Silicon Valley marketers proclaim with much glee that their technology will “change everything.” Doubtful intellectuals question whether their technology is really as transformative as they claim.
Changing Everything
Neither side seems to have seriously considered a different question. Suppose it is true that digital technology has in itself the mojo to “change everything.” How should we react? Is that cause for celebration, an occasion to break out the champagne? Suppose the transformation has in it everything the marketers claim for it—and more. Does that mean we automatically enjoy the magic fairy dust of wealth that sprinkles down on the beneficiaries of a new industrial revolution?
Really?
Perhaps we have been too long blessed by a basically stable social order. We have forgotten how difficult change can be. We forget what it means when technology truly “changes everything.” Change does not automatically go well.
Past Perspective
Much of this book will be about seeing our future by looking at our past. Threaded through this story is a series about “Heroes of the Old New Economy.” These are heroic tales from the early days of the first industrial revolution. We will tell of the efforts that ensured the wealth generated by the first industrial revolution turned into broadly distributed prosperity and freedom. In that spirit, we will open with a story.
It is a heroic story of a brilliant technologist whose efforts were undisputedly successful. Unlike most of the heroic stories in this book, though, our current protagonist is chosen not for his wisdom or vision. Instead, following the spirit of the age, we single him out for his technical brilliance and extraordinary dedication to achieving his goals. Of all the inventors in history, he is perhaps highest on the list of those whom we might credibly claim single-handedly “changed everything.”
For the most part, the transformation which we call the industrial revolution was many small technological advances that slowly built on each other. As a result, it is generally difficult to identify one innovator whose invention was individually transformative. There was, however, at least one truly extraordinary accomplishment which was in itself revolutionary. Yet this exception contains a cautionary tale.
The Dream
Our hero’s invention has been called “perhaps the greatest scientific discovery in history.”1 It is a process for fixing nitrogen into ammonia under high temperature and pressure. Biologically accessible nitrogen was the key element that limited the fecundity of cropland. Knowing this, enthusiastic proponents advertised this breakthrough as a true miracle. Literally, it was making “bread from air.” In an age when chemistry was the hot technology of the day, it was the crowning achievement of the field.
Our hero’s name was Fritz Haber. As an assimilated German Jew, he converted to Christianity and fiercely embraced German nationalism. Perhaps he dreamed of earning full acceptance through service to his adopted country. He hoped that through his mastery of chemistry, he could achieve a single dramatic breakthrough that would both feed Germany’s children and ensure its national security. It wasn’t a small ambition.
The Doubters
Just as nowadays there are many who doubt the potential of digital technology, in that day there were many who doubted both the technological feasibility of Haber’s dream and its hoped-for benefits. Haber labored for many years to overcome the doubts of his detractors. For instance, some questioned that any steel vessel could contain a reaction at the necessary temperatures and pressures.2 Haber’s collaborator Walther Nernst, through careful measurements and calculations, came to the conclusion that any process would require “pressures and temperatures that he considered impractical for industrial use.” This resulted in “contentious exchanges between them.”3 Yet Haber was driven by faith in optimistic projections and unpredictable breakthroughs. A long period of experimentation was necessary to make the reaction work at all.
Even after the basic process was proven, Haber still struggled. His first demonstration to the industrial scientists whom he hoped would adapt his process almost failed:
The company Badische Anilin-& Soda-Fabrik (BASF) sent the chemist Alwin Mittasch and the engineer Carl Bosch to Haber’s laboratory for a demonstration. And, of course, everything went wrong. Haber begged them to stay while he fiddled with the apparatus. Time went by, and Bosch left. Then, just as Mittasch was preparing to leave, the ammonia began to drip out of the tubing. Mittasch stood and stared, and then sat down again, deeply impressed. By the time he left, the ammonia was flowing freely.4
Even after the company BASF agreed to adapt the process, it “required pressures and temperatures considerably exceeding those that had so far been technically possible. The first plants couldn’t stand the strain and its steel reactors burst.”5 It was only through Bosch’s careful detective work and skill at metallurgy that the problem was overcome. The development of the process was a long, painstaking hunt in the dark.
It was also dangerous work. Before Haber’s efforts, a previous researcher had abandoned that line of research after his assistant was killed in an explosion. One of the factories built by Carl Bosch was later destroyed in a blast so massive that five hundred people died. Roofs were blown off fifteen miles away. Nobody knew how explosive fertilizer could be. There were many obstacles in the path of Haber’s dream—and risks in its attainment.
Ahead of its Time
Though the process might eventually have been developed elsewhere, Bosch and Haber’s special skill and persistence brought the breakthrough into being well ahead of its time. The British and the Americans tried and failed to replicate the process for most of the next decade. Even though they knew it could be done, could read a description in the patents, and had plenty of reason to try, they still failed—repeatedly. “The failure was due to a lack of knowledge and ability in building and maintaining the high pressure equipment needed to carry out the reaction and a lack of knowledge about the chemistry of the catalysts needed.”6 Bosch and Haber’s breakthrough was not routine. It arose from the mastery of a subtle and difficult art. In its day, this art was truly cutting-edge.
Exceeding Every Expectation
The results justified Haber’s persistence. The Haber-Bosch process “exceeded expectations, substantially altering the course of the planet throughout the twentieth century.”7 The impact was greater than even Haber’s wildest dreams. One hundred million tons of synthetic fertilizer is created each year by this method. The modern world would not be possible without it. It is estimated that half of the nitrogen in our bodies comes from this process. Alternately, it is estimated that two in five people alive today owe their existence to this invention.8 It not hyperbole to claim that you, dear reader, personally owe your health to the legacy of Haber’s achievement. The substance of our very selves is a monument to one man.
Stop to consider how much bigger a contribution this was than any of the touted transformations of the digital age. Our new era may allow us to tweet and tik-tok, to google and uber.9 These certainly are conveniences. They do change our world somewhat. But are these achievements comparable to the change it was to “make bread from air”? When the fundamental limits on the world’s capacity to feed itself were lifted?
Though Haber was ambitious, he did not foresee these results. His goal was to transform Germany, his adopted country. It was a deeply insecure rising power—haunted by hunger and its own defenselessness. He wanted to transform it into the economic and military juggernaut it became.
It might seem strange to claim that the Germany of 1910 was worried about defense. It was coming off of a string of victories, thanks to Bismark’s shrewd leadership. However, it depended on imports of guano to make ammunition. The bird poop supply lines were easily cut off. Britain, with its superior navy, could strangle Germany’s ability to wage war.
In addition, Germany had a long cultural memory of defenselessness. It still remembered the days when it was a loose confederation of relatively weak principalities, repeatedly rolled over by invading armies. The trauma of the Thirty Years’ War, which killed up to a third of the German-speaking population, left an indelible mark on its culture.
The country also had good cause to worry about hunger. Though it had enough sunlight and land to feed its people, its population was growing. Leaders feared “without a way to fertilize the crops… 20 million citizens would face starvation.”10 At the start of World War I, Germany depended on imports for a third of its food and fodder. As a result, blockades during the war caused food shortages which killed hundreds of thousands.11
On Gods…
Given this history, we might appreciate the audacity of Haber’s dream. What is even more stunning is how, in retrospect, it seems narrow. The future he brought into being is wealthier and more secure than even he could have imagined.
Yet even so, his limited ambitions surpass anything we encounter today. The self-proclaimed big thinkers of our digital age tout ambitions that seem small by comparison!12
So do we honor Herr Haber for this miracle, this most marvelous of machinations? It not only achieved its goal, but vastly exceeded every expectation imagined in the wildest dreams of its proponents. Arguably, Haber was a god whose work gave breath to billions. Do we honor him in proportion to his achievement?
The short answer is no. If he is remembered at all, the godlike aspect to his achievement is forgotten. Instead, he is most likely remembered as a monster.
Why?
… and Monsters…
Because on April 22nd, 1915, on a battlefield outside the Belgian city of Ypres, he gave the order to open the valves of 6,000 metal tanks, releasing 168 tons of chlorine gas. As Haber had calculated, the wind that day blew the gas slowly but inexorably toward the enemy lines.
The Allied troops watched the gas approach curiously… Carried by the breeze, the gas took on a pinkish hue with the setting sun. A man walking at a brisk pace could outrun it. But no one ran. No one had seen this before. At a casual stride, the gas filled their trenches and their lungs. Red hot chemical needles jabbed at the delicate flesh of alveoli and blood vessels. The searing pain brought soldiers to their knees. They convulsed in pain, tearing at their throats. Pus and phlegm filled their lungs. Yellow mucous frothed from their mouths before they coughed out blood. Their faces twisted in agony, they drowned on the land. Terrified by this new horror, many Allied soldiers ran, leaving a six kilometer gap in the line.
The book “A Higher Form of Killing: Six Weeks in World War I That Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare”13 tells of this attack. Remarkably, the author Diana Preston notes, the Allies were utterly unprepared. Surprisingly, because they had extensive early warnings from intelligence and even detailed accounts of the German preparation from a renegade soldier. Yet they did nothing to prepare. They didn’t even warn their own soldiers. “Those in high positions refused to believe, in the face of all the evidence, that Germany’s political leaders and its military commanders would countenance the unleashing of attacks that in addition to being illegal would shatter long-cherished concepts of honor, decency and ‘civilized’ behavior in warfare.”
… Who Are…
Indeed, the gas attack might never had happened if it had not been for Haber’s enthusiasm and energy in promoting the idea. Many of the aristocratic German commanders did indeed despise this strategy just as much as the Allied commanders thought they would. Colonel-General Karl von Einem “denounced gas as dishonorable” and feared its use would “damage Germany’s reputation.” Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria agreed “poison gas was unchivalrous.” The senior German officer assigned to supervise the attack was shocked: “the task of poisoning the enemy as if they were rats went against the grain with me as it would with any decent sentient soldier.”
However, the war had bogged down into a stalemate. The high command was desperate to break out of the trap in which they had found themselves. Quick victory was necessary “before their enemies could fully mobilize their greater economic and military resources”. Haber, for his part, believed “it was a way of saving countless lives, if it meant that the war could be brought to an end sooner.” Personally, he believed “during peacetime a scientist belongs to the world but during wartime he belongs to his country.” But he seemed to also have a different visceral reaction than his aristocratic counterparts to the use of technology in this manner. He is reported to have praised poison gas as “a higher form of killing.”14
It was not only the aristocratic German command who had misgivings about Haber’s chosen strategy. Haber’s wife, Clara Immerwahr—a brilliant chemist in her own right—was horrified. After the attack, Haber received a promotion to Captain. It was a rank that as a Jew he could previously hardly have dreamed of attaining. He returned home to celebrate. At the party in his honor, Clara confronted him. She challenged him with the accusation that poison gas was “morally bankrupt” and “monstrous.” Haber responded no less harshly: in front of everyone at the party he accused her of being a traitor and an enemy of Germany.
That night, Clara took his army revolver and shot herself in the chest. Her thirteen year old son found her as she was dying. Haber left the next day to oversee another gas attack on the Eastern Front. He left his son to deal with his mother’s death alone. His son later killed himself as well, at age forty-four.
In the end, Haber’s efforts and sacrifices made little difference in the course of the war. The German commanders were nearly as surprised and unprepared for the effects of the gas as the Allies. Haber was bitterly disappointed at the failure to mount a powerful offensive that could have taken advantage of the hole that was blown in the line. He wrote later that the commanders “admitted afterwards that if they had followed my advice and made a large-scale attack, instead of the experiment at Ypres, the Germans would have won.”15
… Rejected by All.
Haber’s adopted country, for which he had labored and sacrificed so much, did not return his devotion. Albert Einstein, with whom he was friends, would later say “Haber’s life was the tragedy of the German Jew—the tragedy of unrequited love.” As the Nazis rose to power, they attacked him, and the institute in which he worked, for harboring Jewish scientists. Even though he had converted to Christianity, he became “Haber the Jew” in their eyes. Rather than fire his Jewish staff as requested, he resigned and fled to England. “But scientists there shunned him for his work with chemical weapons. He traveled Europe, fruitlessly searching for a place to call home. He suffered heart failure in a hotel in Switzerland in 1934.”16
After his death, the Nazis repurposed an insecticide Haber’s lab had developed: Zyklon-B. They transformed it into a weapon of mass murder. Among those killed were Haber’s niece, her husband and children, and other members of his extended family.
Be Careful…
So Haber’s exertions achieved the goal for which technologists today claim to be striving. He changed the world. For better or worse, the force of his genius and energy created a world that was indelibly altered.
The masters of the cutting-edge technology of our day boast about “changing the world.” Yet none of their visions touch the audacity of ambition, or totality of transformation, that was achieved by Haber’s breakthrough.
And we should be thankful for that!
The modern conversation around “change” is surprisingly primitive. It seems like a dispute about the proper scoring of the “So you want to change the world…?” reality show. Silicon Valley boosters contend they are cleaning up the top prizes. Other observers cast17 doubts18 upon their triumphalism.
… What You Wish For…
No one seems to be asking: is this a contest you want to win? Mittasch sat down hard when he saw the ammonia flow from the tubing. He knew this was no ordinary advance. There remained ahead a long, hard (and dangerous!) path for Bosch and Mittasch to render Haber’s process commercially viable. But they could recognize the potential to “change everything” when it started dripping out of a tube in front of them.
Mittach’s prescience would have made for a wildly romantic tale… except for the niggling doubt that perhaps we’d wish he hadn’t. Or perhaps, we’d wish he had been a little more impatient to leave that night. Or maybe we’d wish Bosch had been a bit more staid and unimaginative, a little more prone to giving up in the face of danger and setback. Or that Haber himself had been less persistent, less dogged in his will to overcome all obstacles. We’d wish they had all been a little less superhuman.
… Because Your Wish…
If they had not built up Germany’s capacity to produce synthetic ammonia before the war, then the Kaiser might well have been forced to sue for peace in 1915. We wonder: might that have been a lot better for everyone involved? Even for Germany. They had to sue for peace eventually anyway. But first they were bled white. And they engendered a wicked thirst for vengeance from the rest of Europe. A quick defeat might have been better. Even for the loser!
A peace negotiated in 1915 might have allowed the international ties among the aristocracy to prove their worth. After all, Kaiser Wilhelm was proud to be the grandchild of Queen Victoria of England. No less than seven of her grandchildren were on various European thrones in 1914. The aristocracy’s ties were reciprocal: the English throne was as much German as the German one was English.19
In an era where personal connections between heads of rival states are viewed with extreme suspicion, it is hard to imagine such a world. We are upset when our president has ties to a Russian dictator. Think what people would feel if they were cousins? If, like the Kaiser of Germany and the Tsar of Russia, they called each other by baby names—“Willy” and “Nicky”? Remember, this was not because of some Dubya-style fondness for diminutive monikers. Instead, they had been addressing each other this way since they were toddlers. They simply never got out of the habit. How would the people feel that King George V of Britain (i.e., “Georgy”) was a much closer relation—in both blood and cultural traditions—to their German enemies than he was to his own people? (In modern times the House of Windsor has studiously suppressed consciousness of this historical oddity.)
Yet in that era, far from being threatening, these ties made the people feel safer. We have a Monty Python caricature of the aristocracy—“Help! Help! I’m being oppressed!” It allows us to forget that aristocrats provided a crucial service to the peasantry who owed them their allegiance. This was an era where the preeminent historical trauma was the Thirty Years’ War. In such a war, the constant chaotic ebb and flow of battle caused endemic plagues and mass starvation. The aristocrats’ highly ritualized rivalry, controlled by a code of chivalry, provided the crucial service of containing and channeling their conflicts. It kept those conflicts from spilling over into messy free-for-alls that devastated the livelihoods of the peasants.
For this reason, the descendants of those peasants looked at the cloud of poison gas drifting toward them on the wind curiously but without suspicion. The family of “Willy” and “Nicky” and “Georgy”—for all their well-known internal rivalries—was supposed to honor of the memory of their fearsome grandmother. That honor was supposed to keep anything too terrible from happening.
It was in this context that the “higher forms of killing” which appeared in early 1915 were greeted as world-shattering betrayals. It was not just poison gas, but the first aerial bombing of civilians (by Zeppelins), and the first submarine attack on merchant shipping (“Remember the Lusitania!”) which so shocked the world. These violations of the spirit (if not also the letter) of the law of chivalry destroyed the prestige of the ruling families of Europe.
For all that the monarchs of the time were uneasy allies of democracy, the abrupt fall in their fortunes after World War I left a vacuum of authority. That, in turn, led to the rise of fascism. Imagine if the aristocracy had found within itself the ability to call upon their ties of blood and tradition to negotiate a peace in 1915. If they had so vindicated the people’s faith in them, then the transition to the modern world might have been less desperately traumatic.
… Might Be Granted.
A famous movie, “The Grand Illusion,” set in a World War I prison camp, shows the German commander, von Rauffenstein, warmly entertaining a French aristocrat, Capt. de Boieldieu. It hardly matters he is a prisoner of war. At the end of the movie, while generating a diversion to cover for his fellow Frenchman’s escape, the French aristocrat forces the German commander to shoot him. Afterwards, almost in tears, the German apologizes to the man he has fatally wounded. The Frenchman replies “I’m not the one that should be pitied. For me it will all be over… soon. But you’ll have to carry on…. For a commoner, dying in a war is a tragedy. But for you and me… it’s a good way out.” Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the movie:
What the Frenchman knows and the German won’t admit is that the new world belongs to commoners. It changed hands when the gentlemen of Europe declared war. And the “grand illusion” of Renoir’s title is the notion that the upper classes somehow stand above war. The German cannot believe that his prisoners, whom he treats almost as guests, would try to escape. After all, they have given their word not to.
The image of an upper class caught up in a “Grand Illusion” should worry us. That era is now called the Innocent Age. We may talk glibly about the illusions and innocence of previous eras. But does that give us insight enough to identify another such “Grand Illusion?” Would we know if we were caught inside it?
After the deluge, it is all too easy to look back and analyze the previous era’s fatal innocence. But pre-deluge, imagine a ruling class that seems to move easily from success to success, aided by new and seemingly magical technological superpowers. How then can one tell if their ability to handle the challenges of the age is fatally incomplete? As engineers, how would we know if the tools we dream of creating are destined to twist in the hands of the society on whom they were bestowed? The power of technology to benefit society is no stronger than the power of the society to handle it to its benefit.
Unity of Action
In the manner of classical tragedy, we capture the fault lines of this era in a single encounter. Like a playwright who seeks unity of time, place and action, we can zoom in one moment: that fatal dinner party. Haber celebrates his ascension. It is a triumph previously unobtainable for one such as he. His wife, Clara, accuses him. She calls him a monster. He calls her a traitor. In despair, she kills herself. His resolve unchanged, he leaves to continue his celebrated but monstrous work.
Can we see such an encounter in our own era? This book [TODO or is it this chapter?] will start with this unity of action. Then we will do two kinds of transformations on it.
One will be to narrow and widen our view. A playwright condenses his story. But he also demands the encounter shown be “serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude.” That is to say, the unified action distills the faults of the age. The conflict of the characters is a microcosm of the dislocations of the era. In this way, we narrow and widen our view. We can move from a single encounter to the faults of the society at large—and back again.
Serious, Complete and…
The other transformation is to fold over time. We find an encounter of the same shape in our own era. We will return to various aspects of this encounter again and again. [TODO: REFERENCE make these links] We move out from consequence to cause. We seek to name a root cause. Such a name allows us to find a fold line and pin our layers together.
Complicating our story, we will fold twice. One fold comes from the correspondence between old and new occurrences of Clara-style passion and despair. We observe the strange passions of engineers; we ask when we have seen them before. The other fold comes from observations about old and new political dissolution. We observe political alienation. We ask when we have seen alienation like that before. Two folds, two pins.
This double fold allows us to check our own work. The two stories should align. In our first attempt they won’t; there will be some fuss to get a plausible correspondence. It won’t be quite as neat as I am foreshadowing. Our results will push us backwards in time. It is a struggle. Identifying with the passions of far-off times is hard. The technical considerations of folding and pinning are tricky. All of it will require space, length, and care.
… Of A Certain Magnitude
However, by this method the story stress-tests itself. It is quite difficult to get a coherent and complete story using these methods. For that reason our story will be longer and more complex than our promise of “unity of action” with “certain magnitude” suggests. Ultimately, it isn’t a short after-dinner production to be enjoyed in evening clothes. There will be some fussing with fold lines to get stiff transparent layers to line up properly. The reader might wish me to promise a correspondence with a simple and analogous unity of action. I don’t entirely fail; but that concept provides the core of our story rather than the whole of it. The correspondence will be there, and it will ground us. But there will be more complexity around it.
On the other hand, the difficulty will give us some assurance of the correctness of the final result. It isn’t easy to use methods such as these to construct a coherent story. Our folded-over layers are stiff; registering them is not easy. The internal logic of our correspondences is demanding. None of it is kind to either romantic hallucinations or oversimplification.
By that token, however, if we succeed in puzzling it all together, we have assurance we are near the truth. Our ambitious agenda produces either a complete story—or it fails to get anything at all. With difficulty, a coherent story emerges from this stress test. That indicates it is, if not true, at least in the ballpark of the truth.
Haber’s Responsibility
There will be much fuss of folding and aligning layers of history and economic logic. For all that, this work should not be mistaken for a scholarly treatise in either field. If it was, the fuss would be fancier. Instead, we fudge it. We are engineers; we are not trying to be anything else. The goal is not a theory of history, economics or politics. The goal is to understand the responsibility of engineers to a society that their inventions alter. Our search for truth is strictly subordinate to this goal of responsibility.
This brings us back to the question: Why are we so disappointed with Haber? Why, despite his remarkable genius and undeniable contribution, do we still regard his story with no small measure of horror? What responsibility did we expect in which he failed us? Why did he shatter under the weight of that additional challenge? When considering these questions, let us look at the answers and wonder if they don’t also apply to ourselves.
- TODO Reference, presumably? What did I mean for this footnote? ↩︎
- From Catalysis: Science and Technology ↩︎
- From http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/tcaw/10/i02/html/02chemch.html ↩︎
- From http://discovermagazine.com/2001/apr/featbomb ↩︎
- This page explains the details of the problem Bosch encountered and overcame. ↩︎
- From https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/texts/readmach/zmaczynski.htm. ↩︎
- From How a century of ammonia synthesis changed the world. ↩︎
- TODO Reference, presumably? What did I mean for this footnote? ↩︎
- with apologies to the defenders of the brand names. ↩︎
- ↩︎
- This page says “The Germans estimated that some 763,000 people died during the war from malnutrition and its effects.” ↩︎
- Not that I want to spark anyone’s competitive spirit. We will bitterly criticize this style of pissing contest. “My change is bigger than your change!” is not a competition you want to win. Haber’s story will show the consequences of winning top billing in such a contest. It is a cautionary tale. ↩︎
- TODO Cite the book. ↩︎
- All the quotes in the last two paragraphs are from the book A Higher Form of Killing, pages 85-87. All, that is, except the last quote, which is in the front matter on page one—motivating the book’s title. ↩︎
- A Higher Form of Killing, page 13. ↩︎
- From the Smithsonian Magazine account, referenced earlier. ↩︎
- The essay The Paper Bag Revolution points out that the inventions that effectively fueled growth were often small and unglamorous. It asks whether much of the touted software innovations are like “the ‘fluted columns, ornamental arches, entablatures, curlicues and encrusted scrolls’ that… cluttered up 19th-century British machinery—that Americans used to have the good sense to leave out.” ↩︎
- There is an influential treatise “The Rise and Fall of American Growth The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War” by Robert J Gordon. It that the great era of growth after World War II has come to a close. He claims the recent technological advances may be flashy but have had little effect on the growth which has powered America’s wealth and social stability. ↩︎
- When the war broke out, the English royals were caught flat-footed with the surname Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Anti-German sentiment was sweeping England. So that would never do. Ignominiously, they hurriedly took on the name of their castle. ↩︎
