Статьи 5 семестр / _The uncertainties of technological innovation 1

The Uncertainties of Technological Innovation

Even the greatest ideas and inventions

can flounder, whereas more modest steps

forward sometimes change the world

by John Rennie

The future is not what it used to be," wrote the poet Paul Valery decades ago, and it would not be hard to share in his disappointment today. As children, many of us were assured that we would one day live in a world of technological marvels. And so we do—but, by and large, not the ones foretold. Films, television, books and World's Fairs promised that the twilight of the 20th century and the dawn of the 21st would be an era of helpful robot servants, flying jet cars, moon colonies, easy space travel, undersea cities, wrist videophones, paper clothes, disease-free lives and, oh, yes, the 20-hour work week. What went wrong?

Few of the promised technologies failed for lack of inter­est. Nor was it usually the case that they were based on erro­neous principles, like the perpetual motion machines that vex patent offices. Quite often, these inventions seemed to . work. So why do bad things happen to good technologies? Why do some innovations fall so far short of what is expect­ed of them, whereas others succeed brilliantly?

One recurring reason is that even the most knowledgeable forecasters are sometimes much too optimistic about the short-run prospects for success. Two decades ago, for exam­ple, building a self-contained artificial heart seemed like a rea­sonable, achievable early goal—not a simple chore, of course, but a straightforward one. The heart, after all, is just a four-chambered pump; surely our best biomedical engineers could build a pump! But constructing a pump compatible with the delicate tissues and subtle chemistry of the body has proved elusive. In many ways, surgeons have had far more luck with transplanting organs from one body to another and subdu­ing (through the drug equivalent of brute force) the complex immunologic rejection reactions.

Similarly, from the 1950s through the early 1970s, most artificial-intelligence researchers were smoothly confident of their ability to simulate another organ, the brain. They are more humble these days: although their work has given rise to some narrow successes, such as medical-diagnostic expert systems and electronic chess grandmasters, replicating any­thing like real human intelligence is now recognized as far more arduous.

The more fundamental problem with most technology pre­dictions, however, is that they are simplistic and, hence, un­realistic. A good technology must by definition be useful. It must be able to survive fierce buffeting by market forces, economic and social conditions, governmental policies, quirky timing, whims of fashion and all the vagaries of human na-

ture and custom. What would-be Nostradamus is prepared to factor in that many contingencies?

Sadly, some inventions are immensely appealing in con­cept but just not very good in practice. The Buck Rogers-style jetpack is one. With the encouragement of the military, engineers designed and built prototypes during the 1960s. As scene-stealing props in movies such as Thunderball, jet-packs embodied tomorrow's soaring high-tech freedom: fly to work, fly to school, fly to the market-But practical considerations kept jetpacks grounded. The weight of the fuel almost literally sank the idea. The amount required to fly an appreciable distance rapidly became im­practical to attach to a user's back. The packs also did not maneuver very well. Finally, the military could not define enough missions that called for launching infantry into the air (where they might be easy targets for snipers) to justify the expense of maintaining the program.

To survive, a commercial technology must not only work well, it must compete in the marketplace. During the 1980s, many analysts thought industrial robotics would take off. Factory managers discovered, however, that roboticizing an assembly line meant more than wheeling the old machines out and the robots in. In many cases, turning to robots would involve completely rethinking (and redesigning) a manufacturing plant's operations. Robots were installed in many factories with good results, particularly in the automo­bile industry, but managers often found that it was more economical to upgrade with less versatile, less intelligent but more cost-effective conventional machines. (Experts still dis­agree about whether further advances in robotics will even­tually tip this balance.)

Many onlookers thought silicon-based semiconductors would be replaced by faster devices made of new materials, such as gallium arsenide, or with new architectures, such as superconducting Josephson junction switches. The huge R&D base associated with silicon, however, has continued to refine and improve the existing technology. Result: silicon will al­most certainly remain the semiconductor of choice for most products for at least as long as the current chip-making tech­nology survives. Its rivals are finding work, too, but in spe­cialized niche applications.

One projected •commercial payoff of the space program is supposed to be the development of orbiting manufacturing facilities. In theory, under weightless conditions, it should be possible to fabricate ball bearings, grow semiconductor crys-

scientific american September 1995 57