It’s summer in the South and the insects are out. When a friend had to back off from a putt the other day because a tiny bug flew into his face, I recounted the story of the No-See-Um attack of 2018. It was late May and I was coaching a First Tee class of 10 and 11-year-olds at a coastal golf course. Suddenly, the kids dropped their putters and started waving their arms. Then I did too. We were swarmed with a cloud of no-see-ums, or what entomologists call ceratopogonidae, a family of flies commonly known as biting midges that are around 1 to 3 millimeters in length, ergo, you can’t see the damn things. I immediately huddled the kids in the pro shop for protection, where we waited until their parents showed up.
Seven years later, it looks like the Chinese have weaponized no-see-ums.
China this week unveiled a mosquito-sized drone designed for covert military operations and espionage. The miniature device, featuring two leaf-like wings, a black vertical body, and three hair-thin legs, was engineered to mimic the blood-sucking insect by scientists at the National University of Defense Technology in China’s Hunan province.
The nano-winged drone is equipped with ultra -miniature cameras and microphones to capture images, sounds, and electronic signals — with its tiny size rendering it nearly invisible to the naked eye and capable of flying past conventional radar system undetected.
The espionage value of these microdrones is obvious. But when I read the news, I also envisioned swarms of microdrones attacking soldiers in the field as they dropped their weapons, waved their arms and looked for shelter, just like my First Tee kids.
It also brought to mind the duality of technology today. Even as technology gets very, very big — like 2 gigawatt data clusters and 30,000 pound bunker-busting bombs — it’s simultanously getting very, very small.
For example, also making the news this week are stunning photographs from the very large Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile that show, in amazing detail, star clusters 55 million light years away. At the same time, sitting on my couch, I can use an app called Starviewer that condenses all of that cosmic imagery and sends it to my phone. With Starviewer, “You can have 6 billion pixels in your pocket,” said Dr. Steven Ritz of UC Santa Cruz. “It’s really cool.”
Even as our president has big expansionist dreams of swallowing up Canada and Greenland, our culture is trending smaller. Everything’s going micro. Celebrities are microdosing mushrooms and microfasting. With AI (a very big technology), businesses are learning how to micromanage employees and measure productivity in decimal points. Reddit and other platforms are enabling the creation of microcommunities bonding over niche passions like pastel macrame or vegan fashion.
Zohran Mamdani, the apparent winner of the New York mayoral primary, is about to unleash a microeconomic plan (free buses and childcare, subsidized grocery stores) that bucks macreconomic norms. College students can’t get through a class without being triggered by microaggressions. And workers are getting assaulted with microinequities every day (“You're being a bit OCD about this assignment.")
Technology gets even smaller than micro; it’s going nano. Micro refers to a millionth of a meter, but nano measures a billionth of a meter. Thus, we have nanoparticles for drug delivery, nanorobots to repair damaged cells, and quantum dots that make our TV screens so vivid.
There are plenty of examples of microthinking — not seeing the forest for the trees, or worse. For example, our Secretary of Defense discussing classified battle plans on a publicly accessible texting app. Tim Walz saying that he and Kamala would have handily won the election if only they had more Town Halls. Or Google’s last-gen AI model telling users that glue will prevent cheese from sliding off a pizza.
How small can we get? Let’s see, the U.S. has a national debt of over $32 trillion and yet we’re about to pass a budget bill that will pile on another $3 trillion or so. The government is canceling subscriptions to “woke” publications like Scientific American and Nature. And Jasmin Crockett, a Democratic congresswoman from Texas, says about the U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, “I’m the one that’s supposed to make the f—ing decision.” All excellent examples of focusing on trees instead of the forest.
Thank God for the rich, at least they’re still going big. Jeff and Lauren’s matrimonial blowout in Venice will cost $20 million (about $50,000 per guest). When Lauren wants to have a girl’s night out, she flies her friends to space in one of her husband’s rockets. Laurene Powell Jobs just bought her fourth Malibu estate for $94 million. Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun bought a work of art titled “Comedian” that was a banana duct-taped to a canvas for $6 million, then ate the banana.
But we can’t all be rich. So it’s good to see small trending. It took long enough. It was way back in 1977 when Steve Martin kicked off the trend with his record, “Let’s Get Small.” What a visionary. Fifty years later, small is cool.
This pretty well sums it up! One thing not going small, Russ, is your unending stash of pithy observations :). Keep it going.
Nice putt by J.J. to win the US Open recently. The late Charlie Karp gave me an F in Golf at DVC. Of course, it was '67 and I was often stoned on cannabis. possibly hallucinating small flying objects.