Spectrum; 52; Science and Society: A Race Against Time

And Science and Society Arace Against Time recorded 131-67. The United States has thrust itself on to an express way to the future, at a time when no status is quo and changes implicit, we are hurtling into a new age that few of us can

predict and even fewer understand. The technology of tomorrow can make our efforts of today seem like childish experiments. Nor can we depend upon the decisions of yesterday to solve the problems to come. Both science and technology face an immense challenge to control these forces science and technology of set in motion. Mastering our own future is indeed a race against time. I'm David Prowett, Science Editor for National Education Television. We have with us on this program two men who can give us a glimpse of this future and hopefully help us to understand it. Both are scientists and leaders whose contributions to science and society are helping to guide us into our electronic age. Dr. Simon Ramo is vice chairman of the Board of Directors of TRW Incorporated, a major technological firm which he helped to found. An engineering graduate from the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Ramo rapidly gained world prominence as a pioneer in microwave research and as

a developer of the electron microscope. Before the age of 30, he'd accumulated 25 patents and been voted one of America's most outstanding young electrical engineers. Dr. Ramo also became one of the top experts in guided missiles and ultimately the chief scientist of the nation's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Program. Combining the role of scientist and industrialist, he's one of America's key advisors on science and technology. Dr. Lidu Bridge is president of the California Institute of Technology, one of the most advanced research and educational centers in the world. Caltech is not only responsible for the training of key scientists in our country but is directly involved in the exploration of space through the facilities of its jet propulsion laboratory. Dr. Lidu Bridge is himself a widely honored physicist but perhaps more importantly, he's repeatedly called upon to serve as trustee and advisor for government and private programs that broadly affect all aspects of our society. As a distinguished member of both the scientific and academic community, Dr. Lidu Bridge is

highly qualified to illuminate the problems of our world of tomorrow. Together, Dr. Lidu Bridge and Dr. Ramo represent the common ground of science and the ties and conflicts of the industrial and academic worlds required for leadership in the future. I've often thought about the automobile as an example of one of the technological developments that's had a great effect on our society and our social structure and as a common for a lot of troubles, traffic, smog, highways all over the place. You know, I'm sure that Mr. Carnot when he was developing the idea of the second law of thermodynamics in the last century couldn't possibly have foreseen that kind of scientific knowledge would result in an internal combustion engine and that this would result in a thing which we call the automobile. And what's happened is that the idea of an internal combustion engine in a mobile unit was so fascinating and so successful that people just bought so many of them and now they're all over the place. And it isn't that automobile is a failure

as a technological device. It's such a tremendous success that people have got so many of them that all the social problems result from the success of that technology and not from its failure. Well, isn't this rather common? You've got a very good example, of course, of new growing complexity of the interface of technology with society. But I have to say first that I couldn't help but notice how you arrange somehow in bringing up Mr. Carnot to eliminate any possibility of responsibility on his part, the pure scientist. And as one that's not so pure, that is I'm an industrial scientist, I'm an engineer and I think in terms more of the applications as at least my bread and butter and my area of responsibility, I've been happy to notice in some ways that the public is sufficiently confused as to what is a scientist or an engineer, pure and applied, that they will blame the scientists for some of these things and those of us who are engineers don't have to go alone. And people always call you a scientist instead of an engineer, don't they?

Well, when I'm with the industrialist, I'm called a scientist and I'm with a scientist, I'm called an engineer. But no everybody calls me an engineer for very obvious reasons. Well, maybe as we start this discussion, you as the academic man, as the president of Caltech, where you have to deal with definitions of what these professions are. Perhaps we ought to get clear on definitions. You want to try some, see how the Greece will use them throughout? What's an applied scientist? What's an engineer? It is a very confusing business because we talk about the space program as a great scientific achievement when it's mostly you engineers that have done it. So I think we ought to remember that a scientist is simply somebody who's searching for new knowledge. And if he's a successful scientist, he finds something about the laws in nature, about the way nature behaves, maybe in the physical sciences or the biological sciences. He's pretty likely to be the academic sort, who's just examining out of sheer curiosity to find out how the world behaves. But then somebody comes along and thinks that maybe some of that knowledge might be useful

for some problem he has in mind or some problems of interest the company he works for, or maybe just because he has a hunch that this thing might have useful application. And so you sort of call him an applied scientist. He takes an knowledge of science that's already in existence and carries it on and develops maybe a useful little gadget. Now at the moment, as in the case of the automobile and many other situations that we see, we have some critical problems in the workings, the organization of society, and they're probably, I guess we'll get to some examples perhaps far more consequential than the automobile. We noticed that there isn't a professional group that is concerned with this very matter of interface between science and society. Yes, that's exactly right. If there were perhaps, so they should be sitting here instead of us. Of course the social scientists and there are many kinds of those are examining the problems of society, but they're very few of them that are examining the technological problems

which lead into the problems of society. I think we need a new kind of a profession maybe a social engineer who really makes it a point to examine the technological impact of new industrial and other developments on the society in which it is used. We can look at nuclear power and observe that we have this tremendous capability to release amounts of energy sufficient in a few seconds to destroy society long before we have social advances sufficient to preclude it, or we now, in fact, some of the scientists at Caltech have done as much as anyone or perhaps more than almost any other group to break the genetic code. We're about to enter a new period of advances in biology at the same time that we have a population explosion concern and a birth control problem. We have a problem of automation. We can fix it so that we can produce automatically the

material requirements of the world. But are we herlling that as a great achievement? Well, we're afraid of the dislocations. There are two problems here. One is understanding what the dislocations are, where they stem from and how they affect individuals and groups and communities and nations, and the other is to do something about it. Now, if you had the best social scientists in the world that are studying these problems of the impact of technology, in order to get their ideas and their recommendations, their cures adopted, you have to go to politician in the end, don't you? You have to go to local government, state government, there are the national government, because usually these things involve doing something on more than just a very small scale. Maybe passing a law, maybe coordinating a whole lot of things around the country that I have to do, let's say the smog problem, for example, you get into a national problem where implement any ideas that your social engineers, if you had them, could develop.

You still have to depend on the normal processes of government for the most part to cure these problems. Well, to me, government, politicians. These are words that really mean the voting public, the people of the United States. And what we're saying really, I believe, aren't we as this, that the rate of technological advance in the last century, the last several decades, has far outstripped the social organization advance. And this, of course, means that we the people haven't yet come to understand the importance of what's happening, that is the impact of science and technology on our society. So we don't set up arrangements. It's shown by the lack of a professional class, but that isn't the starting point. That isn't the most fundamental thing. There would be a professional group. There would be a

larger fraction of our brain power going into understanding these interface problems if we were clear to the mass of the people. This brings out a fact, which is quite important. I mentioned that Carnot, working in the last century, couldn't have foreseen the automobile, which was one result of his work. Pretty good joke, I knew if you looked at his diaries and found it like that, but I must check that out. He probably didn't predict the smog anyway. Was he an engineer or a scientist? Carnot was certainly a scientist. However, things are happening faster now. Scientific ideas get into practical application faster. And take this problem with genetics, already the geneticists who have been instrumental in cracking the genetic code, knowing the structure of the gene, knowing the way in which the molecules are put together to determine the way in which a cell shall grow and divide and eventually develop into a human being, let us say. Once they begin to see the mechanism for that, already they can see that this can be changed. That if you understand this structure of the gene, you can change it. And if you change

the structure of the gene, you'll change the nature of the creature that develops. So already the scientists are beginning to predict that here will be great social changes. Now they don't how to do it yet. The technology hasn't been invented or even thought up. But already the scientists are beginning to look ahead and say, this is something we better begin thinking about. What are we going to do about this knowledge of genes? This is the thing that couldn't happen a century ago, I think. If the jam up in the use of the newly discovered principles in genetics, 2030, 50 years today, as badly handled as the traffic problem appears to be, as most of our city problems, as water pollution, as transportation even between cities, as getting to the airport in this air travel age, then we're going to have a terrible mess on our hands and control of the nature of people. Now, that's a way of destroying society. There's still another way. And that

is at least my definition, it would be a destruction of society as we know it. And that would be to go to a sort of a robot civilization as we marry the computer. And as we find that everything that we do in life can, by virtue of the mass handling of information and the control of operations automatically, give us a semi-automatic society, so that in a sense, everyone and everything is in the right place of the right time, all according to a carefully controlled plan. And we can allow this gradually to happen to ourselves, you see, if we don't understand society. Now, there are choices, it doesn't have to go that way. No, and besides, it seems to me you're looking much further in the future than most of us are able to see. And even the thing about genetics I was mentioning, that is maybe looking in the century ahead. The trouble is that people think that right today, we have some very

urgent problems we must solve. And it's very important to understand the nature of them. I hear people say, science is going to ruin us, this technology is going to grind us into this robot world that you're talking about. Have we no control over our destiny of science going to ruin our lives? This seems to me a badly misunderstood kind of a philosophy and put of you. Science never hurt anybody because it's just knowledge. People ruin themselves but the way they use their tools. When a man shoots himself with a revolver, is this the father revolver? Is it because this man doesn't have any sense? It seems to me that society is likely to be shooting itself with the technological devices it has which are intended for very beneficial purposes and have proved to be very beneficial and very useful and very desirable. But somehow we turn around and out of ignorance, shoot ourselves with them. If we can learn to how to use these things and their proper perspective and for their proper purpose,

then these imminent problems would be much easier. Well, let's see if we're somewhat prejudiced since we are so close to the scientific engineering technological field even though we obviously each of us have considerable exposure to the other side also. But one of the things I'd say implicit in what we're saying here is that science and technology are tools for society to use. Surely to understand the universe better, to understand what the laws of nature are. Surely to provide to man ways in which he can communicate, move about, produce what he needs for his material comfort and to offer these ways to the society. Surely these are benefits and there's nothing in the, you might say, the charter that an engineer or a scientist sets up for himself that suggests that he is responsible for ensuring that the tools are properly used. In fact, part of

the difficulty is that there are going to be differences of opinion as to what proper you see us. Now, I think we also said that this problem is so big, however, that it is everyone's problem. It's the scientist's problem as a citizen, not as a professional, he can contribute to it. It's a solution as a professional. He should be an articulate citizen and I'm making these remarks to lead up to something that I think would be very useful for us to discuss. The mechanism of the public understanding and making the right decision, these days includes a considerable amount of influence by the government. Now, if everything could be done clearly by the government as it exists today or by free enterprise, by free citizens, I suppose our problems would be solved. The government, for example, clearly is the one that take technology and use it for national defense. There's

no question about that and at least if we can argue about the efficiency, we don't argue about the concept, the need and the scheme of organization. Similarly, private industry can manufacture, can develop the end results if the public wants it, if there's a market. And do this in such a way that if it is a sound product, it means it's economical, it means there is a profit, there is a return, there's a benefit and people are willing to pay for it. Now, there are a lot of things right in between. Private industry, for example, really can't solve the small problem because it's not clear who and how the customer is to be and to provide the return. There are numerous other such examples. We haven't got a system for this and we look to government for leadership. Now, how many congressmen, how many senators have engineering or technical back there? Well, there is part of the problem. How do you get across some of the nature of a technology, its limitations and its possibilities

for good or evil to enough people so that they can elect congressmen who understand this or vote for congressmen who understand that or help their congressmen to understand it and make it clear to their congressmen in what ways, if any, the government can or must move into this picture. It's a problem of education, I suppose, in our broad sense. We can't blame the voter. We can't say the voter, why don't you elect an engineer occasionally or more often there are a few scientists and engineers in public office? Here and there. There have been, I guess, since George Washington's time. We claim him as an engineer. We claim Benjamin Franklin as a scientist. All right. Well, he was a little of everything. He was the technical sociologist, the political, econo-technical sociologist that we were talking about. But it won't do to have just one every hundred years. There are some in government. There are now some at quite high levels in government. And of course, there

are particularly at high levels in the direction of government projects that are technical. And I don't think this is quite counts. We're talking about the interface area. But the public you see can't be blamed because it doesn't have someone to vote for who has this background. People who are trained in physical science and engineering very rarely seek to influence public affairs by way of that kind of leadership. They regard themselves as specialists. They're upset to be called narrow, but the way in which their interests run are from the standpoint of this discussion at overly narrow. There's much more that can be done. The solutions to the problems that science and technology brings and the solutions to many other problems that science and technology did not bring such as overpopulation. Well, science is in part responsible because there are fewer deaths. Yes, where you relieve suffering and you've postponed death and this now turns out to be a bad thing, we think. We forget the enormous benefits that have come along with these unfortunate things which are largely

unforeseeable. I think everybody grants the benefits to mankind of scientific discovery and of the application through engineering development. Not everybody does. Some people are being to doubt this. Well, I think it's important to make it clear relative. What's the alternative? You can't number one, you can't go back. Ask anybody to go back a hundred years and see how you would like that. And as you indicated, you can't turn off the gasoline supply. A lot of scientists have come to a halt and no one wants that. Now, the kinds of things that science and technology makes possible that we are not now using would of course afford such a superior civilization that if you imagine for a moment, and I'm speaking now of the incentives there there, if you imagine for a moment a society, a more intelligent life somewhere out in the universe, on some other planet, in which they have learned how to so organize their society, to use science technology to the fullest for the benefit of mankind or whatever they call their kind up there. It's very, very tempting to move more

of our total amount of creative talent and effort to that. But you see, science and technology makes it possible to put more time on it. When we can produce the things we need automatically, right? But we don't have to spend so much time and effort in that kind of more mundane producing in the shuffling of papers, in the running of the production operation and the assurance that the raw material will be at the right place, then a larger fraction of our citizenry can work on the social problem. When we tie all the logistics of the world together through computers, so that indeed everything needed to produce is at the right place at the right time. Then it means we undoubtedly would have evolved a common language because the computer wants information put down rationally as an economical design. It would be a fortress type of language. That's right. In other words, as we all depend on the computer for the control and handling of information to produce for the world,

we are in effect sharing our information with the computer and the computer presses us to have a common language. As we have communication satellites, we can be closer in thinking all over the world. Some people are terrified with this picture. I think there are some reasons that the results of it may be terrifying. On the other hand, there are many enormous benefits to world peace, to world understanding, and to free men from drudgery and labors. You know, we used to think it was a great thing to have machines that would free men from labor. Now we think it's a terrible thing. Automation, as we now call it, free men from labor to work so long hours. But all of these things can be great benefits. If we can find ways in which to accommodate them into our solar system. Well, of course, there's a great fear of man being replaced by the machine. It's an unjustified fear, except in a short term. That is to the individual man who is being replaced. It, of course, is a justified fear. But I'm sure a correct analysis, a correct

description of what is happening is that man and machine in partnership will be afforded the opportunity to rise to a higher level of civilization and to produce what we need to move things and people about as required with the greatest ease to have a control of a greater amount of energy. In the end, does raise man to a higher level in the same sense that when freed of the need for using man's muscles for the heaviest type of work, the possibly that exists for man to rise to the level of controlling the machines that push the dirt around. Right. So we just have to understand our machines better, understand ourselves a little bit better. Well, we have to understand that this is a tool and that the opportunity is there. That's right. It's only necessary to be the right balance. And I guess what I'm really saying is that things have to get worse before they can get better in one sense. And you can count on things getting worse. When they

get worse, there'll be more people that are willing to take your chance to work on a problem as long as there's no problem. I, you don't worry about it. Then, but the time it is a problem, then it's probably pretty, maybe a pretty bad one. Well, the problem of is here now, I would guess that inverting this analogy or this imagined trip out to visit other planets for the moment, I suppose some intelligent life comes by to visit us. What would they look at? Well, I think they would be disappointed in the way they'd say it was a nice place to visit. We wouldn't want to live there because if they could come here now, they must be advanced at least technologically because we don't really know how to take people out to plan a south side of this solar system. And they've learned how to do that. So in some ways, at least they're ahead of us and presumably they haven't destroyed their society. So they come here and what would they look at?

That's the most important thing to observe about us. Well, I submit it isn't a temperature and pressure and what kind of mounds and valleys that we have on the surface of the earth. It is to look at the nature of our life here, but I would guess that maybe the most important question they would ask. Even ahead of how well do we understand the laws of the universe? How well are we applying them? I say this because learning how to relate science and technology to society, it appears to be a more difficult intellectual discipline, represents a higher order of intelligent life than even than the discovery of more laws of science. So they'd look around and say, well, this is what these earth people have learned about the universe. And this is how they're using it. How they're using it and they've got a long ways to go. Well, we could excuse ourselves by saying after all we've been working in science for two, three hundred years, but we've only been really

faced with social problems for fifty years or less. So give us another hundred years and maybe we'll probably truly learn some of these things. You mean social problems that are greatly influenced by my technology? Oh, we've had social problems since the world began. I suppose the man who was the first one killed in war by an arrow, from a low and arrow, the first use of that terrible new weapon system. That's right. Probably thought the world is getting worse. Yes, technology has a tremendous impact. It's probably what he was saying himself as he hit the ground. But in the large, it's probably true that we have been in for some time the science age of mankind here on earth. We are trying to break into the social age. And we're very inexperienced at both, that both of them are quite young in terms of human experience. But it's getting serious now. It might be. It might be that these visitors, these visitors might also put down on our notes that while we are not very advanced there, just entering the social

age, that maybe they ought to make a return trip fairly soon because there may be some interesting changes here on earth. We're about ready to change it. Let them survive to make the return trip. Well, I have big confidence in the next generation. Our journey into the future is going to be a bumpy one. The changes we face will be monstrous, even to this generation who has lived on the edges of outer space. The dangers of miscalculation and misjudgment are a constant peril for our scientists and leaders, and we, as citizens, can't afford to hold on to the myths and misunderstandings that have kept science and society two separate topics. The blending of science and society must be achieved to reach the highest aims of our civilization. The technology will exist for us to extend our minds and manpower to the limits of our universe, and will continue to grow whether we like it or not. But the race against time can be one, if we have the courage and the foresight to run it.

The race against time can be one, if we have the courage and the foresight to run it. Thank you very much.