4 GO M M E N T

Science and Technology in Crisis

Robin Clarke

SCIENCE is being attacked because it has a habit of spawning technologies that turn out after the event to be at least partially undesirable. In its purer forms it is being attacked for its irrelevance to the potential catastrophes that await mankind. And its practitioners are being attacked because for the most part they have failed to respond to either of these serious allegations with suitable urgency. Generally, they have argued that technology is technology, and its results may or may not be good for the human race but that is no concern of science, which is morally neutral and therefore immune from such criticism.

Such a defence, of course, cuts little ice with those who are concerned with the long-term implications of the activity known as science-and-technology. Jointly, they are the predominant cultural imperative of our time and it is right they should be considered as an inseparable pair. But they can be split into two constituents, just as water can be split into oxygen and hydrogen. However, just as one of these gases has on its own no similarity with water, so science by itself, and technology by itself, have no very clear relationship with science-and-technology. I t is with good reason that they are bracketed together, because it is the total effect of this total approach on human survival, about which we are concerned.

Today, the number of scientific dissidents is fast increasing in a way which is becoming sociologically very intriguing. The attackers include representatives of both the very young and the very old. Politically, their members come from both the Left and the Right. Some are scientifically educated, some are not. Many are concerned with the impact of S and T on the advanced world; many others are worried about the fate of the developing nations if they follow the 'technological imperative'. And the most penetrating attacks come from without, from academics such as Theodore Roszak whose formal training has been in the humanities.

What this apparently disparate group of people has in common is a concern for the future. The debate which they foster is therefore of central importance to those connected with futures research. Indeed, the kind of mistrust of science and technology which has been generated over the past five years is spreading rapidly to the more speciaJised field of futures research, and particu- larly to that branch of it known as technological forecasting.

The technological forecaster, like the pure scientist, has an easy shelter to which he Call retreat. He can argue that his business is with truth, with the elucidation of those things that may become technologically possible in the

Robin Clarke is a member of Futures' editorial advisory board.

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next ten or 5 ° years. He can claim that he is not concerned with whether or not these technological avenues are in fact explored but that at least the knowledge of their theoretical existence is beneficial. Hence, he can argue that the nature of the technology he studies is immaterial.

I would suggest that technological forecasters now begin to dismember this particular shelter before others from outside do it for them--as they surely will. They should begin to recognise openly that their work is not value-free-- however much they may claim to be dispassionate about their work, the fact of the mat ter is that they are intensely involved with it. Those who probe the future of space technology are generally those who wish to see more spent on space research; those whose concern is with military technologies of the future are often those with an uncritical acceptance of the efficiency of nuclear deterrence; those who are concerned with new products usually have an unshakeable belief that free enterprise industry must in the end turn out to be good for everyone. I t is perhaps time that forecasters found a way of making the assumptions which are implicit in their work as explicit as are their forecasts. To do this in their published papers would be an important 'first' in scientific thought, and it would be appropriate for the step to be made by those whose professional concern is with the future. And if this required forecasters to broaden their knowledge of sociology--as a study of their own value systems inevitably would--this too would be no bad thing.

Forecasters must also turn their attention to the relationship between what they study and what actually happens. The unwritten assumption of forecasting is still that theoretical exposure of new ideas does not lead to their development; those who dwell on the possibilities of deep sea mining, for instance, are not actually hastening the development of deep sea mining. This assumption is almost certainly untrue. I t may well be that forecasters are the leaders of technological development and that they play a central and unconscious role in determining our technological priorities. I f this be true, it is up to the forecasters to expose the process to public view and to debate among themselves whether there are some forecasts that might be better left unforecasted. And before someone starts shouting about the suppression of truth and a return to the Dark Ages, let us recall that a forecaster who did a thorough job on the whole field of military technology might well herald a very dark age indeed.

Many of these thoughts have occurred to me since reading Sdence and Technology in the World of the Future, edited by Arthur B. Bronwell (Wiley- Interscience). One of the implicit assumptions of this book is made explicit by the cover design which shows that view of the planet Earth in which only the American continent is actually visible. This is not the world of the future as I know it. Much the same story is evident within the book, particularly in Bronwell's concluding chapter on peace, war and technology. This contribution to futures research turns out in fact to be a piece of political polemic about the glories of capitalist government and the impending death of all socialist regimes. Now I have nothing against political polemic but it does not seem to me to be a good idea to get it confused with futures research. Or, to put it another way, perhaps we should recognise that political polemic and futures research are much more closely intermeshed than we have in the past been prepared to admit.

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