Post Jan 20, 2020
The Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Martin Luther King Day, whatever, holiday is over at the Adams household. Marian’s outrageously large supply of decorations is back in the attic in the proper boxes, and our equally outrageous supply of normal interesting things (to us, at least) is back where it lives most of the year. It is a wonderful period for us, since we have eight grand- children living close to us, all in school, and all having what they call “vacations”. But even though Marian and I are retired, play time must end.
Returning to the topic of creativity,
In my last few posts, I have mentioned my interest in complex problems requiring many people and creativity to solve , and mentioned products in which creativity is relatively straight forward—fasteners. computer apps, truck restoration, etc. Usually relatively small groups of people are involved to ensure a good supply of concepts in these simpler problems, represent the disciplines involved, build the necessary prototypes, and converge on a solution to the problem, and where relatively small amounts of money are involved in the process. Certainly the restoration of the truck mentioned in my Post of 11/19/2019 is a good example
It is very difficult to find and purchase new parts for an old truck. There are people whose business is tearing down old machines and selling the parts, or running small businesses that restore old equipment. But it often is quicker and more likely to result in a good result if a bit of creativity is applied. Examples are the wiring and the interior of this truck. They were both a mess. But I have been working on it with a friend, and both of us have had a large amount of experience in restoring old machinery. It was very easy for us to think of “creative” solutions to solve such problems. We would tear out the old stuff, discuss the problem a bit, agree on a solution, and put in the new. It was clear to us when a good idea came along, and the two of us were capable of implementing it. Was it the best possible solution? It was good enough, and people who did not restore old machinery would often compliment us on how creative we were. But this is the type of creativity that involves few people and relatively little money, and the type that appears in books about how to be creative. Could we progress more rapidly and perhaps come up with more elegant solutions if we hired more people to help? Probably. We could take the truck to the Courtland Truck Works in Courtland California, which specializes in restoring old trucks, especially Peterbilts. You can see the results of their handiwork at shows, if you are not blinded by the chrome and paint shine. Do we want to do that? No way. Their help does not come cheap, and we want the pleasure of being clever and solving small problems ourselves.
But let’s think a bit about creativity on very complex problems in very large groups of people—tens or hundreds of thousands or millions rather than two, as mentioned in the last pages of my last edition of Creative Blockbusting and in my post of 11/08/2019 . Such problems occur for a number of reasons. As I have mentioned, things change over time, partly because we change them through our increasing population, increased expectations, continually increasing technological ability, changing environment, and because, thankfully, creativity is integral to us. But at times (now?) we don’t change as fast as our perceived problems do. I view it as a case of not being at good as solving such problems as in producing them. If you would, we seem to affect our world more rapidly than we evolve.
I have mentioned that one of our problems in solving complex problems involving many people, is our short-term thinking. Let me say a few more things about this. Now is a good time to think more about it, because U.S. elections are right around the corner, and because many other countries and other large groups of people. are seeking quick answers to difficult problems. We definitely have difficult problems, and unfortunately, there are no quick answers that please everyone involved.
An example is medical care in the U.S. We pride ourselves in taking care of our citizens, and spend a very large amount of money on medical care. But we do not rank high in the world in our success. If you look through the internet you will find many surveys, and the U.S. never places first. In fact, we usually finish last among “developed” countries (20th or 30th overall), even though we spend more per capita. What is going on? Many things, one of which is our search for a solution that pleases everyone, but can be put in place in a few years. Britain (and we think the Brits are reasonably smart} put a “National Health Program” in place in 1948, and is still tuning it. The the U.Sis trying one now, (The Affordable Care Act), but it was only begun in 2010. But three highly ranked presidential candidates (Trump, Warren, and Sanders) are vowing to radically change it. To me, this is crazy. In a situation such as this, the ACA should be under improvement based on experience, but not trashed after only ten years of usage I think there are many reasons for this desire for revolutionary change: our naivete on the difficulty of rapid change in a large population, a competitive election, strong personal feelings on the part of the candidates, and perhaps a bit of an age problem —all three of these candidates are in their 70’s and would probably like to still be alive when “their” health system takes over (yes I will probably vote for Buttigieg, who argues for fine tuning and choices for the individual).
As individuals, we tend to measure time not only by the sun, moon, and stars, but also by periods we have noticed , such as hours, days, years, and especially by human lifetimes. To us, 100 years is a very long period of time, since few of us will live that long. Of course, in what is sometimes called geological time, it is an instant. But during our lifetime, we focus on these shorter periods – the quarter of a year in which business people strive to make more profit than the corresponding quarter of the previous year, the time until Christmas or summer vacation, the time until dinner, the time we have to go to the grocery store, etc. We don’t tend to focus as strongly on what will happen during the time after we die. We figure we will have made our contributions and have had our times by then, and our kids can solve earthly problem while we are in heaven, hell, buried in the ground, spread to the four winds, or just gone.
This short-term focus was adequate, and perhaps advantageous during our many years in a roving, hunting and gathering existence. It was necessary to do such things as prepare for changes in the weather and seasonal foods, , and we probably had a good sense of this to define our roving, but we certainly did not need to save money to put our kids through college or design trusts and wills to define the distribution of our property after we die, nor did we have to worry about growing populations, nor the finite nature of the earth (climate change, pollution, nuclear explosions, Better to focus on food and shelter for the next few days.
Short term focus is no longer adequate. I have been a registered professional engineer for 60 years, and a professor in a university for over 50. As I age I become more aware of the problems in the world becoming more complex and more difficult to solve. A good example can be seen in the present U.S. competition for president. The issues that seem to surface have to not only do with health, but income, expenditure of government funds, the U.S. role and position in the world, and other extremely complex problems involving large numbers of people. Even though the statistics say that we have vastly improved our welfare during our lifetimes, it doesn’t seem like that is the case.
The rate of change seems different depending on many things; knowledge about the topic, perceived need for change, relationship to the change, personal involvement in the change, and so on. Reading and watching the media in the U.S. is hardly an upper. But it is necessary if one is to feel comfortable with change. There are no simple ways to solve complicated problems, and In many of these situations there are few or no perfect situations at all. But in any case for a stable society we must keep trying, and keep improving what we have rather than pretending we have miracle solutions.
I have worked on several problems based on change and requiring relatively long time periods and the participation of many people . Maybe that is why I have hobbies in which solutions can be rapidly and cheaply achieved (restoring an old truck).
As an example of what was thought to be a relatively short-term problem, but becomes longer as time passes, as I said in a previous post, I worked on planetary spacecraft at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory between 1958 and 1966. John F. Kennedy, in a speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962, vowed that the U.S. would put a person on the moon within ten years. There were several factors behind this, ranging from developments in technology and science during the Cold War that would allow it, the lead the Soviet Union had in space, and a wide spread feeling that the U.S. needed a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), to beat theU.S.S.R. The first spacecraft to the moon were the Ranger series, and Ranger 1 was launched on August 23, 1961 slightly before Kennedy’s announcement, and I had connections to JPL for various reasons, and became a full time employee soon after. This was an unprecedented flight, and represented a very large amount of thinking, testing, knowledge, and risk (no one was actually sure exactly where the moon was in space), and there was no experience designing and building complicated lightweight devices that could endure the launch environment and operate successfully in space. The first six spacecraft in the series failed for various reasons, and for that the Jet Propulsion Lab was awarded a very painful congressional investigation, demanding certain changes. JPL met this by extreme simplification of the spacecraft, and backed by the experience learned through the first six shots, managed to make successes of the following ones. You may remember the photos of the moon, which became larger and larger until the spacecraft successfully impacted the moon—good theater.
Ranger was followed by Surveyor, a lander that gathered detailed knowledge of the lunar surface, and then, of course, the Apollo program, that put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. Mission completed, President Kennedy.
But in the interim, a large amount of knowledge was acquired, some in flight data, some in design. and manufacturing, and in people such as Werner Von Braun. An example was the booster rocket necessary to place people and their return vehicle on the moon (Apollo). Simultaneously to the exploration of the moon, many orbital payloads ranging from communication satellites to scientific and “spy” satellites were launched. And now we have space stations, navigational systems “space force” (a debatable idea), and the various countries doing such work have put over 1000 “satellites” and many exploratory space craft into orbit.
I worked on the first spacecraft to Venus, and then the first to Mars, both of which took advantage of the knowledge learned from the Ranger series and each other, and since JPL was much smaller, we worked and lived with the Ranger engineers in the same somewhat cramped building. Putting people on the moon had been a hectic race, complete with frustrations and heart breaks, and there was quite a bit of discussion of “why did we have to accomplish all of this in ten years, since all we had to start with were ICBM’s for boosters?” One of the older, more cynical members or our group finally came up with a believable theory. First of all, it was a “space race” with the Soviet Union. But more than that, he claimed, if you wanted to get large amounts of money from the government, you had to propose an exciting project that would be completed while the members of congress, the President, and other influential people were still alive so that they could get pleasure from it. Perhaps wisdom there?
Many of us working on the problem of getting a few people to the moon and back thought it was a finite problem and we did happily solve it as stated. But its solution resulted in other problems to work on, resulting in increasingly complex problems. Such is the case with complex problems with many people involved. Many problems we face will not be solved rapidly, and some will never be solved (free top quality medical care for everyone – someone has to pay for it). Certainly many large ones will be still existing when many, most of us, or all of us now living are dead. And attempts to solve them within the few years in which elected officials are in office, may well fail. Such problems as assuring control of weapons of mass destruction, protection of the ecosphere, overseeing economies, decreasing poverty, and decreasing war may well take constant attention forever. And we should be very suspicious of politicians telling us that they will “fix” them in few years they will hold office, or even in their lifetimes.
What do we do about this short- sightedness? I have no answer other than suggesting we think harder about how long it takes to make long term changes in large populations, investigate new directions for longer period of times before dropping them, and think hard about our great, great grandchildren and the world they will inherit. If you’re really good, think about changes over the last 300 years, and what the world might be like 300 years from now.
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