Challenges to Democracy; 2; Technology and Democratic Institutions, Part II

the posies northern americans consider how democratic men can the problems affecting the survival of freedom with justice air act and talk to voters who are part of the tenth anniversary publication of the center of the fund for the republic an organization dedicated to the examination of democracy in the contemporary world the studies the center of the front of the republic have ranged widely over all institutions of modern society the church to corporations labor unions the military and government seeking to know the conditions of freedom the grounds of its growth the threats to its survival and the changing forms of freedom itself last week we heard talks baidu is one third below roper and heightened recover

now we will hear gerard peele are some brown and solemnly know it's as we bring you part two of the opening session technology and democratic institutions giorgio is president and publisher of scientific american president of the salt institute for biological studies a trustee of the american museum of natural history and director of the american civil liberties union he serves on the executive committee of the health research council of the city of new york and is a fellow of the american association for the advancement of science is the author of science in the cause of man now gerard theater only a generation ago abortion podium that have brought us together here this morning from technology and democratic institution would have stood for a roundabout way of saying progress but in the political climate that evoke

the problem with that again and admit that there're that heading of change and that would change in the context of a delay way of saying revolution revolution not in the grand old sense of american revolution but revolution at that a theme from the uncomfortable baggage of its faith in the tom burrell the animation of the worker diagnosed a century ago by call mock had given ryan are timed to the middle path malaise called an army that if any nation from the south as well as from for five and afterward appears to be the terminus of the american dream after one from which an abu dhabi transcription of the voice of the people who get no satisfaction that guy scraping for viva la land have become ghetto of morton broaden and the soviet the university of chicago have

shown transformed by a menacing new pattern of metropolitan segregation the destructive light of ugliness that making growth of e of rutgers university spreads out upon the landscape and the creeping crawling hideousness of the suburbs with an educational system that does not educate and african american immigration but that's not communicate in a word the rabbit hutch and our citizenry have become incapable of the discussion by which political issues are the pennant the margin by which we have elected a new national administration recently met at the breadth of political discourse what could come of that an election in the time when immigration impotent in the creation of poetry and rap with the part of the vision by fibre nation so it isn't that america and the

looking backward under the nineteen thirties which is what they mean by let's get america growing again don't look backward that about feeling like a penalty of the nineteen twenties and many more of the va been looking backward at eighteen fifty and after that big celebration of the war between the states that on january third debate here overlook the centenary of the emancipation proclamation the center for the study of democratic institutions asked us to look back to seventeenth seventy flick and to answer that question and democratic institutions framed in the landscape of a rural republic secure liberty equality and the pursuit of happiness and a modern industrial for fighting that a lot of the individual whose perfection with to be the goal of office it it faded now to be the wealth that creature of a technology

technological other but haven't doubt him with power to no purpose with techniques for programming and no good for planning with means that compromise all in for a first approximation of an answer i would suggest we take a longer perspective than it provided by the brief parochial history of our republic recent discoveries by physical anthropologist in fact make it possible to place the modern condition of man and a perspective of two million years or even more of the economical status symbol but the thing which is the genus homo from other primates it the making of tools that is technology making it a function of the cerebral cortex that involves integration

of the memory i'm motivated him it integrated purposeful activity now the first primate and youth project the necessary feedback that it glows it not much red resemble homosapien the discovery of a few bones of it and an association with the stone tools that they may have reversed the traditional notion that man made tools it appears rock the tools made man at the very late filmmaking must be reckoned as the major selective pressure in the evolutionary process that generated the great rabble but not of the human cerebral the record as the skulls and hand bones is getting an incomplete but the story can be read in the enduring fossils of behavior the stone tools that are counted among the most numerous couple of look like the

thing they feel show but early in the history of our human evolution became cultural as well as biological the techniques of to making were consciously selected improve been enlarged upon and transmitted by teaching and learning from generation to generation from the earliest time the increasing diversity of stone tools of course imply the corresponding elaboration of technology employing other outlets and during material the mastery of new environment commanded thereby that goes no possibility of a new wave of light when i cover politics at new values and goals to emerge in command as long as forty thousand years ago it appears the diverse technologies of hunting and food gathering animal enabled homo sapiens and i can sell that home in

every environment on earth from the arctic shores of the continent to remote islands in the pacific ocean but the hunting and food gathering way of life did not about the full capacity of man imperceptibly at the hunter them food gatherers came into possession of more intimate understanding of their environment they began to turn into her dominion cultivated that could be no doubt about the progressive nature of this development rather required square miles of open country with a point and a family a few acres that lands of life the thing the farmer the struggle for daily survival of the hunting and food gathering culture according a gateway to the economy of scarcity an agricultural civilization at some time within the last ten thousand years in asia minor rights independently about the same time in

china and an anti independence only three thousand years ago and pre columbian america that was yesterday and its economy ago the increase the population always overtook increase in production that were the cause over long periods of time compared to the span of human life they get slow and halting progress of technology afforded only affect the ratio of tools and techniques the land and labor production increase their ford principally at population increase maintaining at best an equilibrium with want the economy in the kind of economic was enforced by coalition by coalition the agricultural civilization that emerged and following the neolithic about revolution and

proceeded to gather and from the labor of four or five families on the land with a bluff efficient to feed one family in the city or the ancient city joe the famous ensure social divide the temple and the garrison within the walls of the city and outside the creases in the foil of the hubble of the flight the history of the next five thousand years of little to say about the arrangement for that madden and history it's primarily a proof that an account written by the beneficiaries of the the arrangement the books have left the ferry about the eighty percent of the population which was at all time excluded from history but securely rooted an inequitable distribution of yesterday agricultural show that i connected with that even into modern times indeed

two thirds of mankind to live with honor to make a turn and are only now awakening to the diamond demonstrated that but another way of life as possible or as we there were a lot of contemporary everything to know then continued to divide the new rules around fifteen hundred in europe that came a quickening in this process which palestine bedouin have called the life process of mankind the quickening as you explain the rate of discovery in invention accelerate because the accumulating stock of technology widens the scope of human activity and so the opportunity and occasion for new discovery and invention by sixteen hundred the exponential curve of invention with rising perceptibly from the historical baseline and was entering on this with thinning deflection that with the carried aloft on the vertical axis where that coated now

running today at birth in europe and done elsewhere history took that same abrupt turn with the birth gathered in by the economic institutions that yesterday found a new function of wealth of the nation became capital and eighteen to humphry davy speaking in admiration of the new arrangements with able to play on the audio division of property end of labor the difference of rankin condition among mankind ah the thought of the power in for the life like it's morning causes and even its very soul with the beginning of the third great revolution in technology my parable of men to make a bring that back to contemplate contemporary american civilization and the question the issue here for is an american of course but the industrial revolution had reached its breath and if the culmination

all well known standard of living there are the usual index of all revolutionary leadership at its true americans consume three times as much in the way of goods and services per capita at their fellow inhabitants of industrial civilization and more than twenty times as much if the comparison to be made at all as the denizens of contemporary agricultural innovation such a good belly suggest however that people changed that industrial technology is working in the condition of men increasing or well being of american requires less from them by way of work each year they work a few hours of the day two days of the year and julia the bell i'd love to the network that few of their fellow man would recognize at work the centers of nineteen fifty shows that less than half of the american labor force is that an employee and producers

of good but strangely it's the agriculture of industrial civilization here in america the most clearly exposes the nature of the change the technology have brought and portland and manned way of life and contract with agricultural civilization in underdeveloped countries in the world today where eighty percent of the people continue to be bountiful less than ten percent of the american labor force works on the farm working your way a good meteor american farmers produce still bigger you probably enough to feed twelve thousand calories each american each day bad enough to be a billion people and adequate daily ration the american economy upgrades these calories via feeding the animals that have a high fat and protein content for the twenty five hundred to three thousand

calories ultimately consumed by the system and also await a good deal of the food and a good a good deal of that away and phillip have a folk life to keep compulsively in storage in american agricultural thug life we've also a very different kind of the glow from that which would have gathered by the lavish in mesopotamia six thousand years ago at the crew ran are either thing difficult for supply it may be taken as symbolic of the surpluses generated elsewhere and everywhere and our industrial theft from a surplus is our economy and do a capital and no visible cost the current consumption maintains about military establishment and still accumulate unsold inventory that periodically throttle if channels of distribution it's some fifteen percent of our population filled with them on their deprivation his

hand fully offset by the fifteen percent that bluff a chronically and huge industrial capacity the technological step but it the opposite of the scarcity economics at the technological field but its abundant the advent of abundance they've not yet comprehended that either the fear or the practice our economy in truth we must confess the opposite are abundant says dodd to minimize them can feel as well as one that i'm burned and shot down we regularly pretend we can go on managing the production and distribution of abundance through agencies created for the management of yesterday yet we're already in transition from the economy and yesterday the economy of abundant but the verdict three that we have failed to convert them to the historic achievement we have watched and

corrupted the failure to comprehend the failure of a family myth that the critics of our mores and about technology or blame the machine or all will for mismanagement of it more important that compound failure as i've heard a public discussion on what ought to be the central issue that what time and have reduced the politics the trivia internet for example but apple and that you'll get no satisfaction the convergence on mediocrity end of english ability that characterizes so many of the common article the comet take white bread or light beer or guaranteed odorless and college rotc of them anted up a few correspondingly case with product that looks so much like the universal process of entropy that it has taken without question to be a pain of technology

the real truth the technology free the top design and production from technical limitation by doing so kenneth other considerations to hold sway and it is these other considerations and i shall show you that i think the common denominator of mediocrity you know i don't regret it the product not of technology but of the new strategy of imperfect competition or i got a light in kind of competition with your three competitors will get the finances from their market surveys in public opinion polls they look over one another's shoulders in computing the max of maximization of their itself and so inevitably they can to make their product more and more alike i can be argued that they make their products its way to take advantage of the economics have not production but what they save on production they squander on selling oil and it

again terry the wreck of the solution that would have some content with perfect information that theory shows huge competitor adopted the same strategy the money and the social cost of that way of managing abundance of left it demonstrated in the american automobile here is above all a social and not a technological artifact and one that is acutely symbolic of the schizophrenia which i'm getting your attention logical consideration to function efficiently and you like they can ever thought they might rub it take one or more design for the automobile none of the american automobile that any one of the the virtue that abundance about it for than the form of wait wait the material of faith and fuel than and the principal categories and they're also receive a relentless convergence on the same design the pursuit of identical oscillations

in design change and the packaging they're supposed to make all the difference in the world and they supposedly durable good wanted more the automobile discredit american technology according to the standard practice about durable goods industry overcame of perpetuating perpetuating scarcity in the face of a london the automobile is the time for one thousand hours of service to be traded in at forty thousand miles or less now to plain though that have to do with a magnet for prosperity with the creation of jobs with the struggle to maintain profit margins and other vital object it but the compulsion to dictate these objectives arrive from the economics of yesterday they are not the continent's of technology in place of abundance rather by technology we get apple and turning out a somewhat

larger issue that make our when wilson the lego when wolff author of the pan american building responded to the question who is responsible for ugliness a question worth but the myth of orphaned and others add something hopefully called a press conference and aesthetic responsibility in new york city early last year mccarthy's replying with the retina called i quote the architects came up with the scheme which developed some one million five hundred thousand feet on a plot of a hundred and fifty thousand feet with a valuation of twenty million that most of open ended it just wouldn't work it clearly was right what the architects had to come up with with this game that developed a million four hundred thousand feet and evaluation i'm told of seventy five million dollars on that same one hundred fifty thousand square foot plant built in with able to show for them on but as a

result of the sympathetic collaboration of the builder and the architect of the pan am building is not so ugly that might've been but i think then the building and the resultant of a multibillion dollar question involving involving a host of economic considerations and thun aesthetic consideration the dissolution of which technology land a high degree of flexibility and freedom where one element lacking anyway in that equation with the public interest but you can look and dang old marvin kalb on park avenue from the pan am building for evidence that the public interest it represented by any institutional advocate in the building boom that holds our city in its thrall the countervailing our economists rely the abundance of choices place that our disposal by technology are harshly narrowed to this illusion dictated by scarcity economic

technologically speaking we could build our city the way we like it economically speaking that is financially benefit of yesterday it gets built the way no one likes the patrol fleet of the thurber if they both made possible by our rubber tire transportation industry and that's why the joystick spending power of modern technology the whole scheme is that unfair that can be at work for the better benefit of the better off at the expense of the worst or reaching out in all direction from every central city and our country there are the radio gradient about sending income for several cities are becoming racially segregated from the nearest the birds are blighted by the triumph of highway engineering that bring traffic in at the family and loyalty more distant felber and now when we looked at the representation of public interest

in the economics of suburbanization we make a surprising discovery the public is represented there with the biggest expenditures in the public sector or apartments and education literally out like the highway running at the rate of ten billion dollars a year not far in fact behind our investment in education an economic truth about innovation and much like a lot of the education that way the current expenditures per child for taking unlike it down from nineteen thirty nine in real dollars but the investment in building new schools in the suburbs it up and other words the american public had been heavily engaged in financing that suburban transformation of its way of life and the transformation which by any reckoning and the cheaper we thought and therefore the larger numbers that people at that for the benefit of the better off and those carry substantial public expenditures have generated know countervailing force in favor of what would seem to be the interest of a larger numbers

and it out of the public eye the whole on the contrary the taxpayers would seem to have been engaged in financing their own production if anything getting into play of countervailing forces have a scheme for the rational management of technological for five a bit of time our citizenry generated more of them anita ventilation about political life is becoming increasingly urgent for another reason not often mentioned in public because of the discussion and such dangerous and trackless territory that may take you get a little way into the thick of the dark truth is that our system is ailing parent even find unanimity about the diagnosis economists agree that the economy is suffering from a widening gap between its capacity to produce abundance and its ability to generate effective demand in the marketplace they ominously thirty increase in unemployment

no one should be surprised by this state of affairs the technological era that employs fewer and fewer productive workers it obviously caught trying to and fuel consumers with appeared to think out to buy the goods that make no could be noted otherwise it a function of technology these men played a fundamental part of why good product it is up to the economic system to make the new arrangement is necessary to realize the bounty of technology in fact our economic system had managed to do so with a reasonable success until recently it's excessive been a remarkable and you're the fact that the latest revolution technology is subverting the underlying premise of yesterday since nineteen hundred the portion of the labor force engaged and productive function of decline from seventy five percent to forty five percent and rather than court in bombing and an unskilled labor at the outset the declines were offset principally

another line the production in expanding manufacturing sector and its need for skilled labor now they demand have leveled and have begun to shrink in another generation factory workers in this country will be if there's a farmer in our economy had created a whole new category that employment white collar jobs and trade and distribution and finance and in the fifth i've already remarked on the waste involved in these activities unless you remark that they serve the vital economic function of qualifying consumers with paycheck and so supplying effective demand for their goods produced by the declining number of productive workers the record shows how about but the system could not absorb the impact of technology without external affairs between it under the nineteen twenty nine the percentage of gross national product that cycled through the public sector or that is through the payroll the federal state and local governments and grief from three to

ten percent again went out on the front and the jobs that they hope to supply effective demand a massive income transfer from high income taxpayers the low income public job load has greatly expanded the number of consumers qualified with that you think now and then david should be added fifty percent of the public jobs were in state and local governments and replace him principally by the rising demand for the welfare and resource that a fifth of the government in the nineteen thirties when the mounting abundance of technology that confront us with a paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty national party took explicit not notice of economic stimulus generated by public expenditure overnight with popular approval the public sector were doubled its claim on the gross national product writing from ten to twenty percent range of state and local the federal budget also at that time reversed itself and the federal government began spending fifty percent of the public today more than twenty five percent of the gross national product and they are in the public sector

but now they are the different fully ten of the twenty five percent goes to the maintenance and supply of the military establishment the objective can no longer be regarded as ridicule youth job by go there and they must come to the federal exchange at the primary institutional question of our politics and public policy the public interest and not a w h very have said be left to find its way through the intricacies and the web of private interests one answer to the question what does that with the family and the technology is concerned not alone with a mane but also with the end of like the tool making propensity of men from his beginning of expanded the possibility of really get exciting as well as implementing its aspiration it is only an image of industrial society but we can speak of equality without the silent discount of eight out of ten of our brother it by to making a manner that may have freed

themselves from bondage that oil into the thorough and to one another one of the aspirations that now become feasible therefore it's self government with the open acknowledgment that out to making it brought a revolutionary change and man's relationship to nature we can proceed to the necessary revisions and our relationships with one another and i you have just heard george peele talking about technology and democratic institutions part of the opening session of the fund for the republic on location on challenges to democracy in the next decade as recorded by riverside radio w r v e r in new york city gerson is professor of geochemistry at the california institute of technology is chairman of the national academy of sciences committee and oceanography a member of the academy space science board and also editor at large on the saturday review now dr morrison brown

how have thank you very much we are indeed going through an enormous revolution today and ii share much of the concern that has been expressed by mr mumford and peele but as i listen to their statements this morning i couldn't help but reflect that this is not the first revolution the man has gone through a truly momentous consequence there been others for example about seven thousand years ago a tremendous technological invention appeared on labor the same for a million or two years before that time men lived pretty much as the other animals around that then that's invention appeared known

as agriculture which completely transformed human will herbalife and i couldn't cope with wonder whether suppose that during that period and we had a meeting like this and mr mumford and must repeal were discussing this transition i can't get up on tuesday but they might have said something like this no longer as men freeing to rome although i'm sticking with houdini is free to hunt and fish and to enjoy the natural beauties of forest and grassland now he is chained to a small plot of land which they must cover that he uses positions during drawn to being in the right we're seeing a variety of tunes he has no confined to a

stereo or two and an occasional piece of meat tasteless empty when compared with our traditional lizards and snakes it is crowded in the countryside a thousand and now occupy language was formerly occupied by only one in la natural horror has appeared the city in which people live under even more crowded conditions thank you contributing anything security analyst used to be an individual and what is happening to our democratic institutions the tribal councils in which each individual could make his voice be heard at all but disappeared we are governed by a system of technology

and the technologies themselves don't know that they are governing us let us return to the human values of our forefathers no they might've said that but in actual fact they could not accept that for those root major overwhelming major difference it seems to me between the transition we're going through today and the transition which men went through seven thousand years ago that's major difference i believe is one of great to date our society is changing with extraordinary rapidity seven thousand years ago the agricultural revolution went along at a snail's pace seven thousand years ago a man with liver very much has had his

mother father grandfather's for them and he would know i can't believe that his children would live pretty much today most of you are probably familiar with these sequence which runs as follows my grandmother would ride in a horse drawn carriage but was afraid to ride in an automobile my mother would play but i'm afraid they're riding a giant image out but of greater it more fantastic rate of change which is having a profound impact upon our democratic institutions and the natures

of those institutions were we're willing to tolerate a rapid rate of technological change but brazil raised and we are not willing to bring about social changes and political changes which will enable these technological changes to be incorporated league nature of the revolution we are going through today as one of the mobilization of science and technology the mobilization for purposes of research and that's given rise to adelaide the two major long range dangers which have been touched upon but what i would like to read more at technology plays the dame tombstone

persuasion and a portion of unprecedented power and the power of these tools it is increasing in other words as aldous huxley pointed out a number of years ago the the revolt would be stick with the stone and the mascot is no longer possible and the nations where these tools of persuasion and portions are available and utilize toward totalitarianism is a one way street in the absence of influences from the outside the second danger it seems to neighboring as a critical period in is that people place too much crops in maine

ability of technology to protect them to come to their rescue there's almost an implicit promise that we don't have to worry about the future because in some way our science and technology will advance to the point where it will meet man's new needs many people intuitively believe there's actually arms right where we find ourselves locked in a vicious circle with the soviet union for action leads to reaction which leads to new actions in a compound of the size and the effectiveness of weapons systems we hear this in our attitudes toward the population problem to work at work over river where people really don't worry about about the dangers that are creative uncontrolled reading they say

well at some point in time science and technology will always come to our rescue it will produce enough they get to the point where we run out of space than we'll be able to shoot as the moon and of the planets and we can make new lives there that is extremely dangerous two dangers which i've mentioned i have a very strong feeling as which i share with mr mumford that we are indeed had that aura very difficult and perilous times and i can only close by gm is remembered of my story but it returned to the human values of our forefathers as you have heard our some brown member of the panel at the tenth anniversary convocation

of the fund for the republic also on the panel solemn limits attorney at law a member of a prominent rochester law firm is presently vice chairman of the citizens committee for international involvement form to further the progress of the government's international aid program among other boards and witches serves the american association for the united nations the university of rochester and the eastman school of music in nineteen fifty one is true and which was the founder of the television discussion programme the court of public opinion now called opinion which for several years received national honor medal awards from american freedom foundation mosul is to channel ladies and gentlemen as i said you're listening to the report found papers of mismatches mumford and peele on the gun toting observations of homework over and doctor brown or painting or other depressing picture of the world of today and tomorrow i could not help it words of a distinguished american

philosopher mr leslie towns that amount mostly with bob hope last year at georgetown university and mr tauzin are degrading and was asked to say a few words to the students who are about to go out to the world and the bubble burst in the kitchen and said the petition gunman ivan out there my own advice to you is don't go and then make a few fairly obvious comments about the paper's report today i don't apologize for the obviousness of the way i've always taken comfort assertion that we are and they need education and the obvious or rather a good deal more than was sedation of the obscure i'm not going to get into a college distinguished experts who rely on very impressive extrapolation was to prove things are going to be every bit as bad as

they haven't figured out that in due course machines are going to change everything and that the environment phrase we don't have a world filled with the thundering herd of pottering feet well for myself i just tend to take a good deal more seriously than they do the time tested admonition of henry reston never extrapolate the curve even on a woman mr kostas whole problem is not dissimilar from alabama recovers i understand that i start by accepting the fact that technology in and of itself is a more neutral knew it would not that it's what you do that makes the difference to be calm clearly obvious model bill can transport you repeat you soak an american atomic energy compass on the poor give us a limited energy to achieve and

women of horizons television can bring us leonard bernstein analyst press in other words and to call an unfortunate phrase or question is whether or not we're going to have the know why they go along with the know how speaking for myself i simply refused to be depressed by the frightening impact of technology on our democracy precisely because i believe in democracy and in the effort to see discussions such as this one helping us to understand the problem and so we'll be doing about it i refuse to believe that we're going to use the technology to destroy our democratic institutions you have to learn how to make a number of regulatory the real challenge as i see of modern technology today is not whether the user but how he used most effectively in order to accomplish what we want jordan peele papers to recognize that which you know

chances and ways of communication is really an important people don't want to communicate to learn how to make life and freedom are meaningful and richer is and i'm a great deal of people prefer to live in slave to have perfected new ways to extend life isn't really have tremendous significance if we spent so much more of our sources in trying to find ways to kill more people more quickly what i'm getting at is a rather simple fact that the way we handle the challenge of this new technology what we do at the priorities we establish whether we are able to put first at first place will have a great deal to do with whether or not our institutions and our technology can exist side by side perhaps most appeal of cigarette advertising did nothing us ports it does serve to remind us that in technology as well as cigarettes it's what's up front that counts as i look back taking the historical you as has been suggested for the long last of history of what

technology has made the film which seems to me to be a proper and which has been in my judgment glossed over much too much so far today is the fact that technology has on balance meant benefit from bangkok that it has meant improvement in our social condition alleviation of human and social needs and the progress of those things which we consider precious and they said i think we ought to say that clearly to one another and ll the polling makes itself i think even today if you put side by side a life in a primitive community without schumann exhaustion and they were patient against the convenience and comfort of life even in the megalopolis reduction of hunger and disease abolish slavery will really from bondage extension of human life have come from our technology i don't go along with those you know who insist that we are off the main track

dr grace and cook reminded us not so long ago that ninety percent of the medical prescriptions being written today could not have been killed and twenty years ago because the ingredients were no i would never say to those who are so concerned that we may be in the saddle writing man as a matter of fact we have done a pretty good job so far writing thing it's true enough as our technology has changed as we've heard today our institutions have drastically changed we do have large ago a much larger cities larger corporations larger labor unions but we also have larger community institutions of public welfare in good for education for fire and police protection for many of the faith and we have not only the pan and buildings to peel off you forgive me the marikana but also extensive art galleries and museums in concert halls and a large number of colleges and universities all these two i would suggest of the hallmarks of art technologically advanced

democracy today not recognize these things as not to deprecate the fact that there have been i will continue to be unfortunate consequences of this new technology and its impact on our democratic institutions but again it has been mentioned earlier this has certainly been true at least since the industrial revolution some people will be thrown out of work machines will undertake to do a number of the functions which people have performed before when i suggest that the one fact which is common in which we ought to keep in mind is this a technology seeks not to replace man but the treasury to issue zhou made i think twelve which is characterized so much of that work therefore i think the real question we ought to be wrestling with only this morning the past week during the remainder of this car is is this one how can our democratic institutions be strengthened by means of this new

technology i am confident that they can't it seems to me that we now have this new technology ways to communicate faster just for truth more quickly to bring a more effectively to advance progress association more help in our data storage and processing systems today our computers it is possible now to store data and make it available on demand as required to help meet human needs develop undeveloped areas and informed the un and four of communism does indeed live on ignorance and misery than we have here in this technology i suggest a massive march against it spread and how about the effect of this new technology on our system of education i would submit that perhaps the greatest impact of the new technology will be an education compelling as total fraud but better educated and therefore a stronger doctors if there's one thing where it says is is that this new technology depends on the

educated man to create have to think of it to make it work to improve better and better education then it seems to me will have to become us in a condo in this kind of a democracy of ours for a narrow craftsman trained in his splintered special will no longer be able to do the job of running a society we only man a breath of adaptability of flexibility to get education we'll become the criterion of them the traditional hallmarks such as family and social position and money and all the sites suggest will pose a real challenge and real opportunity to ecologists university taken as a whole what should this week in terms of our democracy if we do that this kind of a better educated society well a better educated citizenry citizen through quite obviously for the first time began to fulfill the potential of our democracy will demand more of its couple will insist on leaders who understand such problems a space

atomic energy defense regulation of industry and all of this going on world around us a better educated citizenry also get better able to keep first things in first place to insist on knowing what's going on who's in charge in what's cooking less apt i think to be intimidated by the name for the best theater the rumor monger the top we're apt to cherish and strengthen our democratic institutions or how about those people who can meet the criteria of the higher education what you do with a distant glow and today we have an immense opportunity to think creatively and much perhaps trying to ease concept of challenge in response could become especially meaningful here as machines take over one more machine work people are unleashed to take on more and more people are in a world where millions of people

need to help of millions of other people technology could become ma force not imprisoning man but liberating graham to reach out a helping hand to those in need perhaps the greatest impact of this technology would be to stimulate government industry labor to join together in the creation of the great people score for which the world has long been waiting at her strongest most affective possibly least economical and certainly most fulfilling program of international person to person made and cooperation we go back to where i came into this very difficult to paint a and a conjure up a rather dismaying and frightening picture of technology rampant and in the saddle and what it can do to a democratic institution i just want to be sure that i make my heart very clear that we don't understand exactly where the power of decision lives that we ought not to be pointing the wrong finger at the

wrong place but we ought not to blame machine for what's wrong with manwell you're talking about cigarettes are skyscrapers are sober is that what we are concerned about is essentially how man acts in the face of the challenge which confronts him today and this is the problem with which we've had to deal even before mandela and how to make but we only close by some words that i always found really meaningful and wishing him a strikingly relevant to our discussion today they're from ralph waldo emerson he put it this way if there's any period one would desire to be born would not be the age of revolution when they all then you stand side by side and admit of being compared to when the energy's all men are searched by fear and bajo when a headstart glories of the old and be compensated it rich possibilities of the new era this time like all times rolled emerson is a very good one if we but nowhere to do it and that sums up

everything on the site this time like all times is a very good one if we bought know what to do the pope you have heard solve them and whats harrison brown and gerard peel at the opening session of the tenth anniversary convocation of the fund for the republic center of the study of democratic institutions this was the second in a series of eleven programs concerned with the challenges to democracy in the next decade a mixed program you'll hear robert elections president of the fund for the republic admiral highman gee rig over united states' atomic energy commission and rosemary park president of barnard college columbia university if you'd like to know more about the center for the study of democratic institutions you are invited to write two dr robert m hutchens box for all six eight santa barbara california

this record program was produced by riverside radio wor dr the metropolitan fm station of the riverside church in the city of new york for broadcast by the educational radio network the national association of educational broadcaster is the voice of america and the canadian broadcasting corporation he's been

with his business we can any

person this is the educational radio network