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Pro-technology must appeal to the imagination

	Maybe the anti-technology movement has reached its peak
and will decline.  However, if the age groups in the population
retain their present opinions as they get older, and if the
new generations take their opinions from their teachers and
their immediate elders, there will be a real technological
disaster.  All feasible methods of producing energy may be
paralyzed.  Most likely the disaster would cause a sufficient
reversal of sentiment so that the country would recover.

	If the disaster is to be avoided, youth must rejoin
the pro-technology camp.  However, sober arguments about
the cost-effectiveness of nuclear energy and its good safety
record won't do the job.  Neither will depicting the effects
of neglecting energy production until our noses are rubbed
in the consequences of the neglect.

	It seems to me that what affects the opinions of young
people about technology is in a large measure romantic appeal.
What pro-technology sentiment now exists among young people is
not gratitude for the fruits of the technological civilization
that permits them to live in comfort and study for years before
going to work.  It isn't gratitude for the marvels of medicine
that saved half of them from dying of diarrhea as infants and
small children.  It is rather the romantic appeal of present
and contemplated future technology.

	The pro-technology young people I have met have been
more influenced by their personal experience with technology
than by reading pro-technology literature which is almost
completely unavailable.  For the forseeable future, this will
continue to contribute a substantial number of people who
will respond to appeals to defend technology.  The number of
pro-technology young people who will act politically is much
smaller and depends much more on the existence of specific
pro-technology political and ideological movements.

	Much of the future pro-technology political effort in
the U.S. depends on two sources - the L-5 society and the
science fiction group typified by and perhaps centered around
Jerry Pournelle.

	The L-5 society is an extremely interesting phenomenon.
It was founded to advocate implementing a proposal by Princeton
Physicist Gerald O'Neill that the government establish habitats
for people in orbit around the earth.  O'Neill's proposal differed
from previous such proposals in that it was more detailed and
that his cylindrical space stations were designed to enable people
to live in earthlike conditions with earthlike gravity (from
centrifugal force), a 24 hour day (from a combination of rotation
and precession of the cylinders.  Internally the cylinders were
to be lined with soil so that the inhabitants could lead ecologically
sound agricultural lives.  Thus O'Neill's proposals combined
the idea of space travel with the passion for ecological living
that was popular at the time of the proposal.  The proposal also
involved a huge government program to plan and administer these
ecological lives.
The above may be a bit of a caricature, but all the mentioned
ideological elements were present.

	Subsequently the L-5 society evolved away from the O'Neill
concept.  The ecological lives have been de-emphasized and the
government planning has been de-emphasized.  In fact, the L-5
Society has become a promoter of private enterprise in space
and the main and most effective opponent of the proposed treaty
on outer space on the grounds that declaring space the "common
heritage of mankind" would outlaw or at least discourage private
enterprise in space.  The L-5 society has also become the most
effective constituency for a large American space program apart
from companies involved in the program.  Its appeal is to the
imagination and the spirit of exploration and adventure and
not merely to the rather narrow concept of scientific
investigation.

	Pournelle and like-thinkers have had a major impact on
the ideological content of science fiction.  Until after World
War II, science fiction was not much affected by ideological
currents among American intellectuals.  Its writers and editors
either had a technological background and a simple engineer's
enthusiasm for technology and acceptance of the present social
system or they regarded science fiction as genre with these
presuppositions.  After World War II, however, liberal ideological
themes became increasingly prevalent.  For example, robots changed
from being a tool or an alien menace to an oppressed minority
requiring tolerance.  Sociological themes speculating on a world
dominated by the advertising industry or the Mafia appeared.
In the late 1960s, anti-technological themes became important
and so did counter-cultural themes.

	The new event is the "class consciousness" of science fiction fans
and writers who are often visionaries who really would like to explore
space and welcome new inventions.  It finally sunk in after Lord knows how
many stories about the evils of technology and renunciation of technology
that their hopes were the victims of this ideology.  They began to notice
that there was a connection between the anti-technological propaganda and
the decline of the space program.