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Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems
A question that I have been mulling over: why are the biggest innovations in the past decade so pathetically meaningless? Is Facebook or Snapchat the best we can do? Peter Thiel says it best:
“We wanted flying cars—instead we got 140 characters.”
We are living in the best of times for innovation, at least theoretically: no world wars to distract us, no deadly diseases killing off millions, technological advances at their peak, increasing levels of education around the world and poverty levels at their lowest ever (no, seriously, watch Hans Rosling’s talk about surprising stats).
But maybe that is the crux of the matter: we are too comfortable and there is no powerful enough imperative to innovate, or explore. This article sums it up pretty well:
It’s not true that we can’t solve big problems through technology; we can. We must. But all these elements must be present: political leaders and the public must care to solve a problem, our institutions must support its solution, it must really be a technological problem, and we must understand it.
The Apollo program, which has become a metaphor for technology’s capacity to solve big problems, met these criteria, but it is an irreproducible model for the future. This is not 1961: there is no galvanizing historical context akin to the Cold War, no likely politician who can heroize the difficult and dangerous, no body of engineers who yearn for the productive regimentation they had enjoyed in the military, and no popular faith in a science-fictional mythology such as exploring the solar system.
Luckily we still have Elon Musk.