Progress and innovation: 2023 was a very good year for Americans

2023 was a very good year.

Covid receded to the background -- it is still with us, but with fewer cases, less hospitalization, lower mortality and generally milder cases.  It's similar to flu and the common cold.  Give credit to vaccination. 

That's fine, some will say, but how about inflation?  Good point -- inflation fell off a cliff during 2023, wages went the other direction, and for those living in the United States those are great things.  

Still shocked at pandemic-era unemployment?  That's old news:  The national unemployment rate has hit the floor.  Worried that our nation is losing its scientific and technological creativity?  Read on to become convinced otherwise.

Let's look at a sampling of the year's noteworthy and perhaps overlooked accomplishments to get some idea of how good the year was and what that means for the future.

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All government:  American government worked well.  Our politics is messy and could use much more cooperation and less obstinate standing on principle getting in the way of compromise, but for the most part all levels of government did a good job of providing needed services.  

Federal, state and local governments consistently provided services such as:  Public health and safety; public education; disaster response and relief; access to public lands; national defense; foreign relations; research and development; issuing visas to tens of millions visitors; naturalizing almost one million new citizens; road work; other public infrastructure upkeep.  

FBI data show crime rates continue to decrease (near to all-time lows) and the National Retail Federation retracted its earlier assertion that organized shop-lifting was rampant and increasing.  Bear in mind that American retailers annually book more than $7000 billion ($7 trillion) in sales, so when it comes to shoplifting we are hearing about fractions of a percent of total business and no evidence of an increasing trend.

U.S. national economy:  The nation enjoys overall prosperity.  The evidence is clear.  For example:  Malls in December were packed with shoppers.  I experienced it; you probably did, too.  Respondents to multiple opinion polls done at and prior to that time revealed around 70% were positive about their financial status. 

If you followed the year's business commentary you might have noticed that much of it was  centered around the "tight labor market."  That's another way of saying that 2023 saw an increase in wages and worker incomes due in large part to historically low unemployment. Year-over-year wage growth was 4%.  Inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index ended the year at 3.2% annually based on the reading from the second half of 2023.  Post-pandemic government stimulus and policies encouraged businesses to bring people back to work (remember all the Help Wanted signs earlier in the year?) thereby creating more supply and therefore disinflation.

Unfairness and inequities still exist, but rising wages and falling inflation mean progress in a variety of ways for the future as economist Paul Krugman describes in a recent Opinion piece in The New York Times.

Physics, astronomy and overall cosmology:  With funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, scientists at NANOGrav (short for North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves) accomplished the first-ever detection of something called low-frequency gravitational waves moving through the universe.  

Why is this notable?  We have seen numerous remarkable pictures of stars, galaxies and other astronomical characters in their innumerable and gargantuan existences.  Check out NASA's web site for some great pictures from the Hubble and Webb observatories.  Those pictures have helped to confirm something that has bedeviled the cosmological scientific community for decades:  We cannot see enough stuff to account for the gravity-ordered appearances and existences of the things that we do see.  

Apparently only about 5% of whatever it is that makes up our universe is observable.  In other words, all those stars, planets, galaxies, black holes, quasars and so on can account for only 1/20th of the mass that is needed to make gravity do what it does to put all those things together.  NANOGrav is looking for the other 95%, and last year's discovery is a big step in the direction needed to figure out the other 95% of the story of how everything (ourselves included) has come to be as it is.

The human genome:  Improving our understanding of human genetics is key to the long-term development of defenses against disease and helping to make informed decisions about medical treatments.  Did you know that until last year the 20-year old human reference genome was largely based on samples from only one individual?  (I did not know this.)  The U.S. National Institutes of Health has now put together a new "pan-genome" based on sequences from 47 people; the intent is to continue expanding it to include sequences from about 700 individuals.  The prior pan-genome was largely that of European descent; the new one will overcome the limitations inherent in a single geographic origin.

Medicine and health:  Could there be a cure for cancer?  Recent research has shown that the answer to that question is now "Yes, it's likely."  Bacteria has been found in and among tumors, creating conditions promoting growth of the tumors.  Such a discovery suggests that counteracting or killing the bacteria could help to fight cancer.

Artificial intelligence:  I struggled with this one.  News about "AI" used up a lot of last year's oxygen.  (I'm using quote marks because there is not yet a convincing case for intelligence that is artificially-created by our human intelligence.)  I struggled not because this isn't important, but because I had a hard time convincing myself that the consumption of all that oxygen accomplished anything meritorious.  

Here's why it's included:  Last year's news and controversy about "AI" accomplished a level of public awareness of a potentially pervasive, commanding and influential technology that the preceding fifty years' worth of discussion had not been able to produce.  The general understanding of "AI" -- whatever it might be -- is so warped by hype and braggadocio that it begs for clarity, especially in the moral and ethical realms -- what will it be able to do?  What should it be able to do?  It will be tough going to get good and acceptable answers to those questions.

The "AI" that was introduced late in 2022 and became widely discussed during 2023 is primitive.  By relying on massive amounts of computing power it can accomplish certain well-defined tasks much faster than you or I could, but that's much like saying it can follow directions to stack blocks one atop another.  Intelligence begs for creativity and innovation -- "AI" does not now show those abilities.  Speed and precision might be astonishing, but there is no soul.  Will there be one?  Should there be one?

Let's be wary of human-corrupted "AI" tools that are used to create "deep fake" type lies, but also realize that for every such tool there's another better one that will expose the corruption underlying the manipulation of reality.  

I'm going to be optimistic and say that 2023 accomplished an important public awareness that will continue.  That is needed progress.

NASA and Taters the cat:  Cat videos are popular and entertaining.  NASA has provided us with one that is also important.  Here's why:  Exploratory data gathered by decades' worth of space-faring equipment is sent back to Earth for analysis.  The method of this sending has been and continues to be good old-fashioned radio technology.  It is pokey slow transmission requiring hours or days to send packages of data.  The use of laser technology could be from 10 to 100 times faster.  NASA prepared a video of Taters the cat, sent it (the video, not Taters) 19 million miles away from Earth, and then used a laser to transmit it back home in a fraction of the time that would have been needed by radio frequency methods.  See the video and read the NASA article here.

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I've just scratched the surface with these brief stories.  How much of this type of news do you think is generally known?  If not much, or not enough, it's at least in part because most people most of time look to television and clickbait-infested social media and online videos for news reporting of current events. 

Too brief to provide much detail and context,  often sensational and frequently sycophantic, such mass media fire hoses are usually devoid of critical analysis.  That void is too often filled with conspiracy stories, so knowledge of accomplishments becomes a forgotten casualty in the popular consciousness.  Sycophancy and conspiracy try to poison critical analysis; taking time to learn about remarkable accomplishments is an antidote to such poison.

If you want more from elsewhere on recent accomplishments, I recommend Bill Gates' busy and interesting blog.  His thoughts on the accomplishments in 2023 and his outlook for 2024 can be found by selecting here.  Included is an expanded view of current "AI" successes as well as ideas on what it might eventually be able to do.

People understand that the future is shaped by the progress that comes from accomplishments.  The results of last year's cancer research will help to better focus this year's research; perhaps next year will see the beginnings of a cure.  Last year's wage-earner earned a wage increase that already puts her ahead of inflation, and she understands how that carries forward into the following years, while inflation declines, to her increasing long-term benefit.

One final thought:  The students I work with are well-prepared to enter the workforce.  They are graduates of public education and are thoughtful, informed, skilled and energetic.  I have no doubts about their abilities or their prospects for success and for the benefits and progress that will derive from that success.  Each year to come will produce new remarkable accomplishments.  I look forward to many new good things that will come of efforts yet to be done.

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