the new President’s technology platform.
His appointees seem to understand about open source, about open standards, and about the pernicious impact monopolies and gatekeepers can have on markets.
What’s missing, for me, are big goals. Mars, for instance. A true War Against Oil, for instance. Something that will grab hold of young techies’ imaginations and deliver a result that will make our grandchildren go “wow.”
I remember taking my kids to see Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 a decade ago. The first sci-fi nostalgia film, I said then. It still is. (That’s the actual Apollo 13 crew above, from Space.Com.)
The lack of a Cold War may be one reason. It was the competition with the Soviet Union which animated the space program, not to mention the Internet. With the lack of a seemingly all-powerful enemy to focus on, American technology efforts have become diffuse, and short-term oriented.
That’s a problem, it seems to me. For one thing we have big goals that must be accomplished, over the next generation. We have to save this planet from ourselves, for one thing. We have to accommodate several billion more people by 2050, increasingly mobile and demanding resources.
Today’s young people also seem to be losing touch with or interest in the bleeding edge. My kids treat the Internet the way I treated TV. They don’t care how it works. It’s just a medium to them.
But what will they create with it?
To create anything meaningful, they need big dreams, impossible goals. My father’s generation took us to the Moon, and mine helped build the Internet.
What will yours do? Someone needs to point the way.
