The 1857 Rock Island Bridge Case: Lincoln, River Boats, and the Triumph of Railroads

In the summer of 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton smashed into the Rock Island Bridge, the first railroad bridge to span the Mississippi River, connecting Rock Island, Illinois, to Davenport, Iowa. The collision set the boat ablaze, damaged the bridge, and ignited one of the most consequential lawsuits of the 19th century: Hurd v. Rock Island Railroad Co. (often called the Effie Afton case).

The plaintiff, the steamboat’s owner, argued that the bridge itself was a public nuisance and an illegal obstruction of a navigable waterway. Behind him stood the powerful St. Louis river lobby—steamboat companies, shippers, and merchants—who feared that railroad bridges would choke off the Mississippi’s commercial lifeblood. If one bridge was allowed to stand, dozens more would follow, ending the golden age of river transport.

The Rock Island Railroad hired a relatively unknown 47-year-old Springfield lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, as co-counsel. Lincoln had no formal legal brief on interstate commerce or admiralty law, but he understood something deeper: the railroad was not merely a competitor to the steamboat; it would be its successor.

At trial in Chicago in September 1857, Lincoln dismantled the steamboat interests with plainspoken brilliance. He argued that the Mississippi belonged to the nation, not to any single mode of travel. Rivers had a right to be kept open, but so did the people’s right to cross them. Using maps, models, and a clever demonstration with sticks and string to show wind and current patterns, he proved the Effie Afton had struck the pier because of poor piloting, not the bridge’s design.

More importantly, Lincoln looked forward. In his closing, he declared that “one man’s rights end where another man’s begin,” and that the same public necessity that once justified steamboats now demanded railroads. Bridges were not obstructions; they were the next chapter of American progress.

The jury deadlocked, which legally upheld the bridge. Within months, railroad bridges sprouted across the Mississippi. The steamboat era began its long decline, and the transcontinental railroad network became inevitable. Lincoln’s fee was $500, modest by any standard, but the case cemented his reputation as a lawyer who could see the future. Two years later, when he ran for president, the phrase “a railroad lawyer from Illinois” was meant as a slur by river-state Democrats. History rendered a different verdict: in defending that single bridge, Lincoln helped bind a continent together.

I bring up this story because it seems emblematic of many conflicts throughout our history. Horse and buggy enterprises ultimately yielded to the automobile. Ice harvesters were eliminated with the advent of refrigerators. Typesetters were no longer needed with the advent of desktop publishing. The internet has crippled newspapers. Streaming media has wounded the theater industry.

Can we hold back the future? Should we? Across the country today there is opposition to data centers, even though every single organized group fighting to stop them uses the services that data centers provide. 

What is needed is a real collaboration between the adversaries of data centers and the advocates. Must there always be winners and losers? Is there no possibility of a universal win-win-win for all parties?

Sources:

Lincoln & the Rock Island Bridge Case

Hurd vs. Rock Island Railroad Company

Lincoln's Greatest Case (Tennessee Bar Assn.)

Abraham Lincoln and the Rock Island Bridge

Collision of Interests

A Good Day For Lists: 35 Items of Greater or Lesser Insignificance

I've been recently bitten by the David Foster Wallace bug. That is, I keep finding myself drawn to reading more of his work. Impressive is an understatement. Pow! Blam! Ouch.

Wallace liked lists. Or so I've been led to believe. Here's a list of miscellaneous observations, notes to myself of things to read or do, and ideas to ponder. There's always more to do than there is time, so a list is all we end up with in the meantime.

1. Game 1 of the World Series is tonight featuring the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians, the two teams that have gone longest without winning a World Series championship.
2. Today is World Pasta Day.
3. Who comes up with these things? World Pasta Day?
4. Why is it called the World Series when it only involves a competition North American teams?
5. Blog topic: young bull, Death in the Afternoon, good and bad bulls.
6. Last Friday's Fall Art Show at Goin' Postal was a lot of fun for a lot of people.
7. Blog Idea: Series of blog posts featuring the songs on Dylan's Oh Mercy album, beginning with "Political World."

We live in a political world
Love don't have any place
We're living in times
Where men commit crimes
And crime don't have any face

8. Trivia: Teddy R changed name of Executive Mansion to White House
9. Worth re-reading: How To Lie With Statistics
10. Don't forget to pay your bills.
11. Learn more about Will Rogers.
12. Einstein was a pacifist who became a non-pacifist because of Hitler
13. Item 13 is now removed and has been replaced with this sentence.
14. What are your goals for the next 30 days? Do you have goals or do you simply drift?
15. Submissions are now open for the Water-Stone Review through December 1. They are seeking original, unpublished creative fiction, essays, poetry.
16. In 2009 the richest man in Asia had 168 cars. The average income in India at that time was $500 a year.
17. Jay Leno had more cars than the richest man in Asia.
18. I'm curious how much money the DAI raised last Friday in their Make Your Mark fund raising event.
19. A million square miles of land was added to U.S. as a result of the Mexican War.
20. WikiLeaks: No one likes what Mr. Assange did yet everyone seems glad to have found out about what's been going on underneath Washington's skin.
21. Most dangerous jobs in America #1: Crack Dealer #2: Logging
re: crack dealers... 1 in 4 killed who serve four years on job
22. Fear of being shunned causes people to avoid honesty; takes courage to speak honestly
23. “A hard day’s work never really killed anyone, but why risk it?” ~Ronald Reagan
24. The great virtue of capitalism is that it decentralizes power and minimizes coercion. One nation’s gain does not necessitate another nation’s loss, and it doesn’t discriminate; it is open to anyone.
25. The Man by Irving Wallace made an impression on me as a teen in the Sixties, a novel about the first black U.S. president and the special challenges he would experience.
26.  "Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God." ~Corrie ten Boom
27. In Muslim culture hypocrisy is not as serious of a vice as here because it is better to uphold ideals we fail to live up to than to just give up and say “anything goes.”
28. Blog Entry idea: Great Gatsby and Lady Chatterley’s Lover both have as a theme the difference between good adultery and bad adultery.... A noble adultery and ignoble....
29. Blog Exploration: Do the strong stay strong forever or do they weaken over time (eg. Buddenbrooks)
30. Blog Exploration: What if our brain lost its "sort" function.
31. Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards." ~Kierkegaard

32. In the "good old days" New York City had 40,000 horses that generated 400 tons of manure a day, 20,000 gallons of urine and nearly 200 carcasses. (19th century stat.)
33. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt
34. What are you doing today that will make a difference tomorrow?
35. Another verse from Political World:

We live in a political world 
Wisdom is thrown in jail 
It rots in a cell 
Is misguided as hell 
Leaving no one to pick up the trail

The times are most definitely a-changin'.

"The future depends on what you do today." ~Mahatma Gandhi

Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change

The other day a friend shared with me an interesting article that argued that one of our basic notions of how the brain works is completely wrong. The article, titled The Empty Brain, begins with this somewhat controversial fundamental premise: Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer.

A lot of us have grown up with the idea of our brain as something like a computer. We assume that our memories are stored in the same way the documents and files are etched onto a hard drive. It may not be ones and zeroes, but it's something akin to that. Our synapses, I've believed, were like electrical impulses that work like software protocols. And, as many a sci-fi writer has suggested, one day scientists will be able to patch our brains to real computers for augmented powers and other currently inconceivable experiences. I myself have talked about this as if it were almost a sure thing. In fact, my short story The M Zone is built on this premise, that we'll one day be able to access our memories by means of electronic devices.

The article comes at an interesting time in my readings since I've lately been voraciously consuming books about the future, about the world of tomorrow. Most striking is how varied these authors' pictures of the future have been. In fact, they're often downright contradictory, whether it's cars, geopolitics or the environment.

In the realm of computer science, some writers believe that an A.Il singularity will occur in our lifetimes. Others suggest it will never occur at all, ever. Some see humans living in space stations on Mars in the not too distant future. Others scoff as if this notion is ridiculous.

One of the books I've been enjoying this past week has be Bob Seidensticker's Future Hype. The title alone encapsulates the author's premise. Here's the book's description at Amazon.com:

Conventional wisdom says that technology is the greatest new growth frontier, coupling infinite potential with an ever-growing number of faster, more efficient, and more reliable products and instruments. According to this view, we live in an unprecedented golden era of technological expansion. ""Future Hype argues the opposite. Author Bob Seidensticker, who has an intimate understanding of technology on professional, theoretical, and academic levels, asserts that today's technological achievements are neither fast nor progressive. He explodes seven major myths of technology, including ""Change is exponential,"" ""Product cycle time is decreasing,"" and ""Today's high-tech price reductions are unprecedented."" Examining the history of tech hype, Seidensticker skillfully uncovers the inaccuracies and misinterpretations that characterize the popular view of technology, explaining how and why this view has been created, and offering specific strategies for measuring progress against what is actually known rather than against what its boosters have promised.

Over the years I've written several times about mistaken predictions by people supposedly in the know (c.f "Who Are Your Experts"). And being aware of this tendency (to envision futures quite wide of the mark) nearly all predictioneering begins with extensive qualifying statements that indicate that the author is fully aware that the further into the future we go the more wildly askew we might be.

In fact, this is one of the big question marks for those who write about A.I. No one can really know what will happen when the machines are so smart that they knowledge becomes exponentially greater than ours. It's a moment in time beyond which we cannot see. That is, if it happens at all.

This is what makes this book mentally entertaining. It's an antidote to the unbridled optimism some writers have expressed.

Here's an Amazon.com review from a reader named Byron Justice:
As an audio specialist these last 30 years, I've seen my share of technology hype. Even though history is littered from horizon to horizon with inflated expectations, broken promises, unfounded predictions, and a few outright lies, I'm always amazed at how easily people are goaded into throwing down their credit card for the latest tech toys. Of course, this book reaffirms that which I already know--technology for its own sake may be cool, but has no other benefits. I was predisposed to enjoy this book, and I wasn't disappointed. The guy who should read this book is the same guy who replaced his Beta tape library with LaserDiscs.

A reviewer named Brian wrote:
The people of every period in history tend to think that the time in which they live is somehow special: dramatically better than, or worse than, or in some way fundamentally different from all the times that came before. (And/or the people of today are *themselves* somehow different from the people of yesterday.)

* * * *

In one section of the book the author notes that although times have changed people aren't that different and that many times in the past there have been writers lamenting the fast pace of change taking place in their time. I myself have written about how people in many eras of history have felt this sense of being overwhelmed by the fast pace of change. An article in The Atlantic from the 19th century and another by Kafka back in the Twenties both expressed the emotional exhaustion caused by the breathtaking changes taking place and the feeling of being rushed, pushed, shoved by life. On the other hand, there are many who have become weary by how long the changes are taking place in our time. The author of Future Hype claims the rate of change is actually slowing down.

Seidensticker devotes the middle portion of his book to presenting specific myths and misconceptions such as (1) the idea that change is exponential, or that (3) important new high-tech inventions are arriving ever faster. He even calls Moore's Law a myth, or rather, the notion that it really matters. And even the changes wrought by the internet are overrated.

Ultimately the book serves as a nice antidote to the roiling media hype about all the "inevitable" changes that are moving toward us like a steamroller. You can find it here at Amazon.com.

* * * *
This book brings to mind an article I once read in Writer's Digest about making money by writing articles that are contrarian. This is certainly that kind of book. Nearly every argument has two side, and it is often quite easy to shoot holes in what are often popular misconceptions. (By mentioning "shooting holes" I'm not aiming to veer this blog post toward the topic of guns.)

Anyways, I'm fairly confident that this author enjoyed assembling his book. I also believe it can serve a useful function to keep things in perspective.

* * * *
If you like short stories and enjoyed The M Zone, you can find my Unremembered Histories at Amazon.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Just keep breathing.

50 Years From Today: Two Short Story Ideas from the Brave New World

I'm reading another book about the future in which 60 thinkers share their vision of what life will be like a half century from now. Edited by Mike Wallace in 2008, it's titled The Way We Will Be 50 Years from Today. Such books appear to be legion, as I also have another in my reading stack that collects a batch of thinkers' expectations for 100 years into the future.

The more one reads the more variety one perceives in the predictions of our brightest minds. The chapters are short, more snapshots than full-blown panoramic views. The first by Vint Cerf, VP of Google, does indeed cover a vast amount of terrain in his allotted three pages, with commentary on the effects of nanotechnology, interplanetary space travel and real-time language translation so that all can communicate with all, a reversal of the effects of the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel.

I find the range of scenarios stimulating, many of which I'd never even considered. Cognitive enhancement supplements will become more powerful. The bionic man is in our future. The future of food is addressed. The likelihood of space stations on the moon and Mars are pondered. At least two writers see a future in which nation/states have become a thing of the past. The end of privacy may be part of our future. What will happen to the human soul? The end of infectious diseases may be coming in this century, and heart disease. How advanced will Virtual Reality become? Will the virtual Grand Canyon be more spectacular than the real one? Will the travel industry suffer because people can experience the seven wonders of the world from the comfort of their living rooms?

The contributors to this book include important figures in science, politics, technology and ethics. Some sound alarms, others promise hope. The overall effect is an interesting read.

We live in an era of remarkable scientific advances. These visionary writers extrapolate outcomes from today's news but the scenes they anticipate tomorrow depend on which stories they read today.

As I was working in the yard yesterday it seemed that books like this could be a resource for sci-fi writers. That thought came about when a story idea popped into my head after reading one of the chapters. A little later in the day, after reading another chapter, I had a second story idea. Here are their beginnings, setups so to speak.

* * *

EXCEPT FOR THE WINGS

It's the maternity ward here at Essentia Health, 2058. "Push," says one of the nurses as the mother-to-be grunts, groans, husband alongside stroking her back with a wet washcloth to cool her down, anxious and excited, somewhat in awe at what is unfolding.

The young couple qualified for the new program of genome selection in which babies can be "crafted" with modified gene exchanges. If you dislike your own features, you can replace them with better qualities. The process was initially made available to eliminate diseases that passed genetically from one generation to another. Then people began to clamor for other applications. "What if Billy gets his father's nose. Dirk's never liked that nose." This evolved into a whole palette of selection opportunities. The genetic options became increasingly vast. Facial features of famous celebrities, the brains of brilliant mathematicians and other options eventually became available, at first to those who could afford it, and then to everyone because it seemed wrong to permit only "the haves" to have access to such advantages.

"Push," instructed the nurse.

And this time as she pushed a wave of excitement passed through the room. "He's crowning," another nurse exclaimed.

"Deep breath. Now push!" And there it was, that mossy little head pushing through, a little blue face gasping for breath then screaming as he turned pink and was ushered into the world, flailing his little arms and then kicking vigorously as all in the room could see, their mouths agape, stunned into silence.

The father could see it, the mother sensing it. Something was wrong. Confirmed when the doctor involuntarily exclaimed, "Uh oh," and a nurse stammered, "W-w-where did those wings come from?"

* * *

THE LAST HEART ATTACK

"Grandpa Gwynn, what was it like when you were a boy?"

The old man smiled. His grandchildren were grown now. They'd finally begun to take an interest in his life, in his stories. He long noticed how much the young tyke had grown, with his mother's eyes and a keen wit.

They were sitting in the kitchen, Grandpa Gwynn showing the young man photos on a tablet. After a while Toby asked, "Is it true that you used to be an outlaw?"

The old man wore a quizzical expression as he asked, "Who told you that?"

"Mom says everyone knows, but we're not supposed to talk about it. Is it true?"

As it turns out, the old man had indeed been an outlaw. Back in the Thirties. The 2030s. "It was the beginning of prohibition. A constitutional amendment was passed outlawing preservatives and junk food. Around the same time I lost my job due to the increasingly advanced robotics industry. My cousin informed me that there was good money to be made in the black market junk food economy."

"What's junk food?"

Grandpa Gwynn decided that while he has the young man's attention he might as well stretch it out, explaining the history of agriculture, the advances made in farming and the inventive methods of making food, how they could could be preserved forever by jamming them with chemicals. Unfortunately, these new foods made children fat and helped them develop the first vestiges of coronary heart disease.

Toby yawned, his mind wandering. "Did you have to do time? Was this back before prisons were abolished?"

"No, prisons were closed in the Twenties. My arrest took place in 2035. Prisons were expensive and inhumane. House arrest has proven much more effective. You never noticed the pellet drones that hovered around here when you were little, eh?"

Toby shook his head, which made his grandfather laugh.

"As I was saying, science has come a long way, and when the government understood the cost to society of allowing junk food to remain available to the masses..."

"We learned about all that in school," Toby said. "But why did people eat it when they knew it was bad for them?"

"Addiction. The manufacturers inserted chemicals that stimulated our taste buds so as to set off an ecstatic neurological reaction."

"You mean, like zippetol?"

"Something like that."

The youth stared at him. "But zippetol is legal."

Grandpa Gwynn rolled his eyes. "Of course, but today we have full disclosure. Everything is transparent now. Our data-nodes measure everything. Everyone's healthy and happy, and machines do all the work. Back then no one knew what was really going on. Cereal was three-quarters cardboard, which was legal only because of the lawyers. It was strange back then. They put food in our fuel and put tree pulp in our food. Today it's a whole new ball game."

"What's a ball game?"

Grandpa Gwynn rolled his eyes again. "OK, so now that my shady past is transparent, too, I still have one secret left." He stood and led Toby down the hall to the bedroom. In the back of the walk-in closet he pulled aside a curtain to reveal a vault. As he placed his fingertip on the scanner he half-turned his head to wink at Toby who stood there cradling his chin on his palm.

"Did you read about the man who died last week of a heart attack?" old man Gwynn said.

"I heard Mom talking about it."

"According to the news that man will be the last human to ever die that way. Yes, cardiovascular disease was a serious problem at one time," the old buzzard said as he pulled the vault door back, "until they discovered the connection between children, obesity and junk food."

"You mean..."

"Yep, they solved heart disease by eliminating the cause before it started. Didn't they teach you that in school?"

Author Inserts Himself Here: Grandpa Gwynn is about to show his grandson an unopened bag of Fritos. Should he say, "I'll bet you can't eat just one."?

>>> It's only a story. If you want to finish it... take it away.

* * *
THE FUTURE

Think about all the jobs we have today that our grandparents could never have imagined. Imagine a 12 year old boy in 1964 being asked by his dad, "So, Eddie, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

"I want to be a webmaster. And on the side I'll be a blogger. And Ronnie is planning a career in I.T."

I suspect that many of tomorrow's jobs are so far from our experience we couldn't make them up if we tried. Career success will be directly proportional to our commitment to lifelong learning. My guess is that we're going to just feel our way through and do our best to stay current with whatever the future throws our way.

What do you think the future will look like in 50 years? Would you like to submit a guest post of 500-800 words?  ennyman(at)northlc(dot)com

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Open your eyes.

Why Is Virtual Reality Something We Should Be Worried About?

This past week I picked up a book of essays that have been bound together under the title, What Should We Be Worried About?

The book is filed in a section of the library dealing with futurism, artificial intelligence and similar themes. Futurism is a theme that has interested me on and off as far back a Toffler's 1970 classic Future Shock. In fact, that period of history was awhirl with books on Armageddon and the end of the world. Population Bomb, The Late Great Planet Earth and the findings of the Club of Rome were just a few of the high profile titles.

This book is a bi-product of The Reality Club that John Brockman formed in 1981, which evolved into a new face called The Edge. It's a place where intellectuals and scholars can explore ideas. In 2014 the idea they explored was this one: What should we be worried about?

With nearly 500 pages of short essays, many by people familiar to the broader public, there's plenty of material to chew on. It would be a great book for late night college bull sessions (if kids still do that sort of thing) or for philosophy club discussions. What's this world coming to? Inquiring minds want to know.

Earlier today I pulled a page from the January/February edition of Popular Science because it contained an article and infographic titled Virtual Reality Gets Real. The graphic provides a timeline of key VR milestones from the past (1992's Sensorama Simulator) to the future where people could develop bonds with virtual humans. In 2002 VR was already being used to help people with PTSD.

This book from the Edge has an essay by Milhaly Csikszentnihalyi that begins with his pointing out that it doesn't take much imagination to think of many things to be worried about tomorrow. Ultimately he selected The Triumph of the Virtual as his theme. His big fear here is that children will grow up to be adults without the ability to differentiate between reality and imagination. What will be the effect on democractic societies?

Of course the case can be made that television has been a medium for distracting rather than informing the masses, for manipulating rather than mobilizing us for good. The dark side of VR is more potent than just an occasion for pornographic sideshow circus fairylands.

Another essay in this book discusses the darker aspects of technology as it related to the formation of children's minds and perceptions.

On the positive side of the ledger I've read that VR has been used as a distraction for burn victims to help them through pain and personal horrors. Like most emerging technologies there will be positive, interesting and unforeseen negative aspects. (DeBono's PIN Method.)

VR has been getting extensive publicity this year since the CES Show in Vegas and especially in light of the purchase of Oculus VR by Facebook. One result was that I headed over to Best Buy recently to see what those VR Goggles looked like. What I saw looked undramatic at best, especially compared to the GoPro videos that produce such visually stunning images, especially when mixed with imagination. (I love the GoPro vid taken from the shoulder of a bald eagle in flight.

My guess is that there's a fairly massive hunger being created for the possibilities of VR. What will happen in this field will be anyone's guess, and we're sure to find out. That is, unless some of the other fears outlined in this book come to pass. What is it that keeps you up at night?

Will Driving Be Illegal Some Day?

Here's the opening paragraph of an article on TechCrunch that caught my eye this past month:

Driving a car will be illegal by 2030. Our economy will be severely impacted as millions of truck drivers, cabbies and delivery people are put out of work. In this era of endless innovation, man’s century-long relationship with the automobile is about to be permanently disrupted.

Author Jay Samit pulls no punches with this one. It opens with a short declarative sentence. This will happen, and it will happen much sooner than you think. Samit then affirms a few of the consequences of this advance, including the end of our trucking industry as we know it.

The notion is so immense I have had a hard time knowing how to put my mind around it. We're talking fifteen years. And I just don't see it.

Here are a few problems that I see. First, these new vehicles will have to cost a lot of money. The haves may have them but there are a lot of cars owned by the have nots who have made do with their limited resources by sheer ingenuity. In fifteen years will they no longer be permitted to drive their beaters? I do not see how that could happen.

Will these cars be propelled by bullet-proof technology? I mean, when you need tech support who do you call? Will they answer the phone or will you have to wait "for the next available technician"?

Will these vehicles all be run by means of the cloud? Is it a satellite system like my internet here in our rural home? It won't be by cable, that's for sure/ So what happens when a satellite goes down? Our internet was down for three days in a row last month when our provider's satellite went kaput.

Jay Samit talks about how many Chinese and Indians were killed in traffic accidents last year. He's obviously concerned about all the world's billions and the dangers of driving, but if poor people in this country are prevented from owning cars because of the price tags, imagine the poor in Third World nations?  And how many of those deaths in China and India are due to more laxity regarding driver training? Do other countries have a driver training requirement before getting a license? I know that in Mexico they did not when we lived there half a lifetime ago.

The author notes that cars driving themselves never drive drunk or distracted or while overtired.

In the United States, one out of four accidents is caused by texting and driving (which is six times more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk). The more technology we put in human hands, the worse our driving habits become. And unlike robots, humans need rest. According to the National Sleep Foundation, 69 percent of adult drivers report driving while drowsy at least once a month.

This and other arguments seem to push the idea forward some, but I'm curious about the legal matter of who is responsible when your car hits a pedestrian when the brakes go out on a Duluth hillside? Is the car's owner going to be liable or will the automakers be on trial? To say this is never going to happen seems pretty far fetched.

I'm curious how one will hail a cab in this brave new world. "Taxi! Taxi!" Will the car see me waving my arm? Hear me shouting on a busy New York street?

The argument for going this route seems to be for the purpose of safety. But isn't it all a matter of trade-offs? All life has risks. Maybe one day it will be illegal to get out of bed in the morning. I mean, what if you trip and fall and hit your head?

So, Jay Sarif says by 2030 it may be illegal to drive. But he says more... that it will not only be illegal, but should be illegal. What do you think?