Reply To: Physics Nobel to Big Bangers

[tcg]

This certainly has turned into an interesting conversation. The inevitable diminution of job opportunities is certainly true, but it seems to me only if the technological horizon remains static or shrinks. For the last fifty years this has been so, but not always before that.

Canals used to be big on the East coast. Thousands of workers were employed digging them, barge builders produced at full speed, factories sprang up along the banks. Then came the railroad. The diggers were unemployed, and barge builders went broke, but overall the horizon expanded. The steel industry shifted into high gear, new jobs were created running rail lines across the country, Midwestern farmers had a way to market their produce, This story was repeated in many diverse ways. The expanding horizon readily absorbed the job losses, and the U.S. entered a boom time.

I hope we may see a chance to expand the horizon with new opportunities which we have yet to visualize. I have already described one which I am sure will be huge in my part of the country. In the Southwest we mostly don’t get rained on. We must import our water, stealing it from some one else to fill our needs. Cheap power for water purification of brackish or salt water would be an enormous breakthrough. For example, factories which can’t be built now because of the need for large amounts of water would be feasible creating jobs. Our biggest industry, agriculture, could be doubled if we had more water. This is just one narrow slice of the spectrum of possibilities.

How many more opportunities will we see through an expanding horizon?