Science for Humans
Gorr, Louis F.
Science for Humans Teghnopolis: Social Control of the Uses of Science,, by Nigel Calder. Simon and Schuster. 376 pp. $7.50. Reviewed by Louis F. Gorr The 1970 annual meeting of the American...
...The crucial distinction is that whereas society does not now effect control over science and its applications, it nevertheless has the potential to do so...
...JAMES NELSON GOODSELL is Latin American correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor...
...Technopolis is a society in which the potential misuse of technology is not only not recognized but one which is an agent of technology itself...
...Technopolis," says Calder, "is a society not only shaped but continuously modified in drastic ways by scientific and technical novelty...
...There is little time left in which to regain control of science and technology, and we must, announces Calder, begin immediately to do so...
...Techno polis is an excellent book...
...Whereas Ellul pessimistically felt that society had been permeated so greatly by technology that it could not initiate a reversal, Calder argues that technology is actually good, and that technology can thus be mobilized for the good of society...
...Democracy must permeate all technology and scientific research toward technology...
...This inability actually benefits the technocrats and helps to advance their own purposes and interests...
...Technology, the uses of science, will succeed for good ends if the principles of democracy are applied to it as well as to all other segments of society...
...The question becomes one of whether our society will be a hell, a utopia, or a brave new world...
...We live in Technopolis now, so what we must do is make it habitable...
...FEN-WICK ANDERSON, a copy editor for the San Bernardino Sun-Telegram, witnessed some of the phenomena described in "The Radical Probe" while working for his master's degree in journalism at the University of Illinois...
...A moral and political test for the new engineering will be whether it aligns itself with 'the system' of godlike social planning, or with the individual, his idiosyncracies and his psychological quirks or fancies...
...Reviewed by Louis F. Gorr The 1970 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in December devoted much of its time to the question of the advancement of science and technology...
...This is the question addressed by Nigel Calder, British physicist and science writer, in this timely and significant book, Technopolis...
...Presently, however, society appears to be unable to effect a discriminating use of scientific knowledge and the technological implementation of such knowledge...
...Galder has avoided hollow cliches and has attempted to offer solutions to the problems he points out...
...Technological advance will be evil, therefore, if its potential largesse remains available only to those who can afford it, or if it is used for its own aggrandizement...
...Calder says that "growing wealth and technological powers should multiply, not diminish, personal choices...
...It will require an increase of funds for schools, communities, cities, and the environment...
...Many of those who attended the meeting, however, devoted their time to the question of the advancement of science and technology for the good of society and the alleviation of human need...
...The job he has undertaken is a big one and requires everyone's participation...
...What is needed—and this is the central idea of the book— is a technology based on true egalitarian principles rather than on a narrow and elitist structure...
...Of the many books currently damning scientific research and technological application, Calder's is perhaps the most carefully reasoned, lucidly presented, and convincingly argued...
...LOUIS F. GORR teaches literature at the University of Maryland and has studied extensively in the history of technology...
...A human technology is one that is subjected to review and ultimate control by society, specifically a society in which the importance and dignity of the individual are maintained at all times...
...Is there, in other words, to be a resolution to the division between technocracy and democracy...
...THE REVIEWERS WILLIAM L. RIVERS, professor of communication at Stanford, wrote "The Opinion makers" and edited "The Adversaries: Politics and the Press...
...Democracy and technology can then grow and flourish together for the advancement of mankind...
...Moral and political efforts need therefore to be directed toward compensating the totalitarian tendency and to employing governments to encourage human brands of technology...
...It will require a complete stoppage of funds allotted to "limited wars," men on the moon, and supersonic jet planes...
...The cultural revolution on mainland China is a microcosm of the problem: Is there to be an emphasis on quality, achieved by scientific research and technological development, or an emphasis on equality, achieved by social control of the uses of science...
...Calder recognizes that modern science and its applications have great potential for mankind...
...While admitting that technology tends toward the totalitarian, Calder feels that we can not do without it...
...It is concerned with attempting to solve the problem rather than with constructing elaborate theories and new modes of consciousness...
...Such a massive change will require new outlooks and billions of dollars appropriated to the public sector...
...Until democracy is achieved, a beneficial technology will not be achieved...
...Science may have general laws operating independently from society, but technological application does not...
...It is based on facts rather than on rhetoric, and it is concerned with the difficult task of finding solutions to runaway technology rather than with the mere pointing out that technology is running away...
...Technology has within it the power to serve society, to be an agent of society...
...By pressing technological advances into political and social service—direct balloting through telephones and computers, mass broadcasting, computerized instructional programs in primary schools, highspeed mass transportation, clean water, unpoisoned foods-—the people will once again control technological advance...
...Calder believes that there will be, once it is realized that social forces are more powerful than technological forces, which are, after all, in the hands of men...
...It is this point that makes Calder's book a refreshing antithesis to the bleak picture offered by Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society seven years ago...
...Rejecting these three possibilities resulting from the misuse of science and its applications, Calder posits a fourth prospect...
Vol. 35 • May 1971 • No. 5
