ABSTRACT
I think that most people would accept that all technology is a Faustian bargain, that it giveth and it taketh away, and that the verdict on the value of the giving and the adverse impact of the taking often takes the jury, i.e. society, many years of observation and discovery before it can be delivered with any accuracy. It often requires considerable advances in science or scientific inquiry before a comprehensive assessment of the downside of most new technologies can be made. The famous case of DDT in the US was one of the first great exposures of the damage that a seemingly helpful and benign chemical can inflict on humans as it enters the food chain. The cycle of Utopian discovery and doom-laden revelation continues in a now almost predictable pattern, and even if the precise nature of the downside takes us by surprise we are not surprised that there is one. Science has never waited on society; if it had we might still believe that the sun moved around the earth. In the 1930s we discovered CFCs to refrigerate our food and propel aerosol sprays; in the 1970s we found that they eat ozone. We built atomic power stations to give us cheap electricity but at the price of their radioactive waste being almost impossible to clean up. Motor cars give us tremendous freedom and personal mobility but at the cost of filling our atmosphere with a host of pollutants that could turn our world into a greenhouseand China has yet to start driving in earnest!
