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From: riddle@woton.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle )
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: The Impact of Inventions
Message-ID: <2074@hplabsc.HP.COM>
Date: Sun, 21-Jun-87 19:32:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.2074
Posted: Sun Jun 21 19:32:05 1987
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Approved: taylor@hplabs

A most interesting posting.

My two cents' worth: although I agree with Michael Harrington that the world
hasn't got much longer to survive if we continue to let the technocrats make
all the decisions (and especially if we let them use the short-term profit
motive as their one and only golden rule), I have even less faith in the
government's ability to coerce them to behave responsibly through required
"social impact statements."  "Garbage In, Garbage Out" is a principle that
applies as much to policy planning as it does to computing, and you get a
bunch of corporate consultants together to try to predict anything as elusive
as the outcome of new technology and you'll soon be even further "out in the
ozone" than Michael Harrington.  Just ask anyone who has had any exposure to
the Environmental Impact Statement process: the definition of an EIS is a
2000 page lie, with appendices -- its sole useful function is to provide a
tool for environmentalists to slow the advance of destructive projects by
bogging their proponents down in paper wars. 

Instead, it's time we realized that we *all* share responsibility for the
consequences of new (and old) technology: as consumers, voters, and workers,
among other things.  We all need to remember that just because technology is
doable doesn't mean it should be done, and that just because a product is on
the market doesn't mean it should be bought.  The hamburger that you buy at
Burger King is contributing to the destruction of tropical rain forests and
the air conditioner you use in the summer is eating up the ozone layer; most
of us don't know that sort of thing, but we should, and we can't afford to
depend on corporate or governmental "experts" to tell us. 

But, you'll say, modern industrial society is too complicated for us to
understand it well enough to behave responsibly.  Correct -- and that's one
of the reasons why industrialism may need to be on its way out if we're to
survive. 

Prentiss Riddle