Behind the Themes and Between the Lines
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Behind the Themes and Between the Lines Materials Challenges for the Next Century If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated. —Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter (1872-–1939) English surgeon When we initiated a new department on MATERIALS CHALLENGES FOR THE NEXT CENTURY, we should have demurred a bit. It is not easy in the best of circumstances to distance oneself from current research pursuits. We were asking our authors both to broaden their outlook to cover a broad societal sector such as habitat or information technology, and then to step out of the safe haven of completed, reviewed, and published research. The feature was to play to the creative side of science, an outlet essential for breaking mindsets that limit our thinking, but counter to the rigorous scientific process used to prove or disprove hypotheses that occupies most of our time as researchers. Inspiration without perspiration has the danger of being only science fiction. However, perspiration alone does not challenge the boundaries of knowledge. In this series, we invited our authors to challenge their thinking and step through the door to the unknown. While many were eager to peer out the door, few walked through comfortably. Perhaps the concern over being proven wrong in one’s speculations was too strong. Instead, caution led to articles that focused more on issues of today and the known roadmap into the near future instead of opening up opportunities for the unknown road for decades to come. This was, perhaps, the appropriate place to start. But to be too “short-sighted” in projections can be limiting. We laugh now at
T.J. Watson’s assessment in 1943 that “there is a world market for maybe five computers” and Lord Kelvin’s comment in 1895 that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” We must overcome these roadblocks in our thinking if we are to design an agenda for the future of materials. Speculations are just speculations with no guarantee of their relevance or even their correctness. But then when they are debated and scrutinized by scientists and technologists, they could lead to a possible agenda for materials development in the new century. It is for this reason that we quoted in our introduction J.D. Bernal, who did not hesitate to talk of space travel (at a time when no one thought of launching satellites) or even of immortality (while DNA sequencing would come later). We must therefore be risky and bold in setting our agenda. Have we, for instance, thought of unlimited solar power in the form of microwaveenergy beams straight from geostationary satellites, solving problems of energy and water for our global universe, or even of new memory devices that store more than a few terabytes of instructions within a square inch—making a mockery of the
Habitat: Sensors may be used to measure wind speeds or “earthquake-generated pressures and provide for a temporary increase in strength at anchorage points of the roof and other vulnerable locat
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