By Corey Gray
There is broad consensus that not a lot of good came from the Great Plague of London.
Over 18 months between 1665 and 1666, it claimed the lives of over 100,000 Londoners; a quarter of her population and meted out untold misery and suffering.
The Duality of Nature Part 1: "Annus Horribilis" & "Annus Mirabilis"
This "Annus Horribilis" for the people of London was indubitably "Annus Mirabilis" for a young chap called Isaac Newton.
I was reacquainting myself with the great man a few days ago as I was helping my 16-year-old daughter - a reluctant physics student to say the least - navigate his laws of motion.
Not yet 25 years old, (depending on whether you were using the Julian or Gregorian calendar at the time), Newton retreated to the relative safety of the English countryside to avoid the worst of the plague. Over the course of a year he:
- Invented Calculus, (ostensibly as a tool to describe the motion of celestial bodies),
- Discovered the Universal Law of Gravitation
- Described the Laws of Motion, and
- Discovered that white light was composed of a spectrum of colours - the rainbow
It's amazing what a bit of "mindfulness" can do.
For more than 200 years the work of Newton defined modern physics and in turn was the driving force behind transformational technological innovation.
The Duality of Nature Part 2: From Newtonian Physics to Quantum Theory
Fast forward to 1905 and another famous physicist, one Albert Einstein, has his own "Annus Mirabilis", publishing papers on:
- The Photoelectric Effect, (foundational quantum theory)
- Brownian Motion, (atomic theory)
- Special Relativity, (space - time continuum)
- Mass - Energy Equivalence, (E=mc2)
22 years after Einstein's breakthroughs Werner Heisenberg proposed in a letter to Wolfgang Pauli his Uncertainty Principle.
The great insight was demonstrating that Newtonian physics perfectly describes the physics of motion in the physical world we had known until that time but did not apply at the sub-atomic level.
It is hard to explain how revolutionary this discovery was, and how much it has changed the face of our planet.
There are 3 reasons that Newtonian physics breaks down at the sub-atomic level:
- One cannot simultaneously know the position and velocity of a particle, (Heisenberg)
- Sub-atomic particles do not have continuous energy and motion, rather they are "quanta" with distinct energy levels; and
- Wave-particle duality
The key point here is that Einstein, Heisenberg and let us not forget 1918 Nobel laureate Max Planck, did not prove that Newton was wrong, they proved that different principles and laws apply in different circumstances and conditions.
The Nexus of Science, Technology, Economics, Politics & Society
By the mid18th century, on the shoulders of Newton and set in the economic and political context of Adam Smith's, "An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", (1776), the extraordinary transformation known as the Industrial Revolution commenced, initially in Britain.
The world changed forever.
Vast energy reserves could now be exploited, technological innovation exploded, leveraged in agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, transport and warfare. Combined with a robust banking system, mature insurance industry and stable government - albeit with a blood-thirsty appetite for colonisation - circumstances conspired that the British controlled the world - militarily and commercially.
Until today English survives as the global language of commerce.
Enormous wealth was being created and extracted on a previously unimaginable scale and pace, and governments and citizens alike wanted their share.
Disparities in wealth between and within nations were rapidly becoming larger and starker, causing political and civil unrest.
It is no accident that less than a generation after the commencement of the Industrial Revolution <b><i>The American War of Independence</i></b>, (1775 - 1783) and <b><i>The French Revolution</i></b>, (1788 - 1789), both took place.
Equally unsurprisingly, less than 2 generations into the Industrial Revolution the Social Revolution was precipitated, catalysed by appalling living conditions and sanitation for workers, unsafe workplaces and extreme exploitation. Thomas Paine's "The Rights of Man" (1792), crystalised the moment, defining, contemplating and advocating for "human rights".
In the 19th century slavery was in full swing in America, with around 4 million people enslaved at the time of abolition at the end of the American Civil War in 1865.
In The Congo Free State, by century's end Belgian King, Leopold II, was inflicting his "Rubber Terror". Let us remember, Leopold claimed the land not as a territory of Belgium, but as his own private property, such was the expanding avarice and obsession with wealth. Historians estimate that between 1 million and 10 million people died in this reign of terror. It must be noted that he was far from the only European wreaking colonial havoc in Africa, the Occident, (Middle East), Orient, (Far East) and The Americas.
The fundamental modus operandi was simple: exploit resources, technology, capital and political power to the extent possible to create and amass economic wealth.
It is insightful to note that in the <b><i>Declaration of Independence</i></b>, John Locke's "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" was very nearly, "Life, Liberty and Estate." Such was the extent to which happiness was considered to be dependent on economic prosperity.
There was an assumed linearity and implied connectivity between the two; "Happiness" and "Estate".
Aldous Huxley summarised it acerbically:
"...because cleverness has given us technology and power, we believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer in a yet more systematic way to achieve social order, international peace, and personal happiness."
Unintended Consequences Part 1: The Disaster of Modern "Education"
A key driver of the Industrial Revolution was the lack of supply in the labour market, the associated high cost of labour and a low "future skills" base. These circumstances conspired with the deep self-interest of the ruling classes and their industrialists precipitated the modern factory model of "education", which is, of course, not education at all.
"Vocational Training", to which it should more accurately be referred, is a process in which a certain person with certain knowledge and skills in a certain jurisdiction performs a certain role in the economy, thereby obtaining a certain amount of money and a certain status in society.
The factory model was designed to produce homogeny in knowledge and skills and is deeply rooted in the pre-requisite of behavioural conformity. It has preoccupied itself with convergent thinking (logic driven analysis), to the extent that the majority of adults today are near incapable of divergent (creative) thought.
For those interested, I commend you to the landmark research of Dr. George Land and Dr. Beth Jarman, who, in 1968 observed that from the age bracket of 4 -5 years until adulthood, "creative genius" declined from 98% to 2% inside the contemporary educational system.
Sometime in the industrial Revolution the appalling euphemism, "human capital" was coined, an exemplar of Heidegger's concern of technology reducing people's view of the world to one of mere industrial and commercial utility.
Inexplicably this term has survived.
Unintended Consequences Part 2: Environmental Devastation
Within a short time, the Industrial Revolution and the pursuit of economic enrichment had a devastating effect on the environment.
Air quality from burning coal was appalling and acid rain became prevalent.
Waterways were devastated by toxic chemicals and run-off from industrial processing and became open sewers for dense housing areas, and sanitary crises erupted due to the density of population around manufacturing facilities and cities more broadly and the non-existence of proper sewage treatment or systems.
Natural resources were depleted; entire forests were cut down for their timber or to construct manufacturing facilities or industrial farms. Hills and mountains were cut away.
There was no contemplation of a finite limit to the planet's resources; a form of delusion that persists even today in many places.
Unintended Consequences Part 3: Social Devastation
The heady pursuit of wealth had a profound social impact. Communities broke down as people left their towns and communities to work in mines, factories and infrastructure projects or to head to the New World in the hope of plundering riches.
New communities formed around industrial complexes where social and cultural differences often fomented and spilled over in acts of social dysfunction.
Family units broke down as parents and children moved away from home to work. Even those family units that remained living together were damaged by long work hours, exploitation, disease, illness and exhaustion.
The concept of "class warfare" developed as relatively few people became enormously wealthy, substantially on the backs of underpaid and exploited workers.
Cultural identity blurred, and the idea of "leisure time" became foreign to most.
Is it time for Smart Cities to have its Heisenberg moment?
270 years since the Industrial Revolution commenced, the relentless advance of science and technology continues unabated. Quantum computing, AI and robotics are changing the world at a velocity too great for us to see clearly today, let alone for us to predict even a short distance into the future.
In the same way that Newtonian physics yields to quantum theory at the sub-atomic level, it appears that the traditional economic, political and social theories developed and implemented since the Industrial Revolution may need to give way to new ones applicable to the scale and nature of our modern circumstances.
Economic theorists did not contemplate the possibility of creating near-infinite productivity and wealth with no human work; that workers would transition from being exploited to irrelevant. They did not contemplate that the majority of wealth would be in the hands of an extremely small few. They did not contemplate a financial system in which peer-to-peer transfer of value - "tokens" - can replace the traditional banking system, working with 100% efficiency and transparency at a fraction of the cost.
Political theorists did not contemplate a world in which the majority of humans would no longer need to be conventionally employed; a world in which corporations are larger and more powerful than countries and control the world's critical energy and information infrastructure.
Social theorists did not predict a human population of 11 billion that would live on average to be 90 years old by 2100, nor did they predict a world in which all people are connected with all the information and knowledge ever created, and to all other people - in near real time. They did not predict a society of too much food and medicine and too little exercise. Today more than 73% of Americans are overweight or obese. They did not predict a world ravaged by mental illness and in which people are more connected than ever, and at the same time further apart and more struggling for identify and meaning than ever.
Can people uncouple their sense of identity and self-worth from where they went to school, their job title, their income and their work status?
Can we become creative again?
Academic theorists did not foresee a world in which convergent thinking would become redundant in the workplace - replaced by AI and quantum computing that can access information, process it and solve problems with precision at a pace trillions of times faster than a human and a scale even larger.
Tedious, repetitive data analytics and process driven work will disappear: book-keeping, compliance verifications, government approvals, paralegal work, administrative functions.
Dangerous and arduous labour tasks in transport, mining, resources, construction, manufacturing and war will be replaced by robots.
As E. O. Wilson noted:
"The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology."
Is it time for us to take control of our institutions and technologies, and to have our "Heisenberg" moment?
One thing that over time we have learned about our species is that most certainly we cannot reign in our emotions!
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