Tech Q&A

Eric Roston

I came to this conclusion toward the end of 2003, while covering climate and energy for Time magazine. Carbon had become a media buzzword, but remained an empty signifier. Eager to fill this gap, I left the magazine in early 2006 to write The Carbon Age, which was published this month. The Carbon Age posits that the fastest way to learn the most about ourselves and our world is through the carbon atom. A mainstream nonfiction book, it was designed to intrigue and entertain readers from high-school to retirement. The book embeds industrialization and its climate crisis into evolutionary and geological history — by design an after-the-fact "prequel" to An Inconvenient Truth.

The Carbon Age implicitly sets its sights on U.S. scientific illiteracy. In February 2001, the Hart-Rudman Commission laid out national security threats to the United States over the next 25 years. Seven months later, the commission's first warning, a major terrorist attack, looked eerily prescient. Less frequently remembered is the second threatening trend: Decline in U.S. science and education. Tom Friedman picked up on this thread in The World Is Flat, sorting through the long-term effects of scientific decline on a national economy. The National Academy of Sciences gave the topic a rigorous treatment in its 2005 report, Rising above the Gathering Storm. These three works raise, but do not answer, the question: What actual science is missing from public discourse that might make a dent in scientific illiteracy? The Carbon Age is a rigorous attempt to complement these works, too, by unifying at least a dozen scientific disciplines into one singular story.

Writing a nonfiction book, particularly one that synthesizes an enormous amount of research, is something like a puzzle; you have to discover the pieces, and then discover how they fit together.

Describe your favorite childhood teacher and how that teacher influenced you.
My junior year at Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut, I took "The Humanities" with Sally Kennedy, Jerry Trecker, and David Lyons. It was a transformative class, and it smashed open the world of ideas and books for my fellow students and me. I also learned a lot about writing in that class — a lot of simple rules that I still try to keep in my head now.

Have you ever taken the Geek Test? How did you rate?
I have taken it now: "27.81065% — Total Geek."

Chess or video games?
Chess, but I wish I were better at it, like Kubrick, Nabokov, or my brother, Joel.

What do you do for relaxation?
Many people have asked me this question over the years, with no satisfying result. Then I discovered scuba diving. But now I have a wife and daughter, and we have just the loveliest time.

What's your favorite blog right now?
This is a very difficult question because the Venn diagram of "Friends" and "Favorite bloggers" shows enormous overlap. Saying one name might alienate all the others! But I will throw into the ring Tom Levenson's Inverse Square blog. Tom's writing style and sensibility found in the blog, his books, and elsewhere resembles what I strive for in my own work.

Douglas Adams or Scott Adams?
Douglas Adams. I had to think for a moment about who Scott Adams is. In the Hitchhiker series, the Total Perspective Vortex is a torture machine that blows its victim's mind by revealing his or her exact relevance in the scheme of the Universe. I loved (almost) every second of writing The Carbon Age, but it was also sort of a Total Perspective Vortex.

What was your favorite book as a kid?
When I was a kid, the answer was indisputably Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar. It still holds up. It's filled with humor that manages to be warm, absurd, sophisticated — and yet perfect for children. The competition for favorite childhood book is actually tough, too. When my grandmother retired from teaching first grade after 40 years, she opened a children's bookstore in Glencoe, Illinois. So I spent my summers in the store (The Children's Reading Corner) trying to figure out what my favorite book was.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I read Catch-22 for the first time. That book taught me a lot about writing, comedy, and the world in general.

What new technology do you think may actually have the potential for making people's lives better?
I would keep an eye on the young field of synthetic biology, which I write about in chapter 11 of The Carbon Age. It may hold answers to many of our biggest issues, from personal health to the global energy infrastructure.

If you could be reincarnated for one day to live the life of any scientist or writer, who would you choose and why?
I will restrict myself to five answers:

What are some of the things you'd like your computer to do that it cannot now do?
Cook and clean.

By the end of your life, where do you think humankind will be in terms of new science and technological advancement?
There will be a concentrated acceleration of science and technology in the world's great thought centers — while much of the world copes (or doesn't) with the droughts, agricultural crises, storms, and consequential geopolitical decline made real by global warming.

Which country do you believe currently leads the world in science and technology? In 10 years?
The U.S. is the world leader and should be for the foreseeable future.

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Eric Roston covered technology, international trade, and energy issues at Time magazine for six years and contributed to Time's special issue about September 11, which won a National Magazine Award in 2002. The Carbon Age is his first book. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.

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