The Great Destroyer

“The topic for today’s discussion is the Great Stagnation.  I assume you have all done the reading...”

A chorus of non-committal murmurs suffused the cool New Haven classroom in answer to Professor Thomas Jackson’s comment.  The forty-three year old professor frowned as he wrote “The Great Stagnation” on the chalkboard, the creases disrupting the flat planes and hollow cheeks of his face.

He was going to have to pry a discussion out of them, as usual.

“Ms. Viaje, what is the Great Stagnation?”

Dakota Viaje twirled her pen and said hesitantly, “It’s the, uh, economic downturn following the stock market crash of 1929.”

Jackson closed his eyes, suppressing a sigh.  “That’s the Great Depression, Ms. Viaje.  The rest of you, help her out, what is the Great Stagnation?”

A hand hoisted itself slowly.  “Mr. Fong?” Jackson said.

“The Great Stagnation is the dramatic slowdown in innovation starting in the late 20th century,” the student said uncertainly.

Jackson smiled.  “There we go!  I knew this was an honors seminar at Yale and not a third grade class.  Let’s keep the momentum going.  Ms. Jaffarian, what does the author of today’s reading think is the cause of the Great Stagnation?”

A 24 year old woman with a stud in her nose and spiked hair fiddled with her glasses.  “Ou thinks the Stagnation happened because all of the easy discoveries had already been made.  After internal combustion, electricity, and basic computing, technology becomes much more difficult to develop.”

“Very good,” Jackson allowed, “But not quite the whole story.  Ms. Ramirez?”

“Ou also said that research funding went down generally at the beginning of the 21st century as entitlement spending crowded out other forms of government expenditures.”

Jackson probed, “Is that the full explanation in your mind?”

Ramirez, an Afro-Asian-Scottish-Cuban girl from Idaho, said, “Well, no, the funding levels from the American National Science Foundation went down temporarily, but worldwide R and D spending went up.”

Jackson persisted, “Then why do you think the Great Stagnation happened?”

Thinking as she went, Ramirez said, “There were so many people in the world who needed basic things like food, water and healthcare that the most talented leaders became charity workers instead of entre-per-nerds.”  Ramirez had trouble with the last word, admittedly a somewhat anachronistic term from a long-dead language.

“
Entrepreneurs
.  New-ers,” Jackson sounded the word out.  “And that’s an interesting theory, but until about 200 years ago, scarcity had always afflicted the majority of humanity.  For over half of the Great Stagnation, there was crippling poverty in some parts of the world.  Scarcity is no longer an issue, but there’s still no meaningful technological advancement.  Ergo, scarcity cannot be the main cause of the Great Stagnation.  What other possibilities are there?”

A male student burst into tears.  Jackson sighed.  “What’s wrong, Mr. Coulton?”

“I’m sorry, professor, I just received a text message before class from my amorfriend Pat.  Ou says ou is leaving my amorfriend Dasharra and me.  We were going to be dating soon, but now our troika is ruined!”

Jackson suppressed his exasperation as the rest of the class murmured its sympathies.  He could only manage, “I see.  You’re excused, Mr. Coulton.”

The boy left the room sobbing.  Jackson tried to restart the conversation.  “Back to the question at hand: why haven’t we been able to shake the Great Stagnation yet?”

No one answered.  Jackson figured it was time to stir them a little.  “I’ll offer two provocative theories, and I’ll let you students vote on which offends you more.  Hell, I’ve got tenure, it’s practically my job to say offensive things.”

The students laughed.  Jackson was a notoriously edgy professor, from pushing exotic theories for historical conundrums to refusing to use gender neutral constructions like "Mx." and “ou” in place of “Mr.” or “he.”

The professor held up a finger.  “First provocative theory: we evolved out of technical creativity.  Everyone thinks evolution happens over tens of thousands of years, but it’s always working away, choosing who is most suited to sending genes on to the next generation.  Some scholarly studies indicate the IQ of Ashkenazi Jews was bumped up because for just five hundred years of anti-Semitic employment laws, Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe could only make a living in academic or high-IQ trades like accounting, banking, or rabbinical studies.”

Jaffarian observed, “But shouldn’t inventiveness be a
good
thing that would win out over a lack of creativity?”

“All other things being equal, yes,” Jackson conceded.  “But some psychologists say technical skill may be related to aggressiveness.  A lot of history’s greatest inventors were assholes.  And we’ve been breeding aggressiveness out of society for hundreds of years now.”

“What do you mean?” Ramirez asked. 

I’ve got their attention for once
, Jackson thought.  “The rate of conflict is far higher among hunter-gatherer peoples than among more advanced civilizations.  In such societies, the ability to fight a war is heavily favored by evolution.  Agricultural civilizations tended to favor skilled farmers and workers more than warriors, a tendency that increased over time.  After a few thousand years of selection, aggressiveness—at least, as measured by frequency of armed conflict—was the lowest it had ever been at the end of the 20th century.  No war, no selection for aggressiveness, no inventiveness.  Boom.”

The class digested the idea for a moment.  Then, Jaffarian said, “But the creative arts like literature, painting, and poetry have never been more diverse.  Why wouldn’t they suffer from the lack of inventiveness?”

“A good question,” Jackson judged.  “Inventiveness and creativity are not the same thing.  To invent something requires not just the creativity to think it up, but the stubbornness to keep trying to get it right and the persistence to get funding and bring your idea to market.”

“Any other questions?” Jackson asked.  “No?  OK, I promised you another controversial idea, here it is.  Humanity was always pushed forward by conflict, and we stopped fighting because war became too terrible.  Large-scale innovation requires tremendous investment that’s easiest for a government to provide, but government programs are often wasteful unless they’re administered in a highly-motivated way.  War provided that motivation to be effective managers.  Basic chemistry emerged from gunpowder research.  Atomic energy came from the Manhattan Project.  The Internet came from the Cold War.  So did computers.”

There were no interruptions, so Jackson continued.  “By the beginning of the 21st century, all of the real wars had been fought.  The militaries of the major industrialized powers evolved from armies to police forces that could be periodically sent to other countries.  Their research departments lost focus, working on politically correct feel-good projects like building a better battery or testing biofuels.  With nothing better to do, they grew fat and wasteful.  And now, with the Terran Alliance having secured legitimate world peace, there aren’t even separate countries to have border disputes.”

He came to his conclusion.  “All two billion people on Earth have enough food to survive, enough space for comfort, enough water, enough electricity.  There is literally nothing to fight for.  And so we have no reason to innovate.”

The students looked around uncomfortably as Jackson finished.  “So, what do you think,” Jackson asked, “Did humans evolve to lose the ability for technical innovation or is it the lack of war that did us in?” 

A girl started crying.  Her amorfriend Ms. Zhao said, “The lack of war destroying innovation is an absurd thesis.  The end of war freed up tremendous resources.  One would think that would lead to an
increase
in the time and energy available for innovation.”

Jackson smiled.  “And yet here we are.  The Stagnation started right when world peace did.”

Mr. Stuart waved his hand.  “Cause vs. correlation.  There are a lot of other changes in that timeframe that could explain the Great Stagnation.  Maybe industrial pollution lowered our IQs!”

Theatrically rolling his eyes, Jackson said, “Pollution’s been around since the early 19th century, so we have an almost two-century gap where innovation and pollution were both present.”

Another boy raised his hand.  Jackson said, “I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.”

“I was Katy; now I’m Cart.”

Another mid-term gender change
, Jackson thought.  “Oh.  Well, what’s your take?”

“Maybe in place of technological progress, we just have social progress.  We have
love
.  ‘People are more important than things.’”

Jackson stifled a sigh.  “Yes, we all know the Terran Alliance motto.”

Another student nodded emphatically.  “Love’s all you need.”

“You must be paying close attention in your 20th century music class,” Jackson observed.

He glanced at the clock.  “On that note, it’s about time for us to wrap this session up.  ‘Love’s all you need’ will be the starting point for discussion next time.  I will see you all next week, same time, same place.”

As the students filed out, Jackson retreated to the hall, and thence to his office.  The seminar discussions always left him disappointed with the caliber of his students.  He needed refreshment.

He pushed a button on his desk phone.  “Rupert, hold my calls.”

His secretary replied, “Yes, sir.”

Jackson pulled an electronic reader out from his desk and punched up an oral history of the Battle of Midway.  His official title was “The Martin Benitez Professor of Conflict Resolution” within the history department, but his real passion lay in the study of war.

As he re-re-reread the story of the American victory at Midway, he was transported out of the Great Stagnation, to a world where the first plane was forty years in the past and the first space shuttle thirty years in the future. 
What a time it must have been
, he thought.

Emma Takagawa looked up to the cool, starry sky and wondered about her children. 
Are they happy in their home 200,000 miles away?  Do they wonder at their place in the Universe? Do they ever get lonely?  Do they miss me?

Emma took a drag of her cigarette, savoring the acrid taste for a moment as she allowed herself those fanciful thoughts in the spring air.

No, of course they don’t miss me.  They’re machines. 

She stubbed out her cigarette and walked back into mission control.  The director of the Luna program, Trevor Harvin, scrunched his face into a disapproving frown when he smelled the smoke, but Takagawa didn’t care.  She was forty-two, well past the age when she gave a damn what people thought of her. 

Takagawa asked, “How is the repair going?”

“Same as when you left.  Charlie has disassembled the radio telescope, and now ou’s looking for any source of electrical interference.  Ou still hasn’t found anything though.  Are you sure your robot can handle the job?”

A cold fury rose in Takagawa.  She triggered her headset radio.  “Charlie, this is Emma.  How long have you been in space?”

It took a few seconds for the transmission to get to the moon and then for the response to travel back.  Charlie replied in a neutral monotone, the only voice he had. “790 days, 15 hours, 31 minutes.”

“How many times have you taken apart and diagnosed a radio telescope?” Emma inquired.

“237 times, including the present task,” Charlie answered.

Takagawa queried, “How certain are you that this radio telescope is in working order?”

Charlie responded, “Rounding to the nearest tenth of a percent, 99.9 percent certain.”

Takagawa nodded in satisfaction.  While the robots servicing the Luna research base were decidedly less than human, Takagawa could still take pride in their achievements.  The robots were advanced computers with self-guided limbs and sensors, capable of routine maintenance activities and noticing anomalous performance among the astronomical instruments on the moon base.  Charlie and his brothers were the most advanced machines ever created by human beings.

Director Harvin asked, “Charlie, when was the last time an electronic signal was picked up at the frequency observed this morning by L-25 at 11:12?”

Charlie did not hesitate.  “There has never been another electronic signal of a frequency within a standard deviation of the one detected by radio telescope L-25 this morning at 11:12.”

The director probed further.  “When was the last time an electronic signal as strong as the one detected by L-25 this morning emanated from outside the Earth system?”

“There has never been another electronic signal emanating from outside the Earth system as strong as the one detected by L-25 this morning,” Charlie answered.

Harvin threw up his hands as if his case was made.

Muting her headset, Takagawa said to the director, “You know as well as I do how important that signal could be.  We need to investigate it further.”

Harvin shrugged.  “I don’t know what you want to do.  Our mission is to survey and catalogue stars.  No one ever told us to listen for unique signals.”

Takagawa crossed her arms to prevent herself from slapping the director to wake him up.  “Let’s train the Gagarin Telescope at the source of the signal.  If it’s from within the Solar System, we might be able to
see
the source.  Maybe it’s an old NASA probe or something.  We won’t know unless we look.”

A sigh escaped the stylish fifty-year old director.  “The motors on the Gagarin Telescope are turned off for Charlie’s repair work on the radio telescope because they’re on the same power unit.  The minute the Telescope is up and running again it reverts back to the control of the Astronomy Unit.  They have a long backlog of stars they should be examining.”

Sure
, Takagawa thought bitterly.
The astronomers need that time on the Telescope to impress their amorfriends with the millionth viewing of the Crab Nebula.

She forced a smile.  “Then let’s not turn the motors back on quite yet.”  She triggered the radio again.  “Charlie, please adjust the Gagarin Telescope to examine the area where the signal emanated from.”

“I do not understand your command.  What signal?”

The Luna director chortled, enjoying Takagawa’s humiliation at the stupidity of her creation.

Takagawa swore.  Charlie might have been man’s most intelligent creation, but he was barely an improvement over six-hundred year-old technology.  He sometimes failed to make simple deductions.  In this case, enough time had gone by that he could not determine which signal was “the signal” Takagawa was talking about.  He had no way of inferring why his overseers were so interested in a high-power signal emanating from the outer reaches of the Solar System.

Leaving no room for confusion, Takagawa ordered, “Charlie, adjust the Gagarin Telescope to observe the coordinates of the high-power signal received by the L-25 radio telescope today at work 11:12 A.M. Eastern Standard Time.”

“Yes, Dr. Takagawa,” Charlie replied dutifully.

Harvin said fussily, “I don’t have to tell you that this is against regulations.  You seem intent on ignoring all protocols.  This will have to go in my report.”

Takagawa didn’t even bother rolling her eyes.  “Put whatever you want in the report.  Until another roboticist comes along, you’re stuck with me.”

A few technicians exchanged knowing glances.  Takagawa was, of course, correct, though few of them liked that fact.  She saw the technicians’ looks, but ignored them, not caring what the technicians thought of her.  When First Representative Ismail had started the Luna project ten years earlier, he had needed robots to staff the base.  The Space Administration had found only one engineer even remotely up to the task.  Takagawa had been part of the project ever since. 

It was the culmination of her life’s work, she thought.  She had learned her first programming language when she was four, reprogrammed the family microwave to ruin peas at seven, and hacked her elementary school’s computer system to get out of Equity and Inclusiveness classes on her tenth birthday.  At that point, her father had made a deal with her: no more computer-related felonies, in exchange for which she would get a robotic vacuum cleaner to play with and reprogram to her heart’s delight.

By the time she had taught the heavily-modified vacuum cleaner to pull up weeds in her mother’s flower garden, she was fifteen and ready to head off to college at MIT.  Once there, she breezed through the moribund science departments.  Within six years, she had obtained doctorates in computer science and electrical engineering. 

Since graduating, she had single-handedly dragged the entire field of robotics forward for the first time in centuries, continuously throwing back the limits of possibility.  Her work on the Luna project led her into the field of astronomy. 

The assorted crew supervising the Luna base watched on a camera feed as Charlie, the culmination of Takagawa’s work, walked over to the Gagarin Telescope some 150 yards from the radio telescope.  He moved slowly, his bipedal legs proceeding cautiously over the lunar surface.

Charlie was a Helper v. 1.3 robot with a humanoid appearance.  His head was a round golden cylinder with a faceplate, behind which lay a complex array of optical, thermal, and electromagnetic sensors.  His carbon composite exoskeleton was covered in a white fabric not unlike a spacesuit, though without any of the bulky life support equipment a human would need.  He was nearly seven feet tall, built to provide the strength necessary to perform extraordinary maintenance on the massive equipment that constituted the Luna base. 

Takagawa knew Charlie was a huge improvement over any robots that had come before him.  The other four Helpers on Luna—Xi, Guillaume, Indira, and Pablo—were Helper 1.2 robots not quite as brilliant as Charlie.  But Emma also knew just how limited Charlie was.  He could perform preprogrammed maintenance activities and respond to simple queries.  He could not plan, however.  He could not teach himself.  He had no preferences or thoughts.  Despite the anthropomorphic projections of his creator, Charlie remained a simple machine.