water, energy, and life that surround man; to establish, for varying levels of population, the relationships of resource limitations and pollution generated by man's activities to the quality of human life, and to evaluate how technological advances may modify those relationships.

C. The Techno-economic System. The explorations of method and action by this group would seek to define the relationship between research and development on the one hand and innovation on the other and, in turn, between innovation and productivity; to assess the distribution of employment activities necessary to support progressively more satisfying standards of living; and to explore the educational patterns needed to match work with intellectual capabilities and psychological needs.

The size of these bodies would be commensurate with the size and complexity of the problems. It is anticipated that the scope of the problems, as described above, may be redefined in the process of formation of the exploratory groups or at a later time. We realize that there are significant interrelationships among the components of these three tasks; they are all elements of our "national system." The suggested clusters represent an attempt to define major subsystems for which broad, mission-oriented objectives can be defined. It is recognized that a group might, when desirable, "subcontract out" subsets of the work to any institutions of the required capability. In some cases, there might be recourse to an existing Federal agency possessing the in-house capability to deal with a problem of major dimensions.

In the exploratory stage, the need for dedication to the public interest cannot be overemphasized. Objectivity with a minimum of interest-group bias is essential to insure responsiveness to the best interest of the public. Thus, exploration should be protected from direct "pressures" from any sector of society, including those resulting from the periodicity of the political process. On the other hand, feedback from the Legislative and Executive Branches is essential.

It is essential that the exploratory groups work closely with existing and any new institutions or agencies which are concerned with important elements of these massive problems.

It is specifically intended that existing agencies should be enabled to strengthen themselves to the point of possessing in-house

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capability to perform research and development in behalf of the exploratory groups, or obtain it outside by contract.

Although the comparison is less than exact, such agency functions would resemble that of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the Department of Defense.

The results of techno-economic exploration would be expected to contribute to an understanding of the innovation process and, thereby, aid existing and new institutions concerned with setting priorities for Federal support of applied research for technology.

Coupling the exploratory effort to the public sector is also essential. Provision should be made for periodic reports to the Nation to stimulate widespread and intensive debate.

It cannot be predicted in advance when such exploration will yield insights pointing the way toward new applied research directed at concrete solutions or which may indicate reformulation or reorganization of initial objectives. It will be necessary to wait, recognizing that this is the inherent nature of the exploratory process. There will often be temptations to proceed on the basis of incomplete data and partial insights. These temptations sometimes must be followed and other times rejected.

Although the exploratory groups would be expected to propose methods of implementing each alternative, their responsibility would not extend to selecting the options for implementation.

Their main function would be to develop methodology and manpower, and to put forward a menu of alternative solutions from among which choices can be made by the established decisionmaking processes of Government. Choosing options for implementation must remain the responsibility of the citizenry as a whole, acting through their elected officials. In no way should the exploratory groups impinge on the sovereignty of the political process as the means of establishing priorities.

The strength of the free enterprise system shows up most forcefully in the implementation phase. In many respects, institutions already existing in this country may be well equipped to handle implementation when exploration has been completed and choice of alternatives decided. Once the requirements for implementation are established, the conventional market forces and the free enter

prise system may be expected to operate effectively, as they have in the past.

THE INTERFACE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

Just as the scientist and engineer must take greater cognizance of the emerging social requirements of technology, there also should be greater emphasis placed on public understanding of technology. As the ultimate decision maker in our society, it is necessary for the public to appreciate what technology can do and what it cannot do; what it must do and what it must not do.

A critical factor in trying to anticipate potential dangers of a new technology is knowledge of how the technology will be deployed and what safeguards will be instituted to control its use. In many cases, there are legal and economic arrangements at the discretion of society which govern the availability and control of technologies. These have been referred to as the supporting systems.

Whereas the automobile and road building are technological developments, the supporting systems include rules of accident law, automobile insurance schemes, traffic police, and policies to determine where roads should be built.

Long range analysis might have led on past occasions of important decision to choice or encouragement of different technologies (e.g., bioenvironmental pest control rather than chemical insecticides); however, the engineer alone has not had the background to predict the types of supporting systems society would devise to govern the use of technology. In a large number of cases, if not most cases, a higher sophistication in societal decision-making processes might point to different supporting systems rather than different technologies. These might include, for example, different revenue sources for the television industry, different cost-accounting procedures for pollution, or different formulations of building and zoning regulations.

Along with the lack of analysis and forecasting, a factor which has contributed significantly to the abuse of technologies is the

• Technology: Processes of Assessment and Choice, National Academy of Sciences, July 1969.

scale of use adopted by society. Prime examples are per capita consumption of energy, pesticides, and automobiles. Sixty years ago it would have been simple to predict that the internal combustion engine would chemically pollute the atmosphere more than steam or electric engines, but few would have predicted that in 1970 there would be one car for every two people. Since the number of horse-drawn carriages was small in relation to the population, it is unlikely that more than a few prophets would have foreseen the scale of use of the "horseless carriage." Similarly, over the years there have been periodic predictions of per capita energy consumption and, in almost every case, it was hypothesized that consumption would level out after ten years. After all, how much more energy could we consume? And yet. consumption continues to rise at a steady rate.

In the future an endeavor must be made to assess more accurately the potential scale of use. In striving to enhance the standard of living of the entire population, it might be anticipated that everyone will want and be able to afford "a good thing." If there are upper limits to the scale of use beyond which a good thing is harmful, we must devise equitable means for limiting its use, or find alternatives to satisfy the function or need. Although our society has been reluctant to "ration" supply, in many cases it may be the only alternative to the development of a national consensus for limiting population.

The previous subsection discussed the need to develop a process for exploration of future alternatives. A beginning must be made now in providing the public with sufficient background to make rational choices among such alternatives. It is not suggested that people at large should be taught how to do engineering. There is need, however, that they be given a grasp of some basic concepts and the process by which association of various observations produces an idea. For example, to generate electricity, a fuel must be consumed and, thereby, a resource depleted; waste-heat generation and the need for its disposal at a power station using a heat cycle is a fact of life imposed on us by nature; all of the electricity we consume is eventually converted to heat by irreversible processes. The mean temperature of the earth is set by a heat balance, an element of which is the amount of energy consumed by man. Local and global climate is related to man's activities through the heat balance and man-made contributions to the composition of the atmosphere, although the exact nature of these perturbations to

climate has yet to be fully understood. These are but a few of some basic concepts which are important facts of life in today's technological society. In a democratic society, the public must have a voice in decisions concerning population control, power plant siting, air pollution control, and weather modification; therefore, they must be given a basic understanding of some technological concepts.

The public must also appreciate the capabilities and limitations of the technological process. Engineering is far less an exact science than is physics or mathematics. Empiricisms, extrapolations, and assumptions, which are required when data and theories are lacking, necessarily introduce uncertainties in proposed solutions. In many cases, there are alternative solutions lacking quantified criteria as guides for chosing the best one. Thus, many decisions are based on subjective judgments of individuals, and an informed public will not expect open and shut decisions in all cases.

It has usually been assumed by scientists and engineers as well as the lay public that technological subject matter is too complex for those not majoring in it. In an attempt to disprove that notion, the Engineering Concepts Curriculum Project was undertaken in 1965, under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, to devise a high school level course on systems and computer technology. A text has been published, and the course is now taught in many high schools. Although the level of the subject material may still be too sophisticated for the entire high school population, this first effort has demonstrated that some concepts of technology can and should be made available to a broader cross section of the populace.

Much of the effort in public enlightenment must be addressed to persons outside the formal processes of education, for the simple reason that there are generations of Americans in that group who are enfranchised to participate in, and criticize, complex policy making and decision making involving technological alternatives. We look with favor on suggestions that industry should generate programs to enlarge public understanding of the technology it places in the public hands. Such an undertaking would be far more than quixotic. It can be supposed that a society like ours

7 The Man-Made World, McGraw Hill Publishing Co., 1971.