It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
That line has been echoing in my head for awhile. It really goes well with our current world. I suppose it has always gone well with our world, which is why it's one of those lines that everyone remembers.
What got me thinking about that is that I read a story about the recent fusion breakthrough, followed shortly by a story about how a flaw in our concrete manufacturing process is going to cause a lot of problems for our global society and already is. Everything is going so well and the future is full of such promise of unlimited energy and the social revolution that would result; followed by revelation that the substance that can in many ways be credited as creating the modern world may also be destroying it. Truly the best and the worst of times.
I assume many of you know about the nuclear fusion development. A lab at the Department of Energy was able to produce fusion and capture the resulting energy for a net gain of 50%. We've long known how to do fusion without the massive explosion that might immediately come to mind, but in the past it has always taken more energy to produce fusion than the fusion produced, making it interesting but not especially useful. This time marked the first where we got more energy out of it than we put in. It would be hard to understate how amazing an accomplishment this is. We are of course far from engineers figuring out how to ramp this up to a large scale, and we need to see the process repeated and refined, but it is a first step. I don't have to tell you how revolutionary fusion would be. It would change our world and our society.
You may not know of the concrete problem. The basic argument is that there is a flaw in our process of making reinforced concrete, namely that the rebar used to reinforce it starts to rust almost immediately, putting a hard time limit on how long before the concrete is ripped apart from within and the structure fails. We've already started to see this failure, such as in the condo that collapsed in Florida recently. Evidently a great many other buildings around the world are also in danger of this happening and it is expected to happen to many more, as well as roadways, bridges, and anything else built with concrete. There is also the fact that producing concrete is far from a green process and is in fact among the top polluters. There's more, but that's the just of it. I'll link to the story below if you are interested.
The best of times and the worst of times. It will be interesting to see what comes of both of these things.
Changing focus a bit, I can't really think of any science fiction analogy to the concrete problem, but I can think of one for the fusion breakthrough. Coincidently, this example uses the line above that Charles Dickens wrote many years ago.
I was introduced to that line not from A Tale of Two Cities, but rather from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I was only in elementary school and hadn't yet been forced to read that book, so cut me a break. Anyway, the main story in Wrath of Khan was introduced with that line, and the movie closed with the final line of the book: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." Read that as performed by Shanter for the best effect. They also used some quotes from Moby Dick in that film. Nicholas Meyer, the director and uncredited screenplay writer, was a fan of the classics.
Whether it was miswritten in the script or Shatner thought he could improve on it, the world will never know.
In the Mancave the other day, we were having a discussion with about how science will either save us or destroy us. Star Trek II played with this very idea that science might save us and might also destroy us. In the film, a team of scientists have created a device (named Genesis or The Genesis Device) that can instantly terraform a planet, changing it from a lifeless world to one that is a paradise and can support any life. This amazing ability is, however, balanced by an equally horrifying one: if there is any life already present on the planet when the device is used, it will destroy it.
The analogies to fusion are perhaps obvious. Fusion power could completely transform human society. But if any mistakes in the process are made, or if it were to be hijacked by a bad actor, well... that could be bad. Probably not as bad as your worst fear when you hear the word "nuclear", but not good by any stretch. I've read up on the topic and most experts say that a nuclear explosion of a fusion reactor would be impossible, but there could be lessor explosions and problems. I think we can safely assume all proper precautions will be taken with the development of fusion power, but the danger of the flip side of that coin will always be present.
AI is another great example of this. It has a lot of promise. How a society based on capitalism reacts to no jobs being available anymore aside, there is the promise of more free time and of actively pursuing our own interests when we will no longer have to work because AI robots will do everything. This goes back to that utopian future that Star Trek predicts, where no one has to work and there is no money. But on the other hand... well, we've all seen Terminator. Will AI gives us Star Trek's Data or Terminator's evil Arnold? That is the question.
Anyway, if you haven't read about the recent fusion breakthrough, I highly encourage you to do so. If reading details on science experiments isn't your thing, here's a video from Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about it, and here's another from Bill Nye the science guy. Also, here's that story about the concrete problem. Also a good read, if a less happy one.
