A Personal Quandary
First of all, I'd just like to express my amazement at human society. What humans have been able to build over the 45 odd millennia we've been recording ourselves is absolutely incredible. But as with anything else we create it's a work in progress. Climate change, mass extinctions, poverty, starvation, human rights issues, we have no lack of big problems to solve as we continue to move forwards and create better and better versions of ourselves.
Unsurprisingly, (and I think I share this with most people) I would rather like to have a part in our collective betterment. I'd like to engage with these monumental problems we face as a society and help move the needle. So pan to me sitting behind a desk building software for an internet service provider and it's clear to see that there are some uncertainties and insecurities bubbling through my being, most of which boil down to a simple question - can't I be doing more? Shouldn't I be doing more?
My initial approach to this personal quandary was rather unimaginative. I figured that if I was going to be truly effective at helping solve one or more of these problems I had to become a professional at solving these problems. For my problem of choice - the protection of the marine biosphere - that meant becoming a marine biologist. So, just about a year ago now I signed up for an intro to marine biology class at a local university and started mapping out my transition away from the space of commercial software.
To Be An Enzyme
Thing is, as I began to learn more about marine biology, conservation, and the other disciplines involved in protecting our biosphere, I noticed two very important things:
There were already so many amazing people, many of whom were far more intelligent than me, already working in these fields.
And yet, the majors breakthroughs in the field seemed to keep coming from the outside.
To illustrate the last point, take the example of the drones that are now used to explore, map, and monitor our oceans. While marine biologists and conservationists have, no doubt, had an important role in influencing this particular version of the technology, it has nonetheless been robotics engineers who have opened the door. Satellite data, machine learning, geographical information software, crowd sourcing apps, the list goes on and on. Everywhere I looked I found engineers opening the doors to the breakthroughs in the field.
This is not of course to say that the engineers are responsible for the breakthroughs. Obviously without the biologists and conservations there to guide the application of the technology, none of this would've happened. Nonetheless the pattern did get me thinking and my mind soon drifted toward biochemistry.
We, and by we I mean living, breathing biological beings, should not be possible according to the rules of inorganic chemistry. The reactions that turn our food into motions and thoughts and experiences are incredibly improbable. There is this whole idea of the "activation energy" required to get a reaction going, and for the vast majority of our biochemical processes their activation energy is far to high to ever support life. It's as if there's a series of locked doors and on the other side is life itself.
Well the keys to these door are catalysts. Catalysts (amongst other things) reduce that activation energy so substantially that they quite literally change the rules of chemistry. What was before an improbable reaction becomes common place and, boom, life is born.
To me this is not unlike the relationship between technology and the stewards of our world. While many conservationists, biologists, farmers, and other world stewards are far smarter than I am, and could, given the time and resources, open the doors to things like machine learning, automation, remote sensing, drones, and the like for themselves, the fact of the matter is that they are up to the gills in all the work required to be a steward - conservation planning, running research projects, writing papers, building networks, the list is extensive. As a result they often simply don't have the space to open those doors - the activation energy is just too high. But when an engineer comes by and creates the technology themselves, suddenly the catalyst is there a whole new world is opened up to those same stewards.
Technology catalyses action.
Furthermore, I love this concept of technology as a catalyst rather than a solution, because it puts the focus on using technology to empower people rather than just handing them a solution. Teach a person to fish, right? By catalyzing rather than solving it leaves the engineer free to work on new problems while simultaneously leaving behind a whole workforce of stewards who can adapt and develop the technology on their own. For me, a budding software engineer, this was a powerful realization. Yet I knew there was more, for I was already familiar with the power of catalysts - in how it applied to myself.
Compound Interest
I have always found it quite amazing how technology is able to compound on itself. Each time someone builds a new tool, that same tool makes it easier to construct other new tools. This has the same accelerative effect as compound interest, famously quoted by Einstein as the most powerful force in the world.
Yet, this accelerative effect does not come for free. Simply creating some new piece of technology does not allow it to become foundational for other breakthroughs. Technology only falls into this elevated category when it is created with the appropriate level of abstraction in mind to allow its reuse across many different problems. Tools, not solutions, can be used to build other tools.
I bring this up largely because it suggests an interesting strategy for tackling technical problems. If one starts with the low hanging fruit with the intention of building tools and not just solutions, then with each problem solved a new catalyst is created and other, previously difficult, problems suddenly become low hanging fruit themselves. Beyond making each step far more manageable and producing value more immediately, it also means that over time previously impossible problems become doable. This then brings me to my second tenet:
Building toolsets catalyzes development itself.
A Pot of Gold
And then it hit me - manageable projects resulting in foundational tools that empower incredible work and generate equally incredible impact - this is the stuff of an engineer's dreams. I suddenly had a vision of students and professionals working side by side on projects that would make them drool all while churning out work that empowered our world's stewards to build a better world. The match was there, the question that remained was simply - how?
The answer, I think, is rather simple. It begins with a person, like myself, finding a project or two to work on and beginning to work out how to catalyze action while building out toolsets. As that individual developer builds report and skill, they will find themselves with too many projects to do on their own. So they take those incredibly interesting problems and find some buddies willing to work with them. So the mentorship begins. But as they help their buddies get going, they'll be developing a new skill - how to be a good mentor. This too can be taught, and so once their colleagues find themselves overloaded with projects they too can be taught how to teach. It is at this point that the floodgates have been opened because the organization will now grow itself as each new member begins to draw in members themselves - a pyramid scheme of the greatest intensions.
This is how this veritable pot of gold can be handed out amongst all the engineers who stand to gain so much from it - through the mentorship of new developers. Through such peer to peer development it seems to me that an empire can be built. And so we have our final tenet:
Empires are built upon shared opportunity and mentorship.
A Blueprint
Finally then I have an answer to the question - can't I do more? The answer is yes, and the three tenets illustrated above are one version of how. By building technology I can empower our world's stewards. By focusing on the low hanging fruit and creating tools I can accelerate the development of that technology. And by sharing the wealth and mentoring people into it I can help found an empire. It is a magnificent feedback loop of empowerment - a tide to raise all ships. And it is something I am certainly going to try.
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