Sometimes I wonder - if 'it' were not there, how would things be like today? 'It' is any one of the few technological or engineering breakthroughs that have shaped our present world. Or, perhaps who knows, 'it' killed some other invention or engineering wonder which could have shaped our present world in a totally different manner, may be in an even 'better' way. For, when 'it' quickly gained widespread use and kick-started a market worth millions or billions of dollars, then things like industry, government, taxation, market, etc. come into picture and nobody really wants a change that could hinder the now-smooth functioning market and day-to-day life. Nobody prefers that. Rather, the drive on research and innovation is to keep pushing the frontiers of the existing technology and engineering marvels in incremental steps, training the bright minds in such pursuits and perhaps totally killing a pure 'out of the box' thought process. After all, if we are trained ever since our high school days about a certain set of fixed ways or rules or techniques to learn, to demonstrate, to excel - then our minds just can't fathom in a 'different' way.
'It' can be the engine. The diesel engine, the petrol engine or whatever. The damn engine. It drives locomotives, vehicles. The steam engine was conceptualized, realized and started to be used sometime like 1700 something being invented by James Watt. It has so far been improved, made more efficient, more powerful, more economic and what not. But it is the same damn engine that drives our airplanes or cars on the roads even in 2013. The automobile industry is a massive market, and the growing demand for oil is very widely known by everyone. Now that it's such a huge market and engines are quintessential to any transport even in 2013 (from the 18th century), who would like to change things completely ? I mean there are increasing attempts to use alternative 'green' energy sources like solar, electricity, wind, etc. instead of oil or diesel, but everything is FOR the same damn engine. I ain't talking about energy sources here, I am talking about the mechanism of moving a vehicle forward, the basic engineering entity that helps propel a vehicle. The fundamentals of that have remained same for two centuries. The engine is just irreplaceable. And even if someone tries to think or innovate to replace that engine with some 'new' invention , it is insanely challenging to do so even from the intellectual point of view, for, our educational and learning process have been so linear over years and years that we learn about engines at high schools. Our brains are simply not trained to think laterally.
'It' can be the generator and induction motor to harness alternate current (AC) electricity from magnetic flux, which is mostly done by thermal plants (using coals) or hydro or nuclear. But, the conversion process has remained same - a time-varying magnetic flux induces electricity. Once Nikola Tesla - one of the finest brains to have contributed extremely towards mankind - made those motors and generators to produce AC, we have been producing, transmitting, distributing electricity (and of course, paying electricity taxes) in the same manner for over a hundred years now. No fundamental breakthrough, no elementary change. We are used to it. None of us wants to have this smooth, now-indispensable supply of electricity generation + supply system disrupted by some 'novel' invention. Can any of us actually think of designing an instrument or conceive of a way to generate and distribute electricity in a more efficient manner, may be in a completely different technique? I mean, how much has this branch of electrical engineering called 'Power systems' developed over the last hundred years? What are the fundamental achievements and research outputs in this area? God, it's simply saturated! The transformers, the generator, the motors - the basic process has remained the same !
'It' can be the transistor. Some smart guys (Shockley/Bardeen/Brattain) showed that on a piece of specially designed silicon arrangement, you can control the current flowing between two points with the help of a voltage applied to a third point - like a switch, like using a faucet (or tap) to increase/decrease/stop the water flow between two points in a pipe. Yeah, that's it. Now enter Noyce and use such arrangements to make a 'chip' to execute some functionality using that 'small' switch called transistor. Lo & behold! The rest is history. We really thrive on silicon now. I mean, I am able to post this blog-post only because of silicon. We shall never know how our present world would have been if the transistor wasn't invented.
The funding of modern day research is to - help make the transistor smaller/faster/power efficient, or help make the engine more economic/more eco-friendly/more efficient, or develop alternate 'green' energy for it, or to develop LASERS more powerful/more span of wavelength/more energy-efficient and so on. And it is justified probably to fund research in such efforts. We never have funding for research that encourages 'crazy' research that might probably be able to replace the engine, the transistor, the generator, and probably rightfully so, for neither the economy allows for such funding nor the brains of moderns researchers equipped and trained to think really out of the box. Most of us just simply can't think of anything different. And the very few who can, make such a device/invention which none of us ever could have imagined and on which our society quickly becomes very much dependent making it the next engine or the next transistor.
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