9. SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, & SOCIETY

A. DEFINITIONS

• Science: Attempt to understand the universe, build a conceptual framework; often called "pure," "unapplied," or "basic" research. Most research in astronomy falls in this category.

• Technology: Application of basic concepts to solve practical problems (e.g. shelter, food, transport, energy, medicine, tools, weapons). Use of our basic understanding. Engineering is applied science/technology.

B. THE "BIG THREE" BENEFITS OF SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY TO SOCIETY

AGRICULTURAL GENETICS

"Genetic engineering," the creation of artificial life forms, is nothing new. It has been going on for thousands of years. Essentially all the food we eat is derived from deliberate human manipulation of plant and animal gene pools. Until the mid 20th century, the techniques employed were cross-fertilization, selective breeding, population culling, and other "natural" methods. As our understanding of genetics matured, it became possible to directly manipulate cellular material (ca. 1970+). Molecular biology now offers an ultimate genetic control technology.

CONTROL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE

The control of the microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, parasites) that cause infectious disease is perhaps the single most important contribution of science & technology. In fact, few of us in this room would be alive today without it (because a direct ancestor would have died too early). But as recently as 350 years ago, communicable disease was thought to be produced by evil spirits, unwholesome vapors, or other mysterious agents. No one imagined that it was caused by invisible lifeforms until Leeuwenhoek in 1676 first used the microscope to study biological systems. "Public health" consists mainly of systematic methods for controlling microorganisms.

ELECTRICITY (discussed below)

C. CONVERSION OF BASIC SCIENCE TO TECHNOLOGY

• Science usually precedes technology
  This was obviously not true for the earliest technologies (e.g. fire, stone tools, cloth, ceramics, metalworking, glass). But most of the important technologies of the last 200 years have been based on earlier scientific research. You can construct a "critical conceptual path" of the progress leading to each important new technology; most will be found to depend on a long list of discoveries in basic science.

• Key contributions of science to technology:
  Methods: rational analysis, critical thinking, empirical testing, calculus, statistics, etc.
  Knowledge: Newton's Laws of Motion (mechanics), thermodynamics, electromagnetism, chemistry, biology, structure of matter, etc.

• Enabling discoveries usually are NOT motivated by potential applications
  This is why politicians and opinion-makers who insist on the "relevance" of scientific research are misguided.
  "There is no 'useless' research."
            ---- Nathan Myhrvold, Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Corporation

• Time scale for conversion to use varies enormously
  

  Experimental cathode-ray tube: forerunner of X-ray, TV tubes.

• Examples
  • X-Rays (1895): Accidental discovery (Roentgen) during basic research on physics of electromagnetic waves using cathode ray tubes like the one above. Click here for sample 1896 X-ray. Conversion time to medical applications: 1 year.
    This is a good example of a technological problem that couldn't be solved by trying to solve it. A direct engineering approach to devising a non-invasive mechanism to examine internal human anatomy would have failed utterly.

  • Human Space Flight (1961): Basic concepts needed to build rockets in place since 19th century, so investment of $$$ can solve remaining technical problems. Conversion time: 280 years (from Newtonian orbit theory, the essential conceptual foundation of space flight).

  • CD/DVD Players (1982): Critical conceptual path includes Einstein's work on induced transitions of electrons in atoms (1916), the essential idea in creating lasers (used to convert digital recordings into electronic signals). Conversion time: 66 years.

• Up to the middle of the 19th century, implementation of new technologies rarely occurred in a period shorter than a human life. Today, technological change is much faster, and therefore more obvious.

D. ELECTRICITY: A Case Study

• Electricity is the primary tool of modern civilization
  The most obvious manifestation of electricity today is in sophisticated electronics: DVD players, personal computers, cell phones, video games, iPods, etc. But these are luxuries, and it should be easy to imagine being able to live comfortably without them---in fact, people did so only 20 years ago. We don't really need these things, but we do need electricity. Our reliance on electricity is profound, and its use is so deeply embedded in the fabric of civilization that we mostly take it for granted (until there's a power failure!).
  Electricity supplies almost all of the power we depend on and is essential for manufacturing, agriculture, communications, transportation, medicine, and almost every other aspect of modern life.
  For instance, remember that all the internal combustion engines used in cars, trucks, locomotives, & planes require electrical ignition systems.

  Aside from the power itself, electricity is also the basis of nearly all of the critical control systems we use.
  If knowledge of electricity were somehow magically subtracted from the contents of this room, virtually everything you see would disappear, except a bunch of naked people.
  More seriously, if knowledge of electricity were magically subtracted from our society, our economy would collapse overnight, taking our Gross Domestic Product back to the level of about 1850. Probably half of the population would die off within 12 months, mostly from starvation and disease.

• Faraday (1831) (experimental physicist): discovers electromagnetic induction. Basic.
  By 1830, it was already known that an electric current could produce a magnetic field. Faraday discovered that a changing magnetic field could induce an electric current. This demonstrated the symmetry of electromagnetic phenomena. It was also the key to the development of electric generators and motors, which convert mechanical force to electrical force, and vice-versa, using magnetic fields.

• Edison (technologist), others (1860--1890) develop practical generators, motors, distribution grids, appliances. Applied.
  Many people think Thomas Edison "invented" electricity. He didn't. He invented a large number of electrical appliances---including the electric light, tickertape machines, the motion picture camera & projector, etc. But these all depended on a pre-existing supply of electricity and the knowledge of how to use it---all contributed by basic research in physics.

• Maxwell (physicist): Deduced equations (1865) giving complete description of electrical & magnetic phenomena. Predicts electromagnetic waves traveling at speed of light and thereby demonstrates that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon. Basic.

• Heinrich Hertz (physicist, technologist): First generation & detection of artificial EM radio waves (1887). Applied.

• Methods for modulation of these waves (i.e. impressing an intelligible signal on them) later produce radio and television. Applied.

Faraday's laboratory

E. TECHNOLOGICAL EXCESSES

The Dilemma

• In the last 50 years, dangers attributed to science and technology have often been more prominently discussed than their benefits.
  The average high school graduate of today is much more suspicious of science and technology than appreciative of the riches they have bestowed.

• Perceived threats: environmental pollution, habitat destruction, health threats, nuclear weapons, nuclear poisoning, genetic engineering, mutant monsters (as at right).

• All these threats, whether real or exaggerated, are consequences of technology, rather than basic science.

• Threats are mostly inadvertent---i.e. unforeseen by those who implemented the new technologies or grossly amplified by widespread adoption.
  A classic case of "irrational exuberance" over a new and initially beneficial technology: the casual application of the insecticide DDT, which was taken to truly absurd levels. This led to the book that founded the environmental protection movement, Silent Spring (1962), by Rachel Carson.

• The fundamental dilemma: All technology carries risk; powerful technologies are obviously capable of both great benefits and serious dangers.
  • Fire is the obvious historical standard illustrating the dilemma.

  • Nuclear physics as a modern example. Many people would prefer that nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants had never been invented. Some argue that our knowledge of nuclear physics is a bad thing. But nuclear physics also created nuclear medicine (e.g. using isotopes as biological tracers), without which modern pharmacology wouldn't exist, and radioisotope therapy, which saves hundreds of thousands of lives each year. Many more people have benefitted from nuclear technology than have been harmed by it (so far).

Ironies

• The negative effects of technology are only identifiable in many cases because of modern technology itself. Without the sensitive instruments of modern technology, we would be poorly informed of the impact of environmental pollution on water or air quality, the ozone layer, global warming, induced diseases, and so forth.

• Amelioration of the negative effects depends on science & technology. A retreat from modern S&T would produce vast suffering.

• The hazards of technology and our ability to control those hazards are often not objectively assessed by the media or the government. There are many examples of appropriately recognized hazardous technologies. But there are also many cases where overreactions by the media and the government needlessly alarmed the public (e.g. asbestos, power transmission lines, breast implants, Alar) and diverted attention from more serious hazards.
  • There is a nice irony in this area in the current news:
    Imagine the media firestorm that would rage around the following fictional headline: "Government Scientists Inject Radioactive Waste Into Faces of Helpless Victims."
    Well, the government isn't doing it, but something like this IS happening. The new facial treatment "Botox" consists of botulinum toxin---one of the deadliest natural substances known. It is actually about 1000 times more toxic, gram for gram, than plutonium. And people are eagerly standing in line to have it pumped into their faces!

  • The point is that if technology can make botulinum toxin safe enough to use as a cosmetic, then it can make radioactive or chemical waste safe enough to live with.
    Of course, the technology must be carefully designed and properly applied. Failures to adequately address environmental problems, for instance, are rarely caused by serious technological barriers. Instead, they are usually the product of greed, incompetence, absence of foresight, or lack of political will.

• Without a corresponding downward adjustment in birth rates, the increase in the human life span, which is mediated by modern technology, creates an imbalance between birth and death rates

• The population responds to this imbalance with exponential growth:
  The increase in population in any year is proportional to the population itself.
  In any situation like this where the rate of change of a quantity is proportional to the quantity itself, the solution of a simple differential equation shows that the value of the quantity will "exponentiate", as follows:
  q = q_oe^gt, where e = 2.72, t is time, q_o is the quantity at the start, and g is the constant of proportionality (the net birth rate in the case of population).
  See this figure.
  The same formulation applies to many real-world situations. For example, to a savings account subject to compound interest.

  The population will "run away," or grow without limit, as long as the net birth rate does not decrease.

• For example, a small 2% excess of births over deaths in a given year implies a doubling time for the population of only 35 years. This is close to the actual excess for the human population.
  If the world population is 5 billion in the year 2000, it will be 35 billion in the year 2100.
  [If ASTR 121 scales in proportion, this class will have over 1000 students in it!]
  For an instantaneous estimate of the US population, click on the: US Census Bureau POPClock.

• Any fixed resource (water, land, fuel, air), no matter how abundant, is ultimately overwhelmed by an exponential growth of population.
  Of course, as the population approaches any such resource limit, there will be a negative feedback effect which will drastically increase the death rate until the population stabilizes or decreases. That will stop the exponentiation, but we obviously would prefer not to rely on that solution.

• There are serious ethical quandaries in attempting to control or reduce the human population.

F. SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY POLICY

• It must recognize important needs and predict useful sci/tech initiatives

• Unfortunately, the track record of technological prediction is dismal. For example, consider a 1937 US National Resources Council prediction of important inventions for 1937--62:
  • A few hits---e.g. TV, plastics---but many more misses.

  • The leading predicted technology was the "mechanical cotton picker."

  • Among the technologies not predicted but actually developed during just the following ten years were: antibiotics, nuclear weapons, nuclear medicine, jet aircraft, nylon, radar, and digital computers. Oops.

  • Perhaps the key technology missed in the NRC study was the transistor, invented in 1947 based on developments in solid state physics. This was later transformed into integrated circuits, microprocessors, and a myriad of other electronic components.
    As a result, by 1990 "25% of the GDP of the United States was based on applications of quantum physics" (Wall Street Journal). Even in 1960, few experts would have predicted this.

• The private sector can be just as nearsighted as any lumbering government bureaucracy.
  In 1994 Microsoft, the Godzilla of software corporations, totally underestimated the importance of the Internet. QED.

• In the early 21st century we are entering an era of technological transformation, similar to that produced by physics & chemistry in the 20th century, based on molecular biology. Few, if any, scientists or government officials are perceptive enough to forecast what this will bring only 25 years from now. As always, both benefits and risks have the potential to be enormous.

• Conclude: technology transfer & trends are difficult or impossible to predict. Apart from obvious crises (e.g. WWII), the best policy for government is good, broad support of basic scientific research and moderate (but alert & intelligent) regulation of technology in the private sector.

Study Guide 9
Optional exercise: Try to identify something in your home which was produced and delivered to you without the use of electricity.

Supplements II and III
Optional reading: Seeds textbook 6.1, Chapter 7

1937 NRC Study Technological Predictions vs. Reality
A biography of Faraday (Royal Institution)
The Edison Papers
Exhibit on cathode ray tubes and discovery of the electron
Information on electric power generation (from "How Things Work")
Information on electric motors (from "How Things Work")
Invention of the transistor
Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics Smarter than you thought?
Invention of nuclear weapons
The High Energy Weapons Archive
The coming global oil crisis
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond: review by J. Bradford DeLong of this important book about the influence of environment and technology on societies
A sampling of dumb quotes about technology (P. Ekstrom)
Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia entries:
Michael Faraday
Electricity
Radio
X-Rays

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Last modified June 2008 by rwo
Text copyright © 1998-2008 Robert W. O'Connell. All rights reserved. These notes are intended for the private, noncommercial use of students enrolled in Astronomy 121 at the University of Virginia.