Arthur C. Clarke once said that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Here, at the request of The Examiner’s editors, are four innovations that might not be magical themselves, but that would work magic on our economy and well-being.
All are technical advances that are within reach today, though they’re things we don’t quite know how to do yet. We should try to move faster.
» Better batteries: Electric cars offer tremendous promise. Electric propulsion is efficient, allowing operation at an energy cost of pennies per mile. Electricity generated from America’s plentiful coal stocks can, by taking the place of gasoline, promote energy independence.
Electricity generated by nuclear or hydroelectric plants can promote both energy independence and reduced greenhouse emissions. But you can’t run an electric cable to automobiles, which means the problem is batteries.
Today’s batteries are barely up to the task. A battery that could hold as much energy as a tank of gasoline — and recharge nearly as fast as a gas tank can be filled — would be a godsend. Some new technologies, including ultracapacitors, which aren’t really batteries at all as they store electricity directly instead of holding it as chemical changes, promise that sort of capability eventually.
Sooner would be better than later. This is a place where federal research spending might make a difference.
» Rapid Health Response: Between the threat of new natural epidemic diseases such as SARS or avian flu, and the threat of biological warfare or terrorism, we need to be ready to spot the threats as soon as they appear, and to respond quickly.
Numerous technological thinkers, ranging from futurist Ray Kurzweil to former Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist, have called for a major effort to develop new disease surveillance technologies, and new technologies for the rapid development of vaccines, antiviral drugs, and other medications to allow a swift response.
We should be able to have a working vaccine within 30 days or less of encountering a new infectious agent, rather than taking years. Kurzweil and Frist both support a major effort along these lines (both, in fact, invoke the Manhattan Project as an analogy) and, while I fear that such a crash program isn’t in the cards, we need to be moving in this direction as rapidly as we can.
» Nanotechnology: Nanotechnology — a technology for making and engineering things on the molecular scale — is already a force in many areas, but at the moment it’s mostly a source of high strength materials, sensors, filtration devices, and the like.
It’s even beginning to find its way into cancer treatments and other medical applications. But the real payoff from nanotechnology will come when it matures enough to allow what’s called “molecular manufacturing:” making things by putting the individual atoms and molecules where you want them.
This isn’t radical in theory — it’s how we produce a redwood tree, or a baby, right now, using biological varieties of nanotechnology — but applying these techniques to the manufacture of inanimate goods will be revolutionary.
It may not quite add up to what some nanotechnology enthusiasts predict (“Make anything out of sunlight and dirt”) but then again, that’s how we get a cow, or a redwood tree. Regardless, even primitive molecular manufacturing promises enormous benefits in areas like medicine and information technology.
There are a number of technical steps needed to get us to this stage, as outlined in a “road map” document being prepared by Battelle Labs and the Foresight Institute, but none of them require actual breakthroughs in science, just refinements of engineering.
Both the federal government and private industry are working on these things, but I’d like to see more effort along these lines. As they say, faster please.
» Better nuclear power: Had we gone on building nuclear plants at the rate we were building them in the 1960s, we’d be in a lot better shape with regard to air quality, greenhouse emissions, and energy independence. Environmental concerns stopped that, but now environmentalists are beginning to look more favorably on greenhouse-friendly nuclear power.
There are a lot of newer, cleaner, safer, and cheaper nuclear power technologies out there — pebble-bed reactors are one of my favorites, and the Chinese government is certainly enthusiastic about them — but at the moment research in the United States is moving slowly.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is editor of Instapundit.com and teaches law at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He is also author of “An Army of Davids.”
