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 Essay - nov/dec 2005
The speed of the changes
James C. Delouche
Professor Emeritus Mississippi State University
Time is the interval between events. From our point of view time is linear and we measure it in the seemingly unchanging periods of the earth's revolution on its axis for 1 day, and around the sun for 1 year. Geologists confronted with the vast span of time from the beginning of our planet to recent times developed a geologic time scale based on geological changes that organizes the earth's history into eras, periods and epochs - from the Precambrian nearly 1 billion years ago into the present epoch that emerged from the Pleistocene glaciations about 12,000 years ago. The geologic time scale is so vast, however, that the period of human activities which began only in the late Pleistocene is usually and conveniently classified into "ages" based primarily on the organization of society and economic activities. Looking backward from the early years of the 21st century, our point in time, then considering the present, and trying to discern the future, it is evident that the rate of change has increased so much and so rapidly it seems that time itself and the ages used to measure and characterize it have speeded up, that the ages are accelerating.
Let us consider the past. The stone age or Paleolithic era began when early humans began to use chipped stone tools about 700,000 years ago and continued with little change until about 10,000 years ago when farming was invented and technically advanced stone tools were developed. The agricultural or farming age that began about 10,000 years ago continued with important but non-revolutionary changes until about 1900 and continues even today with essentially no change in some primitive cultures. The bronze age began about 3000-4000 B.C. but was not replaced by the iron age for more than 1500 years. The industrial revolution, claimed by some to be entering a post-industrial phase, didn't start up in Western Europe until the middle of the 18th century (the 1700s) when human and animal power began to be replaced with machines and mechanical sources of power. And, the age of communications didn't begin with the invention of the internet and cell phone as many of the younger generation might believe. Rather, it began in the early 1800s with the development of rail transport, steam ships, and the electric telegraph, and has continued during the last 150 years or so at an accelerating pace with invention of the wireless, the telephone, the radio, television, internet, cell phone, and so on. Presently, we are totally immersed in digital, information, and biotech ages that emerged just a few decades ago and are advancing with bewildering and unsettling speed.
After taking a long look at the then present time and trying to peer into the future a bit more than 20 years ago (1983), I wrote a long eight part essay for a seed trade magazine under the title "Sea Change."I explained that a good meaning of "Sea Change" was a profound and permanent change in the human psyche and/or in the terms and conditions of society, and then stated that: "We're in the midst of a sea change - the most drastic and unsettling change in man's experience since he harnessed machines and power to transform raw materials into the infrastructure of an industrial society." When I wrote these words I thought I might be overstating the situation in much too dramatic rhetoric but now in retrospect I think the words I used really understated it. The 3rd part of the essay subtitled, "New Biotechnology" began with these two sentences:
"Is it just coincidence that the third wave - the information age - generated in imprints on silicon wafers is being joined by the tidal force of breakthroughs into the genetic code - the ultimate information system? Coincidence or not, the exploitation of the two information 'systems' is changing not only the way we do things, but how we feel and think about them."
Two things stimulated these reflections on the acceleration of change and "ages" throughout recorded history and especially during the last two centuries and decades. One is the obsolescence of my computer and the need to replace it again, the 4th time. I recall talking to an IBM representative when shopping for my first personal computer in the late 1980s. After some discussion he assured me that a computer with 33 Mhz speed and 4 (yes 4) MB of memory would serve all my needs very adequately for the foreseeable future. The foreseeable future, however, turned out to be very short and I'm now getting ready to purchase my 4th computer system. (It is said that even Bill Gates also greatly underestimated the rapidity of technical advances and general acceptance of personal computers.) The second thing that stimulated these reflections was a timeline of U.S. biotech crops published in one of the trade magazines. It started with Crick and Watson's famous paper describing the double helical structure of DNA published in Nature in 1953 - just a bit over 50 years ago. (One can argue that it really began earlier with Mendel's laws of inheritance worked out in the late 1800s and their "rediscovery" about 1900.) The next critical step was not taken until 20 years later in 1973 by Cohen and Boyer with development of the basic genetic engineering techniques. Developments then accelerated with the patenting of the first life-form (a microorganism) in 1980, the first genetic transformation of plant cells, and the first patents issued for GM plants in 1983, the field testing of transgenic herbicide tolerant soybeans and insect protected cotton in 1989 and insect protected maize in 1990, and the first large scale plantings of herbicide and insect resistant transgenic crops in 1995-1996 - about 2 million ha worldwide. Since then, as we are all so well aware, events accelerated even more rapidly. GMO have become somewhat controversial economic, political and social issues, but nearly 100 million ha of biotech crops were grown in more than a dozen countries in 2004.
My 1983 vision of the biotech future was reasonably accurate in terms of technical progress but somewhat blurred regarding priorities and products. I thought more idealistically than economically, as it turned out, that transfer of the nitrogen fixation symbiotic mechanism from legumes to cereals would have high priority and might be accomplished by 2000, that high priority would also be given to increasing photosynthetic efficiency, tolerance to stresses including salinity, and the nutritive value of plant products. But, herbicide and insect resistance which were lower in my vision became the great generators of profits for adequate returns on the rather enormous investment costs and, it is hoped, for financing the more idealistic, less economically lucrative research that was at the forefront of my vision. I also gave a much higher position and projected a sooner and wider exploitation to such biotech innovations as "synthetic seeds," micro-propagation and other tissue culture technologies than has thus far materialized.
I examined and graded other new and emerging technologies some of which have come to the forefront. These included: the widespread use of crop modeling, information management systems, GPS and precision planting in crop production which has progressed but not to the extent I visualized; the increasing role of seeds as a delivery system for many essential production inputs which is progressing as expected; seed coatings to regulate germination and emergence and protect seed performance under stress conditions and treatments for enhancing performance such as priming also progressing as expected.
In the final paragraph of my long essay, I identified some trends and predicted others, a few of which have turned out to be correct while others were erroneous. Some of the good predictions were that the number of significant farming units (and farmers) would continue to decrease with a compensating increase in their size, that the inputs needed for crop production would be supplied by fewer but larger agri-supply companies, that the development of crop varieties in the agriculturally advanced countries would be taken over by the private sector and that there would be a great shrinkage in the number of seed companies as crop variety development moved to the private sector and mergers commenced among the large genetic based companies. Erroneously, I predicted that the importance of seed certification and market control would diminish.
Time does seem to have speeded up. A new age emerges, zips by, peaks and is replaced with a still newer age before I understand its meaning and purpose. But, perhaps this is the result of the combination of my accelerating age with the acceleration of change. My grandchildren don't seem to share my confusion by the rapid changes in communications and information retrieval and processing.
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