Covid19 induced change is upon us sorely testing the ability of the political process to deal with large scale systems. But innovation offers hope.

Weary of isolation and talk of societal change then picture yourself in Jane Austen’s time--- visiting Aunt Sarah in a neighbouring village was tortuous if not entirely out of the question. Given the pitiful state of the roads most living in the Regency period ---  never got to travel more than 14 miles (20km) from where they resided! (Has a familiar ring?). And even then they had to contend with roads that were quagmires after heavy rains or breathe in choking dust or worse, face the prospect of encountering highwaymen.

When in strife innovate

These conditions also weighed on the getting of coal from the collieries to ports to run a novel innovation -- steam-powered cotton mills and provide for heating and cooking in the final decades of the Little Ice Age. But  engineering and metallurgical ingenuity was not to prove wanting: Wagonways were built using at first flanged cast iron wheels on wooden planks, then flanged wrought iron rails, then the combination. And the two elements, steam engines and rails, fused.

Breaking down Austen’s isolation

This development in itself was set to break down the omnipresent isolation. In a relatively short period railways sprang up all over the country akin to watching a 30-50 year time-lapse sequence. Mobility rocketed when new lines entered the towns or their precincts. And, as the industrial revolution gathered strength they fostered immigration to factory-rich larger centres. No greater change could be imagined as remote seasides might now be visited by low cost day excursion trains … there was an enormous mass market in people travelling third class, when enforcing railway companies to provide cheap tickets.

(An uncanny parallel perhaps with the extension of the NBN into regional Australia?).

More than a “gear change”

The far reaching innovations of those pioneering Victorian engineers ---  the likes of Isambard Brunel and Robert Stevenson ---  are today mirrored in the lab-enabling breakthrough techs such as highway electrification, lithium-iron batteries, green hydrogen, AI, and mRNA vaccines. For the main part these are @ scale, already feeding or on the brink of feeding, through into everyday life. Increasingly, ---new products move from prototypes to mature technologies in ever narrowing time frames.. Amongst which comes technical obsolescence --- like that digital camera tucked away in a drawer somewhere, rendered surplus to requirements by i-phones.  No less so, fossil fuel powered cars now slated to endure a similar fate (a landscape where there won’t be scarcely any of Scott Morrison’s gears). 

So many moving parts

To be fair these innovations are transitioning into a world steeped in complexity including a similar untidiness with respect to Covid19 measures. CDC’s Fauci for example asked to comment on omicron becoming endemic as the new normal confessed that

There were too many unknowns.” We don’t know the number of people in the country with no experience of the virus—who haven’t been vaccinated or infected. We also don’t know what level of protection an Omicron infection might provide against the next variant. “Because we will undoubtedly get a next variant,” 

…. a by-product of being at a knowledge frontier – a place familiar to scientists but where the public rarely if ever get to go. 

 It’s OK to say “I don’t know”.

Anthony Fauci was right! This is a tricky business with many variables and Darwinian forces up to their mysterious ways. Styles of thinking where processes are taken to be linear, conform to ideas  about the value of human intuition, and are pitted to binary interpretation, lack rigour,  conceptually belonging in the drawer alongside those digital cameras.

At present we have juxtaposition ---- two large scale systems off and running like garden escapes -  a geological one, as a result of explosive population growth, mismanagement of emissions and insofar as viruses are concerned,  overrunning of natural habitats.

Applying innovative approaches

The decadal breakthrough technologies now getting to scale, are integral to reining in these maladies e.g. mRNA vaccines to combat the risk of future zoonotic viruses; lithium-iron solid states for electrification of highways and grid transition; AI to identify new pathways for repairing our fraying connection with the natural world

 Taking a cue from McKinsey’s Global Institute:

Achieving net zero (apropos of Cop26) will require overcoming traditional orthodoxies and ways of working and constructive actions taken during the pandemic have demonstrated the world’s ability to innovate and intervene at scale to support both lives and livelihoods..

Thought leadership

In Australia opportunities will not be fully realised unless true failure points are addressed --- the dearth of science background in our MPs esp. ministers, is a worry for starters, extending to mainstream media?   

STEM (or better still, STEAM ) offers promise in funnelling new generations into science & innovation but nothing beats filling contemporary leadership positions with those who know that science’s moment is here!

Dr Peter Fisher is an Honorary & Vice-Chancellor Fellows Group member, University of Melbourne.

Image: https://www.accenture.com/nl-en/blogs/insights/the-most-out-of-your-innovation-lab

An edited version of this article has appeared in IA.