Origins of Technology 

                                               Stumbling onto Answers

        In about 2003, I had the honor of working with my former freshman chemistry teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, the Nobel prize winner, Dr. Alan MacDiarmid  

       Way back in 1960, when I first started at Penn, his lectures were full of interesting demonstrations as well as insights into his research then into the element silicon. I remember all that, and I remember his ideas about mankind's progress on this earth following closely along the discovery of workable materials for his use at different times in his development. Silicon, you might recall, is currently highly useful in our society as a primary material for electronic circuits, probably being used by yourself right now to read this! Interesting eh? His Nobel prize though, was for the development of conductive polymers (plastics), which we were working on at the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter at the Univ. of Penna. around 2003. The School District of Philadelphia had invited science teachers to participate in a teacher outreach program and I was lucky enough that Dr. MacDiarmid introduced me to a large meeting in the auditorium as his former freshman chemistry student. I really felt great about that. We worked on a paste that would help damaged nerve tissue regrow. It simply needs to conduct electricity see, otherwise it simply wouldn't regrow. The hope was that Dr. MacDiarmid's material would help it along. He passed on in 2007, i believe, may his memory be a blessing, and I read earlier that there had been some measure of success in nervous tissue repair. Most research takes a long time. 

     It's the research about research though that we're doing here, and the relationship of the need for answers as well as methods to success in finding valid solutions to problems. Do we just stumble onto answers? The "eureka" method. "I dreamt i was fighting a huge covid-19 motecule and my tears killed it - the next day - I thought - Yes! - salt water - tried it and it worked - wiped out the entire jar of these viruses! - or - do we employ more logical methods - like - things that worked in the past: "My mom always gave us chicken soup and told us to dress warm" - which does work often you know!  What's important here is that the entire world has received over 300 million shots of 99% proven workable vaccine so far - starting from scratch less than a year ago - and already touching the "R" (reproductive) number of less than one - means it's all over for the covid-19 virus. This is an amazing result. It's like "we'll put a man on the moon by the end of the decade" - and we did; We sure did...RIP JFK. Mankind certainly has enemies - all kinds...