Directors Commentary

Our Assignment: We were to defend the Techno-Optimist side of the debate on whether or not we should have faith in technology to come to our rescue in a time of need. We were to use technology to counter arguments of Malthusian theories about running out of resources. Also, how technology has turned around some early predictions of chaos and destruction from growing populations and decreasing resources. We were to explain the need for allowing the development of new technologies, instead of trying to hinder human innovation.
A big part of the debate against technological optimism is the ever growing population. The population is growing exponentially while the amount of crops and food increases linearly. The skeptics don’t believe technology has the potential to solve that problem. We wanted to take this argument head on, so we decided to use the Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich debate to prove our point that technology can solve any problems in the future. Simon was a professor at the University of Maryland. He was known for his work that saw human innovation and technological progress creating lasting economic benefits from natural resources and continuous population growth. Ehrlich was a professor at Stanford University was known for his warnings about unchecked population growth and limited resources. He was the author of controversial book titled, The Population Bomb, which predicted famines as the result of population growth outstripping resources. The debate was on whether or not the prices of common material resources will go up or down over the course of a decade. Ehrlich’s belief for why the prices would increase uses skeptic’s reasoning that higher population results in higher demand, therefore higher prices. Also that over the years, the supply of the resources would go down, therefore decreasing supply, and increasing prices. Simon however, took the techno-optimist ideas and believed that this doesn’t account for human innovation and development of new technologies. That technology was going to advance so that the process for getting and processing those metals would get cheaper and in turn would drive down the price of the metals. Another big part of why chose to focus on the debate was that winner of the wager was our techno-optimist Simon. At the end of those ten years, the prices for all of those metals did in fact go down.
Instead of just telling about the debate between these two, we decided to act it out how we thought it might have happened. We chose to just read the parts instead of physically acting them out because we thought that acting the debate out would take away from the message we wanted to get across. Andrew read the part of Simon and Adam read the part of Ehrlich. When we read our lines the corresponding person’s (Simon or Ehrlich) picture would appear. This helped to correlate which person bet what and this could help to picture the actual debate.
The other main point we wanted to make was to remind everyone how far technology has come, and use that to show how far it could go. We used some products that have come a long way in just a short amount of time when they were first introduced. The 200mph car is an example for how far it’s come in the 100 years when cars were first being introduced. The picture of the synthetic shirt shows that as our technology has advanced so we don’t have to be dependent on natural fibers. The next few pictures show a laptop and a very small cell phone which represent how technology has become smarter and smaller at the same time, both of which were simple, slow, and big when they were first innovated. The technology of today has come a long way, when the automobile first came out, people couldn’t have imagined it ever getting to a point where we have cars that can go 200 mph.
This took us into our next point, that technology will keep improving, bringing us things we can’t imagine today. One of the pictures shown was a flying car. The vehicle is registered as both a car and an airplane. It’s an early concept of what could be the regular mode of transportation for humans 100 or even 50 years from now. Another picture looking ahead to our future is of the robot ASIMO. ASIMO is walking humanoid robot that has high abilities of mobility and recognition. He is a big part of what could be available for humans in the future.
Our video adds to many of the points made in the book. One of the points we make is the skeptic views brought from Ehrlich during the debate. He believes the population bomb will “bring about mass chaos in the near future.” These ideas closely relate to the Malthusian concerns brought up in the book. The skeptics connect the growing population with environmental disaster, panic, and give rise to “lifeboat ethics.” Ehrlich also makes a suggestion in the video to start limiting the population growth. Forced sterilizations and abortions to reduce population growth are often solutions from Malthusian thinkers.
Another point we make in the video that relates to the book is that human creativity is the greatest resource. Simon states in the video that the growing population is a “great thing,” and that the increased number of people means “a higher number of very intelligent people.” We should not be putting limitations on our ultimate resource, ourselves. Some creative mind in the future will solve our problem of material resource shortages while another innovative mind will solve problems of pollution hazards.
This leads to another topic we bring up in the video, that new technology will help and improve the environment. We brought up the use of computers and the internet reduced our dependency on paper for communication reasons. Through emails, video chats, phones, text messaging we have used to technology to get us past the days of pen and paper mail. This is aiding the solution to the growing deforestation and biodiversity loss problems of the world. Technology has many facets through which it can help the environment. Our technology is only going to get better, which means more advances to help the environment.
In addition to these, another point we make in the video that correlates to the book is how we have and will disprove skeptics’ predictions for not sustaining a large population and its energy needs. The book brings up an early nineteenth-century prediction that America could not sustain a population greater than several million. This deduction came from the idea that with the main sources of energy for transportation, agriculture, and industry being horses and other beasts of burden, there wouldn’t be enough pasture to feed them. However, technology came to the rescue and brought the inventions of steam power and internal combustion engines, which completely threw out the old prediction. We talk about the same thing happening with our fossil fuels. We can use them now, because by the time we do run out, technology will have brought in a new resource for us to get our energy needs from.
And lastly, another point we bring up in the video that makes a connection with the book is also in the Simon debate. Simon won because the prices of the materials went down. One of the reasons those metals went down, was that technology improved our process for obtaining the materials, so the easier access to the material drove the prices down. The book also points to this, stating that innovations in mining technology increase the resource yields of materials. If there is something that we want, technology will always improve ways in which we get it, by making the process, easier, safer, or more efficient.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

This is where we got most of our information on the Malthusian theories. It helped us to know what the opposite side of the argument was in order to defend our side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager
We got most of the logistics from the wager to form our debate from here. We were able to get which metals were chosen, how much the difference was after the ten years, and a couple theories as to why the differences was what it was.

www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0225/080.html
We got more on how it’s human ingenuity that we need to have faith in from this site. It also goes into a couple areas of where we are making big advances in technology.

http://politicalcartel.org/2008/05/06/techno-optimism/
We pulled some base information on what a techno-optimist is from this site. We didn’t go along so much with there being a “bad” or “good” kind of techno-optimist, but focused more on what a techno-optimist believes.

http://www.hybridcars.com/compacts-sedans/toyota-prius-overview.html
This is where we got our information about the Toyota Prius. We found that it was a good example for how technology is improving and will continue to do so.

Video Posted!

Our video is done and posted on our team page! We all spent the afternoon yesterday at the innovation space wrapping up the video. We burned a dvd to have a hard copy to turn in later. There are still a couple more things we need to do before the end of the semester, but we are all going to take a well deserved fall break for ourselves over the weekend.

Almost done

Sunday we met up in the inovation center, in Turgerson Hall to continue our work on our video. Me and adam recorded our debate as Erlich and Simmon in the recording studio. As kyle worked on putting everything together. We are meeting again tuesday to finish up and fine tune our video and post it online.

Video Underway

I was having some issues earlier with iMovie, however it seems as if I have taken care of most of that problem. The video is now in its beginning stages and some filming of a skit will hopefully be taken care of today.

For the Weekend Ahead

We had a quick meeting today. Everyone had been a little busy this past week with other assignments for school. Our goal for the weekend is some individual work on finding pictures for the video and getting some dialogue written. Next Tuesday we are meeting and checking out the Video Resources place that is available for us, to get a feel for what we need to do to start filming and putting it together.

Brainstorming

It's Tuesday, and we had another great meeting. We had done a little research on our own and shared what we had found. Then, we outlined what we wanted to put in the video and have a rough order of how we want to do it. Three weeks from today puts us at Oct. 1, which is the due date we have set for ourselves and are trying to get it approved by Dr. Hull. We closed the meeting with things to get done before meeting again next week, such as researching more and finding some pictures for the video.

Getting Started

We are getting started with our video project. None of us have a lot of experience with the video editting, but we are all eager to jump right into it.