The unseen doers transcend the chatterers

A serendipitous sequence of recollections which build to an observation.

I saw a brief mention of Malcolm McLean, the North Carolinian who revolutionized transportation, shipping, and global trade beginning in the 1960s with his introduction of containerized shipping. 

Malcolm Purcell McLean (November 14, 1913 – May 25, 2001) was an American businessman who invented the modern intermodal shipping container, which revolutionized transport and international trade in the second half of the twentieth century. Containerization led to a significant reduction in the cost of freight transportation by eliminating the need for repeated handling of individual pieces of cargo, and also improved reliability, reduced cargo theft, and cut inventory costs by shortening transit time. Containerization is a major driver of globalization.

McLean personally, corporately, and the industry collectively spent billions over four decades radically upgrading the physical nature and attributes of the logistics industry.  In addition to reduced breakage, reduced pilferage, more efficient use of scarce cargo hold space, dramatically reduced dockage labor costs and time, containerization effectively cut shipping costs by 95%.  Without the efficiency, security, effectiveness, and cheapness of containerization, global trade today would be a shadow of itself.  The world would be dramatically poorer.

Seeing the piece about McLean made me think of Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution.  

Norman Ernest Borlaug (/ˈbɔːrlɔːɡ/; March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009) was an American agronomist who led initiatives worldwide that contributed to the extensive increases in agricultural production termed the Green Revolution. Borlaug was awarded multiple honors for his work, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Borlaug received his B.S. in forestry in 1937 and PhD in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position with CIMMYT in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties. During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations.

Borlaug was often called "the father of the Green Revolution", and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.

From the 1960's onwards, Borlaug's research and ideas not only substantially reduced the number of people dying from starvation they also materially increased agricultural productivity.  

Borlaug helped innovate food production and McLean made it cheap to ship everything, including food, wherever things are needed and wanted.  

And hardly anyone knows their names.  They had a huge impact on the world's built environment, on the world's commerce and prosperity, and they had a huge impact on the world's well-being in terms of both morbidity and mortality.  And all behind the scenes.

And today I am seeing articles such as Microsoft Infrastructure - AI & CPU Custom Silicon Maia 100, Athena, Cobalt 100 by Dylan Patel and Myron Xie and Links for 2023-11-20 by Alexander Kruel.  They are reporting on a series on planned investments by Microsoft over the next few years.  From Patel and Xie:

Microsoft is currently conducting the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen. While that may seem like hyperbole, look at the annual spend of mega projects such as nationwide rail networks, dams, or even space programs such as the Apollo moon landings, and they all pale in comparison to the >$50 billion annual spend on datacenters Microsoft has penned in for 2024 and beyond. This infrastructure buildout is aimed squarely at accelerating the path to AGI and bringing the intelligence of generative AI to every facet of life from productivity applications to leisure.

Whether AGI pans out and with it Microsoft's gamble, we have much the same going on as with Borlaug and McLean.  A multi-decadal transformation of infrastructure and production to the betterment of everyone but largely unseen, unnoted and unremarked.  

It feels like 95% of our daily discourse is sheer propaganda and noise, or ill-considered opinions about dubious or irrelevant things and only 5% has to do with anything important.  In contrast, the things that have made 95% of the difference in modern lives are almost undiscussed at all.