ABSTRACT
Technological advance can, will, and must provide for the future economic growth which is necessary to meet the needs and wants of people American society and of people throughout the world. It is an integral part of man and society. The chapter examines the highly complex interrelations among populations, food supply, natural resources, pollution, and industrial production. The entire predictive core of the Meadows systems analysis founders on the fact that it has virtually, though not completely, ignored the essential element in the population-resource-pollution-industrial-food supply equation, namely, the energy factor. Technology assessment says that man can control the use of his own technology; that human skill, imagination, and creativity can help bring man a better life; and that peoples are not the playthings of a mindless technology which crushes us underfoot. It means that man is master of his own machine, not its slave.
