Alvin Toffler - Future Shock

A key political task of the next decade will be to create this machinery. We must stop being afraid to exert systematic social control over technology. Responsibility for doing so must be shared by public agencies and the corporations and laboratories in which technological innovations are hatched.

Any suggestion for control over technology immediately raises scientific eyebrows. The specter of ham-handed governmental interference is invoked. Yet controls over technology need not imply limitations on the freedom to conduct research. What is at issue is not discovery but diffusion, not invention but application. Ironically, as sociologist Amitai Etzioni points out, "many liberals who have fully accepted Keynesian economic controls take a laissez-faire view of technology. Theirs are the arguments once used to defend laissez-faire economics: that any attempt to control technology would stifle innovation and initiative."

Warnings about overcontrol ought not be lightly ignored. Yet the consequences of lack of control may be far worse. In point of fact, science and technology are never free in any absolute sense. Inventions and the rate at which they are applied are both influenced by the values and institutions of the society that gives rise to them. Every society, in effect, does pre-screen technical innovations before putting them to widespread use.

The haphazard way in which this is done today, however, and the criteria on which selection is based, need to be changed. In the West, the basic criterion for filtering out certain technical innovations and applying others remains economic profitability. In communist countries, the ultimate tests have to do with whether the innovation will contribute to overall economic growth and national power. In the former, decisions are private and pluralistically decentralized. In the latter, they are public and tightly centralized.

Both systems are now obsolete – incapable of dealing with the complexity of superindustrial society. Both tend to ignore all but the most immediate and obvious consequences of technology. Yet, increasingly, it is these non-immediate and non-obvious impacts that must concern us. "Society must so organize itself that a proportion of the very ablest and most imaginative of scientists are continually concerned with trying to foresee the long-term effects of new technology," writes O. M. Solandt, chairman of the Science Council of Canada. "Our present method of depending on the alertness of individuals to foresee danger and to form pressure groups that try to correct mistakes will not do for the future."

One step in the right direction would be to create a technological ombudsman – a public agency charged with receiving, investigating, and acting on complaints having to do with the irresponsible application of technology.

Who should be responsible for correcting the adverse effects of technology? The rapid diffusion of detergents used in home washing machines and dishwashers intensified water purification problems all over the United States. The decisions to launch detergents on the society were privately taken, but the side effects have resulted in costs borne by the taxpayer and (in the form of lower water quality) by the consumer at large.

The costs of air pollution are similarly borne by taxpayer and community even though, as is often the case, the sources of pollution are traceable to individual companies, industries or government installations. Perhaps it is sensible for de-pollution costs to be borne by the public as a form of social overhead, rather than by specific industries. There are many ways to allocate the cost. But whichever way we choose, it is absolutely vital that the lines of responsibility are made clear. Too often no agency, group or institution has clear responsibility.

A technology ombudsman could serve as an official sounding board for complaints. By calling press attention to companies or government agencies that have applied new technology irresponsibly or without adequate forethought, such an agency could exert pressure for more intelligent use of new technology. Armed with the power to initiate damage suits where necessary, it could become a significant deterrent to technological irresponsibility.

But simply investigating and apportioning responsibility after the fact is hardly sufficient. We must create an environmental screen to protect ourselves against dangerous intrusions as well as a system of public incentives to encourage technology that is both safe and socially desirable. This means governmental and private machinery for reviewing major technological advances before they are launched upon the public.

Corporations might be expected to set up their own "consequence analysis staffs" to study the potential effects of the innovations they sponsor. They might, in some cases, be required not merely to test new technology in pilot areas but to make a public report about its impact before being permitted to spread the innovation through the society at large. Much responsibility should be delegated to industry itself. The less centralized the controls the better. If self-policing works, it is preferable to external, political controls.

Where self-regulation fails, however, as it often does, public intervention may well be necessary, and we should not evade the responsibility. In the United States, Congressman Emilio Q. Daddario, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Science, Research and Development, has proposed the establishment of a Technology Assessment Board within the federal government. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress, and by the science and technology program of the George Washington University are all aimed at defining the appropriate nature of such an agency. We may wish to debate its form; its need is beyond dispute.

The society might also set certain general principles for technological advance. Where the introduction of an innovation entails undue risk, for example, it might require that funds be set aside by the responsible agency for correction of adverse effects should they materialize. We might also create a "technological insurance pool" to which innovationdiffusing agencies might pay premiums.

Certain large-scale ecological interventions might be delayed or prohibited altogether – perhaps in line with the principle that if an incursion on nature is too big and sudden for its effects to be monitored and possibly corrected, it should not take place. For example, it has been suggested that the Aswan Dam, far from helping Egyptian agriculture, might someday lead to salinization of the land on both banks of the Nile. This could prove disastrous. But such a process would not occur overnight. Presumably, therefore, it can be monitored and prevented. By contrast, the plan to flood the entire interior of Brazil is fraught with such instant and imponderable ecological effects that it should not be permitted at all until adequate monitoring can be done and emergency corrective measures are available.

At the level of social consequences, a new technology might be submitted for clearance to panels of behavioral scientists – psychologists, sociologists, economists, political scientists – who would determine, to the best of their ability, the probable strength of its social impact at different points in time. Where an innovation appears likely to entail seriously disruptive consequences, or to generate unrestrained accelerative pressures, these facts need to be weighed in a social cost-benefit accounting procedure. In the case of some high-impact innovations, the technological appraisal agency might be empowered to seek restraining legislation, or to obtain an injunction forcing delay until full public discussion and study is completed. In other cases, such innovations might still be released for diffusion – provided ample steps were taken in advance to offset their negative consequences. In this way, the society would not need to wait for disaster before dealing with its technologyinduced problems.