I’ve been reading Michael Hiltzik’s, “Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex” about the Berkeley nuclear physicist and Nobel prize winner who played a crucial role in the Manhattan Project. The following quote caught my attention:
“As children of families that valued scholarly pursuits, Ernest [Lawrence] and Merle [Tuve] both were inculcated with the virtues of study and knowledge from an early age. This was by no means an eccentric upbringing in he American Upper Midwest of the era. A tradition of academic learning had been brought to the region by its Northern European and Scandinavian immigrants; years later, Ernest’s own expanding laboratory would be staffed with accomplished young researchers who had been introduced to the natural sciences in the rural school systems of Minnesota, Montana, or the Dakotas, and who continued their training at the ambitious land grant colleges of the same states. Their education complemented their uniquely American facility with machines and technology, for they had spent their boyhoods surrounded by mechanical gadgetry: farm machines, radios, and cars. “Most of us were radio hams and had taken apart Model T Fords,” recalled Stanley Livington, another Midwesterner (Wisconsin) who was to play a crucial role helping Ernest Lawrence launch his career. So it was less of a coincidence than it might seem that two of the nation’s most eminent physicists would emerge from the same little prairie town [Canton, SD] …”
So, reading this, all sorts of questions came to mind:
As a society, are we losing this “uniquely American facility”?
Are our schools and colleges valuing and selecting for the wrong qualities?
As a society, are we de-valuing the types of public universities that nurtured scientists like Lawrence?
In the 20th century, we had a few glorious periods of enormous scientific (and financial) advancement in part because at the time, Europeans were either slaughtering each other, or recovering from it. Lawrence was heavily funded by a Cold War-driven desire to outpace Russia. As we poured money into the arms and space race, the innovations boomed and advanced at an unprecedented rate, and gave birth to new industries still dynamic today. (Miracle Mile and Silicon Valley.)
But we live in a very different world. Europeans are pumping money into their infrastructure at a rate we’re not. Asia is a powerhouse likely to eclipse American hegemony - and in some parts of the world is already a dominant player in the way the U.S. isn’t and won’t be.
There is a chance, that we’ve had our moment… and it’s now waning.
Our best and brightest have been making money, not things. Those that are engaged in enterprise are often i situations where short term profits are of a bigger concern than long-term industry growth. Our governments refuse to fund infrastructure or fund basic science research and corporations can’t afford to fund research that doesn’t show immediate results for shareholders.
We spent the last 15 years fighting terrorism and let China replace our economic influence in the Third World. We have devalued the American worker and widened the income gap. We shoot ourselves in the foot every time that we build with products not made in the US or give tax breaks to companies that take skilled labor overseas when we could give tax incentives to hire US workers.
The wartime and postwar rise of Big Science certainly led to a boom in innovative spin-offs, and I would agree with you @katliamom that we currently are not funding science and technology at an adequate level. One of the issues raised by Hiltzik’s book, however, is whether Big Science spelled the end of what an individual or small group of creative scientists can accomplish. I would like to think that is not the case, and certainly, American inventiveness predates the era of Big Science.
Nonetheless, quite apart from the funding issue, there seems to be a cultural shift. When I was a young, kids built things. I don’t see today’s kids doing that in the same way. Sure, some kids build computers, some build robots, and some design phone apps, but not all technology is computer technology. Maybe I’m wrong, but this seems quite different than the “hands-on” practical understanding and trouble-shooting skill with everyday technology that many kids acquired in the past. Many kids today focus their efforts on developing that next big app that will make them rich, but many apps are trivial and have little or no impact on scientific or social problems. I also agree with you, @Mizzbee, that part of the shift involves the allure of finance and quick profits, instead of more productive endeavors.
The Europeans don’t pay for their own defense-- we’re defending them, and yet the European governments are still operating via heavy borrowing. Same could be said of Japan. And the Europeans & developed Asian countries have stopped breeding. They’re increasing becoming 2 tier societies of mostly old folk w cushy pensions supported by young folk w poorly compensated dead-end jobs. Don’t get me started on Greece.
Asia may be an increasingly dominant economic player, but minus japan, corruption is rife. The Chinese people were willing look the other way at their leadership’s misdeeds as long as the economy was expanding and the masses were also making money, but the Chinese economic engine is now sputtering. Brazil is another corrupt state that is sputtering. India is a joke. Russia is a mafia state. The brightest minds in the world don’t want to study in or immigrate to emerging market countries.
I’m familiar with that book, too–it’s a fascinating book about the scientific method, and how people like Lawrence (founder of Lawrence Livermore National Lab) helped make America a leader in global science
“Asia may be an increasingly dominant economic player, but minus japan, corruption is rife. The Chinese people were willing look the other way at their leadership’s misdeeds as long as the economy was expanding and the masses were also making money, but the Chinese economic engine is now sputtering. Brazil is another corrupt state that is sputtering. India is a joke. Russia is a mafia state. The brightest minds in the world don’t want to study or immigrate to emerging market countries.”
Agree. Judging by the Chinese and Korean waporware Mr. B saw at a recent trade show, the US is still the leader in the biomedical field.
I don’t believe the US is losing the edge, I think the innovation is happening in the Computer Engineering/Computer Science field and also as BB says Biomedical field. The culture in the USA provides an ideal environment for innovation - true meritocracy, no ego (mostly) and no corruption.
Edited to add @GMTplus7 quote about corruption is one of the main reason other countries do not do as well as the States.
I don’t think we’re losing “inventiveness”, whatever that is, but I note a few issues:
A comment about American startups from overseas is that too many have stars in their eyes and think they'll become a huge company. And they plan for becoming huge instead of taking the incremental steps necessary to get there. In other words, companies from overseas say they've noticed that smaller American companies have tended to become less good at operations, which includes opening markets. This is an area where a number of our competitors are doing relatively better. Our big companies are better than they used to be at this.
I think one of the best things to happen to the US' competitive future was the drop in employment in financial services - and the longer-term effect that regulation may have - because finance and trading had sucked up huge numbers of intelligent people who otherwise would be creating or expanding something productive. That energy will not be wasted as it was making and selling derivative financial products.
I don't think people understand how little innovation exists in the world. It's anti-thetical to many cultures and ideologies and is seen by many religious authorities as a threat.
Again, I strongly disagree. Apps have a had a HUGELY PROFOUND influence on social problems and world events. It’s largely because of social media apps like FB & Twitter that the Arab Spring unfolded so quickly and spread to other oppressive states. Would gay marriage rights have been attained as quickly w/o the support of social media? Crowdsourcing is changing how scientific research is done. It wasn’t hardware inventions that sparked these revolutions.
Social media also has had a dark side. Closet jihadists, racist jerks & other grudge-holding psychopaths feel emboldened when they discover & network w others sharing their twisted ilk.
Apps like Uber, not tangible new gadgets, have put income opportunity back in the hands of the little people and away from monopolistic rent-seeking institutions. Mobile banking apps are giving economic power to poor rural folk in developing countries.
I understand that Europeans and the Japanese spend a fraction of what we do on the military. Yet I don’t hear the US government calling for Europeans to arm themselves more so we do less. It’s costing us, benefiting them, and there’s no political will to change this. This is biting us in the butt now, and will increasingly in the future.
And the fact that China is corrupt and Russia is a mafia state doesn’t change the fact that they’re increasingly bellicose and invested internationally in a significant and compelling way.
We may lead in the biomedical field, and many other fields, but our dominance is no longer a given, and no longer overwhelming in a great many areas.
@zapfino The fact that kids don’t have as much “hands-on” practical understanding with everyday technology is that the technology is much more complicated and digital. Also, those classic courses that used to be offered in high schools – auto shop, metal shop, etc – all those have gone the way of the dodo. Which of course brings us to the quality of our schools… a whole other matter…
I see a lot of kids and people making physical stuff. Go to a Maker Faire. Check out Make magazine. Look at the 3D printer industry. People, including kids, build 3D printers and drones almost from scratch.
Our high school has an engineering program with an amazing machine shop (from private donations and grants), but the rest of the school has construction and electronics classes. Another local school has automotive technology. The junior high has a class that is mostly an old-style woodshop class with some updates.
We have a lot of innovative companies here inventing and designing real stuff. Most of them are spinoffs from the local UC. We have world-leading companies in infrared technology, photonics, AFM and other microscopy, and quantum computing here, just to name the ones that come immediately to mind. We even have some app/website developer types that are well know nationally. And, this isn’t Silicon Valley, but our unemployment rate is currently 2.7%. I’m sure a lot of other places in the country are similarly innovative.
This “are we loosing it” seems a little like the perennial “kids these days” refrain. There’s a lot of cool technology being developed if you aren’t focused on looking at old tech.
And it is not a bad thing. If Europe was not doing well, many US companies would not be able to reap the benefit of selling their products and profiting from that market. In the biotech world, which I can speak for, this means more money for future R&D projects. Nope, we don’t pay dividends, because money poured back into clinical research brings better long-term rewards.
Oh, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think it’s something we as Americans should learn from the Europeans. Like I said, our dominance in the 20th century was – I believe, though experts are welcome to prove me wrong – largely an accident of history. We rose in part because they were killing each other. Or rebuilding their devastated post-war societies. Now they’re investing in themselves in a way we’ve appeared to have stopped.
@katliamom, I disagree with you about the auto shop, metal shop etc are not used by the students, agree with @Ynotgo. My D was heavily involved with the Robotics team and before that other programs like that in middle school. These programs definitely helped her think that she can make something if not available.
I think what’s missing is the programs like NOVA focusing on the innovations that are going on in the current generation not just the past. I would love to see a few programs from NOVA or something like that show how the internet actually originated from DARPA and the transformation that NetScape, Yahoo/Google etc brought to internet. These programs will help others who are not in the “know” get inspired and fuel further innovation.
@chrysanthMum in my school district only a few of the high schools – and none of the ‘better’ ones – offer auto shop or metal shop. Wood shop was only available in select middle schools. It’t not that kids aren’t using these resources, rather than they’re not nearly as available as they were when I was in high school.
The Europeans believe China will be number one. But lately I think from what I’ve heard from some hedge fund managers, the problem in China is worst, not better than 2007. I only wished I sold some of my international stocks when it was higher.
