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I just got back from a talk Neal Stephenson gave at the Watershed as part of something called the Festival of Ideas.
He's just released a collection of his journalism and was mostly discussing the ideas that he has written about in that. It was all interesting - it's Neal Stephenson, even when he's wrong, he's interesting, and he's really thought a lot about stuff that most people take for granted.
The thing that really stuck with me was (I'm not going to do this justice), is that aside from the Internet, we as a society haven't accomplished much since the 70s. The main example he used was why are we still using oil? When he was an undergrad engineering student, lots of people were fired up about alternative fuel sources, but nothing's ever come of it. We haven't been back to the moon. We couldn't now if we wanted to. Everybody's energy seems to be directed towards upgrading Farmville and Angry Birds, and figuring out how to get you to click on ads.
Um. Well. You know, he's right. The internet may have been my lifeline when I was not well, and my life would continue to be much less rich without it, but ... damn ... where the hell has human ingenuity and creativity gone with respect to solving big real-world problems?
He pinpoints part of the problem with trying to realise really outside-the-box projects are insurance and regulatory-related (he spends a lot of time with people trying to do things like go into space without conventional rockets, and this is where they hit a brick wall). He recently suggested to a load of engineers at MIT that they should go into insurance. It went down about as well as you might think, but it certainly bears thinking about.
One of his current projects is trying to find ways to encourage people to Do Real Stuff. Which I think is a thoroughly fine idea, and more people should and society should get behind out-of-the-box projects etc. etc.
I, however, have come home and posted about it to the internet.
I feel that I should be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. However, being neither a scientist/engineer (and too attention deficient to ever become one), nor able to express myself creatively (thank you, head injury), I'm very much at a loss as to where to start.
He's just released a collection of his journalism and was mostly discussing the ideas that he has written about in that. It was all interesting - it's Neal Stephenson, even when he's wrong, he's interesting, and he's really thought a lot about stuff that most people take for granted.
The thing that really stuck with me was (I'm not going to do this justice), is that aside from the Internet, we as a society haven't accomplished much since the 70s. The main example he used was why are we still using oil? When he was an undergrad engineering student, lots of people were fired up about alternative fuel sources, but nothing's ever come of it. We haven't been back to the moon. We couldn't now if we wanted to. Everybody's energy seems to be directed towards upgrading Farmville and Angry Birds, and figuring out how to get you to click on ads.
Um. Well. You know, he's right. The internet may have been my lifeline when I was not well, and my life would continue to be much less rich without it, but ... damn ... where the hell has human ingenuity and creativity gone with respect to solving big real-world problems?
He pinpoints part of the problem with trying to realise really outside-the-box projects are insurance and regulatory-related (he spends a lot of time with people trying to do things like go into space without conventional rockets, and this is where they hit a brick wall). He recently suggested to a load of engineers at MIT that they should go into insurance. It went down about as well as you might think, but it certainly bears thinking about.
One of his current projects is trying to find ways to encourage people to Do Real Stuff. Which I think is a thoroughly fine idea, and more people should and society should get behind out-of-the-box projects etc. etc.
I, however, have come home and posted about it to the internet.
I feel that I should be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. However, being neither a scientist/engineer (and too attention deficient to ever become one), nor able to express myself creatively (thank you, head injury), I'm very much at a loss as to where to start.
