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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ORIGINS OF THE REPORT In recent years concern has mounted over society's seeming inability to channel technological developments in directions that sufficiently respect the broad range of human needs. Whether rightly or wrongly, the belief is now widely held that the continuation of certain technological trends would pose grave dangers for the future of man and indeed that the ill-considered ex ploitation of technology has already contributed to some of the most urgent of our contemporary problems: the specter of thermonuclear destruction; the tensions of .congested cities; the hazards of a polluted and despoiled biosphere; the expanding arsenal of techniques for the surveillance and manipulation of private thought and behavior; the alienation of those who feel excluded from power in an increasingly technical civilization. Even among those who readily concede that tech nological advance has, on the whole, been a great boon to mankind, there has emerged a deep strain of skepticism toward proposals and projects that, in an earlier day, might have been hailed as the very symbols of human progress. Whe1 eas a few years ago, for example, the idea of a supersonic transport seemed to many the obvious fulfillment of man's airborne destiny, today some who might once have greeted the SST with unbounded en thusiasm are asking whether it is truly a sign of progress to fly from Watts to Harlem in two hours, vibrating millions of ears and windows in between. Many who once viewed opposition to the interstate highway pro- 1 Digitized by Goog Ie
gram as essentially reactior ary have begun to wonder whether the convenience of a proposed new expressway to its mobile users will really outweigh its costs to those whose lands and lives it will traverse. Haunted by fears of lead poisoning from automotive exhaust and mind poisoning from televised violence� increasingly influential segments of the population have begun to ask whether we can continue to wait until technology-related problems reach near-critical magnitudes before we renew the search for ad hoc solutions. Some who share these general misgivings tend to make modern technology the scapegoat of all our social ills. They perceive technology as having become an end in itself, subjecting man to its demands rather than serv ing human needs. They regard it as inherently destruc tive of personal freedom and fear that it will make the world totally unir.habitable or at least rob it of all hope and beauty. This wholly pessimistic attitude rests, of course, upon a vast oversimplification-as does the con verse notion that technology is a universal solvent that, having liberated Western man from the bondage of poverty and disease, need only be applied vigorously to assure global prosperity and universal happiness (7) . Between these two extremes lies the view of those who recognize that benefit and injury alike may flow from technology, which, after all, is nothing more than a systematic way of altering the environment. They recog nize that the quality of life has been greatly improved by technological advance and would deteriorate rapidly in a period of technological stagnation; that a technological culture, already adopted by one third of the human race and eagerly sought by much of the remaining two thirds, could be abandoned only at the cost of relegating hun dreds of millions of human beings to suffering and death. The choice, from this perspective, is not between the abandonment of technology as a tool of human aspira- 2 Digitized by Goog Ie
tion and the uncontrolled pursuit of technology as though more tools invariably meant a better life. The choice, rather, is between technological advance that proceeds without adequate consideration of its consequences and technological change that is influenced by a deeper concern for the interaction between man's tools and the human environment in which they do their work. For those who hold· this more balanced view, the ex pression "technology assessment". may acceptably de scribe what occurs when the likely consequences of a technological development are explored and evaluated. Their objective is to improve the quality of such efforts at exploration and evaluation and thereby to foster a more constructive evolution of our technological order. But the concept of improved technology assessment is by no means a unitary one ; it suggests different things to different people. The contents and focus of the notion vary with the vital interests and perspectives of its many proponents. To some, concerned primarily with the preservation and enhancement of environmental quality, technology assessment suggests the evaluation of technical changes or applica tions from the perspective of their likely impact on various environmental goals and resources-or the ex ploration of how particular environmental objectives might be affected, beneficially or adverse\y, by the growth and spread of various technologies. Thus we have seen proposals to create, in the Executive Office of the President, a Council of Ecological or Environ mental Advisers (2) (on the model of the present Council of Economic Advisers) or an inter-agency council on environmental issues, such as the Environmental Quality Council recently established by the President (3) . We have witnessed proposals to establish ombudsmen to intervene in agency proceedings as spokesmen for en- 3 3Q-973 0-69 - 2 Digitized by Goog Ie
vironmental quality against the incursions of technol ogy (4). We have seen proposals to amend the Constitu tion by asserting the right of the· people to a pure environment (5). And we have witnessed a proposal to create a Select Senate Committee on Technology and the Hu� Environment (6), to focus public and political attention on the longer-range environmental conse quences of technological decisions. To others, concerned with the measurement of social change as a step toward the achievement of broad national goals, technology assessment connotes the use of new tools to monitor the impacts on society of technical changes (among others) and to improve the quaJity of feedback from social effects to technological (and other) developments. Thus we have witnessed a movement urging the evolution and refinement of"social indicators" to supplement the present body of economic in dicators (7). We have seen proposals advocating the creation of a Council of Social Advisers (8) (again on the model of the present Council of Economic Advisers) and the establishment of an annual Social Report to the President (analogous to the current Economic Report). We have witnessed proposals to create a National Foundation for the Social Sciences (paralleling the National Science Foundation) and to add social and behavioral scientists to the President's Science Advisory Committee (9). All these proposals focus concern on the social impact of technological change and on relating technical to social goals, although in a broader interpretation social impact often includes the physical and biological environment as it affects the quality of human life. Yet another group is concerned broadly with the need for greater foresight and planning to guide tech nical change with more timely and comprehensive balancing of total costs against total benefits. To this 4 Digitized by Goog Ie
group, technology assessment means an attempt to pro ject the likely growth and probable impacts of specific technologies-such as weather modification, the super sonic transport, satellite communications, and computer aided instruction. Thus we have seen the emergence of "technological forecasting" as a fashionable new disci plifle (10) and have heard increased discussion of "early warning systems" to alert planners and the general public to the potentialities and dangers of incipient technological developments and of alternative possibil ities. This collection of proposals focuses attention on particular technologies and on foreseeing the variety of social and environmental consequences that might follow from their widespread application. Another group, concerned with improving the alloca tion of public resources, views technology assessment as a mean� of identifying and measuring the possible uses of technologies generated by federally supported research and development activities. Of special concern to this group is the supposed transfer of space and defense technology and management techniques to the civilian sector, particularly for the solution of major social problems related to urbanization-such as housing, crime, transportation, and municipal public services. In this connection we have seen proposals to create an Agency for Technological Development (71), and have witnessed proposals to strengthen the Office of Science and Technology or otherwise to centralize and rational ize the allocation and management of federal science resources and efforts (72). Implicit in this set of proposals is the assumption that the allocation of scientific and technological priorities can serve as the catalyst for new social and political priorities, rather than vice versa. And to still others, whose concerns lie with better program and policy evaluation and who do not restrict their attention to resource allocation, technology assessment 5 Digitized by Goog Ie
represents one component of an extended version of planning-programming-budgeting (PPB) . Their empha sis is upon developing more precise definitions of program objectives as they relate to national goals and priorities; more specific and unbiased criteria for assessing program potentiality and performance in cost-benefit terms ; and more successful ways of modifying old programs or proposing new ones with the help of such analytic devices (73). Along these lines, we have seen a proposal to form a standing Citizens' Committee on National Goals and Priorities, with counterpart capacities in the executive and legislative branches (14). We have wit nessed proposals designed to enhance the capacity of Congress to evaluate the technical components of legisla tive issues as they relate to broad national objectives (75) . And we have seen a proposal to establish, at each level of government, an independent "fourth branch" to con duct a continuing objective and "scientific" evaluation of the goals, priorities, and programs of the political branches, using the best modern analytic tools provided by the physical and social sciences (76) . Several of these recommendations revolve about axes other than those of science and technology and do not give the assessment of technology per se a central role, but virtually all of them reflect some awareness of the fact that the interplay between technology and man's natural and social environments significantly affects the problems and opportunities that most frequently dom inate the choices of contemporary life. One of the pro posals, in particular, aims squarely at the technology society interface and asks how the interactions at this interface might be better observed and more wisely managed. This proposal is Representative Daddario's bill to establish a Technology Assessment Board "to provide a method for identifying, assessing, publicizing, and dealing with the implications and effects of applied 6 Digitized by Goog Ie
research and technology" (17). The bill speaks of the need for . . . identifying the potentials of applied research and technology and promoting ways and means to accomplish their transfer into practical use, and identifying the un desirable by-products and side-effects of such applied research and technology in advance of their crystallization and informing the public of their potential in order that appropriate steps may be taken to eliminate or minimize them. Representative Daddario introduced the bill, H.R. 6698, early in 1 967 "not as a piece of perfected legislation but as a stimulant to discussion (18)." His Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Development of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics sponsored a Seminar on Technology Assessment in September 1 967 to explore in a preliminary way some of the concerns suggested by H.R. 6698 (19) . The participants in that seminar differed on matters of detail but agreed broadly that the proposed legislation was directed to a very real problem and also raised subtle questions that required much closer i11vestigation. Accordingly, Congress re quested both the National Academy of.Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering to undertake studies of technology assessment: what it means to various groups, how it occurs today, how it is related to the be havior of individuals and organizations, how its quality might be improved and its influence enhanced. This report is the response offered by the National Academy of Sciences to Congress' inquiries. The report, which we view as but one step in what must become a continuing process, represents the culmination of ·nearly a year of discussions by the Technology Assessment Panel, a group created by the Academy's Committee on Science and Public Policy to consider the need for an improved assessment capacity and the possible ways of achieving 7 Digitized by Goog Ie
it. In undertaking that task, we have not confined our attention to government mechanisms, but have con sidered also the importance of improving technology assessment capability and awareness throughout our society. Although we have given thought to the many over lapping proposals discussed above, all of which bear some relation to technology assessment, we have recognized an obligation to select a particular unifying theme from among the many that are available. In particular, we have focused on technology assessment as the exploration of trends in technological development, working outward toward the effects on society, the environment, and the individual effects of such trends. In an appendix to this report (Appendix A, pgs. 123--135), we discuss other possible foci for technology assessment and we opt for a mixed approach. But in order to keep the problem politically manageable, as well as to avoid an impossible diffusion of effort, we have given primary attention to assesment s endeavors that use technoJogy as a starting point, as opposed to analyses that begin with society, the environment, or the individual, and we urge a similar focus for the new institutions whose creation we recommend in Chapter V. NATURE OF THE PROBLEM DEFINING THE INQUIRY Conceived most broadly, any inquiry into the interface between technology and the human habitat may become an inquiry into the entire universe of questions that bear upon the most critical problems of contemporary civilization. To make its task manageable, the panel decided to draw lines dictated by the concerns that led Congress to request this study, by the matters that we 8 Digitized by Goog Ie
think demand the most urgent attention, and by the issues that we feel most competent to address. At the outset we set aside as beyond the scope of this report those ultimate philosophical issues that seem to be posed by any increasingly technical civilization (20). We set aside as well the implications for human values of basic theoretical discoveries in the biomedical or other sciences (21). Scientific discovery can indeed have important consequences for the ethical and moral foundations of a society, but our concern here is not with the effects of science-what man knows or hypo thesizes about his world-but with the effects of tech nology-what man can do and chooses to do with what he knows. At the same time, we have regarded as outside our inquiry any attempt to ass� in detail the specific consequences or implications of any particular tech nological development or set of developments. Our approach has been quite different. Recognizing that the assessment of technological prospects and perils has become a pervasive activity in a wide variety of private and public in stitutional settings, we have undertaken to identify what seem to us the most critical deficiencies in existing processes of assess ment and decision-maki."lg with respect to the evolution of technology in our society. As they consider the possibility of exploiting or oppos ing a technological opportunity or development, in dividuals, corporations, and public institutions attempt to project the gains and losses to themselves of alterna tive courses of action, and seek a course designed to maximize the gains while minimizing· the losses. The difficulty is that self-interested analyses of this sort may ignore important implications of particular choices for sectors of society other than those represented in the initial decisions. In their pursuit of benefits for themselves or for the particular public they serve, those who make 9 Digitized by Goog Ie
the relevant decisions may fail to exploit technological opportunities that, from a broader perspective, might clearly deserve exploitation. Likewise, as they seek to minimize costs to themselves, the same decision-makers may pursue technological paths that, again from a broader perspective, ought to be redirected so as to reduce un desirable consequences for others. A wide variety of what economists call external costs and benefits thus falls "between the stools of innumerable individual decisions to develop individual technologies for individual purposes without explicit attention to what all these decisions add up to for society as a whole and for people as human beings" (22). In part, this phenomenon is a corollary of the value our society has placed upon relatively unrestrained decision-making by autonomous individuals and insti tutions. In part, the phenomenon follows from the "tyranny of small decisions" (23)-incremental choices that, taken by themselves, may seem unworthy of notice but, taken altogether, may create problems of major proportions. And in part, it is a corollary of the inherent difficulty of predicting and evaluating certain kinds of external costs and benefits, which make themselves felt indirectly or at times and places far removed from the initial points of decision. Indeed, the very difficulty of foreseeing and quantifying such secondary consequences discourages their consideration in decision-making proc esses and encourages emphasis upon the much more readily predictable and quantifiable primary effects. None of these considerations, of course, is entirely new. Long before man found himself committed to a highly technological culture, he had learned to make systematic use of a wide variety of tools, or technologies, to achieve a great many ends, and each new tool, as well as each new kind or level of use, brought benefit to some and injury to others. For centuries, a wide range of benefits 10 oi9,tized by Google
and injuries were simply ignored in the decision-making processes that influenced technological change. Social institutions were operated primarily for the benefit of small elites, and effects on the great majority of the population seldom came within the purview of decision making-a situation that prevails in many developing societies even today. Yet the same technologies whose effects we sometimes deplore are themselves largely re sponsible for the fact that we both can and do consider the effects of decisions and policies on a much larger part of the human population than ever before. Despite the long history of inattention to the wider consequences of technological change, therefore, our panel starts from the conviction that the advances of technology have yielded and still yield benefits that, on the whole, vastly outweigh all the injuries they have caused and continue to cause. But such advances have also made possible population growth and income expansion, both of which have gen erated increased demands on resources for consumption and for waste assimilation. Moreover, as the number of people who share in the material benefits of technology has grown, there has developed a mounting sense of individual worth and an escalating set of demands for a better life, a life freer of the harmful side-effects of technological progress. At the same time, advances in science and technology have brought advances in our ability to anticipate the secondary and tertiary conse quences of contemplated technological developments and to select those technological paths best suited to the achievement of broad combinations of objectives. The tremendous growth of science and technology during the last two decades has indeed created a situation in which there exist many more technically feasible options than we can possibly choose to pursue, coupled with the sophisticated methods of analysis and forecasting needed 11 oi9,tized by Google
to select those options that can minimize unwanted consequences. This enhanced sensitivity and expanded range of alternatives does not necessarily imply that the deleterious side-effects of technological change are worse today than they were a century or two ago-although some obviously are. It does imply that our visions and capacities have so broadened and deepened that we can now, for the first time in human history, realistically aspire to have it both ways: to maximize our gains while minimizing our losses. The challenge is to discipline technological progress in order to make the most of this vast new opportunity. Nor can this opportunity be foregone without incur ring a considerable risk of grave injury to mankind. For the new power, rapidity, and momentum of technological development ; the diminishing lead-time between initial innovation and widespread application ; the expanding radii of technological effects in space and tim e ; the increasing size, density, and affluence of the popula tions in which such effects are felt ; and the fact that the environment is rapidly approaching its maxi mum capacity to assimilate waste-these circumstances have created a situation in which the cumulative and interacting deleterious consequences of many technolog ical developments and decisions might ultimately out weigh their primary benefits. Particularly as it becomes necessary to engage in technological enterprises on a national and even a global scale, the need to project the total systems effects of alternative courses of action will become far more pressing than it was when we could experiment with more localized projects. For all these reasons, we are moving into a period in which the margin for error will be narrower and the costs of unwise choices higher than in the past. In this context of heightened danger as well as oppor tunity, decisions concerning the development and ap plication of new technologies must not be allowed to 12 Digitized by Goog Ie
rest solely on their immediate utility to their sponsors and users. Timely consideration must be given to the long-tern1 sacrifices entailed by their use and prolifera tion, and to potentially inj urious effects upon sectors of society and the environment often quite remote from the places of production and application. For by the time such consequences have become so obvious as to generate intense political concern, we may find that the psychological and financial commitments of various in dividuals or groups to technological paths and institu tional arrangements already selected will have made any significant change of direction very costly if not alto gether impossible. Thus, we may freeze ourselves into technological patterns whose far-reaching consequences not even their originators would deliberately have chosen . Most of the effects of technological or social shorts�ghtedness that cause concern today-environ- . mental pollution, social dislocation, urban congestion, the highway death toll, noise-may come to seem minor indeed when compared with the problems that could then confront us. Most of the undesired effects of tech nological change are still reversible, albeit at ever higher costs, by yet further applications of science and tech nology, or by changes in habits, attitudes, and institu tional arrangements. But as these effects become more nearly global in scale, we may increasingly find ourselves faced with consequences that are truly irreversible-for example, profound climatic changes, or permanent alterations in ecological regimes, or irreversible social deterioration. Seen in this light, the problems to which we must address ourselves are these: How can we in the United States best begin the awesomely difficult task of altering present evaluative and decision-making processes so that private and public choices bearing on the ways in which technologies develop 13 Digitized by Goog Ie
and fit into society will reflect a greater sensitivity to the total systems ejjects of such choices on the human environment? How can we best increase the likelihood that such decisions (domestically and, in the end, globally) will be in formed by more complete understanding of their secondary and tertiary consequences, -and will be made on the basis of criteria that take such consequences into account in a timelier and more systematic way? And how can we do these things without denying ourselves the benefits that continuing technological progress has to offer, especially to the less-favored portions of the human population? We must note emphatically that the alternative to such heightened sensitivity and broadened criteria is not necessarily a continuation of current rates and modes of technological innovation and diffusion. It is entirely possible that, frightened by the untoward side-effects of technological change and frustrated by their inability to "humanize" its direction, people with much power and little wisdom will lash out against scientific and tech nological activity in general, attempting to destroy what they find themselves unable to control. That sort of Luddite response would, of course, be tragic, but it may eventuate unless we can take constructive first steps in the general direction discussed here. As this report explores the need for such steps, it will inevitably emphasize mistakes that have been made in the past-instances when technological developments chosen for exploitation now seem to have been needlessly injurious to some set of social or environmental interests; instances when alternative technologies could have achieved comparable objectives at significantly reduced social cost; instances when technological developments were accompanied by inadequate or inappropriate systems of supporting institutions and technological or legal safeguards. But deploring such undersirable side effects of technological change is not tantamount to 14 Digitized by Goog Ie
decrying technology itself. Indeed, techno)ogy as such is not the subject of this report, much less the subject of this panel's indictment. Our subject, instead, is human behavior and institutions, and our purpose is not to conceive ways to curb or restrain or otherwise ''fix" technologv but rather to conceive ways to �iscover and repair the deficiencies in the processes and institutions by which society puts the tools of science and technology to work. Thus, if the panel seems in this report "quick to lament the fallen sparrow, but slow to celebrate the fall of 'Typhoid Mary,' (24) "the reason is not that we have forgotten the benefits of technology but that we have been directed by Congress to explore how such benefits might be attained with less injury to human and environmental values. Any negative emphasis in this report is thus no more than an inevitable corollary of pursuing our assignment. The current concern with the undesirable secondary c onsequences of technology reflects not so much the fact that technology is more threatening today than it has been in the past as the fact that we have perceived our actions to have wider consequences than we earlier con templated, have learned how to use science and tech nology to explore and control such consequences, and have become willing to assume responsibility for those consequences "over wider stretches of space and time. In a very basic sense, modern science, by deepening Man's vision of the interconnectedness of things, has greatly enlarged his moral horizons" (25). How best to expand our decision-making processes to fulfill those enlarged expectations is the central question to which this report is addressed. TWO PRELIMINARY DISTINCTIONS The task confronting us involves a complex set of problems that might usefully be described in the form of a two-dimensional matrix, with the horizontal dimension 15 Digitized by Goog Ie
consisting of technologies and supporting systems, and the vertical dimension consisting of perception and response . Technologies and Supporting Systems We must distinguish clearly between technologies or technological .rystems--c odified ways of deliberately manip ulating the environment to achieve some material ob j ective-and the legal and economic arrangements through which such technologies become available and are subj ected to social control-arrangements that are here described as supporting .rystems. The automobile and the highway network comprise a technology or a tech nological system ; rules of accident law, automobile in surance schemes, and traffic policemen are components of the corresponding supporting system. The panel believes that in some cases an inj ection of the broadened criteria urged here might have led, or might in the future lead, to the selection or encouragemen t of different technologies or at least modified ones functional alternatives with lower "social costs" (though not necessarily lower total costs) . For example, bioen vironmental rather than primarily chemical devices might have been used to control agricultural pests, or there might have been design alternatives to the purely chemical means of enhancing engine efficiency, or mass transit alternatives to further reliance upon the private automobile. We believe, however, that in the vast maj ority of cases an improved set of decision-making processes might have led, or might eventually lead, not to different tech nologies but rather to different supporting systems. These might include, for example, different ways of allocating radio frequencies or distributing contra ceptives ; different ways of integrating automobiles into the transportation network, with more rental and less 16 Digitized by Goog Ie
ownership of empty seats ; different revenue sources for the television industry ; or different ways of compen sating and/or relocating persons injured by pollution, declining industries, or highways. A classic and timely illustration is furnished by the applieation of advancing technology to traditional agriculture in the developing world . Few would question the primary benefits-indeed, the absolute necessity of this "green revolution, in Asia and elsewhere, but it is likely to raise massive problems of economic disloca tion, social unrest, and political upheaval-unless the developed nations, in cooperation with the third world, plan very carefully (26). Intelligent planning and co ordination of social, legal, and economic policies with technological . trends of unquestioned primary benefit will yield recommendations that are often non-tech nological in character-recommendations with respect to supporting systems rather than technological systems but this should not obscure the relevance of such coordi nation to the enterprise of technology assessment broadly conceived. Perception and Response We must distinguish also between changing the percep tions of decision-makers and changing their responses to what they perceive. With respect to the former, it seems clear that there is a need to develop and organize the capacity and willingness of all relevant decision-makers and institutions (not simply of some central agency) to cooperate in a broad, society-wide (and ultimately global) effort to perceive (monitor, predict, understand, evaluate) more sharply than in the past the full range of consequences of technological developments-at suffi ciently early stages to make a di.fference and in terms of suffi ciently broad yet measurable criteria to overcome the bias 17 Digitized by Goog Ie
toward technologies and supporting systems that promise immediate utility to those for whom they are designed. But changes in perception alone, however profound, are almost certain to prove insufficient. The relation ship of knowledge to action is exceedingly subtle and complex ; to alter the conduct of those who sponsor technological developments so that their behavior . in fact reflects broader perceptions (i.e., so that they are guided by new criteria) might require changing the legal rules constraining or facilitating conduct ; or the incen tives, positive or negative, indirectly molding it ; or the general attitudes that condition patterns of thought and action. For virtually every deleterious environmental effect, one could undoubtedly identify many experts who warned us, but for one reason or anothe r their warnings were not heeded. Perhaps their evidence was spotty or incon clusive. Perhaps they assumed that the marshaling of a persuasive case was somebody else's responsibility. Very likely their opinions were not accepted by other experts, or they did not know how to attract the attention of people who could influence the crucial decisions. Per haps the experts who foresaw the unfortunate effects of particular lines of development were not aware of viable alternatives and so could not convince decision-makers that the rather speculative side-effects they perceived warranted foregoing the tangible and indisputable bene fits of particular proposals. Or perhaps the decision makers simply believed, relative to the values then prevalent, that they had more to lose by heeding the warnings of potential injury than they had to gain by proceeding in disregard of them. In none of these situations would clearer vision alone have sufficed ; early warnings were indeed sounded but fell on deaf ears ; the need was less for improved perception than for improved response. 18 Digitized by Goog Ie
· Whatever any process of assessment might reveal� choices between alternative technologies or supporting systems are essentially economic and political in char acter ; responses to assessment almost always require that decisions be made between competing and conflicting interests and values. Although one might imagine an authoritative assessment structure designed to circum vent market and political modes of accommodating and resolving such conflicts, the price of such a structure, in terms of its impact upon the basic institutional fabric of our society, would be intolerably high. Whatever improvements might be made in assessment systems, therefore, it is important to remember that the products of such systems ultimately represent no more than inputs into the complex network of decision-making processes, private and public, economic and political, that together mold the growth of technology and channel its integra tion into the social structure. 19 30-973 0-69 - 3 Digitized by Goog Ie
