COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	.require "let.pub[let,jmc]" source
C00013 ENDMK
C⊗;
.require "let.pub[let,jmc]" source
∂AIL Mr. William Buckley↓National Review↓150 East 35th St.↓New York, N.Y. 10016∞

Dear Mr. Buckley:

	I would like to write a column on technology and science for
%2National Review%1 with emphasis on technological issues related
to public affairs and the ways in which ideology
has recently been distorting how technological
facts are considered.  Since %2National Review%1 has done well for
twenty years without such a column, I should explain why you need
one now.  The basic reason is that false technological arguments are
being given for liberal policies, and many scientists and engineers
are being hypnotized by liberal ideology into distorting science.
%2National Review%1's arguments against liberal policies are incomplete
without also exposing technological myths - many of which conservatives
have come to accept, because they don't see how ideology has biased science.

	Until the late 1960s, the technology used to generate electricity,
to mine coal or transport people from place to place was mainly
considered  the business of the companies that provided these goods
and services.  Decisions about what technology to use were made
by corporations on the basis of present costs, likely future costs,
and attractiveness of the results to present and potential customers.
Since the 18th century, when the British government offered a prize
for a method of determining longitude at sea, governments have
helped develop technology, but government decisions mainly concerned
how much help to give what industry and what form the help should take.

	Now technology has become a plaything of ideology.  For example,
it is part of most liberal ideology that trains are good and airplanes
are bad, that solar energy is good and nuclear energy is bad, that
organic farming is good and fertilizer is bad, that small scale
technology is good and large scale technology is bad.
Moreover, scientific and technological arguments, usually ill-founded,
are mobilized to support policies the liberals favor for other
reasons, e.g government regulation with its accompanying expansion
of bureaucracy.  The monetary and social and health costs of
some policies are minimized and others are exaggerated.

	Reporting of scientific and technological news is increasingly
contaminated by ideological bias.  Through our computer, we get the
Associated Press A-wire and the %2New York Times%1 News Service, and
I read all the stories with the word "science" in them.  About half
show an ideological bias - always liberal.

	Scientists themselves are under increasing ideological
presssure and many succumb, accepting ideologically based
technological presuppositions when asked to help determine
the consequences of proposed government policies.  Most scientists
are politically liberal and dislike opposing the good guys.
Thus last week I received a letter from Argonne National Laboratories,
and ERDA supported research center near Chicago, asking me and
about 20 other Stanford faculty to form project to study small
scale energy technology, promising government support.  It was
suggested that we read E.F. Schumacher's %2Small is Beautiful%1
subtitled %2Economics as if People Mattered%1 in
preparation for the meeting.  I read the book a couple years ago, when it
became the bible of the "appropriate technology" movement.
Governor Brown of California is reported to base policy on it
and President Carter is recently reported to favor it.  It is a
collection of essays written at different times, inconsistent
among themselves.  Its main force is moralistic; if you doubt
even its technological contentions,
you are guilty of supporting colonial oppression, arrogantly
imposing Western ways on the natives, and dehumanizing life;
in fact you're a robot yourself.  Like the %2Sayings of Chairman
Mao%1, it is subject to exegesis, and when it seems to be talking
nonsense, it only shows you aren't interpreting it properly.
I regret to say that many of my colleagues have no defense
against such moralistic attacks and will agree to anything rather
than be considered uncultured engineers.  Alas, C.P. Snow was
wrong, and there are at most one and a half cultures.

	My qualifications are as follows: I am Professor of Computer
Science at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory (concerned with making computers behave as
intelligently as possible).
I am also a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the National
Legal Center for the Public Interest, a public interest organization
that fights the others when they go overboard.


	My non-technical writings include
an article in %2Scientific American%1, pieces for the yearbooks
of the %2Encyclopedia Britannica%1, the %2World Book%1, and the
%2Grolier Encyclopedia%1 and a series of commentaries on the
articles in a study of the future impact of computers.  The latter
will be included with the articles when they are published by
M.I.T. Press.  I am also writing a book on technology and society
that concerns what can and should be invented.  I have not yet
written for any national non-technical magazines.

	I enclose some writings, none of which is exactly suitable
for a column, but I will submit a sample column if you consider
it worthwhile.

	The following people will say good things about me (I think):
Edward Teller, Sidney Hook, Alphonse Juilland (a Stanford Professor
of French who has written for %2NR%1), and Miro Todorovich (Professor
of Physics at Columbia and Chairman of the Academic Advisory Council
of the National Legal Center for the Public Interest).

	The following sample column topics come to mind:
Carter's recipe for energy poverty and impotence (if it turns out
to be such),
must we really use less energy in the future and what do we get
for the energy we use,
the twenty trillion dollars worth of depleted uranium at Oak Ridge,
has the automobile been a disaster,
pop technology with BART as an example,
why we shouldn't give electronic mail to to the Postal Service,
the ugly aspects of %2Small is Beautiful%1,
science distorted by ideology in the National Academy of Sciences
review of Beckman's %2The Health Hazards of not Going Nuclear%1.
the media on energy, especially nuclear
science and politics in the Carter administration
American export of anti-technology ideology
the saccharin issue,
is this a "post-industrial society",
why the Russians are further behind in computers than they were ten years ago,
why Brazil is right in defying Carter,
how computer terminals in the home will make the authors independent
of the publishers.

	While I think you need something in every issue, 

.sgn