Netease Technology News July 12, the “Financial Times†famous undercover economist Tim Harford (Tim Harford) wrote that people have misunderstood the subversive technology. While inventions such as flying cars or humanoid robots are cool and appealing, the most disruptive inventions are often inexpensive and inconspicuous, such as paper and wire mesh.
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The "Blade Runner" released in 1982 was an outstanding movie, but it was a bit weird. Actress Rachael looks very young and beautiful. But she is actually a technology - an organic robot designed by Tyrell. She possesses a human brain and is infused with memory extracted from a human being.
The robot is too delicate. Unless you use special equipment, you can't see the difference between human beings and the human eye. Even she thinks she is human. Los Angeles police detective Rick Deckard knew that Rachael was a robot; in the face of Rachael, Dickard found himself falling in love with such an attractive artificial intelligence. And what did he do when he wanted Rachael to come out for a drink?
He called her on the public telephone.
One is Rachael, a biotech miracle, and the other is the public telephone that Dickard used to call her. The great contrast between the two technologies has brought some inspiration. It's not that the failure to anticipate the emergence of smart phones means that the Silver Wings Killer has destroyed its futurism. Rather, when we are asked to think about how new inventions may shape our future, our imaginations will often leapfrog to those advanced to unimaginable technologies.
It is easy to imagine imagining the mysteries of artificial intelligence and imagine downloading and uploading human brain memories. But whenever we are asked to imagine what our daily lives may be like in a society that is advanced enough to develop such a biological robot, our imagination tends to stagnate. The audience of the Silver Wings Killer will believe that there will be no change in the daily life of Los Angeles, except for some flying cars and black literature.
Today, it is not easy to think about how technology will shape our lives. Some economists are disappointed with the slow growth of productivity and fear that the good years will leave us. "The economic revolution between 1870 and 1970 was unique in human history." Professor of Economics Robert Gordon wrote in The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Road, "Since 1970, the pace of innovation has not been as broad as it was before. It is not so deep."
Other economists believe that the exponential growth of computing power will open up a special era. The two economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee wrote "The Second Machine Age," Klaus at the World Economic Forum. Schwab) believed that it was the "fourth industrial revolution" after the steam, electricity, and computer revolutions. This upcoming revolution will be based on artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, nanotechnology, biotechnology, neuroscience, and many other areas where venture capitalists are excited.
Predicting the future of technology has always been a delightful but fruitless game. Nothing looks more outdated than the yesterday version of Tomorrow's World. But history can teach us something useful: don't cling to the thinking of the next big thing, don't blindly have an independent technological miracle to completely change some part of economic life, but don't set off any embarrassment elsewhere.
On the contrary, when we tried to imagine the future, the past brought two lessons. First of all, the most influential new technologies are often insignificant and cheap. The affordability of the public is often more important than the attraction and complexity of Rachael's organic robots. Second, new inventions do not appear alone, just as Rachael and her robotic partners did. On the contrary, just as we are still struggling to find ways to make the best use of them, they are already profoundly reshaping the society around us.
"The theory of toilet paper"
To understand how the inconspicuous invention of invention shaped the current world, think about the Bible—the Gutenberg Bible from the 1450s. The black Latin letters divided into two columns give each page the aesthetic feeling of no less than the monk's handwriting. Of course, these pages were printed using revolutionary movable type printing. Gutenberg invented an alloy suitable for casting type, which can print hundreds of copies of one page, and then can be reused to print completely different things.
Gutenberg type printing is almost universally recognized as one of the most important inventions of mankind. It brought us religious reforms, promoted the promotion of science, and promoted the cultural spread of readings from novels to news. But if it weren’t for an obscure and easily overlooked cheap invention: paper, the printing would be no different from Rachael—an independent technological miracle. The innovation was amazing, but in general it didn’t cause anything. .
The use of paper for movable type printing is not for technical reasons but for economic reasons. Gutenberg also used parchment to print several pages of his Bible. Parchment is a product of animal skin and has long served as a writing instrument in Europe. But parchment is expensive - parchment for a book needs 250 sheep. In an era where few people can read, it is not that important.
The paper was invented in China 1500 years ago and used for a long time in the generally literate Arab countries. But it took centuries to spread to Christianity in Europe. It was only when the merchant class began to need daily writing tools to draw up contracts and make accounts, that paper became popular. Mark Kurlansky wrote in his book “Paper.†“If Europe in the 11th century barely needed paper, Europe in the 13th century was very eager to get paper.â€
After embracing paper in Europe, it became the continent's earliest heavy industry.
Paper can be said to open the door to printing. It is cost-effective to purchase a large number of printers and print machines, but large quantities of parchment will not be used for printing; it requires hundreds of thousands of animal skins. It was not until the mass production of paper became feasible that it was meaningful to find ways to print large amounts of paper.
It is not that writing is the sole use of paper. Mark Miodownik pointed out in his book "Stuff Matters" that we use paper to do a variety of things, from filtering tea and coffee to decorating our walls. Paper brought us milk cardboard, cereal packaging and crumpled cardboard boxes. It can be made into sandpaper, wrapping paper or greaseproof paper. After a specific treatment, the paper has enough softness and absorbency, and it is also cheap enough so that you can wipe whatever you want to wipe.
Toilet paper looks a hundred thousand miles away from the printing revolution. It is easily overlooked. But many inventions that change the world are basically inconsequential—too cheap and not worth mentioning, even if they quietly make everything come back in order. We can call this situation "the theory of toilet paper."
Various examples of toilet paper theory
When you think about it, it is not difficult to find examples of toilet paper theory. The western United States has undergone great changes due to the invention of barbed wire. The great salesman John Warne Gates used such a slogan to promote barbed wire: "Lighter than air, stronger than whisky, lower than dust."
Barbed wire allows settlers to fence in the vast savannah without spending a lot of money. Joseph Glidden applied for a wire mesh patent in 1874; just six years later, his factory's annual barbed wire could circle the earth ten times. The only advantage of barbed wire fences over wooden fences is the lower cost, but that is of great significance for the western United States: locally, the simple invention of barbed wire can help prevent American bison from hanging around, and it can also prevent cowboys. The cattle trampled on the crops.
Once settlers can control their land, they have the incentive to invest in and improve it. Without barbed wire, the U.S. economy, the historical trajectory of the 20th century, may be very different.
The global energy system also has a similar story. Rachael in the energy industry - the so-called "change everything" invention, a fantastic invention - is nuclear fusion. If we can perfect this amazingly complex technology, then we may be able to safely obtain almost endless energy by aggregating various hydrogen variants. This may happen: In France, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is scheduled to be fully operational by 2035 and costs at least US$20 billion. If it is feasible, it will reach a temperature of 200 million degrees Celsius - but it is still just a pilot plant that produces less energy than the coal plant and only erupts for 20 minutes.
At the same time, cheap and affordable solar energy is quietly leading a completely different energy revolution. The cost of solar power to achieve revenue and expenditure balance has dropped by two-thirds in the past seven years, but it is only slightly higher than the operating costs of natural gas plants. But the drive to reduce this cost is not a great technological breakthrough, but rather an inconspicuous approach familiar to IKEA customers: a simple, modular product that can be mass-produced and quickly assembled.
The problem with solar applications is not that the weather is not always sunny. The emerging solution is another cheap and well-known technology: batteries. The use of lithium-ion batteries for storing solar energy is becoming increasingly popular, and future popular electric vehicles will be equipped with huge batteries. Several giant battery factories are already under construction, the most notable of which is Tesla’s Gigafactory super battery plant. The plant plans to produce 35 GW (gigawatts) of batteries each year by 2020, which is higher than the total global battery output in 2013. As with solar panels, battery prices have dropped significantly. This "IKEA" is a typical example of toilet paper technology: the same old things, but the cost is cheaper.
Perhaps the best known example of tissue paper theory is a corrugated steel box that is 8 feet wide, 8.5 feet high, and 40 feet long. Since the launch of the shipping container system, the proportion of global merchandise trade in global GDP has expanded from about 10% at the end of the 1950s to more than 20% today. Every time we visit the store, we can say that it is surrounded by products from all over the world, such as tomatoes from Spain, red wine from Australia, and mobile phones from South Korea.
牎 曜嫉 曜嫉 曜嫉 曜嫉 曜嫉 曜嫉 曜嫉 å¿ å¿! The collapse of the sulphate chain (arc Levinson) was written in his book "The Box" (Marc Levinson). However, such a simple and economical freight transport system has become a stronger global driving force than the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Prior to the adoption of such shipping containers, an ordinary transatlantic cargo ship may carry 200,000 different items, among which there are hundreds of different types of goods, from food to letters to heavy machinery. Handling and loading a wide variety of cargoes from the front of the quay, and filling them in all corners of the hull, requires dock workers to have the skills, strength and guts at the same time. Every time a ship has to ship, those workers usually have to work on the ship for several days.
The container freight system has changed all this. Under the guidance of maintaining the balance of the ship and tracking each container's computer system through the global logistics system, the task of loading and unloading the container ships is completed in an orderly way by the large cranes. But the basic technology that supports all this can be said to be simpler. The shipping container was invented in the 1950s, but it used knowledge from the 1850s. Because of its low cost, it can work.
The concept of container is a simple one, and the person who promoted it, Malcom McLean, is rarely described as its inventor. As an entrepreneur, he has great dreams, dares to take risks, pays attention, and is good at dealing with regulators, port authorities and trade unions.
McLean's real achievement was to change the system around his container operations: the design of cargo ships, trucks and ports. Foresighted people know how toilet paper-based inventions can completely reshape the entire operating system; for those of us with relatively limited imagination, it is relatively easy to deploy Rachael-style inventions to existing systems.
If nuclear fusion is feasible, then it can subtly replace coal, gas, and nuclear fission in the grid we are familiar with (suppliers produce electricity and sell it to us). Solar and battery are relatively more challenging. They are quietly turning the power company into a platform that is close to Uber or Airbnb—connecting millions of small-scale power suppliers and consumers, continuously balancing supply and demand.
Difficult popularity of revolutionary technology
Some technologies have truly revolutionary significance. They surpass the pragmatism of paper or barbed wire and can produce an incredible influence for generations of people. But they will take some time to reshape the economic system around us - it will take longer than you think. There is no invention that is more in line with this description than electric power. At the beginning of the 19th century, it was not understood by people, but it was eventually widely used to realize commercialization.
Thanks to the inventions of Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan, the available light bulbs appeared in the 1970s. In 1881, Edison established power plants in New York and London and began selling electricity as commodities within a year. A year later, the first electric motors were used to drive the manufacturing machines.
However, the history of the implementation of electricity in the manufacturing industry is puzzling. Power could have been expected to take off in the late 1800s, but it has not actually become a source of mechanical power, and it has had little impact on the manufacturing industry in the 19th century. By 1900, electric motors provided less than 5% of mechanical drive power for American factories. Although Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse did their utmost, the manufacturing industry was still in the steam era and did not fully embrace electricity.
The manufacturing industry in the United States did not experience a surge in productivity until the 1920s. Why is it 30 years late? The new motor works well only when everything else changes. The steam-powered plant is powered by stunning driveshafts, countershafts, belts, towers, and thousands of droppers. The early efforts to promote electricity simply replaced the original huge engine with the same simple motor. The result was disappointing.
As economic historian Paul David put it, electricity did not triumph until the factory itself was reconfigured. The drive shaft is replaced by wires, and the huge steam engine is replaced by dozens of small motors. The factory has become more spacious and has more natural light. As the drive shaft is removed, the roof can be used to support pulleys and cranes. Workers are responsible for running their own machines; they need better training and higher wages. Once we changed all the everyday details around the motor, it became a wonderful invention.
In 1990, David pointed out that computers may also be in the same situation as motors: We still cannot fully see their economic benefits, because we have not yet understood how to reshape our economy to make the best use of them. The subsequent research by two economists, Eric Brynjolson and Lorin Hitt, supported the idea: They found that companies that invested in the development of computers in the 1990s did not achieve any benefit. And companies that have also undergone restructuring (including decentralization, outsourcing, and customizing their products) have achieved a surge in productivity.
Overall, those productivity data have not yet shown a major breakthrough like the 1920s. From this perspective, David's ideas have yet to be confirmed. But in other respects, his statement will almost instantly prove correct. People started thinking about using computers in various new ways. By August 1991, Berners-Lee put his World Wide Web code on the Internet so that others could download and repair. This is another humble cheap technology that unlocks the potential for the older, more ambitious Internet itself.
Inspiration for the future
If the fourth industrial revolution can achieve its vision, what will the future look like? Maybe super smart AI? Robot killer? Telepathy: Neuralink, the brain-computer interface company developed by Elon Musk. Nanobots survive in our blood and help eliminate tumors? Or is it that Rachael has finally appeared?
The theory of toilet paper shows that we should give the cheapest technology the same attention as the most advanced technology. One of the candidates for the cheapest technology is: cheap sensors and cheap internet connections. Each smart phone has multiple sensors, but sensors are becoming more and more ubiquitous, and you can see it from the jet engine to the California almond farmland. They can be used to identify patterns, fix problems, and maintain efficiency growth.
At the same time, we began to vaguely realize that they are also potential privacy and security nightmares—from crackers that can break invasively, to botnets that are made up of printers, to networks that reveal the most intimate personal data. Sex toys. They can be said to have both amazing potential and hidden dangers.
Regardless of the future technology, they are likely to require us to make changes to adapt to them, just like factories in the early 20th century. The truly revolutionary inventions are literally true: They change everything, and this change is hard to predict.
The idea of ​​a definite problem was raised by two economists, Daron Acemoglu and David Autor. They believe that when we study the impact of technology on the workplace, we should observe it from the details—observe the small tasks rather than the entire work.
For example, running a supermarket involves a lot of tasks - putting products on the shelves, closing accounts, looking for small jobs, and preventing picking up. Automation technology has brought a lot of influence to supermarkets, but this is not because machines replace manpower. Instead, they replace the tasks originally performed by humans. They are generally tasks that can be easily programmed. Barcode technology has changed the survival count from a human task to a computer-implemented task. (This is a toilet paper-type invention: cheap, ubiquitous, and it hasn't had any impact until retail formats and supply chains are adjusted to make full use of it.)
Analysing the labor force and automation technology from the perspective of tasks, we can see that the job itself will not disappear in the short term—human special skills will be very precious. Ott said that when humans and computers work together, computers can enhance human capabilities such as “problem-solving skills, adaptability, and creativity†while dealing with “daily programmatic tasksâ€.
However, there are also signs that the new technology has polarized the labor market: the demand for high-end skills and low-end skills has increased, and the demand for mid-level skills has fallen. If current human skills are so valuable, the growth in demand for low-end skills is somewhat unpredictable - but in fact, many special human skills are not high-end skills. The human skills demonstrated by well-known British writer Jane Austen, Albert Einstein, and Pablo Picasso. The hotel maid who cleans the restrooms and beds can also show . We are human beings not only because of our brains but also because of our keen eyes and smart fingers.
Therefore, I am very concerned about an invention: "Jennifer unit", from a company called Lucas Systems. Jennifer and many other programs like her are examples of "voice-controlled applications" - just software, and a simple, inexpensive headset. Such systems have become part of the day-to-day work of storage center workers: voice prompts in the ears or instructions on the screen, specifically telling them where to go and what to do. If you want to collect 13 items from the shelf, Jennifer will tell human workers to pick up 5 pieces, then pick 5 pieces, and then pick 3 pieces. If you say "sort of 13 items", it is easy to make mistakes.
That kind of approach is reasonable. The computer is good at counting and scheduling. Humans are good at picking goods. Why not decompose the task first, and then hand over the work of conscious thinking to the computer, and hand over brain-free picking to humans?
Like paper, Jennifer is cheap and easily overlooked. Like generators, Jennifer's technology can make a difference because they allow managers to reshape the entire workplace. Science fiction teaches us to fear robots like Rachael that exceed humans; perhaps we should fear Jennifer. (Lebang)
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