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CHAPTER II. EXISTING PROCESSES OF ASSESSMENT AND DECISION As we proceed to the body of the report, we make two preliminary observations about the relevance-and the irrelevance-of history. Hindsight alone plainly will not suffice. The panel initially consid ered but ultimately rej ected the notion of building its report around a set of historical case studies. Had we attempted to do so, we should have been forced to identify a set of examples sufficiently representative to suggest how a successful system of assessment and response ought to be structured . But one cannot know definitively how representative a selection one has made unless one knows in advance precisely how the assessment process ought to operate . The most that can be achieved through the "case study" method is a rough approximation-one that must be supplemented by exploration of the relevant institutional and organizational considerations. Morever, we are wit nessing a shift in values from those of a basically selfish society to those of a society in which "the public interest" is becoming a matter of more than rhetorical concern . Finally, political and technical decisions now tend in creasingly to generate complex chains of interacting consequences that go beyond the immediate obj ectives of those decisions. These circumstances impose serious limits on the relevance of historical materials and, at the very lea st, require that they be used with special caution, and that their use be tempered with particular imagination. But history does have its lessons, and offers us in numerable potentially usefu l hypotheses. As we have 20 Digitized by GoogIe
noted previously, our problem, despite its new dimensions is an old one. Men have long invested their resources and energies in the purposeful alteration of their natural and social environments, and thoughtful men have long recognized that such investments in technology, what ever their benefits, may also yi eld unforeseen and un wanted consequences-from the erosion of the soil to the erosion of the human spirit. Particularly since the panel's obj ective is to evaluate the possibilities of building on and redesigning existing systems rather than to seek ways of beginning completely anew, we need understanding of how existing systems function, and of how they have either succeeded or failed in the past. We tum then to an examination of those systems. With the development and expansion of capitalism, there emerged a market structure capable of directing innovative abilities in a systematic way to such areas as production, transportation, and communication. For the most part, the initiation and diffusion of technological changes were governed by this economic market. Some attention, to be sure, was given to anticipated impacts upon military potential or national pride, but invest ments in research and development, in translation from laboratory investigation to product or process, and in widespread application, were most often determined by assessments of short-range commercial profitability or of broad economic benefits to producers (as in the case of agricultural or mining research) . The resulting tendency to associate private enterprise and the price system with technological innovation and diffusion has occasionally obscured the importance of government in channeling the direction and molding the character of these processes. As early as the Civil War, American naval vessels were used in the initial effort to lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable, nominally a private enterprise. Indeed, the federal 21 Digitized by Goog Ie
government involved itself even earlier in the develop ment of technology-usually in a stimulative capacity, as through the patent system initiated in the late eighteenth century, but occasionally also in a restrictive capacity, as through the regulation of steam boilers initiated in the mid-nineteenth century. Contributing to the frequent failure to discern the government's early role was the fact that, when government intervened in the interest of innovation-as in the extension of railroads across the American continent-it ordinarily did so by enhancing the market rewards of private innovators-for example, through the issuance of patents or the granting of public lands. By the mid-twentieth century, largely as a result of the massive fed eral support of research and development stimulated by World War I I , government policy had become at least as influential as the forces of the ordinary market in setting the environment for technological change. Today the government finances nearly 50 per cent of industrial research and development and virtually every governmental agency is involved in one or more programs designed to further the development and use of some technology, by providing an outlet for its goods and services, or by stimulating it at its inception, or both. The federal government now exerts a pervasive influence on the development of technology through support for highway construction ; water-resource devel opment programs ; subsidies for airport construction ; management of air traffic control ; promulgation of safety regulations in hundreds of industries ; extension of tax credits for capital investment and depletion allowances for underground mineral resources ; agricul tural price supports and the soil-conservation program ; aid to education programs that acquire audio-visual 22 Digitized by Goog Ie
equipment ; patent and licensing policies ; and in count less other ways. Numerous agencies have been created either to regulate the activities of technology-based industries or clusters . of industries (railroads, communication, aviation, electric power, drugs, and others) or to per form rather specialized functions with respect to the impact of technology upon particular facets of the environment. Among these are the Interstate Commerce Commission ; the Federal Communications Commission ; the Federal Aviation Agency ; the Federal Power Commission ; · the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration in the Interior Department ; the National Air Pollution Control Administration and the Environ mental Control Administration in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare ; the Environmental lmpact Office of the Department of Transportation ; the Federal Trade Commission and the Bureau of Standards in their consumer-protection activities ; the Food and Drug Administration in its regulation of new drugs and therapeutic devices ; and the Atomic Energy Commission in its j oint roles of development and regulation. Decisions on budget allocations for technology wholly or predominantly dependent upon the federal govern ment-whether to go forward with the development of a sea-water desalting plant or with a project like Plow share ; whether or not to proceed with the supersonic transport ; whether to open a sea-level Panama canal ; whether or not to develop a nucl ear-powered merchant marine ; which new energy source or conversion method to push (shale oil, direct conversion, or coal liquefaction, for example) -have a profound impact upon tech nological change in the private as well as the public sector. Federal decisions to develop space and defense technology, for example, have accelerated technological 23 Digitized by Goog Ie
change in industries with important civilian impact, such as computers, integrated circuits, civil aviation, radar, and satellite communications. Similarly, the introduction of Medicare by the government as an organizational advance in medicine will have a profound impact on the development of new technology for medical-care delivery-for example, the use of computers for record-keeping and diagnosis, or the automation of medical laboratory procedures. The decision-making apparatus of the government has thus come to play a central role in supplementing-and sometimes replacing-the forces of the market as the de terminant of the rates and directions of technological change and application in the private and public sectors. This apparatus incll.ldes a large number of mission oriented governmental bodies, whose missions are the advancement or regulation (and sometimes both) of specific categories of technology-related enterprises or effects, and the use of public funds (channeled through grants, contracts, or tax benefits) to support research, development, procurement, and operations. Within this set of governmental and market processes, the initial assessment of the costs and benefits of alterna tive technological possibilities is ordinarily undertaken by, or at the behest of, those who seek to exploit one of the possibilities in question for their own purposes. Those purposes may be the enhancement of med�um-term return on investment and corporate stability and growth, in the case of private enterprise, or the maximization of benefits to particular constituencies, coupled with bu reaucratic survival and expansion vis-a-vis other organi zations or governments, in the case of public entities. To some extent the professional societies are influential in technological assessment-as they were, for example, in the d ev elopment of the boiler codes. Voluntary industry-wide cooperation on specifications, as in the 24 Digitized by Goog Ie
case of the American Society for Testing and Materials, represents another assessment prototype. Yet such pro fessional groups, however conscientious, often have unconscious commitments to the technology or tech nologies with which they are associated and tend, with few exceptions, to make little difference in the basic perspectives from which assessments are currently made. Even when the proponents of a technology (whether in the government or in the private sector) seek financial support from public revenues, their own assessments still provide the basic inputs into the political system. Those inputs may then be supplemented by the views of those organized groups that perceive themselves, or a set of values (such as conservation) to which they are passionately attached, to be prospectively benefited or seriously threatened by the technological change in question. Only the contending interests of those who already recognize their stake in the technology and are prepared to enter the public arena to defend their position find their way into the legislative and appro priations processes. In all but a jew special situations, no other assessment occurs in the initial stages of technological development, when alternative possibilities are being explored, or of technological application, when early per formance is being evaluated. Of course, even this kind of assessment, which values each technological development solely in terms of its likely impact upon a fairly narrow set of obj ectives and interests, takes place within a social and legal environ ment that structures the assessment process in important ways. Institutions like property and contract, supple mented by bodies of rules and incentives of many kinds (as expressed through principles of tort liability, tax law, patent law, copyright law, antitrust law, zoning law, and so forth) , and occasionally buttressed by principles of professional ethics (especially in the health field) , deter- 25 Digitized by GoogIe
mine the outer boundaries of what is permissible, and establish, within those boundaries, at l east some of the categories of costs and benefits that even the most narrowly self-interested assessment would have to take into account. Partly a� a result of government regulation, partly as a result of public criticism and the consequent fear of ever stricter controls, and partly as a result of a complex set of social trends affecting the fundamental attitudes and aspirations of corporate management, the cost benefit calculations made within the industrial "techno structure" have tended in recent years to give greater weight to the secondary and tertiary consequences of investment decisions and management policies. Rarely, however, has the social and legal context within which assess ments are made fundamentally altered the relatively narrow frame of reference for evaluation. With few exceptions, the central question asked of a technology is what it would do (or is doing) to the economic or institutional interests of those who · are deciding whether or how to exploit it. As a technology is applied widely enough to make its impact felt upon other groups, those groups are theoreti cally free to strike bargains with its sponsors in order to induce them, for a price, to abandon or alter their activities in directions more favorable to their interests. The many obvious difficulties of entering into such multiple agreements, however, ordinarily rule out this potential mode of adjustment. Only when the deleterious impact of a development upon remote groups or interests is sufficiently severe to generate sustain ed and organized opposition through legal, political, or diplomatic chan nels can that impact create any negative feedback (through litigation, regulatory legislation, treaty, or otherwise) to the decision-making processes responsible for the disputed development. Even then, the influence of such delayed feedback is significantly limited by the 26 Digitized by Goog Ie
combined power of all who have come to see their interests as dependent upon the status quo. The assessment and decisional systems thus far described comprise the bulk of the evaluative and direc tive processes molding the evolution of technology in our society. A more complete description would re quire mention of the · fact that, in a few exceptional areas, continuing assessments are undertaken by one or more agencies empowered to prevent the imple mentation of a technological proposal or to require a previously approved proposal to be abandoned . In one case-nuclear reactors-this Clearance authority · is re posed in the Atomic Energy Commission, the same agency that has the mission of advancing the underlying technology. In another case-new drugs-the clearance authority is lodged in the Food and Drug Administration and is not linked to any promotional activity. In both instances, the terms of reference for the assessment are quite narrowly circumscribed : new drug assessments are concerned solely with safety and therapeutic efficacy under described conditions of use. ; nuclear-reactor assess ments are concerned only with control of the hazards to human health and safety posed by radiation and ex plosions-that is, those features that most spectacularly distinguish nuclear reactors from conventional ways of generating electricity. A number of agencies, organizations, and individuals conduct ad hoc assessments of the effects of those tech nological developments that have already generated particularly acute concern, and others conduct similar studies of currently significant problem areas (threats to privacy, highway safety, air pollution, and so on) to which well-established or emerging technologies are believed to contribute. But no mechanism eixsts to trigger such studies in a systematic way at early stages in the process of development and diffusion; to explore means of deciding 27 Digitized by Goog Ie
whether a given set of events does indeed represent an "early stage" in a significant technological trend; to examine the terms of reference or the methodologies of such studies as are being undertaken; or to inject the results of such studies .rys tematically into the decision-making process itself. When Presidential Task Forces, private foundations, or groups like the President's Office of Science and Technology or the President's Science Advisory Committee become involved in efforts of this kind, the usual reason is that a specific area of concern has already reached near crisis proportions or has otherwise captured the imagina tion of particularly articulate individuals (Ralph Nader and Rachel Carson come immediately to mind) or of unusually influential groups. The result is often a report that duplicates other efforts, or overlooks im portant considerations, or comes too late to exert any significant influence on the underlying technology, or is without a recipient other than the public at large. 28 Digitized by Goog Ie
