Samuel Florman: The Aftermath

My field of specialty is the history of technology. If my father had prevailed, I would have followed in his footsteps and become an engineer. Actually, that came close to happening. I kind of liked the tinkering, but calculus and physics got me down. Also, the profession seemed awfully austere, somehow too forbidding for what I like to think is my blithe spirit. Maybe I have known too many engineers throughout my life. My father is a pretty good egg, but even he will admit that he’s a bit stuffy. And he is practically a laugh riot compared to some of his colleagues. Of course, engineers have changed a lot in recent years, what with computer whiz kids in blue jeans transforming attitudes in the workplace. But my father is from the old school, and I suppose I will always think of him as typical of the profession.

Not that my choice of career was determined by negative factors. I’ve always liked storytelling and thinking about faraway places and long-ago times. One summer during high school I read through all of those Will and Ariel Durant books about civilization, which my parents had bought ages before from a book club, probably for just a few dollars. And I have a passion for dates: 1066, 1492, 1776—that kind of stuff. So I ended up studying history. Putting that together with my liking for gadgets—and maybe the engineering genes in my family—the history of technology seemed a likely choice. If things had gone differently I would have been in Atlanta right now, writing my thesis on the development of machine tools in early nineteenth-century England. Instead, here I am on a foreign shore, wondering how I can possibly write down the story of what has happened.

When our seminar group was reading Moby Dick, we spent a lot of time talking about the technology of whaling. That part was pretty cool; but in a more cosmic sense the image of that ship made its way deep into my inner landscape (or seascape, I should say). The sailing vessel, Pequod, captained by the mad Ahab, off in search of the white whale, sinister symbol of a hostile universe, and with a crew that represents the human race—wow, what a ship, what a story! When, shortly after the Event, my father told me that the Governing Council had chosen me to be its recording secretary—and incidentally the official historian for our community—my first thoughts were of Ishmael, the sole survivor, telling the tale of that unearthly journey. Now here am I, a mundane historian—actually a student trying to become a historian—designated to record happenings even more inconceivable.

The most I have been able to do in these pages is summarize the events in bare outline. I hope some day to take my notes, along with the minutes I’ve kept at many meetings, add in such materials as I can glean from other survivors, and put together a more complete chronicle. But even that will be just a beginning. A host of historians and philosopher-poets will be needed to bear witness to the phenomenon through which we have lived in the past twelve months. Luckily, there were aboard our ship, the Queen of Africa, a few journalists, sages, and leaders—political, commercial, artistic, and religious—many of whom have been keeping their own diaries. I’m sure that the same is true among the Inlanders, the local inhabitants.

In this slight journal, I have interwoven my private experiences with the historical facts, jotting down what I see and hear, and a little bit of what I feel. My history professors would not have approved. They discouraged expressions of personal sentiment in academic papers. And if my father knew that I was commingling my personal memoirs with his officially commissioned history, he would not be at all pleased. But for now, he is much too busy to think about such a minor matter.

I should explain that my father, as president of the AAES, is sort of provisional co-ruler of our group, along with the captain of the ship. The local folk—we call them Inlanders since that’s where they live in relation to us, settled as we are along the coast—they have political leaders of their own. Matters of common concern are managed by what we call the Coordinating Committee, about which more later.

I cannot say enough about how wonderfully the people have behaved. I had seen it many times on television or read about it in books—survivors of floods, fires, or earthquakes working together bravely and steadfastly. Well, now I’ve experienced it firsthand. There is something about common danger—and shared tragedy—that brings out wondrous human qualities. It can’t last forever, of course; but for a year now the group’s conduct—with few exceptions—has been exemplary. The ship’s crew, established in functional units, with a formal, military-type chain of command, performed splendidly, and the rest of us pitched in as needed with a minimum of selfishness or malingering. Since the passenger list was comprised mainly of AAES people, we have a ready-made corporate structure. Nobody talks very much about exercising authority, but the organizational chart has come in handy. We used it in the earliest days for distributing information, food, and shelter, and for matching volunteers to appropriate tasks. It was convenient that AAES is a “society of societies,” thus providing communities within communities.

Unlike doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, American engineers have never had a single, central organization to which individual members of the profession belong. Since the founding of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1852, the main organizing thrust of the profession has been along the lines of separate technical disciplines—civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, and so forth. Efforts to join together continually ended in failure, often in acrimony. Even after the creation of the AAES in 1980, there were quarrels and disaffections, almost dissolution. The gala cruise on which we embarked last Christmas season was to celebrate not only the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the AAES, but also the commitment of more than fifty engineering societies to a new era of cordial collaboration.

In planning this extravagant venture, however, my father was inspired by a vision that far transcended the realm of professional organizations. His grand conception was to bring together the most talented, creative engineers in the world, and to have them, as a council of experts, consider the state of technology as we moved forward in the new millennium. His recruiting efforts were incredibly successful. We have among us an array of engineering talent that could not be matched anywhere.

It was no great trick to enlist the ruling cliques of many of the constituent societies, the presidents, executive directors, and trustees. These people thrive on board meetings and professional get-togethers. They were sure to greet the idea of a seminar cruise with delight. But my father is wise enough to know that these organizational leaders, astute as they may be, are not the world’s greatest engineers. The prodigies, the geniuses, the true pacesetters were all too busy with their technical activities, not likely to be running volunteer associations.

Acting with a committee, but doing most of the work himself, my father compiled a list of the engineers best qualified to make the seminar an event of global significance. His most important decision—especially considering how things turned out—was not to rely upon the elders of the profession, but rather to seek out people at the so-called cutting edge. He began by inviting the one hundred engineers, ages thirty to forty-five, who were selected competitively by the National Academy of Engineering to attend a “Frontiers of Engineering” meeting in Irvine, California, the previous year. Hailing from industry, academe, and the government laboratories, these individuals are by definition at the forefront of technological activity. Then further nominations were solicited worldwide, from national academies, professional societies, corporations, and universities.