Profit in diversity

It is next to impossible to assess the true overall value of a species," Norman Myers writes in his review this week of a clutch of books on biodiversity (pages 22-28). We cannot tell what may come in handy later - even within the narrow focus of potential usefulness to humans - so we had best keep as much variety as possible.

It is also, as contributors to this week's Multimedia section make clear, next to impossible to assess the future uses of information technology - which bits will be used for what purposes; which products will turn out to be "nothing more than curios", as Peter Fowler puts it in his article describing the evolution of Liverpool John Moores's award-winning programme Cytofocus; which professionals will prove most adept at using new tools as they become available.

Chaos theory - non-linear mathematics to the purist - with its emphasis on contingency, is transforming the way we think about these things. Perceptions arising from the new mathematics have, for example, finally demolished the linear model of industrial innovation. They are transforming methods of risk analysis, underpinning neural network computing, and providing new insights into social policy and financial and other markets. Its wisdom is profoundly subversive of central planning and strategies designed to pick winners.

Instead, it reinforces James Fawcett's plea on page 12 for education-orientated research and his warning against allowing research to be hived off to specialist institutions dedicated to solving problems defined by governments or companies. It also contradicts those who claim that we are now producing too many graduates for the jobs available, that oversupply is reducing graduate earning potential, or that expansion in higher education has gone too far.

We cannot know what problems will need to be solved; what solutions will pop up or what use can be made of them; what jobs there will be in the future. Existing, familiar jobs are certainly disappearing, for middle managers as for coal miners. But new ones are appearing, and not just for derivatives traders. New jobs (and new companies) will be created by graduates who cannot find the work they want within existing organisations. This is what is meant by saying that our economy and our living standards will depend on an increasingly well-educated workforce, on people who can drive forward new developments into new ways of living and working.

Since we cannot tell what contingencies will arise, our best hope must lie in fostering and preserving diversity. Just as we are now discovering therapeutic properties in plants like the rosy periwinkle which evolved its medicinal characteristics for its own good, not ours, so we need to encourage as much wide-ranging, speculative research, study, learning, training as we can find the money and time for. We need to make sure we do not, as Alistair MacFarlane warns, make it increasingly difficult "for new workers to break into the charmed circles of established workers". We need to give value to other activities - applied research, consultancy, business formation. We need an open, generous approach, far away from the zero sum game of narrow competition for a restricted range of pre-chosen goals.

Then there will be at least a chance that whatever contingencies arise, somewhere, someone will be pre-adapted to exploit them. The analogy with the diversity of the natural world is instructive. Perhaps growing concern with protecting biodiversity will also betoken greater understanding of the importance of diversity in human affairs and even diversity in further and higher education.