by John Akers
“In 1905, Albert Einstein published four papers that revolutionized humanity’s understanding of mass, energy, space, and time. It’s referred to by scientific historians as his ‘miracle year,’ a term that may yet come to be viewed with a sense of irony by subsequent generations.
“In his first paper, Einstein proved the existence of atoms through his explanation of the random motion of particles suspended in a liquid or gas, known as Brownian motion. His second paper detailed the photoelectric effect, in which light energy can only be disseminated in discrete packets, known as quanta. In conjunction with the wave theory of light suggested by Maxwell’s equations, it described the dual wave-particle nature of light, one of the foundational principles of quantum mechanics.
“In paper number three, Einstein unveiled the principle of special relativity, which explained the changes that happen to mechanical systems when moving close to the speed of light. And finally, in his fourth paper, he demonstrated how tremendous amounts of energy could be released from even atomic-sized particles, courtesy of the most famous formula in physics, E=mc2.”
“Hello, atom bomb,” muttered Pax.
Alethia nodded, then waved her hand. A new stream of pictures pushed Einstein off to the side.
rotary dial telephone, pop up toaster, escalator, airplane, municipal water purification, armored tank, bra, zipper, dishwasher, machine gun, chlorine gas, mustard gas
Alethia raised her hand, pausing the images flow on a bald man with a wiry, thick mustache and a pince-nez with circular lenses.
“Ever heard of Fritz Haber?” Alethia asked.
Pax shook his head. “Can’t say that I have.”
“Fritz Haber was a German professor of chemistry who, before World War I, developed a process for converting nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia. His synthetically produced ammonia became an essential component of modern fertilizers. To this day, fertilizers made with the Haber-Bosch process help grow the food that feeds more than half the world’s population.
“However, during World War I Haber’s humanitarian impulses took a back seat to his patriotism. At the outset of the war, he applied his expert knowledge of chemistry to create the world’s first chemical weapon, chlorine gas. In 1915, he personally oversaw the first deployment of chlorine gas in battle, when 6,000 canisters of the stuff were used to kill 7,000 French soldiers in only 10 minutes, and cause lung damage or blindness to thousands more.
Pax shook his head in amazement. “Guy looks like an elementary school teacher.”
“After the war,” Alethia continued, “Haber became the founding director of a chemical company, where he created an improved pesticide using—remember Prussian blue?—hydrogen cyanide. Called Zyklon A, it was purposely given a distinctive, bad odor to alert anyone in the vicinity to its toxic nature. But when the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s, they took Haber’s creation, removed the warning smell, and used odorless Zyklon B to kill more than one million Jews in the gas chambers, including members of Haber’s own extended family.
“He was Jewish?” asked Pax, surprised.
“Yes, by birth. But despite his conversion to Lutheranism as a young man, and his demonstrated loyalty to Germany in WWI, his ethnic lineage was all that mattered to the Third Reich. Haber was forced to flee in 1933, and he died only a year later.
“During the first World War, Haber defended his role as the father of chemical warfare, saying, ‘death is death, by whatever means it is inflicted.’ Unfortunately, there is no record of whether his opinion changed after the ideology of his beloved country mutated into seeing him as the enemy.”
Alethia waved her hand, and the top of Fritz Haber’s chromed head disappeared as the stream of pictures resumed.
airplane, helicopter, fighter plane, television, vacuum cleaner, motion picture camera, submerged oil wells, electroencephalography, insulin, parachute, liquid fuel rocket, penicillin, chloroflorocarbons
Alethia paused on the image of another mostly bald man, who wore glasses over a pleasant, cherubic face. Nearby were images of refrigerators and aerosol cans.
“Ever heard of Thomas Midgley?” Alethia asked. Pax shook his head.
“Midgley was a scientist at General Motors Chemical Corporation (GMCC) in the 1920s and ‘30s. His first claim to infamy was leading the team that helped invent leaded gasoline as a cheaper way to eliminate the knocking sound that accompanied early gas-powered automobile engines. Even though lead was a known toxin and several people who worked on the project died or suffered severe mental health problems, Midgley and his boss, Charles Kettering, argued that exposure to lead below a certain threshold was safe. Lead eventually became a standard additive in gasoline for the next 50 years. It took more than two decades to conclusively prove that any amount of exposure to lead is unsafe, and that leaded gasoline was contaminating the environment. Then it took two more decades before the use of leaded gas was completely eliminated around the world. We now know there is no safe threshold for exposure to lead. However, the full impact leaded gas had on human and animal health during this period will never be known.
“With humanity still unaware of the disastrous effect of leaded gas, Midgley moved over to GM’s Frigidaire division and began working on developing a safer alternative to ammonia-based refrigerator coolants. By the early 1930s, his team had created chloroflorocarbon (CFC), commercially known as Freon. For the next 50 years, CFCs ate away the Earth’s ozone layer, eventually depleting it by as much as five percent in some areas.
“As you saw earlier, the ozone layer blocks 98 to 99 percent of the ultraviolet radiation of the sun. Even a small increase could quickly lead to skin cancer and reproductive problems for all animals on the planet, and a larger increase would lead to another extinction event. Fortunately, scientists detected the problem in the 1980s, and CFCs were subsequently made illegal. Just as fortunately, the nature of the problem was such that it could self-correct—the ozone layer naturally rebuilt itself. Nonetheless, it will still be another decade before the damage is fully repaired.”
Alethia flicked her hand again, and Midgley’s face returned to the wall as a fast, continuous stream of images passed in front of Pax and Alethia.
Sarin gas, cellophane, air conditioning, polyethylene, polystyrene, antibiotics, electrocardiogram, felt tipped pen, masking tape, neoprene, blender, paper towels, electron microscope, FM radio, magnetic tape recorder, radar, jet engine, photocopier, Teflon, traffic lights, garbage disposal, power steering, artificial respirator, synthetic rubber, pacemaker, neutron, clothes dryer, magnetic tape, steam turbine, vacuum triode, electric power station, electric steam iron, automatic washing machine, solid state amplifier, mass spectrometer, structure of atom, superconductivity, electroencephalogram, quantum mechanics, tuberculosis vaccine, tetanus vaccine, penicillin, neutrino, electron microscope, nylon, helicopter, photocopier, xerography, carbon dating, programmable electronic computer, atomic fission, semiconductor, automatic transmission, duct tape, microwave radar, modem, ceramic magnet, superalloys, synthetic oil, nuclear chain reaction, nuclear fusion bomb
Suddenly everything went dark. Then, a flash of light appeared in front of them, so bright that Pax had to turn his head for a moment. Then as he looked back, a billowing, orange and black fireball mushroomed upward while the muted sound of the blast rumbled in the background.
“Almost 100 years ago,” said Alethia, “the first two practical applications of Einstein’s theory of mass-energy equivalence came to pass. One was the invention of the atomic clock. The other was the atomic bomb.
“Initially, the U.S. government developed the bomb as a deterrent to Nazi Germany’s attempts to develop such a weapon. But a few years later, a change in leadership from Roosevelt to Truman led to a change in mindset. Three years after the start of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government decided to use the bomb as an active weapon of war, instantly incinerating 250,000 Japanese civilians living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“A few years earlier, some Hungarian s
cientists had visited Einstein in the U.S. to share their concern that the knowledge he had uncovered might be used by men like Himmler, Eichmann, and Hitler to gain possession of an atomic bomb. Einstein’s reply was, ‘I had not thought of that.’”
The walls lightened again, the image of smoke and fire disappeared, and new images began to cascade past.
AK47 rifle, antibiotics, stored program computer, mechanical cotton picker, radar storm detection, velcro, Big Bang theory, instant photography, hologram, disk brake, kidney dialysis, Tupperware, air traffic control, cortisone, breaking the sound barrier, transistor, corneal contact lens, self-propelled field irrigators, jet plane, silicone, X-ray crystallography, structure of DNA, fluoroscopy, night vision, artificial hip, rock tunnel borer, long-distance phone calling, computer compiler, traffic walk signal, automatic coffeemaker, artificial heart valve, nuclear power plant, Dacron, open-heart bypass surgery, maser, atomic clock, transistor, synthetic diamonds, polypropylene, color television, transistor radio, kidney transplant, nuclear powered submarine, cryopreservation, radioimmunoassay, polio vaccine, random access memory, silicone dioxide, transatlantic telephone cable, Earth-orbiting satellite, integrated circuit, oral contraceptive, gamma ray tumor imaging, permanent satellite, Kevlar, geothermal electric plant, programming languages, operating system, laser, ultrasound, pacemaker, optical lithography, laser-based tumor removal, space based imaging, man in space, positron emission tomography, compact cassettes, digital transmission system, man orbit Earth, transatlantic telecast, smoke alarm, self-cleaning oven, communication satellite, touch tone telephone, carbon fiber, acrylic paint, equalizer, electronic fuel injection, packet switching, handheld calculator, computer mouse, random access memory, man on the moon, digital photography, CD ROM, digital seismology, airbags, mud pulse telemetry, arthroscope, genetically modified organisms, microprocessor, space station, automatic drip coffeemaker, video games, carbon nanotubes, email, computer axial tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, cell phone, graphical user interface, Ethernet, fiber optic cable, personal computer, TCP/IP, liquid crystal display, light-emitting diode, in vitro fertilization, electronic sewing machine, PC modem, cochlear implant, laptop computer, electronic spreadsheet, remote operated vehicles, controlled drug delivery, rare earth metals, space shuttle, scanning tunneling microscope, artificial heart, internet, robotic surgery, solar electric generating stations, defibrillator implant, networked automatic teller machine, antilock braking, deep brain electrical stimulation, fullerenes, echo planar imaging, Lasik surgery, digital camera, gene therapy, Java operating system, nanotechnology, World Wide Web, genome sequencing, optical amplifiers, global positioning system, personal digital assistant, radio-frequency identification, computer aided design, animal cloning, Mars robot, digital video disk, smartphone, fracking, massive multiplayer gaming, metamaterials, motion sensing input, vacuum robot, robotic limbs, International Space Station, speech recognition, hovercraft, fuel air explosives, human embryo cloning, unmanned drone, self-driving cars, DNA reprogramming, rail cannon, coil gun, virtual currency, near-field communication, massive open online education, H5N1 virus, Higgs boson, 3D printing, autonomous robotic assistant, synthetic biological organs, biofuels, ectogenesis, reprogenetics, microdrone, medical device implants, neuroprosthetics, synthetic nanosensors, supramolecular chemistry, oncolytic virus, machine vision, nanomaterials, nanomedicine, EyeTap, internet of things, ampakines, reusable rocket, directed energy weapons, conductive polymers, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, virotherapy, intereferometric modular displays, concentrated solar power, electric double layer capacitor, quantum dots, nanowire battery, volumetric displays, virtual reality, augmented reality, plasma weapon, hyperloop, brain computer interface, self-configuring modular robots, exoskeletons, organic light-emitting diodes, metal foam, radiolysis, artificial photosynthesis, exascale computing, scramjet, Univiz, ocean thermal energy conversion, vortex ring gun, bionic contact, solar roadway, electronic nose, e-textiles, super sensing, molecular electronics, 3D optical data storage, quantum computing, genetic alphabetizing, airborne wind turbine, spintronics
Suddenly, no more new images moved off the wall in front of them. The last of the images they’d just seen slid silently back to the wall, which Pax now saw was so far away he could barely see them. The darkly shaded but translucent ceiling was now less than 30 feet overhead, and he could see the sun was high in the sky above. A wisp of cloud hurtled by, and he realized the winds outside must be tremendous at this height, yet still he felt nothing. He looked back at Alethia.
“Congratulations,” she said. “You made it.”
Chapter 52
“That wasn’t at all what I expected,” said Pax. He couldn’t believe he was now almost two miles off the ground. He still hadn’t detected any sensation of movement, or heard any noise suggesting it. He noticed the large disk had reappeared, along with their water glasses. He leaned over and picked his glass up again and drank.
“I’m sure,” said Alethia. “But hopefully now you see the problem we’re concerned with.”
“You think we’re going to destroy ourselves with the technology we’re creating.”
She nodded. “And now that you’ve seen what we had to show you, what do you think?”
Pax thought for a moment. “I guess I’ll assume all the information you showed me is accurate.”
“Actually, there is one major inaccuracy.”
“Oh?”
“Yes—the timelines. At the beginning, we were covering time extremely rapidly—more than two million years a second. But ever since then we’ve been slowing things down continuously to show you certain details, particularly the history of human civilization. By the end, we were progressing at a rate of one year per second. But doing this naturally distorted the perception of the timelines involved.
“We placed the picture of LUCA in your office as an attempt to correct for that, to give you an accurate sense of the timelines involved.”
“How so?” Pax asked.
“If you were to condense the entire history of life on Earth into the time from when you found that picture until now, the entire 10,000-year history of human civilization would have happened in the amount of time it takes to say your name.”
“Oh. Well then.” He pondered this. “I guess that helps, but it seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to.”
“Not at all—it’s important,” said Alethia. “The essential point we wanted to impress upon you here today is how slow a process evolutionary change is. It’s critical to have a gut-level feel for this, so one can understand how much faster our knowledge-gathering is happening in comparison. Because our recent history has shown what a great challenge it has already been for us to avoid mass self-destruction, either with our weapons of war, or through catastrophic collateral damage to the environment.”
Pax thought about what he’d seen that day. Reluctantly, he found himself unable to deny the truth of what Alethia was saying. The amount of knowledge humans had gained in the past few hundred years was astonishing, and certainly seemed to be accelerating faster than our ability to control it. But the idea that humanity could literally wipe itself out in the near-future seemed so far-fetched! Certainly, some tech was falling here and there into the hands of people not morally qualified to possess it. But could it really wipe everyone out? And was it reasonable to think it could happen anytime soon?
Feeling a need to say something, he said, “I think you’ve made a compelling case. The volume and complexity of the tech we’ve been creating has certainly been accelerating, particularly over the past 200 years. We’ve created weapons of mass destruction, and we’ve used technology in ways that were dangerous and in some cases very destructive.”
Alethia nodded, a hopeful look on her face.
“However, I think your analysis is biased.”
To his surprise, Alethia’s expression didn’t change. “How so?”
“
You’ve focused primarily on the bad stuff. What about all the good things? Cures for diseases? Decreasing poverty levels around the world?”
“All that’s true. We freely acknowledge the many positive things human technology has enabled. The problem is, none of it will matter in the long run.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Pax scoffed. “Of course it matters.”
“No, it won’t. In particular, there are two issues that make the positive contributions of technology irrelevant. First, the technology we possess today, let alone what will be coming say, 100 years from now, is so powerful it can already enable a small group, even a single person, to unleash a technological Armageddon on the world. There are already many other ways a creative person can set the world on fire using technology far less complicated and costly than nuclear weapons.”
“Second, going through even a cursory analysis of our evolutionary history, as we’ve done today, should make it obvious that humans lack the inborn moral and intellectual capacity to responsibly manage such powerful technology. While it’s possible for us to develop such moral capabilities through education and experience, it’s not embedded as part of our DNA to do so. We do not innately weigh our interests proportionately against those of the broader society. We do so—or not—based on individual choice.
“Almost six months ago, the Infinet conducted the most complex parametric regression modeling of the future state of humanity ever undertaken. The modeling was based on the twin trajectories of our biological evolution and our technology. It looked at more than 100,000 variables detailing every aspect of human existence, from each country’s history of gross domestic product to the average amount of individual domestic violence in every region and subculture around the globe. It was the most massive statistical analysis ever performed. It took the Infinet several months to capture all the data, then another month to perform the analysis.”