Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith on Soonish

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: Russ Roberts interviews Kelly and Zach Wienersmith about Soonish, a humorous but serious tour of emerging technologies. They discuss space access, asteroid mining, space elevators, robotic construction, augmented reality, biology, and organ printing, emphasizing trade-offs, economic incentives, unintended consequences, and how breakthroughs often depend on breakthroughs in unrelated fields.

Main Topics: Space travel economics and asteroid mining (Priority: 5/5): The guests explain why launching mass into space is extraordinarily expensive, why asteroid mining is unlikely to be profitable for bringing materials back to Earth, and why its best case may be supplying in-space infrastructure. Space elevators as a radical access technology (Priority: 5/5): They describe the physics and promise of a space elevator, especially its potential to slash launch costs by avoiding fuel-heavy rocket launches from Earth’s surface, while noting major materials and security hurdles. Construction, robotics, and programmable housing (Priority: 4/5): The discussion shifts to automating construction with robots, prefab systems, and programmable matter, including how machine labor could make skilled artisanal building cheaper and more widely available. Augmented reality and social regulation (Priority: 4/5): They explore uses for AR in training, safety, and disaster response, while also highlighting privacy, harassment, and governance problems if digital overlays become persistent and socially powerful. Biology, genetics, and body systems (Priority: 4/5): The conversation covers artificial selection, Brassica vegetables, the nasal cycle, and the limits of biological modification, showing how even mundane bodily functions and food crops are deeply engineered or poorly understood. Organ printing, incentives, and moral hazard (Priority: 3/5): They discuss 3D-printed organs as a medical breakthrough and use it as a springboard to talk about moral hazard, risky behavior, and the role of painful consequences in shaping incentives. Dark consequences and speed of change (Priority: 5/5): The guests reflect on why many technologists underthink harms, and why fast-moving feedback-loop technologies like brain-computer interfaces or AI raise special risks because culture may not adapt quickly enough.

Key Arguments: Space is hard mainly because rockets must carry almost all their fuel from the start; this makes Earth-to-orbit transport inherently expensive and limits space economics. Asteroid mining is unlikely to make sense if the goal is to bring materials back to Earth, because Earth already has comparable resources and cheaper extraction options; it may only make sense for building space infrastructure. A space elevator could dramatically lower launch costs by eliminating most rocket fuel needs and reusing infrastructure, but it requires an extraordinarily strong, lightweight cable that may depend on future materials like carbon nanotubes. Technologies often emerge from unrelated advances: battery improvements enabled EVs; similarly, space-elevator materials or robotics may come from breakthroughs outside the original application area. Construction has changed less than many assume; automation could reduce labor costs, expand access to quality housing, and revive labor-intensive aesthetics like woodwork and masonry at lower prices. Augmented reality could be transformative in industrial training, surgery, and disaster response by reducing errors and giving real-time guidance, not just by displaying trivia. The social problems of AR are substantial: digital overlays can become tools for surveillance, harassment, or contested property claims, and laws may lag behind the technology. Many researchers focus on benefits and neglect harms; the authors argue technologists should proactively consider negative externalities, even if ethics specialists are needed to help. Brain-computer interfaces and AI are especially concerning because they may create internal feedback loops that accelerate change faster than culture or regulation can adapt. Biological modification is already pervasive through agriculture and breeding, and the line between “natural” and “engineered” is much thinner than people think.

Data Points: Book subtitle: 10 Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything - Describes the scope of Soonish. Space elevator cable length: 100,000 kilometers / 62,000 miles - Approximate length of the proposed elevator cable extending to geosynchronous orbit and beyond. Space station altitude: 250–300 miles from Earth - Used to explain why the ISS is still deep in Earth’s gravity well. Current launch cost: about $10,000 per pound - Russ cites the cost of sending material to space using rockets. Space elevator projected launch cost: about $250 per pound - Estimated cost if the space elevator concept could be made workable. Rocket mass on a low-Earth-orbit mission: 80% fuel, 16.5% machine, 3.5% payload - Used to illustrate the rocket fuel problem. Construction robot speedup: 3x faster than a conventional construction worker - Describes the semi-automated mason (SAM) working with a human. Agricultural timeframe for domestication: at least 10,000 years - They note humans have been altering biology through breeding for millennia. Human brain modification example: 50 more IQ points - Used in discussion of why iterative brain enhancement could become dangerous.

Pivotal Quotes: "New technology is not simply the slow accumulation of better and better things." — Russ Roberts: Used to frame the book’s focus on discontinuous technological change rather than incremental progress. "If bankers had to get their body cavities opened up to receive a bailout, they might think twice about making another risky loan." — Kelly Wienersmith: A darkly comic line from the organ-printing discussion illustrating moral hazard and incentives. "The scary thing is if you get a technology that contains some sort of feedback loop, it contains its own development." — Zach Wienersmith: Explains why brain-computer interfaces and AI feel uniquely risky compared with slower-moving innovations.

Implications: The episode suggests that future progress will be uneven: some technologies may dramatically cut costs or expand capabilities, while others create new ethical, legal, and security problems. Listeners should expect trade-offs, second-order effects, and culture lag.