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C00002 00002	vts[w83,jmc]		VTS course description and notes
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C00011 00005	Enhancing humanity
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vts[w83,jmc]		VTS course description and notes

Technological Possibilities for enhancing man

	This course surveys the technological possibilities for increasing
human capability and real wealth.  It is oriented toward what people will
want rather than around what we might think is good for them.  Some of the
improvements discussed are in the direction of (1) making housework
trivial (2) making government responsive (3) increasing the ability of one
person two build an object like a car, airplane or house to suit him
without organizing others (4) allowing groups to live as they prefer less
hindered by general social laws and customs.  We will emphasize computer
and information technology and ask what will be genuinely useful and not
just flashy.  To what extent are futurists and science fiction writers
helpful?  Can we envisage advances as important as electricity, the
telephone, running water, inside toilets?

	The second topic concerns the social factors that determine the
rate of scientific and technological progress.  Why was scientific
advance a rare event until Galileo?  Why didn't non-Western cultures
break through into the era of organized scientific and technological
progress and why did it take Western culture so long?  Why isn't the
rate of progress faster today?  As examples, we shall inquire into
the obstacles that are making cellular telephone systems and electronic
funds transfer take so long.
one and a half cultures
Who are the opponents of progress?  What is the basis of their opposition
and which of their tactics are effective?
Could progress actually stop?
Rate of progress today and at turn of century.
Products and systems.
Which innovations are easy and which are hard.

Discussing what technology can do for humanity leads to the question
of what is good for humanity and what humanity ought to be doing.
We propose to bypass these questions by reducing the problem to
what technology can do to help humans achieve their individual
goals whatever they may be.  It is the business of some other study
than technology to study how the goals of different individuals
must be compromised, what if anything beyond individuals achieving
their goals constitutes the welfare of humanity, and how people
may be persuaded to do what's right.

I don't claim that this choice is entirely ``value neutral''.
Spending effort on improving technology thus delimited, involves
a certain amount of confidence society will somehow work out
the conflicts among individuals.  It also assumes that enlarging
the pie is worthy of effort rather than putting all effort into
deciding how it should be better divided and getting the decisions
implemented.  Anyway that's where my interests lie, and this course
is intended to appeal to people who share these interests.
Syllabus

by week

1. Introduction of reading
	course notes
	Dennis Gabor, Innovations
	C.P. Snow, Two cultures
	Samuel Florman, Existential pleasures of engineering
	Joseph Corn and Brian Horrigan, Yesterdays's tomorrows
	Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason
	Serge Taylor, Making Bureaucracies Think
	Petr Beckmann, Edith Efron,
	Francis Bacon, Novum Organon
	Edward Bellamy, Looking Backwards
	Jules Verne, Mark Twain's Connecticutt Yankee
	American science fiction
	Theodore Roszak,
	Arthur Kantrowitz, The Ming Navy

1.5. Individual values vs. social control
Rate of progress today compared with that of 1900.
Criteria for a useful invention.

2 and 3. Capsule history of technology with emphasis on rates of progress
in different parts of the world.

4. The idea of progress and the pace of technological and scientific
advance.  When did science begin to impact technology?  When did
Utopias begin to include technological advance?

5. The automobile, nuclear energy and EFT.

6. How can computers help?

6a. Full access to all public information.  Full freedom to publish.  How
much difference will it make?

6b. Computerized objectivity, Leibniz's dream revisited.  Anyone who can
get through the filter with an idea can get it seriously considered.

7. Automatic delivery, personal flying machines

8. Robots

9. Medicine, improving humanity. the artificial heart.  How the
camel of social control gets its nose in the tent.
Are humans smart enough?

10. The anti-technological movement

11. The long term, preventing the ice age, CO2.
The scientific basis for technological optimism.

12. Expansion of humanity into the galaxy.  Self modification of
humanity.

13. Computer controlled cars.

14. Technology and crime.

15. Guest lecture by Bernstein?
Enhancing humanity

General

	Enhancement of humanity among other worthy goals.

	Make it possible for one person to build more: a house,
a car, an airplane, a computer.  That is the extreme case.  It
is also worthwhile to make it possible for a small group to
build more.

	Make the world's literature computer accessible to everyone.

	Make an automatic idea filter powerful enough so that
it is possible to pay social attention to ideas that get through.
(Actually it might be possible to do something with a non-computerized
idea filter).

	Such equality as we have is based on the technology that
permits a person or family to live reasonably with much less
exploitation than formerly.  In particular, such equality of
the sexes as we have is based on household technology.  It will
become greater when we have the technology to reduce housekeeping
and child care to a triviality.

	Robot servants may be a long way in the future.  However,
when they come, we will have a Victorian age that will make
respectable Victorians look like slobs.

Advances other than those that make individuals more capable
and free to achieve their dreams.