Imminent progress

Name the last great scientist you know. I bet you'll say Stephen Hawking, and that's pretty much because he's the last (and not to be disrespectful, but not the most important) of his kind. While his research was most certainly profound, it basically comes down to evaporating black holes. Anyone else in the last 50 years? Well, no, not really. I mean, there are scientists around, some of them very relevant, but none that really changed the world.

Now, let's move back before 1968, the year when all that was good, beautiful, and true retreated before the solipsistic hordes. You'd really have a hard time naming just one.

A shocking lack of diversity

And this is barely half of them. There's Tesla, Oppenheimer's nuke team, Watson&Crick&ThatForgottenChick, Alan Turing, that misogynist Feynman, Schottky and his Bell labs team, Von Neumann, Von Braun, Korolev, Fleming...just the few of the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more which I have unfairly forgotten to mention.

So what basically happened is that 60 years ago we had somewhere close to 50 great scientists alive and kicking, each of them having given us a profound insight in the nature of the universe or a profound technological breakthrough. Today we have one, and sadly he's not really in the best of shape nowadays.

Still too white and male, but at least disabled

So when you hear all that progressive talk that today the living standard is greater than ever, the only reason for that is the fact that the discoveries from people like these found their way in people's everyday lives. First those of the first world, and finally those of the third world. All the great things we have now, such as iPhone and the internet owe their existence to this bunch. It's a natural progression, but one that takes decades to develop. So when we're saying our gadgets of today are nicer than the ones which previous generation played with, it's only because the fundamental research of that previous generation didn't make it into the mainstream markets yet.

What is worrying, however, is that there are no more people like this. The last of his kind has a few more years to live, and that pretty much puts the species to an end. Whether it's biological or social, I can't really say. Sadly, I believe it's both.

The biological part is, to be honest, a long shot. But it may be quite possible that huge leaps in medicine allowed the weak to live, essentially introducing many small defects into the gene pool, and thereby making exceptional individuals ever more rare. This may or may not be correct.

What most certainly is correct is the social problem. First of all, there's really no reason for any smart guy to go into science anymore. While it was once a solid career, today it's a total personal failure. PHD comics is essentially a documentary. After working hard to be the best in your school, you get to a good college. Where you work your ass off again to enter tenure. Working for half the paycheck of your elementary school dimwit colleague who's now a certified plumber, you and 5 other people compete for one professorship place at your university. Truly, who in their right mind would want that? What's left in the universities are essentially not so bright but very bookish people.

Then comes the publish or perish mantra. You have to churn out enough papers to stay on track. If you make a bombshell discovery, you need to split it in a dozen smaller papers to satisfy the bureaucracy. Or you can really make something huge and be a one shot wonder, most likely losing your career over slow production because you didn't satisfy the bureaucracy trolls. It's basically become impossible to do, at least for people who don't live at home with their mothers, thereby independent of paychecks and being forced to pay the bills.

There's also an easier road, one that most prefer to take, which is simply to publish crap. Just satisfy the form and churn out as many bad research as possible, it's unlikely anyone will ever read it anyway. With enough ass-licking, you have a good shot at becoming a new professor one day.

Is it then surprising that the only way to make the Saturn V - equivalent engines nowadays is to pull the Chinese option? That is - scan the black box you don't really understand and just make a copy. It works for now. At least while we still know how to make copies. Next in line, we'll pray to the Mighty Mountain God to help us.