On winning a book prize

After the American Century

Some readers of this blog already know that my 2006 book, Technology Matters: Questions to Live With, was selected as the winner of this year's Sally Hacker Prize by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). The award was handed over at the annual banquet of that association in Pittsburgh, October 17 amid what seemed to me to be wild cheering for at least 2 or 3 seconds.

In previous years the winners of various prizes each made a little speech, thanking friends, family, and fellow scholars for their support. We have all heard such speeches, and know why SHOT might think it a good idea not to have them. So I did not give a moving testimony or tell any humorous anecdotes, but simply stood to have my picture taken with the prize.

Getting rid of the other acceptance speeches was a good idea, but in my case, of course, it was not. I had many important ideas to communicate at just that time, and indeed the wine of the previous hours had enhanced my thinking considerably. I am only sorry that these deep insights into the nature and purpose of research and "the meaning of it all" did not get out, because these penetrating thoughts now seem to have evaporated.

Instead, I will merely note that the prize was given for a work published in the previous three years that best explains some aspects of the history of technology to a wider audience. The plaque abbreviates this to "the best popular book." While I was extremely pleased to have fooled the usually more alert jury and gotten this award, one now former friend dryly asserted that this was the prize for the "least unreadable academic book."

If any of my loyal readers are interested, Technology Matters is in paperback for only a few dollars more than it costs to download it in the format of Amazon's Kindle reader. There is also a strange French translation that eliminates most of the notes and some passages of the work, clearly in an attempt to make it even more popular and better suited for the general audience. A German translation has also appeared. This is much longer and seems more scholarly than my original. Indeed, it appears to be so much more profound and more heavily-footnoted in German that I am hoping it will win a prize as a work written not for the general public but for specialists.

Should it win in German, I will insist on giving the speech I have forgotten from the banquet in Pittsburgh.

The Peace Prize, Unexpected but Deserved

After the American Century
Yes, it is a bit surprising that Obama received the Peace Prize already in his first year as President. But no, I do not think it is undeserved, though this seems to be the standard pundit's response in the US today, where I happened to hear the news while driving across Pennsylvania. Obama has done quite a bit for a man in office far less than a year. Not one commentator that I heard over the afternoon noted it, but he has abandoned the Bush program of installing missiles in Eastern Europe, while angered the Russians and blocked progress in many other areas. This was a major change that opens the way for progress while giving up on an idea that did not make a great deal of sense in strategic or military terms. (It also would cost a lot of money, now saved.) Then there was a major speech given at the University of Cairo, opening a useful dialogue with the Arab world. These two things alone are more than George W. Bush did for peace in 8 years.

But this is not the whole list. Obama has talented full-time negotiators trying to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to talk again, and he has tried to be an honest broker, pushing the Israelis to stop the illegal settlements on the West Bank. Obama has also pressured Iran to abandon its nuclear program, but done so with softer rhetoric than Bush, and tried to begin a dialogue, albeit an almost impossible task with the current leaders in Teheran.

And what about saving the American economy from collapsing? This in itself has been a major achievement of his administration, and it did help to keep the world from spiralling downwards into economic collapse. Peace is not so easy to work for in poverty as it is in prosperity.

But most of all, Obama's achievement of becoming the first non-white person to be elected to the highest office anywhere in Europe or the Americas, must have looked to the Norwegian committee like a powerful demonstration that racial differences can be transcended, that millions of white people could trust and vote for a black person. Apparently, not only the Republican Party but also the pundits, just do not get this. But it made a tremendous impact in the rest of the world, and Obama is not only a symbol of hope, but proof that hope is not delusional.

Ironically, most Europeans and the Nobel Prize committee can see Obama more clearly than the blathering commentators on American radio and television. I admit that I am a little surprised he won this soon, but he would have to be on anyone's short list for the years immediately to come, had he not received it now.

The Olympics: Chicago or Rio in 2016?

After the American Century

Tomorrow, in Copenhagen, the International Olympic Committee will decide where the 2016 Olympics will be held. I gather that the odds makers think Tokyo has little chance of getting it and Madrid only slightly better prospects. Apparently the real battle is between Brazil and the United States, or Rio and Chicago.

I would be happy to see the games held in either nation. As an American, I certainly can see Chicago as a good choice. I spent considerable time there in 2003, and was impressed by the city's continued growth and resilience. On the other hand, I have to admit that it seems unfair that no Olympics have ever been held anywhere in South America - though they were once in Mexico, which is Latin America but still part of North America.

There is another argument for Brazil that goes like this. The 2012 summer games are going to be held in London. Is it a good thing to have the games in the United States right after they are in Britain? Shouldn't they be moving around to different cultural and linguistic zones?

What does not come out in the all too brief news stories I have seen, is any detail about the actual facilities these nations are prepared to build or already have on hand. This is not only about the sporting facilities, but also the airports, security systems, hotels, roads, and public transport. Then there is the question of the safety of these cities. Where is the rate of robbery and petty crime high and low? Tokyo might have the edge on that particular issue, for example. Unfortunately, the public does not get a detailed explanation of why a particular city was chosen. London beat Paris last time, in 2005, but it was hard to see why.

We will soon know the result, and of course it could be any one of the four applicants. I have a sneaking suspicion that President Obama would not be coming personally to represent his home town if he did not think there was an excellent chance of success. But then, the President of Brazil came too.

Is Anyone Really Saving Energy?

After the American Century

Is anyone really saving energy? Time for a little reality check, as all the green rhetoric might make one believe the use of electricity and gasoline is falling.

The Kyoto Protocol was intended to help reduce pollution and CO2 levels. Signed by most of the world's nations beginning in 1997, it went into effect in 2005. However, during this eight-year interval, the signatory nations failed even to restrain consumer demand, which galloped ahead each year by an average of 500 billion additional kilowatts.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, in 2005 the world was using one third more electricity annually than it had in 1997. This growth was by no means evenly distributed. Japan, whose economy was not growing much anyway, nearly achieved zero energy growth (4%) in contrast to China's rampant 223% increase. Germany (10%), France (17%), and the United Kingdom (12%) grew rather than shrank their demand, but they were less profligate than Ireland (51%), India (40%), Argentina (39%), or Brazil (27%). Almost everywhere the consumer wanted more and no nation had managed to reverse the trend.

The failure to reduce energy use cannot be explained by cost-benefit analysis. US energy efficiency could be improved by 23% through off-the-shelf technologies such as better insulation, replacement of inefficient appliances and light bulbs, and the like. The cost of making these changes would quickly be recovered through large savings on electricity bills. But consumers do not want to invest up front to get the longer term benefits.

Likewise, automobiles are on sale that are twice as efficient as the average car on the American road. Moreover, Europeans and Asians, who once could sneer at Americans for driving so much have adopted the car in ever increasing numbers. Indeed, earlier this year for the first time the Chinese topped the US in new car sales, with more than 1 million new vehicles sold each month. Not much help for global warming there.

Do not be lulled by green rhetoric into thinking that politicians have actually done anything much to stop global warming. CO2 emissions are rising along with consumer demand. This is a global problem and no nation has yet really demonstrated that it can reduce its level of emissions and consumption to below the 1997 level - which was the idea of the Kyoto Protocol. So far, it is all wishful thinking.

7,000 Killed by Drivers on Mobile Phones

After the American Century

We hear about it each time a soldier is killed in Iraq, but more people die each year on American highways, the victims of drivers who are busy texting or using their mobile phones. Studies have found they drive no better than drunks, causing more than 200,000 accidents every year.

I have written before in this space about the danger of texting or using mobile phones while driving. Now it turns out that the US National Highway Safety Administration did studies of this problem when it was just beginning to be serious, back in 2002. Guess what. They estimated that drivers talking on mobile phones were responsible for 955 highway deaths in that single year, plus a large number of non-fatal accidents. This number can only have risen higher since then, as more people now use these mobile devices than in 2002.

It gets worse. The bureaucrats in Washington decided to suppress these findings. The public never heard about it. The toadies did not want to anger Congress. Am I being unfair when I ask this, but is it not the duty of the National Highway Safety Administration to keep the roads safe? Hide the fact that annually 955 people (more now almost certainly) are dying on the highways because we should not anger legislators? Please recall that the idea of democracy is to serve the public, not Congress. A death toll of more than 7,000? More than 1.5 million accidents, with many maimed and damaged for life? In a statistical sense, this is about double the casualty toll from the 9/11 attacks. But these deaths happen just a few at a time, about 2 or 3 people killed every day.

Should we blame this on George W. Bush? Did anyone on his team ask that this information be squashed? Only now, due to pressure from journalists using the Freedom of Information Act, do we know that slaughter on the highways was thought preferable to riling up Congress. For more on this shameful episode, click here. But please do not read about it while driving.

Iran and the Bomb

After the American Century

This week we all learned that Iran had been hiding a second nuclear development site. It was buried underground, and never shown to the inspectors whom the Iranians wanted to convince its intentions were purely the peaceful development of atomic power. It is exceedingly hard for anyone to believe that now.

Decades ago I visited Hiroshima, where I visited the museum devoted to the victims of the first atomic attack. One exhibit remains burned into my memory. It was a little girl's watch, and the hands had melted into the dial at precisely the time the bomb went off. She was on her way to school. Heat that powerful seared her flesh and boiled the blood in her arm. That little girl would have been about 75 today.

Atomic weapons have no place in this world, and should be done away with. Proliferation is not an acceptable option. Not only should Iran be convinced to give up their bomb, but the Israeli and Pakistani governments should do the same. Otherwise, the risk is that other Middle Eastern states will seek "parity" with Israel and Pakistan.

Both the Russians and the Americans have been scrapping their nuclear arsenals, bit by bit. With enough time and a bit of luck, the detailed engineering knowledge of how to make these terrible weapons could be forgotten, even if we cannot unlearn the physics that explains how nuclear fission can occur.

In the meantime, I think the Iranian people should all be sent a photograph of that melted wrist-watch, in hopes that they will think again on the direction they are headed.

Shame on the Republicans

After the American Century

President Jimmy Carter has bluntly said what many people were thinking: that Republicans, including many sitting on Capitol Hill, have been showing a great deal of disrespect for the office of the president, as well as for President Obama personally. This seems especially clear to those Americans, like myself, who live abroad in constitutional monarchies. It would be unthinkable and socially completely unacceptable for someone to scream at the Danish queen during a speech that she was lying. Anyone who did that would be universally condemned, by all parties.

When Americans chose to be a republic, after there unhappy relationship to the British kings, the founders knew that the president would have to play a double role, as chief executive and as head of state. Some presidents have done this more successfully than others, of course, and the United States was fortunate to begin with George Washington for eight years.

Preserving civility and good manners is probably not the strong point of Americans generally, but it is important to try to show respect for those with whom one disagrees, and it is vital that a party that loses an election, as the Republicans did, respect the will of the people and try to work constructively as legislators. History will not be kind to the Republicans currently in office, however. I feel fairly certain of this, being a historian. Taking the long view, they are not behaving wisely.

Instead, we see an increasing tendency to rabble rousing, false slogans, and denial. Shame on the Republicans.

Obama's Success with the Economy

After the American Century

As the Obamas go on a 9 day vacation, one can look back at eight months in office. Given the enormity of the economic crisis he faced, it is remarkable that even as he takes a well eared rest, bankers around the world are announcing that the crisis seems to be easing. Mærsk, which runs one of the world's largest container ship operations, also sees clear signs that the economy has turned. And who would have imagined, back in December, that the virtually bankrupt American International Group Inc (AIG) would announce here in August that it would be able to repay its massive government loans?

It is tempting to give Obama all the credit, and certainly he deserves much of it. He boldly pressed through a large deficit spending plan, stabilizing the banks. He also made some hard choices about the American automotive industry, radically reshaping General Motors and Chrysler in the process. While unemployed has risen, this is characteristic of all such crises, and cannot be expected to fall again just yet. Overall, Obama can be given high marks for preventing a meltdown in the US economy that would have had severe repercussions around the world.

One must also recognize, however, that the structure of the world economy as a whole is shifting, and in the future it will not be quite as focused on the success or failure of the United States. Unlike Europe and the US, China and India have not suffered shrinkage in their economies, only slightly slower growth. The Economist forecasts a rather robust 8% growth for China in both 2009 and 2010, and it will maintain a large trade surplus with the rest of the world. India is growing almost as fast, at a rate of over 6%. In other words, Obama and the Democrats have stopped a slide in the American economy, which may regain the ground it lost in a year or two. But China and India are forging rapidly ahead, increasing their importance to the world economy as a whole.

In short, Obama's programs seem to be working. The American economy is reviving. But the real story, once we have some decades of perspective, will almost certainly be that the crisis of 2008 was the last time that the United States mattered so much to the world economy as a whole.

Drugs on Your Paper Money

After the American Century

In the past two days a story has been widely repeated on the Internet about cocaine on dollar bills. The gist of it, as reported on Danish national radio was that 95% of the dollar bills circulating in Washington DC have been used to sniff cocaine. Or that was the impression given. While I admit that this would help explain the erratic behaviour of Congressmen, I thought the science behind the story might be interesting.

As seems to typically be the case with Danish journalism, this story was made as sensational as possible without looking into the matter very far. A few minutes on the Internet cleared up the story somewhat. The research on which this story was based has been done by several people employed at the University of Massachusetts branch campus at Dartmouth. They gave a paper at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Washington. As reported in Science News, "of the 234 banknotes sampled from 17 U.S. cities, those with the heaviest cocaine residues – as much as 1,240 micrograms per bill – tended to come from relatively big cities with serious drug problems. Cities like Baltimore, Boston, Detroit and Los Angeles."

Note the numbers here. They looked at 234 dollar bills from 17 cities, or on average slightly less than 14 from each city. That sounds like a small sample. It also turns out that just one tainted bill passing through a bank counting machine will contaminate the equipment and many bills that pass through the equipment afterwards. The American chemists had very sensitive measurements, and could detect an amount of cocaine as small as 1/1000 of a grain of sand. Some bills had 100,000 times as much. In short, a few "dirty bills" could contaminate a very large number of others.

Then there were the international comparisons. According to the story, in Brazil 80% of the banknotes had traces of cocaine, while China had only 20% (22 of 112 bills examined). Japan's currency was the cleanest, only two of twelve having traces of the drug. But are all currencies equally liable to retain cocaine? They are not. The Argonne National Laboratory found that the British pound, for example, is made of fibers less abrasive and more tightly woven than those in American greenbacks, with the result that little adheres to them. I always knew the Brits were uptight in many areas, but this was new to me.

All in all, then, we should not conclude that 90% of Americans are snorting cocaine through their declining currency. Take the report with a grain of, er, salt.