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C00002 00002	STANFORD TECHNOLOGY CLUB - A PROSPECTUS
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STANFORD TECHNOLOGY CLUB - A PROSPECTUS

	This is a preliminary  proposal to create a club  at Stanford
whose  purpose will  be to  find and promote  good technology  and to
promote its application and to  encourage larger scale efforts to  do
the same.  The club is needed because:

	1.  Technology  has  not  done as  much  recently  to  change
people's  lives  for the  better as  it did  around  the turn  of the
century when  within a  very short period,  were introduced  electric
lights,   telephones,  automobiles,   central  heating,   control  of
infectious disease by  sanitation.  More  recent improvements  (radio
1920s, television 1948, mass  air travel 1950s, color TV  1960s) have
been smaller in effect and have come along slower. You will note that
I have not  mentioned nuclear  energy. While nuclear  energy is  very
important in reducing the cost of energy and therefore increasing the
number of people who can benefit from it at a given level, it has not
produced qualitatively new  things for the  man in the street  except
some new worries.

	2. The  reasons for this are twofold:  First, the easy things
were done,  and new  important innovations  will require  either  new
technology  (computer  control),   or  pushing  the   mechanical  and
electrical  technology very  hard.   Secondly,  the attention  of the
technological community has been distracted from civilian  technology
by the  lack of payoff  and by  the emphasis on  military technology.
Therefore,  certain traditions  have grown  up that  hinder progress.
Thus, it  is very  hard to  get  support for  university projects  in
civilian technology.

	3. The  anti-technological and even  anti-rational tendencies
of the literary culture  have reached a new  peak. We scientists  and
technologists get our  culture from these  people and have  also been
profoundly  affected by this trend  of thought.  A  related effect of
the weakness  in innovation  in civilian  applications  has been  the
concentration on  side-effects.   While attention has  to be  paid to
side-effects  and the present increased attention  is mainly good, it
can't be allowed to exclude thinking about new things in the minds of
socially conscious technical people.

	4. The Stanford  technology Club might undertake some  of the
following activities:
	a.  Survey  various  fields  for  the  possibility of  useful
innovation.  Some questions are: When will the home computer terminal
be feasible and when will it  have applications sufficient to make it
worthwhile.  What is  the long  range solution to  the transportation
problem?   What  about computer  controlled cars?    Is the  personal
flying  machine  feasible?   How  can the  costs  of construction  be
reduced?  What are the basic areas of technology where  breakthroughs
in cost or performance can make many things  possible?  Is the planet
running  out of  resources, and  what kind  of resource  planning and
environment monitoring are needed?

	b. Provide a forum for presentation of ideas in these fields.

	c.  Discuss  the  institutional  barriers  to  innovation  in
civilian technology and discuss how to overcome them.

	d. Popularize useful technology  both to attract workers into
the field and to combat anti-technological propaganda.