Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 296–303

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Technological Forecasting & Social Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore

Is the force awakening? T

Ulrich A.K. Betz

Merck KGaA, Frankfurter Straße 250, Postcode F127/003, D-64293 Darmstadt, Germany

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Scientific and technological progress over the centuries was very strong in some fields, much weaker in others
Science and even virtually absent in a few so far. For the future, there are a series of areas where new breakthroughs can
Technology be expected to occur. However, there is some evidence that such breakthroughs seem to be increasingly difficult
Future foresight to achieve. The paper reviews these discussions, maps scientific and technological progress over the centuries
Humanity
and presents new ideas on how to foster and accelerate scientific and technological advancement.
Innovation
Progress

Since Johannes Kepler with “Somnium” (Kepler, 1634) wrote the
world's first science fiction novel (encompassing a travel to the moon),
science fiction has remained a source of inspiration for scientists and
the public, as convincingly demonstrated for example with the Star
Wars movie “The Force Awakens” which broke box-office records all
over the world (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/). Experien-
cing the impressive visualization of advanced technologies leaves us
wondering whether mankind will ever be able to achieve such tech-
nological progress. Beyond science fiction, there are predictions made
in the frame of serious future foresight activities. Throughout the entire
20th century, the year 2000 often served as a time on which such
predictions for advancement were projected, as for example nicely
summarized by Davis (2012). Retrospectively, these predictions now
seem over-optimistic and have largely not been fulfilled, progress un-
fortunately having been much slower than initially anticipated
(Humphrey, 1967; Kahn and Wiener, 1967). Predictions for example
included: Elimination of bacterial and viral diseases, large-scale ocean
farming, weather control, establishment of space colonies (e.g. the ring-
shaped “Taurus” was envisioned as a colony that could house 10,000
people for the purpose of mining ore from the moon) etc. If you would
transfer someone from 1967 to 2017 and tell him this is the future, most
likely he would be very disappointed. Looking out of the window, the
world today looks quite similar to how it looked in the 60s. At first
sight, it seems that not much has changed except the design of cars and
the smartphones in our hands. How can it be that technological pro-
gress overall was much slower than predicted? In fact, efforts to look
back on what has been achieved so far and what can be expected from
the future have triggered an intense debate on whether technological
progress is overall accelerating as usually claimed or whether it might
even have decelerated in recent decades.
Key examples of proponents for the optimistic position are Vinge
(1993), Kurzweil (2006) and Erik Brynjolfsson/Andrew McAfee
(Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2011, 2014), mostly based on already
achieved and projected future breakthroughs in IT and communication
technologies - enabling cognitive computing, big data analysis and ar-
tificial intelligence which are supposed to catalyze progress in diverse
areas (Chen and Butte, 2015). In fact, the rise of computers has become
publicly apparent with key events such as the victory of Deep Blue over
the chess world champion Gary Kasparov (Weber, 1997) under official
tournament conditions in 1997 or the winning of the quiz jeopardy! by
the IBM Watson system in 2011 (Markoff, 2011). Machine learning
algorithms have already reached an impressive level of sophistication
and Google's Deep Q-Network (DQN) has been able to master a diverse
range of Atari 2600 games superior to a professional human game tester
(Mnih et al., 2015). The fact that Google Deep Mind was able to beat
Lee Sedol, one of the world's top players in 2016, was another key
milestone, as this game due to its high number of variations is ex-
ponentially more complex than chess and requires a certain degree of
intuition (Gibney, 2016). The list of achievements was just recently
topped by Deep Stack, an algorithm for imperfect-information settings,
which was able to defeat with statistical significance professional poker
players (Moravcik et al., 2017). Even the occurrence of an event called
technological singularity is projected, the generation of artificial in-
telligence capable of recursive self-improvement whereby smart ma-
chines would design successive generations of increasingly powerful
machines, creating intelligence far exceeding human intellectual cap-
ability (Kurzweil, 2006; Vinge, 1993), basically the last invention
humanity would ever have to make. Kurzweil has more generally
summarized this as the law of accelerating returns and predicted that
paradigm shifts have and will continue to become increasingly
common, leading to “technological change so rapid and profound it
represents a rupture in the fabric of human history” (Kurzweil, 2011).

E-mail address: ulrich.betz@merckgroup.com.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.08.006
Received 24 July 2017; Accepted 15 August 2017
Available online 31 August 2017
0040-1625/ © 2017 The Author. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).
U.A.K. Betz
He even arrived at the prediction that already the generation of humans
living today will live forever (Goldman, 2013). Amazingly, just recently
a series of discoveries have brought a breakthrough in anti-aging re-
search (Castellano et al., 2017).
On the other end of the spectrum, however, several proponents have
argued that technological progress in the past decades has decelerated.
This is, for example, claimed by Michael Mandel (Mandell, 2000), Peter
Thiel with Gary Kasparow (Thiel and Kasparow, 2011), David Graeber
(Thiel and Graeber, 2014), Cowen, 2011a, b, 2016, Gordon, 2012,
2016, Hanlon, 2014, Fredrick Erixon with Bjorn Weigel (Erixon and
Weigel, 2016a, b) and summarized by Rotman (2016), Graeber (2012),
Karlgaard (2012), Pfeiffer (2016), several articles in The Economist
(Economist, 2013a, 2013b; The Economist, 2015), Buchanan, 2015 and
Fry, 2016 but heavily contradicted by others such as Gates (2014) or
Mokyr (2014) just to mention a few.
And the argument for a slowdown at first sight really seems ridi-
culous, as conventional wisdom is that the world is moving faster and
faster and that the pace of innovation is constantly accelerating. Since
2007, when the first i-phone was released, we experience a digital surge
that has had a visible impact on the way we live our lives. Driverless
cars are arriving on our roads, drones will soon fly over our heads
delivering goods, advanced surgery can be done by robots and modern
medicine will soon have made significant impact on cancer (Erixon and
Weigel, 2016a, b). For the first time in history, more people die today
from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from
old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide
than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined (Harari,
2015). The argument of an innovation slowdown is mainly based on the
thought that the 1870 to 1970 period had experienced a technological
revolution - unique in human history in its tremendous impact on daily
lives (e.g. electricity, cars, antibiotics, telephone etc.). According to the
proponents, such an impact on our lives has not been achieved by the
digital technologies since then. Gordon describes in his book, “The rise
and fall of American growth” (Gordon, 2016), the century between
1870 and 1970 as a special century, a period of unprecedented eco-
nomic growth and improvements in health and standard of living. He
stated that this economic revolution was unique in human history and
by 1970 lives had totally changed in the developed world. The in-
troduction of fundamentally new classes of technology seems rarer now
than it was in the past. Information technology has certainly trans-
formed the present day, but railways, telephony, automobiles and the
chemical and steel industries each brought transformations as big as
anything IT has wrought so far (The Economist, 2015). Indeed, it seems
that the genuine progress in IT from the 1970s up to the 2000s has
masked the relative stagnation of energy, transportation, space, mate-
rials, agriculture and medicine, at least when the advancement factors
described above are taken as key performance indicators. Our ability to
do basic things such as protect ourselves from earthquakes and hurri-
canes, to travel and to extend our lifespans is barely increasing. Many
technologies that are considered modern are actually already quite old,
Augustin Mouchot wrote the first book on solar energy in 1869, John
Ericson designed an engine powered by the sun a few years later, Ro-
bert Anderson designed the first electric car in 1831.
Looking at the pure numbers in a non-biased way it has to be noted
that the GDP growth has in fact slowed down in western countries (e.g.
2.82% 1920–1970 and 1.62% 1970–2014 for the U.S.) (Rotman, 2016).
Productivity growth actually had slowed down in many OECD countries
already before the financial crisis, which only amplified the phenom-
enon (OECD, 2015). Since the start of the financial crisis none of the
Western economies have so far returned to the pre-crises trend of GDP
growth (Erixon and Weigel, 2016a, b). The real median wage earned by
men in the United States is lower today than it was in 1969 and median
household income adjusted for inflation is now lower than it was in
1999 (Cowen, 2016). Rates of absolute upward income mobility, chil-
dren's prospects of earning more than their parents in the U.S. have
fallen sharply from ~90% for children born in 1940 to ~50% for
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 296–303
children entering the labor market today (Chetty et al., 2017), largely
due to lower GDP growth rates and greater inequality in the distribu-
tion of growth (Goldin and Katz, 2008). It has been argued that this
slowdown would be the best available evidence that the third industrial
revolution (mainly digital, post 1972) was a mere shadow of the second
industrial revolution (1875–1972) (Gordon, 2012). Another interesting
phenomenon signaling a decrease in dynamism is that the share of start-
up firms declined from 2001 to 2011, a trend which has continued in
recent years (OECD, 2015). The aging of firms at the global frontier was
suggested by the OECD to foreshadow a slowdown in the arrival of
radical innovations and productivity growth (Andrews et al., 2015).
Most indices agree that in most of the world's regions an excess of funds
is chasing too few growth investment opportunities and even compa-
nies considered to be innovation pioneers are sitting on huge cash piles
rather than investing them (Riley, 2015).
Against this view it was convincingly argued that the digitalization
and IT revolution produces great benefits that are not reflected in an
immediate GDP increase (e.g. free access to knowledge and digital as-
sets) such that the GDP may no longer be the right measure of progress
(The Economist, 2016). In addition, rather than indicating a slow-down
of science and technology, the lack of GDP growth could originate from
the fact that humanity on earth is inevitably facing the limits of growth,
as first published in the famous Club of Rome report in 1972 (Meadows
et al., 1972). Despite a lot of criticism that the first book has received,
recent analysis has demonstrated that the essential points of the report
are correct (Meadows and Randers, 2004). It could be shown that the
“business-as-usual scenario” described in the Limits to Growth report in
1972 unfortunately aligns well with historical data so far. Going on
unchanged, this would finally result in collapse of the global economy
and environment around 2020 with signs of decline becoming visible
earlier (Turner, 2014, Turner and Alexander, 2014).
Beyond GDP, looking at the healthcare sector as an example to
determine whether technological progress is accelerating or deceler-
ating, it is evident that the most important sources of higher life ex-
pectancy in the 20th century were achieved in the first half of that
century, when life expectancy rose at twice the rate of the last half
(Cutler and Miller, 2005). Just recently, for the first time since 1993,
Americans' life expectancy has even decreased (Xu et al., 2016). The
fact that life expectancy in developing countries is increasing to levels
seen in the Western countries is an argument of improved development
and technology distribution but not of top technology advancement.
Looking specifically at achieved breakthroughs in science and tech-
nology, Dong et al. have found that the last science and technology
productivity surge begins around the middle of the 16th century, peaks
at the early 20th century but declines since then (Dong et al., 2016).
Likewise, the Pentagon physicist Jonathan Huebner (Hübner, 2005)
using a list of important technological discovery landmarks, has calcu-
lated the global rate of innovation vs. population and has found that the
curve peaked around 1870 and has decreased since then. Interestingly,
Ray Kurzweil using a similar methodology has reached the opposite
conclusion of Huebner: namely that technological progress has been
accelerating throughout all of Earth's history, and he predicted that it
will continue to do so (Kurzweil, 2006). It is important to note that in
such assessments, the level of technology that was already reached in the
past and lost later should not be underestimated, such as e.g. indicated in
recent discoveries around the ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism
which is an analog computer designed by Greek scientists in 205 BCE
(Marchant, 2006). A similar Archimedes sphere has been described by
Cicero (Marchant, 2015). Another striking example is nanotechnology
operated already by the ancient Romans. A historic glass chalice, known
as the Lycurgus Cup, appears green when lit from the front and red when
lit from behind, a characteristic that puzzled scientists for decades. The
mystery wasn't solved until 1990 when researchers discovered that the
Roman artisans were nanotechnology pioneers that had impregnated the
glass with particles of silver and gold, ground down until they were as
small as 50 nm in diameter (Merali, 2013).
U.A.K. Betz
Let's look deeper in digitalization and IT as the poster child that
undoubtedly has progressed tremendously. Indeed, your cell phone has
more computing power than all of NASA did when it sent a man to the
moon (Kaku, 2011). Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel and
Fairchild Semiconductor, described in a seminal paper in 1965 (Moore,
1965) a doubling every year in the number of components per in-
tegrated circuit (with a revised forecast to doubling every two years
(Moore, 1975)). This is called Moore's law, which in fact has guaranteed
an ever-increasing computation power over the years and has enabled
the IT revolution. Even in this textbook example of accelerating in-
novation, it seems that the speed of advancement is decreasing and
Moore's law seems to come to an end (Waltrop, 2016). In addition, the
annual reduction in the price of ICT equipment relative to its perfor-
mance has peaked at minus 15% in 1998, but its rate of decline has
steadily diminished until then (Gordon, 2014).
If the viewpoint that the speed of innovation is decelerating in the
past decades is true, then the question, of course, comes up “how could
this be”? In their recent book “The innovation Illusion: Why so little is
created by so many working so hard” Erixon and Weigel (2016a, b)
exhibit the view that a crisis of capitalism is the underlying reason for a
decline in the speed of progress, listing as the four apocalyptic
horsemen of decline: gray capitalism (aging populations with a lack of
willingness to invest in risky long-term innovation), excessive corporate
managerialism (play it safe and avoid all risks attitude), second-gen-
eration globalization (ability to expand markets via globalization
without the need to innovate) and complex government regulations
that have rendered companies moribund and risk-averse. Their con-
clusion is that R & D basically is still doing well, but that the generated
discoveries are not appropriately leveraged towards economic growth
via risk-embracing entrepreneurs investing to channel the invention to
the market to reach an audience.
Along the same line, Jan Vijg has argued that responsible govern-
ment and industry leaders have begun to refrain from risky bets on
exciting new exploits and the time of grand projects, such as the
Eisenhower Interstate System, the Moon Landing Program or the de-
velopment of the internet is behind us. Instead, we mainly pursue in-
cremental improvements of existing technologies, embark in catch-up
programs for developing countries and spend huge resources on social
programs and military. The consequences are slowing advancement and
a decrease of the dramatic progress society has undergone since the
industrial revolution now > 200 years ago (Vijg, 2011). It might even
be, that the digitalization revolution which often allows for very rapid
pay-backs on investments has spoiled investors' appetite for more risky
long-term endeavors.
Other analysts have looked at the nature of discovery research itself
and came to interesting conclusions. Youn et al. (2015), via analyzing
the US patent records and associated technology codes since 1790,
could demonstrate that the creation of completely new technological
capabilities has significantly decelerated and that combinatorial in-
novation (Kodama, 1992) has become the norm. Things already
changed around 1870 when growth in the number of new distinct
technology patent codes slowed down. This suggests that invention now
proceeds mainly by recombining existing technologies and chimes with
the idea that inventions were, in some sense, more fundamental in the
past than they are today (The Economist, 2015). It seems that humanity
desperately awaits the moment when we break through into some new
domain of science, radically different from anything we currently em-
brace, which opens a new door making a new innovation explosion
again possible (Buchanan, 2015).
It is clear though that if there is a problem it is a problem of quality
but not quantity and these days ~2 million scientific papers are pub-
lished each year, more than ever before in human history (Ioannidis
et al., 2014). Lutz Bornmann and Rüdiger Mutz have identified three
growth phases in the development of science, which each led to growth
rates tripling in comparison with the previous phase: from < 1%
starting in the 17th up to the middle of the 18th century, to 2 to 3% up
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 296–303
to the period between the two world wars and 8 to 9% up to 2012
(Bornmann and Mutz, 2014). Not just in relation to scientific papers but
also with patents, the past three decades have seen dramatic growth
and filings almost tripled between 1985 and 2014. Around 2.68 million
patent applications were filed worldwide in 2014 (http://www.wipo.
int/pressroom/en/articles/2015/article_0016.html). In addition, the
world is producing more PhDs than ever before, China has now over-
taken the U.S. to become the world's biggest producer of PhDs
(Cyranoski et al., 2011) and it is now estimated there are 7.8 million
researchers worldwide (UNESCO, 2015).
Last but not least, R & D funding seems not to be the problem either.
Worldwide R & D expenditures totaled an estimated $1.4 trillion (cur-
rent PPP dollars) in 2011. The corresponding estimate for 5 years ear-
lier in 2006 is $1.1 trillion. Ten years earlier, in 2001, it was $750
billion. By these figures, growth in total global R & D has been rapid,
averaging 6.4% annually over the 5-year period and 6.7% annually
over the 10-year period. Adjusted for inflation in the US total spending
on R & D has almost tripled since 1965. Strikingly, however, also here it
seems that recently we have moved into a decline. The OECD report
published December 2016 (OECD Science, 2016) stated that govern-
ment-financed R & D has declined (in real purchasing power parity
terms) by 2.4% since 2010, when it accounted for 31% of total OECD
R & D expenditures, falling to 27% by 2014. In its December report the
OECD raised serious concerns about declining public funding for R & D
and innovation raising concerns that the situation could deteriorate
further with aging societies. In many OECD countries public research
funding in 2015 was below the level determined for 2000 (e.g. Aus-
tralia, Finland, France, UK, Italy, Spain and the U.S.). The report also
criticizes a shift from funding of basic research to R & D tax incentives
for corporations, leading to less breakthrough and more incremental
innovation. For the U.S., the situation has been described in a recent
MIT analysis (MIT, 2016).
In summary, the question of whether there is an acceleration or a
decline in the speed of science and technology advancement depends
very much on the specific area under investigation. While there is
certainly room for optimism on some breakthrough technology areas
such as digitalization and robotics, there are also some signs of a decline
in GDP growth and generation of completely new breakthroughs. While
the reasons for this are not entirely clear, it is safe to state that some
technology areas are progressing much faster than others. If an extra-
terrestrial civilization would look at us humans from outer space, they
would probably be surprised on our progress in some areas and dis-
appointed about our progress in others. Similarly, it could be shown
that for the past 100 years information technology has outpaced energy
technology in progress rates by a factor of 1.5 to 7 with neither type of
technology showing strong saturation effects (Koh and Magee, 2006).
Nevertheless, 80-year exponential improvement in information storage
by mechanical and electronic means had only recently (~ 1990) sur-
passed printing on paper as to information storage per unit cost (Koh
and Magee, 2008).
Let's have a look at what humanity achieved so far in the various
technology areas in boosting its natural capabilities.
1. Population
Growth in human population size can be used as a baseline of our
advancement and has certainly seen a tremendous increase. Starting
from a bottleneck of only 2000–20,000 humans (Ambrose, 1998; Behar
et al., 2008) we have now expanded to 7.3 billion (http://www.
worldometers.info/world-population/). This would result in a popula-
tion advancement factor of 4 ∗ 10E5.
2. Transport speed
The fastest human footspeed on record is 45.7 km/h seen during a
100 m sprint (average speed between the 60th and the 80th meter) by
U.A.K. Betz
Usain Bolt (IAAF, 2009). While the fastest transportation speed
achieved up to date is 39,897 km/h reached by Apollo 10 CSM upon re-
entry into earth orbit (Furniss, 2003). This results in a transport ad-
vancement factor or 1 ∗ 10E3.
3. Calculation speed
In general, the speed of supercomputers is measured and bench-
marked in FLOPS (Floating point Operations Per Second), currently the
Sunway TaihuLight at Wuxi in China is considered the world's fastest
computer with 93 PetaFLOPs (93 ∗ 10E15FLOPS) (https://www.
top500.org/lists/2016/11/) while the human brain can only make
about two conscious calculations per second. This results in an ad-
vancement factor of 5 ∗ 10E16.
4. Communication
Naturally humans are able to communicate with ~300 other hu-
mans as determined via analysis of hunter-gatherer social networks
(Hamilton et al., 2007). With the mobile communication technologies
today one person is basically able to reach every other human on the
planet. This results in an advancement factor of 2 ∗ 10E7.
5. Life expectancy
What is commonly known as ‘average life expectancy’ is technically
‘life expectancy at birth’ (LEB), in other words, it is the average number
of years that a newborn baby can expect to live in a given society at a
given time. A major determinant of life expectancy at birth is the child
mortality rate which, in our ancient past, was extremely high skewing
the life expectancy rate dramatically downward. The life expectancy at
birth of hunter gatherers is around 30 years (Gurven and Kaplan, 2007),
in Japan currently it is about 84 years (http://data.worldbank.org/
indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN). The combination of high infant mortality
and deaths in young adulthood from accidents, epidemics, plagues,
wars, and childbirth, particularly before modern medicine was widely
available, has significantly lowered LEB in the past, but for those who
survived early hazards, a life expectancy of sixty or seventy would not
be uncommon even in ancient times. Taking LEB as a measure we
calculate an advancement factor of only 3, if we would look at life
expectancy of adults it would be basically zero! Human lifespans have
remained constant for almost 2000 years, when Socrates died at the age
of 70 around 399 BCE, he did not die of old age but instead by ex-
ecution. It is ironic that ancient Greeks lived into their 70s and older,
while > 2000 years later modern humans aren't living much longer
(Radford, 2009). Contrary to common notions, seventy-year-olds wer-
en't considered rare freaks of nature in previous centuries. Galileo Ga-
lilei died at seventy-seven, Isaac Newton at eighty-four, Michelangelo at
eighty-eight (Harari, 2015). The war against death is likely to be one of
the flagship projects in the coming centuries.
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 296–303
6. Energy generation
Historically humans were mainly generating energy from burning
wood. A typical wood fire generates 16.2 MJ/kg (http://www.world-
nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Introduction/Energy-for-the-
World—Why-Uranium-/), while a modern nuclear power plant is able
to generate 80,620,000 MJ/kg from U-238/Pu-239 (https://
whatisnuclear.com/physics/energy_density_of_nuclear.html).
This results in an advancement factor of 5 ∗ 10E6.
7. Information storage density
Areal density is a measure of the quantity of information bits that
can be stored on a given length of track, area of surface, or in a given
volume of a computer storage medium. In 2016 Sony has announced
a new tape that holds 148 gigabits (Gb) per square inch beating a
record set in 2010 more than five times over (http://www.bbc.com/
news/technology-27282732). Interestingly, the data storage capa-
city, speed and duration of DNA goes far beyond (Extance, 2016).
Naturally it can be calculated that on stone or paper 10 bits per
square inch can be engraved. (http://www.tecchannel.de/storage/
extra/401897/nanotechnik_ibm_speichert_1_tbit_in/).
(http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v5/n7/pdf/nnano.2010.
137.pdf).
This results in an advancement factor of 1 ∗ 10E10.
8. Food production/acres needed to feed 1 person
The 25 top calorie staple crops worldwide according to 2008
FAOSTAT data, required 1 ∗ 10E9 ha to grow. In terms of calories, then,
approximately 1 billion ha can feed 10 billion persons, and 1 ha can feed
about 10 persons these days (http://www.gardeningplaces.com/
articles/global-food-crisis.htm). In contrast it takes one to ten square
miles of land per person to support a hunter gatherer lifestyle (http://
www.trunity.net/sam2/view/article/51cbf44b7896bb431f6af515/).
With 1 mile2 = 259 ha this results in an advancement factor of 3 ∗ 10E4.
9. Construction (buildings height)
Göbekli Tepe is an archaeological site at the top of a mountain ridge
in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey with a height of ~15 m.
The tell includes two phases of ritual use dating back to the 10th –
8th millennium BCE and is considered the oldest building on earth
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe). The Jeddah
Tower is a skyscraper under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, if
completed in 2020 as planned, the Jeddah Tower will reach un-
precedented heights becoming the tallest building in the world, as well
as the first structure to reach the one-kilometre-high mark (https://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeddah_Tower). This results in an advancement
factor of 70 only. All advancement factors are visualized here (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Advancement factors of various technology areas as
calculated from the most advanced technological status
achieved by humanity today vs. capabilities of a hunter
gatherer human in pre-historic times.
U.A.K. Betz
This method brings us to the following rankings of most advanced
vs. less advanced technologies:
1) calculation
2) information storage
3) communication
4) energy generation
5) population
6) food production
7) transportation
8) construction
9) medicine (life expectancy)
Interestingly this list intuitively makes a lot of sense. Highest pro-
gress has been achieved in the poster child of technological progress, IT
and communication/mobile phones/internet. The technology fields of
energy generation and food production show an average advancement
(without progress in food production the population growth would not
have been possible so the two are certainly interlinked). Interestingly,
construction and particularly medicine are apparently dramatically
under-developed technologies. Looking at the materials we build our
buildings with (often still brick and mortar as in the classic antique or
even prehistoric ages) this is pathetic. Also when it comes to life ex-
pectancy progress has been close to zero, so despite all the hype about
new medicines, progress here, when measured against life expectancy,
indeed seems to be very slow. Hopefully the new gene editing and stem
cell technologies will bring some progress in this apparently under-
developed area. Also the fact that transportation is below average
seems to correlate well with the poster-child of technological under-
achievement: space travel and the inability of humanity to colonize
space and the dramatically slower progress vs. what was anticipated
fifty years ago.
Looking into the future of science and technology is always difficult,
especially when it comes to the emergence of completely new break-
through discoveries and technologies. Yet it is exactly these discoveries
that, for decades or even centuries, power global progress, triggering so
called Kondratieff waves (Kondratieff, 1935) of high sectoral growth,
separated by intervals of relatively slow growth until the next break-
through technology emerges (Devezas et al., 2005; Korotayev et al.,
2011). Examples for such past breakthrough discoveries are: The de-
velopment of the steam engine, emergence of railways, steel and heavy
engineering, electricity, the automobile and finally the emergence of
telecommunication and IT. At this point in time it is hard to predict
what could be the breakthrough that will trigger the next Kondratieff
cycle. The question is of outstanding importance, the Obama adminis-
tration's policy also emphasized a search for the “next trillion dollar
trigger”, as IT and the internet were for the Clinton years (Glenn and
Gordon, 2007). Past forecasts have never been accurate and while the
advent of automobiles, spaceships and robots was widely anticipated,
the arrival of x-rays, radio, transistors, lasers, superconductors, nuclear
energy, quantum mechanics, communication satellites, fiber-optic
technology, gene editing and the entire electronics and digital revolu-
tion were all surprises. When Bill Clinton assembled the top minds of
the nation to discuss the economy in 1992, “no one mentioned the in-
ternet” (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2011). Interestingly, and coming
back to the area of science fiction, Jules Verne however had correctly
predicted many technological advances in his writings, long before they
were invented, such as e.g.: electric submarines, helicopters, newscasts,
solar sails, lunar modules, videoconferencing, sky-writing or tasers
(Kerr, 2015). Likewise, the concept of nanotechnology was envisioned
by Richard Feynman during a lecture called “There's plenty of room at
the bottom”, delivered to the American Physical Society in Pasadena
December 1959 (Feynman, 1959).
Looking at the situation today, which areas have the potential to
deliver the future breakthroughs? As already mentioned at the begin-
ning of this article, the most frequently cited expected breakthrough is
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the generation of artificial intelligence with the consequence of the
emerging so called technological singularity, a computer capable of
designing computers better than itself with the expectation that re-
petitions of this cycle would result in a runaway effect and create in-
telligence far exceeding human intellectual capacity. The median ex-
pectance date for the singularity is 2040. The first use of the term
“singularity” in this context was made by Stanislaw Ulam in his 1958
obituary for John von Neumann. The term was later popularized by
Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil. Areas closely connected to this field
are voice-based computing, augmented reality or brain-electronic-in-
terfaces connecting the artificial with our biological brains. Elon Musk
has recently announced that in his opinion meaningful interfaces be-
tween the brain and computers were five years away and has heavily
invested in the field with the founding of his new company “Neuralink”
that starts making invasive devices for treating neurological ailments
but finally targets an implant that would let the wearer tap directly into
the internet and all of the computational power available there (The
Economist, 2017). In the area of computer-brain-interfaces already
amazing breakthroughs have been achieved today such as for example
the electronic transfer of sensorimotor information between two brains
(Pais-Vieira et al., 2013) or the direct thinking of letters into a computer
(Herff and Schulz, 2016).
Also synthetic biology carries a lot of hope to become the next
super-enabling technology (Church, 2014; Waltz, 2015). Via advanced
synthetic biology all organisms could become the subject of complete
manipulation and engineering, including humans. Imagine a future in
which human beings have become immune to all viruses or no longer
develop diseases like Alzheimer or back-pain. Bacteria or other artificial
organisms could custom-produce all materials, even items, or generate
enough electricity or biofuel. Pioneering geneticist George Church and
science writer Ed Regis have intriguingly described the potential of this
technology (Specter, 2015).
Nanotechnology in all its aspects, especially in the most sophisti-
cated form as nano-robotics certainly holds tremendous game changer
potential. Intriguing options are described for medicine, such as robots
patrolling our bodies (Saadeh and Vyas, 2014), a technology that
amazingly has already been partly realized (Hoffman, 2015). The
generation of so called smart dust networks of programmable matter,
matter that can take each form via programmable re-assembly of the
nano-devices, is another striking example. Smart dust entered the
Gartner's hype cycle in 2013 as the most speculative entrant (http://
www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2575515). Interestingly self-assem-
bling matter has already been realized in the macro-format (Hardesty,
2013).
Another area with potential to deliver a significant game changing
breakthrough is nuclear and quantum physics with new ground-
breaking insights on matter and the universe such as e.g. dark matter,
dark energy or the universal theory combining Einstein's theory of re-
lativity with quantum theory (theory of everything) (Weinberg, 1994).
There is the hope that nuclear physics will solve the energy problem
once and for all with the technology of nuclear fusion becoming reality.
There are some encouraging signs that this might actually happen ra-
ther sooner than later (Carrington, 2016). Needless to say, solving the
energy problem would simultaneously solve many other problems
(water, food etc.). Quantum physics could result in further major
breakthroughs. Apparently quantum communication has already been
achieved just recently (http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/
2017/may/18/particle-free-quantum-communication-is-achieved-in-
the-lab and https://phys.org/news/2017-06-atomic-imperfections-
quantum-network-closer.html). Recently it could also be shown that
quantum effects are actually affecting living organisms (Ball, 2011).
Effects like photosynthesis, some forms of enzymatic catalysis as well as
the birds' compass are apparently working with quantum phenomena.
Going even further than that, quantum physics has the potential to
shatter our entire understanding of reality. This is visible in the so
called “Bells Theorem”. In 1935 Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen
U.A.K. Betz
published a paper which showed that under certain circumstances
quantum mechanics predicted a breakdown of locality “spooky action
at a distance”, but doubted this could really happen and thus viewed it
as evidence that quantum mechanics was incomplete. Correlations of
this sort, however, later were observed experimentally. As Bell proved
in 1964, this leaves two options for the nature of reality: The first is that
reality is irreducibly random, meaning that there are no hidden vari-
ables that “determine the results of individual measurements”. The
second option is that reality is ‘non-local’, meaning that “the setting of
one measuring device can influence the reading of another instrument,
however remote”. In other words, the world is either non-causal or non-
local, meaning that either causal influences propagate faster than light,
or a common-sense notion about what the word “cause” signifies is
wrong (Wiseman, 2014; Wiseman, 2015).
Then there is the area of parapsychology that has for millennia been
part of human mythology but has so far not really come into the reach
of science, although amazing scientific literature exists on the apparent
reality of psi phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance or precogni-
tion. For example physiologic reactions to a positive or negative picture
can apparently already be detected before the subject has seen the
picture, even before the computer has randomly selected the picture to
display, a variant of the phenomenon termed precognition, confirmed
in a meta-analysis of 90 experiments (Bem et al., 2016). Also a meta-
analysis on telepathy apparently came to a positive result (Storm et al.,
2010). Then there is an ancient Indian literature that mysteriously ac-
curately predicts the speed of light, which must have been arrived at
intuitively, and which seems an extreme coincidence even to those
well-versed in modern measurement and probability theory (Kak, 1998)
(http://www.science20.com/machines_organizations_and_us_
sociotechnical_systems/fringe_editor%E2%80%99s_dilemma_raises_
questions_about_future_science).
Needless to say that these results were heavily challenged by other
members of the scientific community. Should it one day be possible to
reproducibly and convincingly demonstrate such effects, for example
with a particularly gifted individual, we would certainly see a sig-
nificant paradigm shift in science as the astronomer and author of many
popular science books Carl Sagan pointed out: “There are three claims
in the extra-sensory-perception field which, in my opinion, deserve
serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect
random number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild
sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images “projected” at
them; and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a
previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which
they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation. I
pick these claims not because I think they're likely to be valid (I don't),
but as examples of contentions that might be true. They have at least
some, although still dubious, experimental support” (Sagan, 1997).
Overall, it is most amazing to see the progress humanity has made
over the millennia to understand the world we are living in and to be
able to manipulate it to our advantage. On the other hand there are
areas where we are as ignorant as we have ever been and no progress
what so ever has been achieved. A strikingly visible example is looking
at the quote from Seneca written 2000 years ago: “…whether all matter
from which the universe is formed is continuous, without intervals of
space, or dispersed as emptiness mixed with solid matter; what kind of
abode a god has, looking upon his work in detachment or actively
controlling it, whether he encompasses it from without or is implanted
in the whole; whether the world is immortal or to be reckoned among
perishable things and things born at a certain time” (Seneca, n.d.).
In this article we have seen that although technological progress has
overall been slower than expected, there are numerous fields that hold
extraordinary promise for the future. How can we awaken the “force”?
What can be done to boost progress in science, technology and in-
novation?
In terms of new thinking, rather than repeating proposals already
extensively made in the past such as increased collaboration, open
301
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 296–303
innovation and pre-competitive consortia, promoting free societies or
keeping R & D funding up, as important as they are, in the frame of this
article five new proposals are developed and recommended for im-
plementation. The list is by no means meant to be exhaustive but should
constitute a contribution of a few stimulating thoughts to an ongoing
discussion:
1) The new superstars:
Scientists and entrepreneurs need to be celebrated as the new global
superstars. This needs to be reflected in global competitions, prizes,
awards and last but not least salaries. Why should a super star sci-
entist be celebrated less than a super star football player? A series of
high impact prizes has recently emerged with cash volumes sur-
passing the Nobel prize, although their impact is a matter of ongoing
debate (Bays et al., 2009; Krauss, 2016).
2) Moonshot academies:
Special research investments should be taken in areas with potential
to deliver new breakthroughs and enable new moonshots. The list
provided above could be used as a first starting point. In the Stokes's
scheme this would relate to working primarily in the Pasteur's
quadrant (Stokes, 1997), i.e. seeking fundamental understanding of
scientific problems which have immediate use for society. This
needs to be achieved by special research funding schemes providing
long term stable support, as work in the anticipated breakthrough
areas will not deliver the constant stream of publications required
for current scientific careers. Recently philanthropists have started
to provide such funding with key examples such as the $3 bio Chan
Zuckerberg Science initiative (Cha, 2016) or the Breakthrough Prize
in life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics with laure-
ates receiving each $3 million, three times the size of the Nobel prize
(https://breakthroughprize.org/News/12).
3) Information tsunami floodgates:
In terms of information and communication overflow, it seems we
have reached the limits of what the human brain can reasonably
digest. For the first time in history people are bombarded with far
more information than they can process, so exposing them to in-
creasing amounts of random pieces of information will not increase
their rate of innovation. At the same time the new social media are
amplifying our communication frequencies leading to constant dis-
ruptions, all resulting in an information overflow (Levitin, 2015).
Key inventions which increase the rate of innovation in the future
may include technologies that filter and prioritize information ap-
propriately in a personalized manner (intelligent assistants). In the
end what we need is a shift from opportunity/information seeking
focus to a prioritization focus.
4) Dr. All:
In the previous centuries breakthrough innovations have often been
produced by so-called gentlemen scientist, individuals freed from
the necessities to earn themselves a living, broadly interested in
multiple areas of science, combining fields and working inter-dis-
ciplinary. With time passing, this way of working has become vir-
tually impossible due to the explosion of knowledge and an in-
creased need for specialization to be able to compete. Larger and
larger teams were required for meaningful discoveries and author
lists of publications are growing longer and longer (Aboukhalil,
2016). The IT revolution might allow us to reverse this trend and to
re-establish the gentleman scientist. Relevant information is broadly
available and can be easily and quickly obtained on an as need basis.
Furthermore, robotics might soon allow us to automate and conduct
experiments in a speedy manner. Maybe the technology-empowered
gentlemen scientist can be revived in the future? (Casserly, 2012).
5) Innovation isolators:
In the history of humanity increased spreading of information and
more intense communication has always led to a jump in innovation
output, starting with the formation of cities, the development of
writing and the tremendous progress triggered by the development
U.A.K. Betz
of the printing press. In that sense the boost in communication made
possible with the internet has advanced humanity to a level never
seen before. Information is rapidly spreading over the planet; all the
knowledge of humanity is available at our fingertips and people can
constantly communicate online in a way that has never been pos-
sible before. Accordingly, if this theory is right, a new golden age of
innovation should follow soon. On the other hand it has been argued
that the creation of breakthrough innovation is negatively affected
by too much communication (Derex and Boyd, 2016). It could be
shown that partially connected groups produce more diverse solu-
tions and more complex solutions than fully connected groups.
While in the short run fully connected groups outperformed par-
tially connected groups but then ended up being trapped on local
optima. So rather than further increase communication we might
have to restrict it. In that sense an unconventional scenario could be
to completely information-isolate several larger groups of highly
competent scientists (each team comprising ~100 people) for ex-
tended periods of time (> 5 years) to work independently on a
breakthrough research problem and then to bring them successively
in contact.
Although this article is focusing on scientific and technological
progress it should not go unmentioned that this is only one aspect of
many in a more holistic view and beyond science and technology
humanity is progressing at various other dimensions such as morality
with a decrease in violence (Pinker, 2011), better social organization
(Bury, 1920) and increased happiness (Helliwell et al., 2017). Indeed it
even seems that for the first time in many decades social change is
outpacing technological change (Phillips, 2011).
Nevertheless it is fair to say that science and technology is a very
powerful force that in the past millennia has enabled humanity to grow
in numbers, and advance in capabilities. This force has tremendously
changed the shape of the world we live in and promises to continue to
do so in the future. The eternal quest for truth, the desire to understand
the universe and its governing laws, combined with the ambition to
apply the discovered principles for the good of humanity continue to
hold big promises for a bright future. The door to the next big thing, the
next breakthrough could somewhere on this planet be opened just
today, and the “force” be awakened.
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