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.cb SOCIETAL ATTITUDES TO TECHNOLOGY

	The foregoing exposition of the social effects of computer
technology as consisting of opportunities is not the accepted point of
view of the computer science community.  Unfortunately, C.P. Snow was
mistaken; there aren't two cultures.  There are barely 1.5.  The
scientific community mainly takes its social attitudes from the general
culture, and beliefs quite contrary to a scientist's own experience can be
adopted and maintained in the face of considerable contrary evidence if
this is what the magazines and the professors are saying.

	The Association for Computing Machinery has a Special Interest
Group on Computers and Society, and I recently read all the issues of its
newsletter which has been published since 1975.  This newsletter has had
almost nothing positive to say about any new technology.  The largest
single issue discussed is that of whether electronic funds transfer should
be allowed.  Every possible worry is advanced, and there are a few feeble
articles from the banking industry saying what they are doing to meet some
of the %2what ifs%1.  The president of the of the ACM's most recent letter
to the membership was entitled %2Technology:  Boon or Bane?%1, and it was
as much like a college freshman theme on the subject as the title would
suggest.

	Most other technological communities are in a similar state,
although the doctors generally stand up for medicine and some of the
physicists stand up for nuclear energy.

	It seems to me that the amount of harm people are suffering from
side-effects of industry and technology in general is less than was common
in eras dominated by a more positive attitude.  Therefore, it seems
unlikely that the present attitude is mainly a result of observed harm.
Here are some thoughts on the subject, and in presenting them to this
audience, I apologize for poaching.

.item←0
	#. Technology hasn't changed daily life much recently.%51%1
.SEND FOOT ⊂ BEGIN SPACING 0; SELECT 7
	1. The prevalent belief that technology is changing the world
faster and faster, and people can't adapt to it - is wrong.  In fact, the
inventions brought into use since World War II such as TV, jet travel and
the pill have affected daily life much less than those adopted between
1890 and 1920 such as electric lights, piped-in gas, telephones,
automobiles, and mechanical refrigeration affected the life of that time.
For most people, computers, nuclear energy, lasers, and DNA are just names
in the news, because no-one cares whether his electric bill was prepared
by a typist or a computer or whether the light goes on because of burning
coal or fissioning uranium.

	Since people take health and prosperity as only their just
deserts, maybe the lack of technological innovation in daily life
contributes to the anti-technological intellectual fads.  This lack is
temporary, because cheap information processing will lead to many more
popular inventions than those discussed in this paper.
.END ⊃

	#. The most common view of anti-technology is that it is a
response by a certain part of the population to the situation in which
they find themselves.  The amount of anti-technology in a society is a
function of the circumstances that generate such attitudes.  This belief
is accepted both by people who agree with this response and who disagree
and regard it as produced by ignorance.  The alternate view is that
anti-technology is a dynamic movement with a social structure,
recruitment, internal rewards and punishments, and the vehicle for claims
for political power.