Technological leadership

The above video is in Mandarin Chinese, but this website describes what's going on. It's a technological innovation allowing passengers to get on and off a high-speed bullet train, without the train ever stopping. Neat, huh?

Arriving passengers board that connector cabin before the bullet train arrives. Then, when the train zooms through the station, it picks up the cabin (which slides along the roof of the train) while simultaneously dropping off a similar cabin containing departing passengers. Passengers move between the cabin and the train, through the roof of the train, while the train is speeding between stations.

This is really cool, but it's happening in China, not the U.S.  Don't get me wrong, it's great that technology is advancing worldwide. But it's China that seems to be taking the lead on all of this stuff these days, and as an American, I'm jealous. Also, China is a dictatorship, with no respect for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or any rights of minorities. That may change someday, but until it does, they're certainly not suited to lead the world.

But while we Americans are timidly refusing to move into the 21st Century, China is spending billions on alternate energy research, determined to control the market for advanced technology and lessen their reliance on foreign oil. While we're struggling to fill potholes because of our never-ending quest for lower taxes, China is building futuristic bullet trains. While many American cities have high school graduation rates below 50%, China has 6 million university students and almost 400 million Internet users (more than the entire population of the U.S.).

In America, politicians proudly proclaim their disbelief in evolution, and school boards work to replace science with religion. Republican leaders complain about studying fruit flies (in complete ignorance of how useful that's been to basic research) and even about monitoring volcanoes. They eagerly proclaim that global warming is just a scam, some massive conspiracy (for no logical reason) from climatologists. They leap to fund abstinence-only sex education, which doesn't work, but use political tricks to stop funding for basic scientific research, which does.

In the media, scientists are portrayed either as laughably-inept geeks or madmen eager to "play God." The hero's gut feeling is always right, not the hard work of professional scientists. In a nation which has led the world in science and technology (to our immense prosperity), only military research now gets any respect at all. At the end of World War II, the G.I. Bill led to the best-educated labor force in the world. Now, education is for "liberal elites." Regular Joes just want lower taxes for the rich, like God intended.

It's not just that China is taking the technological lead from America, but that we seem to be eager to abandon it to them. We're not even interested in competing. No, we've unilaterally surrendered. In the most advanced nation on Earth, we no longer seem to see any value in science and technology. If we just pray often enough, we'll get all that we want, right? And whatever happens, God must have wanted it that way. Meanwhile, it's TV celebrities and sports stars who are the real heroes, and what did book-larnin' ever do for them?

OK, there are still a few people in America who think science is important and who aren't threatened by higher education, but it seems to be an increasingly small minority. And many of those are children of immigrants, whose parents - unlike native-born Americans - still see a value in such things. Unfortunately, with the current anti-immigrant fervor, I wonder if we're moving towards shutting down even that source of skilled people.

Well, to show that all is not lost, here's another great video, this one from the Computational Learning and Motor Control Lab at the University of Southern California:



Obviously, we're still doing neat stuff in America (actually, in collaboration with scientists around the world, which is how science should be done.) But although it's cool, it's not nearly as bold as going to the Moon, or even building bullet trains. We apparently don't have the money or even the will for bold efforts these days. And research into robots has military applications (both of these were funded by DARPA), which is probably why we do it. Just as prisons now seem to be the only civilian growth industry in America, so too does the military seem to be the only ready source of research money, at least for cutting edge technology.

But come on! Do Republicans really think we can continue to have the most advanced military in the world if we're passed up in civilian science and technology? Military power is based on economic power. Without a highly-educated workforce, high-tech industries, and heavy research into basic science, we'll eventually be forced to buy weapons from other countries - when they're willing to sell them (i.e. probably not while they're still cutting-edge).

I don't want to give the wrong impression here. I want to be absolutely clear that we can compete with China. As I say, I get the feeling that a lot of Americans have already just given up (those who can be bothered to think about this at all). Remember in the 1980's when Japan was the unstoppable economic juggernaut? America just could not compete, so why even try? Except that we could, and we did.

It's the same way now. I've seen us taking the wrong path for decades now, but it doesn't have to be that way. Although we've gotten a terrible start to the 21st Century, suffering for eight years under the worst presidential administration in U.S. history, we're still the high-tech leader of the world, we've still got the world's most powerful economy, and we've still got a diverse society united in a tradition of innovation and risk-taking, with personal freedom that's essential for a unfettered marketplace of ideas.

If every nation on Earth were free and democratic (majority rules/minority rights: two sides of the same coin), I suppose it wouldn't matter much which nation led the world in science and technology. But right now, it does. And if we continue as we are now, as we have been for some time, we won't lead anyone much longer.