Begin forwarded message: From: vze2fhs7@xxxxxxxxxxx Date: November 13, 2005 4:32:06 PM EST To: dave@xxxxxxxxxxSubject: Re: [IP] more on NPR: Chris Mooney, 'The Republican War On Science'
Jock Gill wrote:
After watching Connections [James Burke], Pandora's Box and The power of Nightmares [both by Curtis Adams for the BBC], as well as McNamara [Errol Morris], I have this strange feeling that what we are experiencing is a deep and angry backlash at the failures and bill of goods sold to us by techno utopians who had the unbridled hubris to think they could be Masters of the Universe. It does not matter if they worked at Gosplan in the USSR or for RAND in the USA. Fundamentally they were all techno utopians who got it wrong at great cost....
My take is perhaps the opposite of Gill's. What I see in the current opposition to science and technology is the response of people frightened by what the future may bring: global warming, nuclear explosions, toxic chemicals, pandemic influenza, etc. When the message scares you, you shoot (or at least hobble) the messenger!
Harold L. Burstyn, Attorney-at-Law and Registered Patent Attorney, 216 Bradford Parkway, Syracuse NY 13224-1767, tel. (315) 445-0620; Fax (509) 479-4103; Adjunct Professor, L. C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse University, CST 4-104, Syracuse NY 13244-4100, tel. (315)443-4375, fax (315) 443-2583
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