However, excepting the world of art with its obvious cultural impact, what does the loss of dreams and dreamers imply for the mundane everyday world.

To me it means that we are eventually going to reach a point of stagnation. A state in which little really new ever appears. Where what is described as new is in fact only a rehash of something old, where the serendipitous world shaking innovation is only a memory.

In some measure we can see a microcosm of such a world in today's Japan. Japanese society is one in which the individual is submerged in the group. The maverick spir

As problems arose we used our human abilities to overcome them. If those abilities were to disappear surely the human race would be radically changed.

Our ability to solve problems rises from the need of the moment, "necessity is the mother of invention", etc., but to an even larger extent from our ability to visualize solutions and how we might profit from them. Not necessarily profit in the monetary sense but in the acquisition of new knowledge or the plaudits of our fellows.

The single thread that binds together most breakthroughs is that they were achieved by individualists, dreamers, people who didn't fit the mold.

Most of the world of today is run by hardheaded, practical, pragmatic people who see problem solving as a systematic exercise. You just feed all the relevant information to the computer and wait for it to spit out a practical solution for you to follow.

This is a viable approach to problems with large amounts of available information concerning similar problems but it isn't the way breakthroughs occur. For one reason, most of the easy problems have already been taken care of. Somebody already came up with the wheel, the sail, the sundial etc. Each of these inventions, in its own time, was the equivalent of curing cancer, or developing a clean, renewable, economical energy source today.

These discoveries were probably made by individuals more or less in the mainstream of their society, folks not too different from you and me. Therein lies the rub.

Most of the major problems we face today are not susceptible to solution by the average person. They are so complex, so esoteric in nature that it requires either someone of genius level intellect or vast and very expensive education. In addition, they can't be solved just through human thought. The possibilities are so numerous that supercomputers are necessary just to eliminate the impossible. The physical components that can't be run through a computer still need great amounts of expensive production and test equipment for validation and quality control.

The costs involved in this kind of problem solving places it out of reach of everyday folks and into the venue of the new inventors, the technocrats who by virtue of their education or position have access to that kind of equipme.

Unfortunately, this also leads to an overall lack of inventive spirit in the human race. Why should we care about solutions that baffle college professors and their banks of computers? So we just sit back and watch and hope that the eggheads can come up with a solution before we are overwhelmed by whatever the latest dilemma happens to be.

The spirit of inventiveness, the dreams of the plain people of yore that solved our problems until the advent of the industrial revolution has largely disappeared. The dreamers; the Gutenbergs, the Edisons, the Morses, the Franklins, who took a minimum of education and sophistication and produced inventions that shook the world are becoming a dying breed.

The loss of this spirit is bad enough in itself but what it poses for the future is even more ominous. We will soon run out of dreams and soon after of dreamers. That may not seem important to the practical problem solver of today but there is a possibility that without dreams not only will science suffer but other human activities as well.

And I'm not saying, as some have, that the end of invention is near, that soon we'll have invented everything that needs to be invented. There are still vast worlds to conquer, it's just going to require more resources and deeper thought.

The arts in particular stand to lose as we run out of dreamers. Art generated by computer seems a poor substitute for a painting by Rembrandt or a Michelangelo sculpture. Too much of the creativity is taken over by the machine, the selection of color and texture will be flawless, and sterile. Imperfection will be ruthlessly rooted out and we will see not the soul of the artist but the technical ability of the computer programmer.

However, excepting the world of art with its obvious cultural impact, what does the loss of dreams and dreamers imply for the mundane everyday world.

To me it means that we are eventually going to reach a point of stagnation. A state in which little really new ever appears. Where what is described as new is in fact only a rehash of something old, where the serendipitous world shaking innovation is only a memory.

In some measure we can see a microcosm of such a world in today's Japan. Japanese society is one in which the individual is submerged in the group. The maverick spiri

Most of the world of today is run by hardheaded, practical, pragmatic people who see problem solving as a systematic exercise. You just feed all the relevant information to the computer and wait for it to spit out a practical solution for you to follow.

This is a viable approach to problems with large amounts of available information concerning similar problems but it isn't the way breakthroughs occur. For one reason, most of the easy problems have already been taken care of. Somebody already came up with the wheel, the sail, the sundial etc. Each of these inventions, in its own time, was the equivalent of curing cancer, or developing a clean, renewable, economical energy source today.

These discoveries were probably made by individuals more or less in the mainstream of their society, folks not too different from you and me. Therein lies the rub.

Most of the major problems we face today are not susceptible to solution by the average person. They are so complex, so esoteric in nature that it requires either someone of genius level intellect or vast and very expensive education. In addition, they can't be solved just through human thought. The possibilities are so numerous that supercomputers are necessary just to eliminate the impossible. The physical components that can't be run through a computer still need great amounts of expensive production and test equipment for validation and quality control.

The costs involved in this kind of problem solving places it out of reach of everyday folks and into the venue of the new inventors, the technocrats who by virtue of their education or position have access to that kind of equipme.

Unfortunately, this also leads to an overall lack of inventive spirit in the human race. Why should we care about solutions that baffle college professors and their banks of computers? So we just sit back and watch and hope that the eggheads can come up with a solution before we are overwhelmed by whatever the latest dilemma happens to be.

The spirit of inventiveness, the dreams of the plain people of yore that solved our problems until the advent of the industrial revolution has largely disappeared. The dreamers; the Gutenbergs, the Edisons, the Morses, the Franklins, who took a minimum of education and sophistication and produced inventions that shook the world are becoming a dying breed.

The loss of this spirit is bad enough in itself but what it poses for the future is even more ominous. We will soon run out of dreams and soon after of dreamers. That may not seem important to the practical problem solver of today but there is a possibility that without dreams not only will science suffer but other human activities as well.

And I'm not saying, as some have, that the end of invention is near, that soon we'll have invented everything that needs to be invented. There are still vast worlds to conquer, it's just going to require more resources and deeper thought.

The arts in particular stand to lose as we run out of dreamers. Art generated by computer seems a poor substitute for a painting by Rembrandt or a Michelangelo sculpture. Too much of the creativity is taken over by the machine, the selection of color and texture will be flawless, and sterile. Imperfection will be ruthlessly rooted out and we will see not the soul of the artist but the technical ability of the computer programmer.

However, excepting the world of art with its obvious cultural impact, what does the loss of dreams and dreamers imply for the mundane everyday world.

To me it means that we are eventually going to reach a point of stagnation. A state in which little really new ever appears. Where what is described as new is in fact only a rehash of something old, where the serendipitous world shaking innovation is only a memory.

In some measure we can see a microcosm of such a world in today's Japan. Japanese society is one in which the individual is submerged in the group. The maverick spir

The costs involved in this kind of problem solving places it out of reach of everyday folks and into the venue of the new inventors, the technocrats who by virtue of their education or position have access to that kind of equipme.

Unfortunately, this also leads to an overall lack of inventive spirit in the human race. Why should we care about solutions that baffle college professors and their banks of computers? So we just sit back and watch and hope that the eggheads can come up with a solution before we are overwhelmed by whatever the latest dilemma happens to be.

The spirit of inventiveness, the dreams of the plain people of yore that solved our problems until the advent of the industrial revolution has largely disappeared. The dreamers; the Gutenbergs, the Edisons, the Morses, the Franklins, who took a minimum of education and sophistication and produced inventions that shook the world are becoming a dying breed.

The loss of this spirit is bad enough in itself but what it poses for the future is even more ominous. We will soon run out of dreams and soon after of dreamers. That may not seem important to the practical problem solver of today but there is a possibility that without dreams not only will science suffer but other human activities as well.

And I'm not saying, as some have, that the end of invention is near, that soon we'll have invented everything that needs to be invented. There are still vast worlds to conquer, it's just going to require more resources and deeper thought.

The arts in particular stand to lose as we run out of dreamers. Art generated by computer seems a poor substitute for a painting by Rembrandt or a Michelangelo sculpture. Too much of the creativity is taken over by the machine, the selection of color and texture will be flawless, and sterile. Imperfection will be ruthlessly rooted out and we will see not the soul of the artist but the technical ability of the computer programmer.

However, excepting the world of art with its obvious cultural impact, what does the loss of dreams and dreamers imply for the mundane everyday world.

To me it means that we are eventually going to reach a point of stagnation. A state in which little really new ever appears. Where what is described as new is in fact only a rehash of something old, where the serendipitous world shaking innovation is only a memory.

In some measure we can see a microcosm of such a world in today's Japan. Japanese society is one in which the individual is submerged in the group. The maverick spir

The spirit of inventiveness, the dreams of the plain people of yore that solved our problems until the advent of the industrial revolution has largely disappeared. The dreamers; the Gutenbergs, the Edisons, the Morses, the Franklins, who took a minimum of education and sophistication and produced inventions that shook the world are becoming a dying breed.

The loss of this spirit is bad enough in itself but what it poses for the future is even more ominous. We will soon run out of dreams and soon after of dreamers. That may not seem important to the practical problem solver of today but there is a possibility that without dreams not only will science suffer but other human activities as well.

And I'm not saying, as some have, that the end of invention is near, that soon we'll have invented everything that needs to be invented. There are still vast worlds to conquer, it's just going to require more resources and deeper thought.

The arts in particular stand to lose as we run out of dreamers. Art generated by computer seems a poor substitute for a painting by Rembrandt or a Michelangelo sculpture. Too much of the creativity is taken over by the machine, the selection of color and texture will be flawless, and sterile. Imperfection will be ruthlessly rooted out and we will see not the soul of the artist but the technical ability of the computer programmer.

However, excepting the world of art with its obvious cultural impact, what does the loss of dreams and dreamers imply for the mundane everyday world.

To me it means that we are eventually going to reach a point of stagnation. A state in which little really new ever appears. Where what is described as new is in fact only a rehash of something old, where the serendipitous world shaking innovation is only a memory.

In some measure we can see a microcosm of such a world in today's Japan. Japanese society is one in which the individual is submerged in the group. The maverick spir

However, excepting the world of art with its obvious cultural impact, what does the loss of dreams and dreamers imply for the mundane everyday world.

To me it means that we are eventually going to reach a point of stagnation. A state in which little really new ever appears. Where what is described as new is in fact only a rehash of something old, where the serendipitous world shaking innovation is only a memory.

In some measure we can see a microcosm of such a world in today's Japan. Japanese society is one in which the individual is submerged in the group. The maverick spirit is frowned upon as unsuitable, "the nail that sticks up must be hammered down." Ironically, this philosophy has stood Japan in good stead since the end of World War II. It has produced a class of "super techs" that have proved superior to our own in the continuing development of electronic equipment and even automobiles.

The important concept in the above is "development". All the world wide admiration Japan has earned through its hard work and adherence to its ancient principles is based on innovations from outside, mostly from the United States. They have created one of the great economies in the world by taking someone else's ideas and improving and tweaking and developing them to such a degree that they simply thrash us in the marketplace.

These products must not be confused with the "MADE IN JAPAN" junk toys and notions of post-war occupation fame. They sell better simply because they are better!

In these products and in the very success of the Japanese way though may be the seeds of their own downfall. The focus of Japanese industry is on development, on the improvement of existing products. Furthermore, their culture is not conducive to unorthodox thought, the kind of individualistic unconventional impracticality that marks the great inventors in Western society. The free-thinking, risk accepting philosophy that produced the printing press, telegraph, telephone, gramophone, etc. Each one of which was ridiculed early in its existence but went on to change the world.

This isn't to say that the Japanese way of doing things is wrong, their success in the world market is abundant proof that it works. It is part of their adaptation to life in a nation of small, crowded islands not overly blessed with natural resources. They are making the best of what they have.

But what does that have to do with the way American culture works, they are them and we are us, why should we study, analyze and attempt to learn from the Japanese experience? Simply, it could happen to us!

The Western way of doing things is very different. We have cultivated a tradition of openness, of individualism, of innovation that the Orient has never known. Much earlier in our history we began exploration for its own sake. The search for new ideas, urged on by ambition and nurtured through the appearance of new technology became part of our heritage. Thus the Western world was a beehive of innovation not only in science and technology but in politics, social and commercial relationships.

How then are we in danger of losing this spirit of innovation? Through the loss of dreams and dreamers! We are moving away from the patterns of thought that brought us our free spirit. Our society has matured to the point that we are focusing ever more inward, our interests are more on personal day-to-day issues and on the micromanagement of our environment. This is exacerbated by the fact that our technology has outstripped our educational system to the point where the average person can't even understand it much less participate. Our incredible advancement has put the invention of earthshaking new products or concepts beyond our capabilities. Innovation has become institutionalized. For a superb description of the creative mind and process, read Robert Grudin's wonderful book, "The Grace Of Great Things." Nobody says it better.

The sad fact that we are on an innovative downslide is apparent not only in the technological area but in our day to day life as well. Government constantly attempts to insert itself further into our personal lives, activists of every shade and color try to legislate their point of view into law. Those of religious persuasions attempt to institutionalize their version of morality through political means. Small business, the supposed last refuge of individualism, wallows in regulation and anti-competitive litigation, while big business uses legal chicanery and mind-numbing advertising techniques to peddle useless products to televi