One of the things I worry about is the idea that a single technological innovation will save the world from all our troubles. Not too long ago Roger Ebert posted an interesting video about Solar Roadways, a project which essentially replaces all traditional asphalt with solar panels in order to generate and meet energy needs. 

I commented about the potential problems the project might have – from individual circuits within each panel to maintenance and so on – and received a response from another who stated that as a working scientist, they truly believed that solar energy was the only way to go in order to solve the world’s problems from energy to even famine (for some odd reason, our comments are no longer visible, so this recap is purely from memory from over a month ago). 

Hearing comments like these worries me because it entails a myopic understanding of technology and its inner workings. For centuries, humans have aspired towards the one remedy, the one cure, the one anything that would solve all of our problems, and invariably these brilliant innovations had their share of additional, unforeseen problems as well (may of which I’ve previously talked about here). 

Not to say that we shouldn’t be optimistic about human tenacity and innovation, but there’s a need to be realistic as well. These days, I spend my time around too many engineers to not think about how something new might have some issues, and how those issues could (or couldn’t) be resolved with what technology currently allows us to address. 

Say, for instance, the solar road takes off (and I surely hope it does) – what could possibly happen? Given that each panel has complex circuitry, that means that there’s a higher chance for something to wrong by virtue of problems/issues being a function of complexity (for math nerds, we could even write this as FCUK(complexity)*). This also means that road workers will require extra training, which could possibly be more expensive for companies and contractors specializing in road work (or even the government, which would mean tax dollars). One of the nice things regarding asphalt is that road maintenance is relatively easy since it’s a durable-enough material; sure you’ll get the occasional pot holes and fun stuff, but you only need to re-lay asphalt every few years or so. 

To point being is that no single piece of technology or scientific innovation can truly be without its trouble and be 100% guaranteed to completely change how the world turns and functions. In a ideal world, I’d love to agree with the sentiment that solar power can possibly solve at least 95% of the world’s problems somehow. Solar power cars, solar power roof tiles, solar power generators, solar power laptops… the possibilities seem endless, right? 

The only downfall to this is that unfortunately, a subset of the world’s population lives in weather conditions to Seattle, where it rains at least 90% of the year (hyperbole not guaranteed) or likewise areas where the sun doesn’t shine like the golden coast Katy Perry seems to enjoy popping about so much these days. Not to mention infrastructures that may not even allow for nice ol’ contractors to go in and blow up, given cultural sensitivities and sacred buildings and all that jazz. Personally, I don’t think someone would be all too ecstatic that their famine issue might be resolved if you blow up their sacred burial ground for your solar power project. 

The slightly hyperbolized example set aside, we have to be realistic whenever something new comes up, and it is not realistic to say “this ___ will solve all our problems, if only ____!” Everything is a collective, singular components making up the whole and whole producing the singular components, and so on. We can’t realistically proclaim a something will cure everything simply because everything consists of many somethings. Watson Crick’s belief that genetics determine everything ignores all environmental conditions that may bar a prodigy from ever reaching their full potential (or even living long enough for the matter); Raymond Kurzweil, as well as other Singularity movement enthusiasts, believe that a select few of technological geniuses can affect nations without getting into politics at all; and so many other innovators who believed they held the key to solving everything – and I mean everything – with the utter confidence that tomorrow would have few to no problems at all. 

We have to be realistic: problems exist because it is the physical construct of our world, from atoms to electron to energy to mass – there’s no absolute good or bad without the other; that is to say – if we didn’t have problems, how could we know what we had was actually good to begin with? 

Perhaps it’s the human condition to continuously try to overcome limits and barriers that come our way. Pessimists will unrealistically proclaim it’s all pointless; optimists will unrealistically elicit it’ll all be over soon; and pragmatist will acknowledge it’s just another step at a time, towards a different future than what we have at the moment. 

*I really hope a dyslexic child doesn’t read this sentence.