Long Rambly Post

You should read this article here. 

If you're at all like me, part of you was totally like, dude! How cool is that? Imagine some guy standing next to a cell phone tower, and without him even realizing it, the tower melts! Wow! Part of you is also like, hmm, the military flying around an airplane full of toxic chemicals? This may not end well. The military doesn't exactly have a flawless track record regarding safety, see exhibit A. 

The other issue, of course, is that a bunch of engineers and scientists spent a considerable amount of intellectual energy figuring out how to make the laser small enough, light enough, and powerful enough to be effective when mounted in a smallish cargo aircraft. Not that this, in itself, is particularly wrong, but these same engineers didn't spend that energy thinking about how to to build effective solar panels, how to educate children better, how to grow food more effectively, how to transport goods efficiently. 

One of my first jobs out of college was with the defense contractor Lockheed-Martin. For a nerd, the place was heaven at first. I worked with really smart people on big, hard problems. I learned a ton, and to this day, I'm proud of the work I did there. The environment allowed me to accomplish more than I would have dreamed myself capable of. As a liberal the place left me conflicted. Our essential goal was to build computer games -- very, very realistic computer games. These games would help train our soldiers by providing battlefield experiences that were far more comprehensive than could be had rolling around Fort Knox in a bunch of M1's. Plus it's safer and more environmentally friendly to train in simulators than to tear up the terrain while guzzling fuel. However sound these arguments were, they did little to assuage my fears that I was doing wrong by pouring my intellectual energies into things military.

I felt then, as I do now, that the problems of the world will be solved when people decide to solve them. More precisely, the successes and failings of the world cannot be pinned on some abstract notion of "society", but on the sum total of all the decisions we as individuals make. If we each live our life trying to make the world a better place for everyone, then this would be manifest on a large scale. With this starry-eyed idealism I got a job in a poor, rural high school as a math teacher, got my ass and idealism handed to me, and was shown the door. Not that I was a good high school teacher, but compared to the smooth efficiency at Lockheed, the high school was dysfunctional. Things that you would expect to happen in a high school just didn't. Of course, an institution that employed better than a hundred people with the task of educating some six hundred kids had a quarter the budget of the thirty five person division of Lockheed I had left. When I left teaching, I was broke. My old boss at Lockheed called me up and offered my job back (at better than twice the pay of the high school.) I said yes. For a while Lockheed continued to be a great place.

Even after Lockheed, I found that many of the jobs I took had some peripheral connection with the military. I have two immediate family members whose paychecks come, at least partially, from defense spending. Many of my friends work, in some way, for projects funded through the military. My high school best friend's dad helped design guidance systems for ICBMs. This same friend recommended Lockheed to me (and me to Lockheed.) I'm sure that some of my job opportunities after grad school will be defense related. Again, none of this is bad. The military has funded lots of basic science, which, arguably benefits everyone. 

The thing is that we need something more. Everyone I know seems to be wired so that their creative urges drive them to create in scientific and engineering realms, but no one I've met seems to have a sense of creativity that leads them to solve social issues effectively. Put another way, we as humans can build cell phones the size of a credit card, but we can't seem to provide basic food and healthcare to everyone. In movies the future is always signified by hyper-advanced technology or the consequences thereof, but rarely is the future signified by an end to social ills. One could argue that the notable exception, Star Trek, replaces social problems with armed conflicts with alien races.

Sometimes I think that the process of addressing these issues is like waking up. We've become aware of technology and are currently developing it as fast as we can, but I think, or hope anyway, that humanity will continue waking up, take another step forward and develop an equally strong interest in addressing, what seem to be, more significant needs.