Engineering and the Quest for the Holy Grail

In his bestselling treatise on globalization, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of The Twenty-First Century, author Tom Friedman coined the term Triple Convergence.  In his book, Friedman outlines the ten forces that have helped to flatten the globe - - from the collapse of the Berlin Wall, to work flow software, to global supply-chaining - - all allowing people to collaborate, compete, and share on a global stage.

Friedman also acknowledges that the ten factors or forces could not have flattened the world all on their own.  He credits the spread of a rich flattening environment to the creation of complementary software, the Internet, and political factors that caused several developing countries, including China, Russia, India and Latin America, to open their borders at this time with the creation of the perfect storm that let to the rapid-fired pace of globalization.

We have another perfect storm - - the Triple Convergence of social, sustainability, and global economic loops and feedback loops.  Storm is the correct word - - from the Middle East to Europe - - the streets are full of fronts and pressure zones, impacting the social fabric of society (and very old societies - - like Egypt and Greece).  In his June 7, 2011 New York Times column (The Earth's Full), Friedman gives us a view of the new Triple Convergence:

"We will not change systems though, without a crisis.  But don't worry, we're getting there.

We're currently caught in two loops.  One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices, rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.  At the same time, improved productivity means fewer people are needed in every factory to produce more stuff.  So if we want to have more jobs, we need more factories.  More factories making more stuff make more global warming, and that is where the two loops meet."

The new Triple Convergence of reinforcing feedback loops - - jobs (not enough of them in spots), sustainability (demand is outpacing supply of certain critical resources), and globalization (a multi-speed growth world of developed versus developing) places engineers at the sharp end of the new Triple Convergence.  Engineering is fundamentally in search of the holy grail.  A holy grail of market-focused technology that will avoid a global sustainability crisis by decoupling material and energy growth from global economic growth.  Our collective engineering futures, in some form or fashion, will involve work on this decoupling process.  If engineering, science, and economists cannot decouple a global looping system of 5% global economic growth from a world of 5% energy consumption growth for an additional three billion people and a new rising global middle class - - we are in very big trouble.

Good luck with the quest.