ABSTRACT
The primary problem in the "social control of the sciences", Nigel Calder observed, is reconciling "specialist expertise and long-range planning with the generalism of democracy in a way where ordinary citizens' wishes are heeded and experts neither bow nor dictate to administrative authority". Technology conjures double-edged visions: prosperity and pollution, medical elixirs and chemical poisons, cheap plentiful energy and hair-triggered nuclear obliteration. This chapter presents an instructive glance back at social forecasting several decades ago to ferret out the perennial problems daunting our best guesswork about the shape of things to come. It taps more fully into historical accounts to appraise the major scenarios for future governance that these forecasters beheld: autonomous technology, technocracy, class domination, or a more participatory democracy. The chapter also probes the perils of "technological fixes" and underlines how difficult the intrinsic problems are that technological change poses for even the most competent and sensitive specialists.
