Chapter 4: New Age, New Technology

Two basic questions will face humanity in the 21st Century. First, how do we deal with the new demographic reality? Second, where will we find the sources of energy we need to live as we wish to? In other words, what will life be like after the excesses of the last century of the European age? The problems were posed by technology. If they are solved, they will be solved by technology.

The demographic shift means a scarcity of labor. Assuming that reversing the population shift is neither possible nor desirable, there must be two parts to the solution. First, there must be a source of non-human labor. That means advancing technology to the points that machines can assume more of the tasks that humans currently do: robots.

Second, human beings need to be made productive for longer. When Social Security set the retirement age at between 62 and 65, life expectancy was 61 years for men and 63 for women. No one anticipated life expectancy approaching and surpassing 80 years. With the young going to school into their twenties and a retirement age set seventy five years ago, the existing work force can’t support everyone in school and retired. The math requires that humans work longer because they live longer. That, in turn, requires that they be healthier than ever before. A new type of medicine, built around genetics, is needed to cope with increases in life expectancy.

The hydrocarbon based energy system that Europe developed is running out of steam as well as effecting the environment in unexpected and apparently unpleasant ways. A source of energy is needed that increases the amount of energy available without exhausting resources or impacting the environment. The most logical solution is the efficient conversion of sunlight into electricity in the one place where the sun always shines—space.

That means that space travel must be revived and its cost dramatically reduced. That is going on already, driven as always by military considerations. However, the hydrocarbon crisis will generate an economic basis for space travel. From the Mercury Program on, everyone wanted to go to space, but as with Columbus, no one knew what to do when they got there. What was the direct economic benefit? No one would wonder about the economic benefit of Saudi Arabia. In the 21st century space will outstrip Saudi Arabia as a source of energy. And that will force space travel to evolve dramatically.

.European Technology

Necessity is the mother of invention and geopolitical necessity drives technology. Technology is shaped by geopolitics because the resources of nation states go to nurture those technologies that will support their interest. Science may develop a thousand possibilities. Nations select those that promise to solve problems and increase security and power. What we are looking for is the place where overwhelming necessity and

available solutions meet. This is not so much about the details of engineering solutions as about the general outline of possible solutions to obvious problems.

The connection between technology and power is obvious. The Romans were great civil engineers. They built roads, bridges and walls of such extraordinary quality, that many can still be used today. They built weapons—not using explosives or any other chemical power—that were devastating. The catapult, like modern artillery, destroyed enemy armies. These roads and weapons made the Roman Empire. They allowed the Romans to profit from their empire, allowed their armies could get to wherever they needed to go quickly, and allowed Roman legions to defeat their enemies when they got there. Rome would not have been possible without technology which developed alongside the empire. Power created technology. Technology created power.

Let’s consider European technology. Europe didn’t invent the technology that powered its global adventure. It was mostly imported from elsewhere, especially from its mortal enemies, the Muslims. Europe solved its geopolitical problem by a skillful integration of existing ship-building, navigational and weapons technologies. Political necessity generated a technological solution. The technological solution created geopolitical power. Early Europeans weren’t inventors. They were systems integrators.

The first problem was exploiting the empire. After conquering the Incas and Aztecs, forcing their way into India, establishing footholds in other places, the task of Spain and Portugal—and later France, England and the Netherlands—was to exploit and defend their empire. This did not require breakthrough technology. What it required was a systematic extrapolation of existing technology. So, their task was to build better and more ships, improve navigational accuracy and introduce better weapons. These were incremental improvements. Breakthroughs were in production, administration and organization: efficient shipyards, financial systems, armies trained to use firearms better. The systematic implementation of technology was the order of the day—or the century.

The extrapolation of technologies created a global empire and that created a new reality: the increasing wealth of Europe. The transfer of wealth from the rest of the world, which began with outright theft and evolved into a system of exploitation that improved colonial economies while transferring increasing amounts of wealth to the home country, created a fundamental imbalance—and an opportunity.

The empire created a fantastically wealthy ruling class. It also undercut large parts of European agriculture and produced a large number of dispossessed and impoverished peasants, leading to violence in the 17th and 18th century. The core problem was a surplus of wealth. It had to be invested. The traditional investment was land, but they weren’t making any more of it, as the saying goes. The wealth taken from the rest of the world had to find a home. So did the peasants. Labor and capital had to be married.

Traditionally, manufacturing was carried out by individual craftsmen, perhaps working with an apprentice or two. With cheap labor and capital available, a new form of production emerged. By building a larger workspace and hiring workers, Europe

systematically introduced the division of labor leading to an item such as a chair no longer being made by a single craftsman, but by a group of workers who divided the task among themselves.

The division of labor increased production and wealth. It was the beginning of modern factories and manufacturing and also began the vast movement of peasants from farms to cities. The factories had to be close to their customers, those who were wealthy enough to buy their goods. And since factories made parts for other factories, they had to be close enough together to allow efficient transfer. Workshops multiplied, workers multiplied. Peasants seeking work multiplied and cities surged to unprecedented size.

The pressure to make manufacturing more efficient became intense. Human muscle power was supplemented by mechanical power. The source of the power was the steam engine and the source of the steam was wood and coal—hydrocarbons.

This was the critical technological breakthrough for the Europeans. Until that point they integrated non-European inventions and evolved them. With the introduction of hydrocarbon driven engines, the game changed radically. For the first three hundred years of this age, Europe was playing out the technological hand it was dealt. For the second two hundred years, Europe was inventing an entirely unprecedented technology. More important, it was applying it across the board.

The unexpected outcome of Europe’s conquest of the world was industrialism.

The Europeans were searching for ways to manage global empires, massive urbanization, and the need to keep workers healthy. In the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries hydrocarbon engines provided the solution. They gave the Europeans a transportation system on land and sea that increased the speed with which goods and armies moved: railroads, cars, ships, planes. The Europeans introduced communications systems powered by electricity generated by hydrocarbons. They developed powered factories where the productivity of workers could rise faster than their wages. They invented modern cities, where electricity and plumbing feeding into powered processing systems, drove the city as if it were a machine.

Two things were invented outside of the hydrocarbon system. One was explosives, which allowed mining and new styles of warfare. The other was modern medicine that kept the population expanding and maintained the market and the work force. But in a sense, explosives and medicine were also driven by the hydrocarbon engine. The pharmaceutical plants making the medicines and the equipment in the hospital all required power, as did the mass production of explosives.

European society was mass society. Every institution of the Age was built around surging population and global politics. The European Age ended with mass communication, mass transportation, massed explosives, mass industry, massive urban areas and mass medical care. The technology that sustained mass society was hydrocarbon driven power generation. Everything that was developed in the second half of the European age,

including the catastrophic wars that destroyed it, ultimately traced back to this technology.

The hydrocarbon economy was obviously not confined to Europe. A global empire made hydrocarbon technology global. Nor was the application of the hydrocarbon technology to various areas confined to the Europeans. It wasn’t even primarily European. It was the Americans who pressed the technology to its logical and most extreme conclusion. Transportation, communication, factory production, urbanization, explosives and medicine became the American forte in the 20th century.

American Geopolitics, American Technology

As Europe declined, the United States began the process of transition by adopting and advancing European technologies. This was not dissimilar to the Europeans in the 15th century who adopted foreign technologies to begin their own age. Many of the sciences developed by the Europeans in the 19th century became the foundation for American technologies in the 20th century. Many of the technologies that the Europeans had first thought about in the late 19th century were made important by the Americans in the following century. The Europeans invented the automobile and the factory; the Americans mass produced them. The Europeans discovered wireless radio; the Americans perfected commercial broadcasting. The Europeans discovered modern medicine; and the Americans industrialized it.

At the beginning of an age, the core technologies that will be important already exist. There are transfers and extrapolations, not new inventions. Identifying important technologies is not difficult, if you understand the problems that are to be solved. To help us visualize the critical technologies of the first century of the American age, we should seek to do two things. The first is to see what technologies were being incubated during the last part of the 20th century; the second is to understand the geopolitical requirements of the United States. Looking at the United States is the key just as looking at Spain and Portugal was the key to understanding the shape of European technology.

Let’s consider the social and geopolitical problems posed in the new age. The United States is a profoundly under-populated country. The population density of the U.S. is 30 people per square kilometer compared, for example, to Japan’s 337 and the UK’s 243 people. During the population explosion, American population grew with the rest of the world. Yet U.S. population density remained profoundly low. This is true not only against total land, but also against arable land—land that can support population.

The United States has historically had a labor shortage which it has solved through massive immigration. However, in the 21st century, immigrants, that have historically been available in abundance, will become much less abundant, as population growth slows throughout the world. Until the middle of the decade, this problem will be compounded by increasing numbers of retirees, longer education cycles for young people and a smaller working population to support them. Taking care of the elderly while

maintaining and increasing the standard of living for the rest of the population will the main economic challenge in most advanced countries.

However, the United States has a problem other advanced industrial countries don’t have—a military problem. The United States must maintain the balance of power in Eurasia where it is vastly outnumbered. There is no way to send a U.S. force to Eurasia large enough to outnumber indigenous forces. Therefore, the United States needs to make each soldier more deadly and effective than the enemy soldier. This is not a new problem for the United States but it is one that will be intensified by demographic shifts. What will be new is the degree to which the United States will be involved in interventions and wars around the world. The number of involvements will increase rather than decline. Interventions must as a result become more efficient. Efficiency requires new technology that increases the effectiveness of a limited number of soldiers. The old American problem on the battlefield will be intensified by America’s new role. It will need to substitute technology for people in order to achieve its goals.

There is a second set of needs. The European age broke free of its constraints with the introduction of hydrocarbon engines which powered everything in society, using coal and then petroleum. The hydrocarbon economy has become a bottleneck to future development. As the global economy accelerates, it needs more energy at a lower price. If the price stays the same or rises, then the total amount of economic activity devoted to energy will increase. The price of hydrocarbons can’t drop in the long run. The cost of extraction rises as the more readily available supplies decline. Whether we are speaking of oil on the ocean floor or the conversion of coal into a form usable by petroleum burning engines, the cost of extraction and processing will rise. In addition, burning hydrocarbons is inefficient. Most of the energy is lost.

Undoubtedly, hydrocarbons have an effect on the environment. The degree of this effect has become an intense, almost theological debate over global warming. In fact, the argument over global warning is not relevant to the future of hydrocarbon usage. Whether or not hydrocarbons effect the environment, their use must decline dramatically. There are economic reasons for this. There are also strategic reasons.

The greatest pool of oil reserves—the most efficient form of energy hydrocarbons—is located in extremely unstable locations. This is not an unfortunate coincidence. Once hydrocarbons became the basis of the European economy, control of oil fields became the basis of power—of all sorts. Oil comes in two geopolitical flavors. Some oil is located in advanced industrial countries that possess major armed forces, like the United States. Some oil is located in other places. These other places, wherever they are, became arenas of strategic competition. They became inherently unstable and disproportionately wealthy. Vast amounts of oil were located in the Arabian Peninsula and the surrounding areas. Not surprisingly this area became enormously unstable. Anyplace that has oil and is not a powerful nation—like Nigeria, or Venezuela, or Indonesia—will be unstable.

As the price of oil rises, the importance of these areas of low cost oil will also rise. Military force will have to be used to secure supplies which not only leads to conflict, but

further raises the price of oil. When we include the politico-military cost to the rising price of crude and its processing, it becomes clear that an alternative must emerge in the 21st century.

Therefore, the geopolitical problems that must be solved are--

1. Contracting populations, and the transitional problem of too many old people, schooling taking too long, and too few workers to support them.

2. An economy and military based on hydrocarbon engines that will cost more and limit economic growth.

3. A military system that has to be smart and agile, working with fewer people, farther away and more frequently than ever before.

We now know what is needed. Let’s turn to what is available.

Technologies in Transition

The great technologies of the 20th century were being incubated in the last quarter of the 19th. The same is true, we suspect, in the 21st century. The technologies that will solve the problems that we have posed already exist, at least in their earliest form, like the telephone or the car in 1890. We see four technologies, most of which were developed in the last quarter of the 20th century and which are, in our view, not even in their Model T form yet, even though they may be well known and even pervasive.

1. Computers, which are systems for the management, manipulation and distribution of large amounts of data.

2. Genetics, which is a way to look at and manage biologic systems that focuses on the data structure underlying life.

3. Space travel, including manned and unmanned systems, both in earth orbit and deep space.

4. Pure solar energy conversion systems.

There is continuity here. Computing is an extension of the revolution in communications and electronics. Genetics is an extension of the medical revolution. Space travel extends the technologies of exploration into a new domain. All energy is solar in origin therefore solar energy is an attempt to go beyond hydrocarbons as a storage medium of solar energy.

At the same time, each of these technologies is radical and unprecedented. Computers may be electrical in nature and heavily linked with telecommunications, but the manipulation of data that is inherent in computing is unprecedented. Genetics derives from twentieth century biology, but it opens the door to controlling patterns of human life and managing nature that have never been seen before. Space travel extends other

transport modes into space, but the movement into space transforms the framework of human geography. New forms of energy continue the movement from muscle to autonomous power, but promise to change the economics and geography of energy. Each derives from prior technological thrusts, but each radicalizes it.

Computers to Robots

We will begin with computing. Computers to this date have increased their capacity to manipulate data. In a thousand ways, this has made people more efficient. In some ways, computers have substituted for people, by permitting some basic controlling functions. But while computers have helped people become more efficient, computers have not replaced people. And in an era of stagnant and declining population, the augmentation of the labor force is the emerging need.

Computers evolved to process large amounts of numeric data--they were numbers crunchers. From number crunching they evolved to manage words and graphics. They still crunched numbers, but that process became invisible. What you saw was on the screen. The next evolution turned the computer into a communications device, where the primary purpose was accessing information from websites and communicating with other people. In the process, the computer changed its shape until today, virtually any device can be driven by a computer or contain one. In some sense, what the hydrocarbon engine was to Europe, the silicon chip is to America—save that that chip represents a primitive state of the art.

The first silicon based computer emerged in the 1960s, driven by the need for miniaturized computer systems for the U.S. space and missile program. The first personal computers emerged in the 1980s with the real surge in the PC coming later in the decade. While computers have saturated the world and gone through multiple transitions, we are still only twenty years in the game. Consider. The automobile was invented in the 1880s. The Ford Model T wasn’t introduced until 1908. In benchmarking the level of development of the household computer, we should bear that in mind.

The question, therefore, is where the computer is heading? To this point, computers have been passive. They managed information—including communicating it—but the computer has generally (not always) left its environment alone. It didn’t do things, it didn’t change its surroundings, it wasn’t active.

The next step, therefore, is to invent computers that can see their surroundings and do things to it. The name for such a computer is a robot, a name which derives from the Russian word for “worker.” The next step for the computer, therefore, is to move from computing to working. We don’t mean humanoid robots that clank or resemble strange looking humans. We mean autonomous systems with a limited degree of judgment that can carry out simple tasks.

We know also this next step does not mean artificial intelligence which has failed to materialize. The reasons are breathtakingly simple. You cannot teach a computer to think when humans don’t fully understand how humans think. Thinking is not merely a logical chain. A critical component of thinking is emotions which guide the thinking process and generate shortcuts. A person walking down a street is influenced continually by emotions, such as fear, that guide his actions. If he were to wait for his reasoning to guide him across the street, he would be killed. The shortcuts provided by emotions build bridges in the thought process.

This is not an academic point. It gives us a sense of the limits of robots. It also gives us a sense of what they might do—limited, simplistic reasoning without the critical emotional component.

When we imagine a robotic home kitchen the concept becomes clearer. The robot is the kitchen itself, which contains food in storage units, refrigerated and un-refrigerated, storage for cooking implements, stoves and ovens, dishes for serving food, cleaning units for the dishes and utensils. Imagine this aligned so that food would move from the storage unit to the heating unit to the dish, to the table to the cleaning unit, under the guidance of a computer.

In order to cook, there would be the following steps:

1. A recipe defining materials, sequence, operations (mix, grind, etc.), heat and time.2. Sensors that could identify food in storage bins using existing barcodes.3. A system for extracting the food from the storage area to the preparation area.

This could be a mechanical hand that places the food on a conveyor belt. 4. Cans, bottles are opened, but are designed to be manipulated by standardized

systems5. The food is measured and mixed using sensors and manipulators. 6. Food is inserted into a heating system that can cook, bake or microwave7. Food is completed when it reaches appropriate temperature and textures, for

which sensors exit8. Food is placed on plate and transferred to table9. Food is eaten10. The plate and utensils are removed and placed in washer.

Don’t think of this as a robot replacing a human in a standard kitchen. Think of it as a reconfigured kitchen unit, with integrated elements, and food being produced within the system.

The system itself would be robotic but it would not require artificial intelligence -- it would require a preconfigured kitchen and highly detailed instructions as part of the recipe. The system would then execute a series of prescribed functions. Maybe the end result would not be gourmet cooking, but it could certainly serve breakfast and go far beyond the TV dinner. Think of a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, bacon coffee and

orange juice going through this system. It would take the ability to sense and manipulate objects. The rules don’t have to be learned – they can be stored.

Imagine this on a commercial scale, so that a fast food restaurant making a limited menu would be able to automate a great deal of the cooking. In that event, if this were to happen, the labor shortage would be ameliorated by reducing the number of workers needed in each restaurant. In addition, in an aging society, food could be prepared at home without the need for expensive home help. And in the working parts of society, time devoted to food preparation could be reduced dramatically.

Think about applying a system like this to the home of an aged person where home care is not available. With nursing homes full and labor shortages, beds would be saved for individuals who could no longer care for themselves at all. This would allow people who could care for their own basic bodily functions to remain at home, not soaking up scare labor. It would allow fast food restaurants to function without minimum wage help.

Basic technologies for this system already exist. The ability of a machine to read a bar code, to grasp a container, to empty a measured amount, to carry out a series of sequenced operations involving cutting, grinding, blending, followed by heating and serving are all within in the imaginable reach of modern computing. As computing capacity increases, the ability to manage a pre-configured environment whose shape and locations are programmed into the system becomes a manageable task. The judgment tasks—has a piece of meat been sliced properly, is the cheese ground to a proper fineness—require sensors, rules, and programmed processes. These exist.

Now, take the example of the automated home kitchen, multiply it through the home or industry on multiple mechanical tasks, from custodial work to working assembly lines and we can see the beginnings of the solution to the problem of the labor shortage. The cost, of course, will be substantial. A rule of thumb might be that a kitchen unit so described will cost the equivalent of a new car. But then it would not experience the stress of the internal combustion engine running at high speeds, so its obsolescence period will be much longer. Amortize a $30,000 kitchen over a ten year period, and you are dealing with a monthly cost of $250, or about $8.50 a day, not much more than a fast food meal costs today.

Think about one other example—transport. Right now a human being is required behind the wheel of every truck or train. The process of driving requires judgment, but only of a limited sort. It is important to know where you are and where you are going. There are already devices that can provide that information relying on space based GPS systems. You also need to know where you are in relation to the road and to other vehicles. Sensors exist that can do that. It is not a simple matter, nor is it incompressible. We can see the science and technology to support this, as well as the necessity. Robotic vehicles may not be here now, but in half a century it is difficult to see how they will be avoided. Multiply these examples over and over again and you can see what is happening and must happen.

What we might call pseudo-robots is the logical next step of computing. And they are also the logical solution to the labor shortage, particularly in advanced industrial countries. Their development will be underwritten, as is usually the case by United States defense department programs designed to substitute pseudo-intelligent systems for people on the battlefield. These programs, already well under way, are readily transplantable into the civilian market. It is a geopolitical and social imperative which already has posed its solution.

Computers will have to become more powerful to support the robotics advances. As the ability to create smaller structures on silicone based microchips has increased computer power has increased. The smaller the structures, the more can fit onto a chip which in turn means greater computing power. Since 1965 when Gordon Moore, a founder of Intel, wrote an article that has been boiled down to constitute “Moore’s Law,” silicon microchips consistently and dramatically have increased their computing power.

The processing power required for this is not unimaginable, but it is also not available yet. Silicon based chips have to evolve or be replaced. Silicon, as a material, is reaching the limits of its capabilities. Indeed, the entire binary system on which contemporary computing is based limits the growth in computing power. In a binary system, each transistor has a value of 0 or 1. Assume that a chip could be develop that could exist in four states, like DNA, instead of two states.

Silicon cannot readily support non-binary systems, let alone support the structures needed to power robotic computing systems. Therefore, as the next leap takes place, an evolution from silicon to some follow-on material is needed. What post-silicon computing will look like is not clear. There has been discussion of molecular level computing, in which each molecule would serve as a transistor, and quantum computing, which may actually be silicon based but would dramatically move beyond binary values. One of the more interesting discussions has been of biologically based computing materials taking advantage of the four-variable logic of DNA. Biological computing, as it is called, would use organic tissue to go beyond the limits of silicon. There are other alternatives, using other materials and other methodologies. What the solution will be is unclear. That a solution is needed and that there are several possible alternatives is what matters.

What is clear is that sometime during the first half of the 21st century, coinciding with the contraction of the size of working populations in advanced industrialized countries, along with an aging population, workforce productivity will have to surge. For that to happen, computing power will have to surge. With a number of theoretical options already on the table, and the economic need of the computing industry to find new applications for itself, a convergence will take place, and a new generation of computing focused on the manipulation of the environment rather than the passive processing of information, will emerge. The details are murky, the capability is clear and the compulsion is obvious.

The development of robotics is designed to supplement the workforce. But robots cannot possibly replace the essence of human labor which is creativity and true judgment.

Humans alone can perform those actions. As the population stabilizes and ages, it will become more essential to extend human life and the period for which human beings can remain active.

From Medicine to Genetics

In the late 20th century, scientists succeeded in mapping the human genome. Compare this to the discovery in the 19th century that germs cause disease which paved the way to controlling infectious diseases. The discovery of the genome paved the way for redefining fundamental patterns and processes of human life. Genetics will likely not permit the creation of a new species beyond homo sapien—certainly not for the next few centuries. But it will undoubtedly be able to manage the defects of an unhealthy genetic structure and possibly manage some of the consequences and processes of inherent genetic decay. In other words, it will make humans healthier while they live and possibly allow them to live longer.

Like computing, there is nothing speculative about genetics. Like computing, it is far from a mature science, let alone a technology that can be widely applied to human disease and decay. But like computing, genetics is a science whose moment has come. It is not only a possible science but a necessary science, given the demographic realities we are facing.

It is possible that genetics and other attendant sciences could allow for a fundamental extension of human life, moving average life expectancy past the century mark. It is simply unclear whether that will happen and there are those who argue that humans are hard wired to die at the hundred year mark. But if genetics could simply extend human life incrementally, into, on average, the mid-eighties or nineties, that would have a substantial impact in cushioning population contraction in the advanced industrial countries.

But the problem is not so much the length of life as the period of life in which a person cannot produce but does consume. So if population problems can’t be solved by people living longer, they can be dealt with by people remaining healthy and productive longer. One way to do this would be managing diseases. Consider the following list of the leading causes of death in advanced industrial societies:

1. Heart disease2. Malignant neoplasms3. Cerebrovascular disease4. Accidents & adverse effects5. Pneumonia6. Artherosclerosis7. Mental disorder8. Senility without psychosis9. Diabetes Mellitus

10. Embolism & thrombosis

The two leading causes of death in the advanced industrial world are heart disease and cancer. Both cut life short but they also degrade the productivity of those who have them while they live. Both can be debilitating diseases that not only curtail production but also massively increase consumption. Research has found both diseases also appear to have substantial genetic components. If these diseases could be controlled and their occurrence reduced—even if life expectancy didn’t increase—the non-productive period in a person’s life would be diminished. If genetics were able to dramatically cut, not only the death rate but also the occurrence of these and other diseases, then the available work force would expand dramatically.

With the non-productive years of the young continuing to expand due to higher education, the only solution, apart from more people, is to ensure people remain productive longer and suffer from fewer periods of non-productivity. The concept of retirement really only entered the human cycle in the 19th century, and became arbitrarily fixed at about 60-65 in the early 20th century, when life expectancy in advanced industrial countries was occurring in the mid-60s. With life expectancy now pushing 80 and moving beyond, the creation of a 20 year retirement period is unsustainable. At the same time, the onset of diseases makes it necessary. As a result, society is being consumed at both ends, the young and the old. Cutting the years of education is not practical which leaves as the solution reducing the period of inactivity at the other end.

This is the critical driver for genetic technology. As the demographic shift takes place, the extension of life and the contraction of non-productive old age will be an economic and political imperative. 20th century medicine has extended productive life as far as possible. Medical technology is now extending life of consumers without extending the life of producers, compounding the problem. The management of infectious disease must give way to the management of a host of degenerative diseases that are at least to some extent genetically based.

Energy

Even if population numbers stabilize, energy demands will continue to rise. The substitution of more machines for human labor will increase the demand for energy. Imagine the proliferation of a vast array of robotic devices and consider the amount of energy they might consume. Substituting robots for people will increase energy demand. Population decline and stabilization don’t necessarily lead to a decline in energy consumption.

The hydrocarbon system of energy production is in decline, but it will certainly not disappear in the 21st century. There are some specialized uses in steel production or jet aircraft that are not going to be replaced any time soon. Energy usage always comes from a variety of sources. As we have discussed, hydrocarbons cannot remain the primary

source of energy as the century goes on. The question is what will become the primary source of energy after hydrocarbons?

Any new energy source will have to do two things. First, it must replace the use of gasoline in automobiles. Second, it must end the use of oil in electrical generation. And it must do so while mitigating environmental effects. Whatever your view of the environmental issue, there can be no dispute on this point: the political pressure to mitigate the effect of energy production and consumption on the environment is overwhelming. No new energy system can emerge that does not deal with this political reality.

All new forms of energy are going to be initially expensive and require a primary investment in infrastructure. The initial cost of gasoline was not in the drilling, but in the building of refineries, transporting the product and building gas stations close enough to each other to serve all automobiles before they ran out of gas. The oil industry was able to scale with the automobile industry, so it was not a sudden cost. It took about fifty years (1900-1950) for the automobile to diffuse and for the oil economy to mature. From then on it was incremental.

We should note that one of the things that drove the development of petroleum infrastructure was World War II, when the production of gasoline not only drove the global economy, but also shaped military strategy. World War II also helped underwrite the cost of refineries and drilling. Fifty years would be a reasonable period of time for the emergence of a major new energy source replacing the mass use of petroleum. And we would expect another mid-century war in the 21st century to drive—and help underwrite—the cost of the new energy source.

What will be needed is an economically sustainable energy source that maintains and extends current standards of living, takes over a substantial part of the energy burden from petroleum within a fifty year period, has minimal environmental impact, and whose development dovetails with the requirements of war, so that its cost might be underwritten by society as a whole. The standard of living issue is critical. The solution is being driven by a desire to maintain standards of living. High prices of petroleum will be the primary driver, with environmental considerations second. Asceticism won’t work.

The only energy source that can be imagined here is electricity. Electricity can, within the fifty year time frame, power most of the transportation system as well as a huge portion of industrial, agricultural, commercial and household uses. But that, of course, is the easy part. Electricity is not an energy source. It is a product of energy—another way of delivering it.

There are two sources of energy. Solar based and nuclear based. Solar based energy uses the sun as the source of energy. This includes hydrocarbon, which is biologically stored solar energy, or wind or water based energy, as well as the direct utilization of energy. The other is atomic energy, which uses the energy inherent in atoms. This could be

something like hydrogen energy systems and nuclear power. Both generate energy by using power available at the atomic level.

Let’s begin consider the hydrocarbons, of which oil is only one type. There are two types of non-oil based hydrocarbons to consider. The first is coal, an efficient way to produce electricity. If we were to move to electric cars, coal would be well suited for the task. Its weakness is its environmental impact, at three points: mining coal, transporting coal and burning coal. Its advantage is that it is a well known technology with few hurdles beyond the cost of building more plants. It will, however, encounter massive political resistance.

There is then hydrocarbons derived from living organisms, like ethanol from corn. This solution raises an inherent problem. If this corn, or other agricultural sources, were to be the basis of energy, huge amounts of arable land would have to be turned over to growing these plants. Given the demand for energy, the amount of land required would be enormous. Using land in this way would attack the cost and availability of food. Unless a new technology were to be found for growing food on much less land, the impact of plant based energy would be devastating. In addition, it would have all the same environmental effects as petroleum.

Hydrocarbons are readily available. Coal is the most attractive source of hydrocarbon energy, and it will undoubtedly be used as an alternative to oil fired electric generation. There is an ample supply of coal as well. But given the costs of new mines, new power generation units and conversions relative to the environmental impact, and its already wide use, we can’t see the environmental effects permitting this source of energy production to surge any further. Plant based energy is a non-starter unless we are prepared to surge the price of food.

Nuclear power is the next alternative. Nuclear energy has obvious advantages, but leaving aside the risk factor, it is also a very expensive mode of energy production and also one fraught with geopolitical consequences. One of the interests of the advanced industrial world is preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. While industrial and military nuclear reactors are different, they are not so different that the spread of the former does not facilitate the spread of the latter. Therefore, if a global shift to nuclear energy took place, leaving aside risk and cost, it would lead to a diffusion of nuclear technology that would challenge American and other interests. If the advanced industrial world intensifies its utilization of nuclear energy it will spread throughout the world. Between that and environmental issues, there will be little enthusiasm for nuclear energy.

There is then hydrogen, which has been discussed as a means for powering cars. Hydrogen bonds with oxygen, releasing energy--in other words, it burns. Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe and would seem to provide the most logical source for energy.

If only it were that simple. The problem is that hydrogen is not readily available on earth except in a form already bonded to oxygen as water, or as part of other molecules. In order to burn hydrogen we must first break its bond with oxygen by processing water. We

then get hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Apart from the amount of energy needed to free the hydrogen atom, we have to dispose of carbon dioxide which is said to be responsible for global warming. An alternative strategy is to free hydrogen from natural gas or coal, which of course makes it the end result of hydrocarbon based energy. Hydrogen requires a huge infrastructure investment, which given the complexities of hydrogen production, would hardly appear to be worth it.

That leaves us with solar which we divide into two groups—solar effect and direct solar power. Solar effect uses energy generated by the sun indirectly, capturing it through one of its direct effects, like the wind or waves. On a small scale, either of these are useful technologies. Critics of hydrocarbons have argued for wind based electrical production for a long time. But the problem there is scale. In order to power the United States in the 21st century, the number of wind generators that would have to be deployed would be breathtaking. They would be everywhere, along with electrical transmission lines. Wind generators are actually pretty noisy, and they tend to kill birds—usually endangered—that fly into them.

If wind generated power as a prime source of energy would be intrusive, wave generated power would be both more expensive and have incalculable effect on coastal areas where they would be deployed. Based on the motion of the sea, it would require large scale mechanical installations in the ocean to generate energy. The impact on the oceans near the coast from deploying massed power generation systems is incalculable. We can be certain that there would be an impact on marine life and we should bear in mind that the environmentalists who oppose hydrocarbons and advocate alternative energy sources would quickly turn against wave generated power as they have against wind.

Logically, the direct utilization of solar energy is the most efficient system. It cuts out the middleman of chemicals or wind. The sun is direct energy and the task is to convert it into a usable form, such as electricity. Technology for converting solar radiation into electricity already exists. It is at this point relatively inefficient, but the problem is extrapolation, not developing a new technology.

The traditional approach to solar energy is to place the conversion systems—photovoltaic cells—on earth. This poses two problems. The first is clouds, which block the sunlight; the second is that photovoltaic cells require a substantial area. Even placing these cells in the desert would create vast farms of solar collectors. The environmental disruption would be massive. So you have the paradox that the least environmentally intrusive form of power generation is possibly the most environmentally damaging when placed on the earth.

But that problem could be solved—along with the problem of clouds—if the solar collectors were placed in space. There has already been substantial discussion of a space based power generation system. Solar collectors would be assembled in space, the energy would be converted into electro-magnetic radiation and beamed to the surface in the form of high energy microwaves narrowly focused at collection and distribution nodes.

NASA has been involved in research on this subject since the 1970s, in SSP, or space solar power. In this project, vast numbers of photovoltaic cells, designed to convert solar energy into electricity, would be placed in geostationary orbit or on the surface of the moon. The electricity would be converted into microwaves, transmitted to the earth and reconverted to electricity, where it would be distributed through the existing and expanded electric grid. The number of cells needed could be reduced by concentrating sunlight using mirrors, and reducing the cost of launching the photovoltaic arrays. Obviously, the receivers would have to be in isolated areas, since the localized microwave radiation might be intense, but the risks would be far less than from nuclear reactors, or from the environmental impacts from hydrocarbons.

A space based solar collection system is an obvious solution and certainly within the technical capability of the United States by the end of the 21st century if it chooses to go this route. And it seems reasonable to think that it will because it solves one problem while playing to U.S. strength. By then other nations might pursue this goal as well, providing a non-exhaustible, non-polluting solution to a geopolitical nightmare.

Space

Obviously, given this discussion, the final technology of the 21st century must be space travel. The immediate conclusion of Columbus’ visit to the Western Hemisphere was that trans-Atlantic travel had no particular uses. The primary interest was gold and he didn’t find any. In due course, gold was found, and a vast array of unexpected uses of the Western Hemisphere by European imperial powers became evident until, as we are arguing, North America becomes the center of gravity of the international system. Clearly, 35 years after the first landing on the moon, labeling space a failure is foolish.

Indeed, while a use for the moon is still unclear, space is already filled with indispensable civilian systems. The communications systems, ranging from telecommunications to television are heavily depending on satellites operating in geosynchronous orbit. GPS systems, that are becoming ubiquitous in automobiles and are used for endless navigational purposes, depend on the Navstar system operated by the U.S. Air Force. And obviously, for military uses, space has become the enabling system for warfare, ranging from communications to navigation to surveillance and intelligence gathering.

But the economic impetus for going into space will ultimately be the one thing that is absolutely abundant in space: energy. What gold was to the conquistadors, energy is to advanced industrial society. The cost of scavenging for hydrocarbons, converting them to usable form, and cleaning up after them is prohibitive. Nuclear reactors are expensive and present potential risks which, however, remote, meet political resistance. Derivative solar energy conversion is less efficient on earth than in space, and also impacts the environment. Therefore, going to where energy exists in its purest form allows even inefficient conversion systems to operate effectively and unobtrusively, save for the inevitable impact of the interaction of microwaves with the atmosphere—which goes on all the time anyway from the sun.

The issue of going into space is not technological. Humans have almost fifty years experience developing space technologies. Rather, the issue is cost. The single use rocket imposes extremely high costs for launching materials, as would an aircraft that could use its engines only once and then require replacement. It should be noted that single use systems were embedded in the origins of space travel, because the core technology was driven by the need to develop nuclear weapon delivery systems that would, in reality, only be used once.

Just as the cost of Columbus’ initial exploration strained the budget of the Spanish monarchy, space exploration in its initial phases was a state-based project, driven primarily by military considerations and enormously costly, given the technologies that had to be developed. However, once the technologies are developed, governments are not necessarily the most efficient at applying technologies economically.

What has been lacking is the “killer app” of space, the single use that is so overwhelmingly attractive that investment to overcome limitations will be readily forthcoming. The killer app, it would seem, is energy. Whatever arguments are made, there is no doubt that the hydrocarbon economy of the European Age will have to be supplanted in the American Age. While the idea of space based energy generation appears radical, and certainly technological evolutions are needed, the idea is no more radical than the idea of conquering and populating the Western hemisphere was at the beginning of the 16th century. Indeed, it is far less radical.

We can extend the concept of the exploitation of space by considering the co-location of some manufacturing facilities with the energy source. If energy costs in space are cheaper than on earth, and the cost of transportation declines as it always does, then it is logical to go to where energy is cheap to produce things. Certainly, the cost of bringing materials into space is high. It is interesting to consider what minerals might be available on the moon, where energy is cheap and minerals might be cheaper than on earth. Any manufacturing process requiring basic minerals, vacuum and intense energy could be carried out on the moon efficiently. Consider the production of some electronic components.

One objection would, of course, be the cost of shipping things from the moon to earth. Today, of course, the cost of shipping would be astronomical. But the cost of shipping from the Western to Eastern hemisphere in the 16th century was equally prohibited. Apart from gold and silver, it wasn’t cost effective to ship much more. But over time the price of shipping declined dramatically, until the cost of shipping became a negligible factor in trade. The cost of shipping has declined historically. The same will happen in space.

Humans will not go into space to manufacture things. They will go into space to get gold, in the form of abundant energy. Having gone into space to get gold, the transfer of other economically advantageous activities to space will follow. Just as the conquistadors came to steal gold but were replaced by empire builders exploiting whatever was available in

unexpected ways, so too, the utilization of space, and particularly of a planet that has no life but has energy and minerals would be attractive.

Conclusion

The four technologies discussed—robotics, genetics, non-hydrocarbon energy and space travel—are all extrapolations of already active fields. There will be countless other fields that will matter a great deal as well. But each of these appears to be fundamentally important in dealing with essential geopolitical issues, which can be stated this way. The end of the population explosion and inevitable graying of the population, followed by population decline, requires dramatic substitutions for human labor, hence robotics. The need to make somewhat scarcer human life more productive requires genetics. The cost and geopolitical complexity of the hydrocarbon economy requires a radical alternative fuel. Space based systems provide that alternative.

It should also be noted that these are all technologies in which the United States excels. There is a bit of circular reasoning here, but it contains a truth. The United States is the center of gravity of the international system because it has created a culture of technology that has overthrown the European system. And therefore, the United States will use those technologies to transform the way the world operates, just as Europe transformed the way the world operated during its age.

And just as the European technology created an economic revolution, it also created a military one.