Lull in technology breakthroughs may be ending

A few months ago, economic analyst Noah Smith observed that scientific advance is like mining ore. You find a vein you think is promising. You take a risk and invest heavily. You explore it until it taps out.

The problem has been that over the last few decades only a few veins have really been paying off and changing lives. Discoveries in information technology have obviously been massive — the internet and the smartphone. Thanks in part to public investment, clean energy innovation has been fast and plentiful. The price of solar modules has declined by 99.6% since 1976.

But life-altering breakthroughs, while still significant, are fewer than they once were. If you were born in 1900 and died in 1970, you lived from the age of the horsedrawn carriage to the era of a man on the moon. You saw the widespread use of electricity, air-conditioning, aviation, the automobile, penicillin, and so much else. But if you were born in 1960 and lived until today, the driving and flying experience would be safer, but otherwise the same, and your kitchen, aside from the microwave, is basically unchanged.

In 2011, economist Tyler Cowen published a prescient book, “The Great Stagnation,” exploring why scientific advance was slowing down. Peter Thiel complained that we wanted flying cars, but we got Twitter.

But this technological lull may be ending. Suddenly a lot of smart people are writing about many veins that look promising. The first and most obvious is vaccines. The amazing fact about COVID19 vaccines is that Moderna scientists had designed the first one by Jan. 13, 2020. They had the vaccine before many people even thought the disease was a threat.

It’s not only a new vaccine but also a new kind of vaccine. The mRNA vaccines will help us teach our bodies to fight pathogens more effectively and could lead to breakthroughs in combating all sorts of diseases. For example, researchers have hope for mRNA cancer vaccines, which wouldn’t prevent cancer, but could help your body fight some forms.

In energy, geothermal breakthroughs are generating tremendous excitement. As David Roberts notes in an excellent explainer in Vox, the molten core of the Earth is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly the same temperature as the sun. If we could tap 0.1% of the energy under the

Earth’s surface we could supply humanity’s total energy needs for 2 million years.

Engineers are figuring out how to mine the heat in the nonporous rock beneath the surface. As Roberts writes, “If its more enthusiastic backers are correct, geothermal may hold the key to making 100% clean electricity available to everyone in the world.”

This is not even to mention fusion. In one of those stories that felt epochal when you read it, my New York Times colleague Henry Fountain reported in September on how MIT researchers had designed a compact nuclear reactor that should work.

It feels like autonomous vehicles have been three years away for the last 10 years. But sooner or later they will arrive. Waymo has already started a driverless rides service in Phoenix — like Uber and Lyft, but with nobody in the front seat.

One could go on: artificial intelligence; space exploration seems to be heating up; a variety of anti-aging technologies are being pursued; on Wednesday The Times reported on an anti-obesity drug. There’s even lab-grown meat. This is meat grown from animal cells that would enable us to enjoy steaks and Chicken McNuggets without slaughtering cows and chickens.

Obviously, all these veins are not going to pay off, but what if we gradually created a world with clean cheap energy, driverless cars and more energetic productive years in our lives?

On the plus side, global productivity would surge. What economists call total factor productivity has been grinding along with 0 to 2% increases for years. But a series of breakthroughs could keep productivity surging. Our economy, and world, would feel very different.

On the negative side, the dislocations would be enormous, too. What happens to all those drivers? What happens to people who work on ranches if labs take a significant share of the market? The political difficulties will be complicated by the fact that the people who will profit from these high-tech industries tend to live in the highly educated blue parts of the country, while the old industry workers who would be displaced tend to live in the less educated red parts.

Government investment has spurred a lot of this progress. Government would have to come up with aggressive ways to mitigate the shocks. But it is better to face the challenges of dynamism than the challenges of stasis. Life would be longer and healthier, energy would be cleaner and cheaper, there would be a greater sense of progress and wonder.

The voters of Delray Beach will elect two city commissioners in the citywide March 9 election. After an extensive review of the candidates in both races, the Sun Sentinel recommends newcomer Price Patton in Seat 1 and the reelection of Commissioner Ryan Boylston in Seat 3.

The two-person contest for Seat 1 is the easiest choice among Delray’s three races, which includes a contest for mayor. Patton, a first-time candidate with an impressive record of civic volunteerism, is well-prepared, knowledgeable and has the city’s best interests at heart. He also displays a civility that’s desperately needed in a community where personal attacks and verbal combat have poisoned the political atmosphere.

Patton would be an improvement over Commissioner Adam Frankel, a 49-yearold lawyer who’s seeking a fourth term. Frankel has had plenty of time to leave his mark on the city. After nine years in office, he has an undistinguished record that too often tilts in favor of development, which threatens to ruin the character of this special place, as it has in so many other Florida cities.

Patton is a slow-growth advocate who respects Delray’s unique character. “I will stand on the side of the neighborhoods,” he said in a Sun Sentinel editorial board interview.

Patton has served capably for more than six years on the city’s Historic Preservation Board and Site Plan Review Advisory Board — in both cases as Frankel’s appointee, by the way — where he opposed development projects that later won commission approval.

Frankel was a commissioner from 2009 to 2015, when he was forced to resign because of term limits. In 2018, he returned and won a third term with 43% of the vote against two opponents.

Frankel voted to extend the city’s monopoly trash-hauling contract with Waste Management without seeking competitive bids. He voted to fire George Gretsas as city manager last November without cause, which would have cost the city’s taxpayers about $180,000 in severance pay if he had prevailed, but Gretsas was fired with cause by a three-member commission majority. In his Sun Sentinel questionnaire, Frankel listed “aggressive panhandling” as one of the city’s three most-pressing problems.

Patton, 70, who’s making his first run for office, has also devoted his time to an afterschool program in the city’s Haitian-American community and to preserving George Washington Carver High School, the city’s historic Black high school.

He’s a retired editor at the Palm Beach Post and part-time editor of The Coastal Star newspaper. If elected, Patton says he will sever ties with the Star, which regularly covers the city. With his long career in local journalism, Patton would bring a healthy skepticism to City Hall. He won’t be afraid to ask tough questions, and he’s smart enough to make up his own mind.

Patton and his wife, Carolyn Riley Patton, a Delray Beach native and publisher of the Star, have a son and two grandchildren and have lived in the same home in the Marina Historic District for 33 years.

There’s little doubt that Patton would give Mayor Shelly Petrolia another reliable ally on the commission. Patton and his wife each gave Petrolia’s campaign the maximum contribution of $1,000, and as Patton said in our editorial board interview, “I make no apologies” for a close alliance with the mayor. You can question Patton’s choices, but you have to respect his candor.

Patton has raised about $20,000 so far in this race, $10,000 of which is a personal loan. Through Jan. 31, Frankel reported raising about $34,500.

City commissioners serve three-year terms at a salary of $9,000 a year. The office is considered part-time and nonpartisan. For Delray Beach City Commission Seat 1, the Sun Sentinel recommends Price Patton.

Delray Beach City Commission Seat 3

The citywide Seat 3 race is a rematch between Commissioner Ryan Boylston, currently the vice mayor, and former Commissioner Mitch Katz. Boylston defeated Katz in 2018 by a margin of 56% to 44%.

Boylston, 38, the owner of 2Ton, a digital marketing agency, is the better choice in this election. Despite our differences with him on several issues, including his vote to fire former City Manager George Gretsas without cause, Boylston is usually a solutions-oriented commissioner who deserves a second term in Seat 3.

He has shown a commitment to residents of The Set, the city’s historically Black community, and has been a strong supporter of workforce housing and of building alliances with the Palm Beach County school system. He enjoys the support of labor unions and local businesses, a sign that he’s able to build consensus across the political spectrum. As Boylston noted in his Sun Sentinel questionnaire, he has the support of seven former city mayors.

Boylston last year agreed to pay a $2,000 fine for two violations of the state ethics code for doing business with his government agency. He was the part-owner of a Delray Beach newspaper that accepted about $23,000 in paid advertising from the city’s Downtown Development Authority when he served as a city appointee to the DDA.

“I never voted to directly send advertising to my former newspaper,” Boylston told The Coastal Star last year after he agreed to a stipulation and fine in lieu of a formal hearing. “It was up to the DDA staff to decide where to spend their advertising dollars.”

Katz, 49, wrote in his Sun Sentinel questionnaire that he’s running again because Boylston violated the public trust in the DDA ethics case and should have resigned. That’s an overreaction. Boylston made a mistake and paid a price for it. During our online candidate interviews, Katz engaged in name-calling, calling Boylston a “slick marketer” and “disingenuous.” He generally came across as argumentative and combative. City Hall needs less of that temperament.

Despite his ethical misstep, Boylston is the better choice. The voters got this one right three years ago, and they should make the same choice this time.

Boylston has raised about $51,000, including a personal loan of $10,000, and Katz has raised about $6,000.

For Delray Beach City Commission Seat 3, the recommends Ryan Boylston.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Dan Sweeney, Steve Bousquet and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.

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