Massive Technological Failure

THE BIG ONE coming up is going to be massive technological failure, so strong that it will undermine faith in science for a generation or more.

Its going to happen because science is expanding at a fast rate ,and over the past few centuries the more science we've had, then - albeit with some time lags - the more powerful technology we've had.

That's where the problem will arise. With each technology, the amplitude of its effects - both positive and negative - gets greater. Automobiles, for example, are an early twentieth century technology (based on eigtheenth and nineteenth century science) that caused a certain amount of increased mobility as well as a certain number of traffic deaths.

The amount on each side was large, but not so large that the negative effects couldn't be accepted. Even when the negative effects came to be understood to include land - based problems or pollution, those have still generally been considered to be manageable. There's little desire to terminate scientific inquiry because of them.

Nuclear power is a mid twentieth century technology (based on early twentieth century science). Its overall power is greator still, and so is the amplitude of its destructive possibilities. Through good chance, its negative use has so far been restricted to the destruction of two cities. Yet even that led to a great wave of generalized, antiscientific feeling not least from among the many people who had always felt that it was impious to interfere with the plans of God.

The Internet is in many ways an even more powerful technology (based on early twentieth century quantum mechanics and mid twentieth century information theory). So far, its problems have been manageable, be they the surveillance of personal activity or viruslike intrusions that interrupt important services. But the internet will get stronger and more widespread, as will the colllablorative and other tools allowing its misuse: the negative effects will be greater still.

Thus the dynamic we face. Science brings magic from the heavens. In the next few decades, clearly, it will get stronger. Yet just as inevitably, some of its negative amplitudes - be it in harming health or security or something as yet unrecognized - will pass an acceptable threshold. When that happens society is unlikely to respond with calm guidelines. Instead, there will be blind fury against everything science has done.

by David Bodanis