The article doesn't define big explicitly, but given the context and examples provided, the author's intent seems clear. It's revolutionary vs. evolutionary, audaciously ambitious in terms of timetable and scope, and dependent on focused, cohesive effort that draws deeply from our pool of talent and expertise. A Herculean task for a nation.
This isn't precise, but it's not unclear.
Is shooting yet another Mars rover or satellite into space a difficult and impressive engineering marvel? Sure, but at this point, these events are not revolutionary. Cell phones have proliferated, but not due to any planned or concerted national effort. Same with computer vision, progress is humming along, thanks to (evolutionary) processing power advancements and the work of academic or industrial researchers working largely independently of one another.
I see pushes from government -- clean energy/arpa-e, cybersecurity, etc., but nothing "big," nothing the public has rallied behind (or is even aware of). In some cases, the momentum for these thrusts is slowed by questions of utility and practicality -- is global warming an actual thing? Sure, the U.S. has been spending money as if it's pursuing something grand, but everyone's just focused on keeping their heads above water.
When draining swamps qualifies but cell phone coverage doesn't, I argue that it is still unclear.
> "A Herculean task for a nation."
So the internet is not big because it wasn't created under the direction of a single authority? It's upending education, journalism, commerce and control over the exchange of information. Even at the most generous, the trickle-down impact of the Space Program doesn't match that level of societal change.
But this isn't "big" just because Peter Thiel once dismissed it?
> "Is shooting yet another Mars rover or satellite into space a difficult and impressive engineering marvel? Sure, but at this point, these events are not revolutionary. "
And how does that act of adding a life support system and a passenger qualify as more than evolutionary? If going to Mars is evolutionary because its been done, it would seem that sending meat to mars is also evolutionary.
Yes, you're right. There's seemingly another element to the author's designation of "big" that I neglected: people working toward a common goal with no obvious or immediate commercial benefit. Cell phone coverage was a natural outgrowth of competition between cell phone companies and a desire to claim more customers and provide more competitive service.
> So the internet is not big
The author didn't say this, Thiel did, and the context in which he said it is not all that clear. Seemingly, given the context of the article, it's a reaction to the current state of Silicon Valley backed ventures, which Thiel (perhaps rightly) claims are not providing technological breakthroughs. If Thiel is suggesting that the Internet, in a larger context, is not a breakthough innovation in itself, I can't agree with that.
> And how does that act of adding a life support system and a passenger qualify as more than evolutionary?
Personally, I don't think it does. Then again, there may be huge technological hurdles above and beyond those that enabled the moon landing or the mars rovers that I'm not aware of. The average person probably isn't aware of them either, and whether or not it's justified, "putting a person on mars" will probably never seem as ambitious as "putting a man on the moon" had seemed at the time.
I'm not trying to posit a 'good' definition. I'm just pointing out that the one on offer is a bit hand-wavey for use in judging society.
I didn't interject but I thought - how can you live in a world upended by the internet and say no big changes are going on? The answer is that it all depends on your focus.
Are you serious? I'm having a hard time seeing a disruptive innovation in CV anywhere.
To say nothing of the generic bipedal utility robot. CV is the big roadblock there. [1]
No, these things aren't going to happen tomorrow. But they have a fair chance of being delivered before we could actually put a human on Mars or eradicate poverty in Africa, even if massive societal projects were undertaken with those goals in mind.
And, conveniently, CV won't require those massive societal projects. It'll get them, eventually. To enable the really cool stuff. [2] Sort of like cars changed everything even before we had a massive highway system that unleashed further potential.
[1] Though power density is a big challenge, I don't think anyone's going to mind if version 1 of their autonomous maid/handyman only works in one-hour bursts. Not so long as it can actually do the housework. If someone's keeping up with things day-in, day-out, it's rare that more than an hour or two's-worth of work needs to be done in a day.
[2] e.g. Going from self-driving cars and trucks to self-driving transport pods that autonomously link to tracks and ad-hoc caravans for long-distance high-speed travel, then de-link and queue for self-operating cranes to be load them onto self-piloting ships to deliver them to foreign ports where they operate the same dance in reverse.
Self-driving cars would make my commute wonderful, but won't be materially different than having a good bus route. The only real difference I can see autonomous vehicles making is to remove a certain class of jobs and creating another class of jobs.
Likewise, you could hire a "generic bipedal utility robot" pretty easily today. It's expensive, but that's mostly a political problem. (For the humor-impaired, that last clause was a joke.)
By this definition a cell phone is not materially different than having a personal land-line available regardless of where you live, work, eat, play, etc. That seems like a fairly silly thing to say when you compare the two. One because it points out the absurdity of the notion of perfect coverage/perfect availability of a 'good bus route' and two because there's obviously much more you can do with a cell phone because it's everywhere, that not even a wired phone at every destination could achieve. (e.g. the entirety of pocket computing)
Similarly, you see no societal advance in bringing something only the very wealthy can afford (personal servants) to the middle class? (initially, and then trending down with commoditization)
That's nearly the definition of massive social change: making the quality of life of royalty affordable to the middle class.
If applications, then they are literally immense. Robots that can perform any manual labor, thus increase in mnaufacturing ability (plus ability to conduct scientific experiments) by an immense amount. Marshall Brain has good articles about what computer vision technology can enable, including the short story Manna. Computer Vision is easily the most disruptive technology since the invention of the steam engine (it multiplies the work capacity of humanity by that much). It's a new gold rush bigger than the internet (robocars and humanoid robots including Baxter from Rethink Robotics are signs of that beginning). Startups should be all over it, web 2.0 and social networking are miniscule in comparison.
Our definition of "big", I think. I can't be sure because the article leaves it so loosely defined that one could cherry pick data to suit their mood.
Is no space project acceptably "big" simply because it doesn't include humans or habitats? We've been to Mars a few times lately, by robot. We're going to earth orbit far more efficiently these days. We're launching satellites at a furious clip. And for this, even though poor nations languish without proper electricity, they do have cell phones. Not to downplay the problems that remain, but that one seems "big" to me; at least worth mentioning.
To say nothing of computer vision. Processing power advancements have turned this long-suffering field into something of a white-hot ball of promise lately. The applications being developed will be at least as transformative as anything the automobile delivered.
Is this not "big" because the applications will first be delivered to wealthy nations, because some of them look like "toys", or because it lacks the old-school wonder of a big-ass rocket launch? I have no idea from the article; I can only infer the author disqualifies it by its complete omission.
And the author is similarly imprecise on who "we" even are. After identifying many of the problems they consider "big" as primarily international political problems, in many cases a result of international poverty, they then point fingers at the US political situation [1] when looking for answers.
Is it reasonable to expect that the national feeling that fed support for a US-centric space program is lacking because there isn't similar contemporary support for solving problems overseas? Not that the US couldn't do more on some of those problems [2]. But aside from the military removal of despots, the US has no real history of possessing the national will -- or even the capability -- to solve political and poverty problems overseas.
Even if we had that Cold War-era national spirit today, I'm not sure it logically follows that it would unite behind e.g. a massive political/research/development effort to light Africa.
[1] A mess no doubt. And one doing grievous harm to our national R&D.
[2] We could even "do more" by doing less in some cases: stopping support for programs that aren't helping, but are instead warping markets and political structures.