It is a no-brainer to say that the modern age is the product of science and technology. Without the printing press and cheap paper, steam and internal combustion engines, electricity and electronics, vaccines and antibiotics, fertilizers and hybrid seeds, plastics and pesticides, without Watt, Maxwell, Carnot, Edison, Pasteur, Einstein, Weiner, Borlaug, and more, the world would be a very different place. There would surely be fewer human beings in it, and everyone would be less wealthy and healthy.

Would it be a better world? The answer to that question depends on your values.

Is there anyone who could seriously wish for such a world?

Well, there are certainly plenty of people who object to science, technology, and their fruits. Some see hazards to life and limb in such things as electric power lines, nuclear power plants, vaccines with side-effects, and the release of chemicals to the environment. They want all these horrible things stopped.

Some see hazards to personal freedom, property rights, and the right to pursue dreams of wealth in the mere collection of data about the effects of greenhouse gases, chlorofluorocarbons, estrogenic chemicals, nuclear power plants, and the like (after all, such data can lead to government regulation). They want these horrible things stopped.

Some see immorality in the use of animals to develop drugs and medical procedures for human benefit, research on human embryos, cloning, and genetic engineering. Some see downright evil--the hand of Satan himself--in anything that contradicts their favorite scripture, from evolution to behavioral genetics to population biology. And they all want to voice their protests before Congress, in the courts, and even on picket lines. Some protestors have even been known to trash research labs (animal rights groups) and blow up researchers (the Unabomber).

I've had to think about these people and their arguments this year, as I worked on the third edition of Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Science, Technology, and Society, an anthology of pro and con articles on various scitech topics published by Dushkin. The importance of this sort of book is underlined, I think, by what happens when my students take exams: questions that relate to the side of an issue with which they agree pose few problems; that material sticks; questions on the other side, however, are another matter. To most of us, whatever the other side says is just meaningless noise.

An interesting example came up this summer in relation to cloning (the topic of my second column here). National Bioethics Advisory Commission chair Harold T. Shapiro summarized the report of the Commission in the July 11, 1997, issue of Science, saying that the Commission "made every effort to consult widely with ethicists, theologians, scientists, scientific societies, physicians, and others in initiating an analysis of the many scientific, legal, religious, ethical, and moral dimensions of the issue [including] potential risks and benefits of using this technique to create children and a review of the potential constitutional challenges that might be raised if new legislation were to restrict" its use. Among those consulted was Leon R. Kass, who argued at great length that we should ban cloning simply because we find it repulsive; rational debate is beside the point ("The wisdom of repugnance: why we should ban the cloning of humans," The New Republic, June 2, 1997).

Do we really have to pay attention to the other side? Well, it's out there, its proponents share the world with us, and it really does make sense to listen to them. After all, they might actually be right!

In this column, I wish to talk about that other side a bit. I don't have the space to go into great detail about specific issues and the arguments on each side (many are included in the book, so buy a copy; in fact, buy each new edition as it comes out every year or so--the idea is to keep the presentations up to date, and each edition overlaps only about fifty percent with its predecessor). But I can speak of patterns and generalities.

To begin, who do I mean by "the other side"? I love science and technology and the modern constant flood of new knowledge. I embrace all three whole-heartedly, with full confidence that in the long term they will enhance human welfare in all possible ways (yes, I recognize that in the short term there may be problems). For me, "the other side" does not share that love and confidence. It includes both political liberals, who tend to have a jaundiced view of the effects of technology on human health, and political, intellectual, and religious conservatives, who tend to cling to traditional ideas and values. The former tend to think we have quite enough technology already, thank you; anything new is bound to be dangerous. The latter tend to think we know enough already, thank you; new knowledge is bound to be subversive of the Proper Order of Things.

Let's begin with the liberals, with the hazards posed by technology to life and limb. Here we can consider pollution, ozone depletion, global warming, contamination of foods, drug side-effects, and so on. Many of these hazards are very real and it is highly appropriate to reduce them promptly and thoroughly. The Food and Drug Administration was invented to deal with those related to food, drugs, and medical devices, largely because people used to put some of the damnedest stuff on the market, from radioactive potions (containing radium) to tapeworm egg diet pills (sure, they'd work... but!). I once found in an antique store an old case full of strangely shaped glass tubes that screwed into a base somewhat like a flashlight equipped with an electric cord. The tubes glowed blue when activated (like black-light bulbs) and the accompanying brochure said that the ultraviolet light emitted could cure whatever ailed you. There were tubes shaped to fit every portion of the body, as well as every orifice. I still wish I could have afforded to buy it. Recently, I found that a version of the device was still available.

The FDA's mission is to ensure both safety and efficacy. Very few people object to the former (think of radium and tapeworms). Some do object to the FDA's attempts to ensure that the claims made for various herbal cures and wonder devices (such as Wilhelm Reich's orgone boxes) are justified, on the grounds that people should be free to try anything (even black-light bulbs that produce sunburns in strange places). When the FDA fails, however--when drugs turn out to cause cancer or birth defects, or when silicone breast implants stand accused of destroying immune systems--the objections become numerous and loud.

Objections can be just as numerous and loud for hazards that are not real. For instance, in the last few years there has been a huge amount of debate over whether electromagnetic fields (emitted by power lines, computer monitors, cellular telephones, electric blankets, etc.) cause cancer, based on the observation of a few cases where the two seemed to go together. Repeated research has now shown that the hazard is so small that it cannot be told from zero; the suspect cases were due to no more than coincidence. But the objectors remain, insistent that there are no coincidences. If a child gets leukemia, there must be something to blame.

That's not a new idea. People have always wanted scapegoats, and they have found them in devils, witches, minority groups, black cats, and even gods (I myself favor Murphy). Today's favorite scapegoat seems to be science and technology, whose products admittedly are not perfect. I mentioned vaccines above. There is a new whooping cough vaccine on the market. It is supposed to be much safer than its predecessor, which was indeed known to have side-effects that killed perhaps twenty children each year. And yes, twenty dead kids is serious business. But is it serious enough to justify replacing that old vaccine?

Is that a stupid question? Well, twenty dead kids meant a huge liability insurance bill for the vaccine makers. For a few years, it was hard to find a company that was willing to market this vaccine (and others), even with federal liability limits. Dead kids are lousy PR.

But if you remember how many kids whooping cough itself used to claim each year--over 5,000 out of more than 250,000 cases of the disease--twenty deaths is trivial, nothing, nada, zilch. Click here and here for fuller discussions of whooping cough and its vaccines.

We have forgotten that life used to be a pretty risky affair, that antibiotics have only been commercially available for half a century, that.... You get the idea. People today get worked up over risks that would not have impressed their grandparents or great-grandparents. They have no sense of perspective. They think life comes with guarantees.

It never did. It doesn't now, though science and technology have spoiled us by reducing the risks tremendously.

The wish for guarantees also seems to be what drives many political, intellectual, and religious conservatives, who often seem to see science and technology as threats to the ideas and values they grew up with. It would be so easy to use creationists as an example that I will say very little about them here. A much more interesting case is Leon R. Kass (see above), who finds human cloning so repulsive because it threatens "important human values, such as the profundity of sex, the sacredness of the human body, and the value of individuality."

Another is that of Sven Birkerts, who argued in The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (Faber & Faber, 1994) that electronically presented (via computer screens) information threatens traditional conceptions of literacy, the literary culture, and the sense of ourselves as individuals, among other things. He seems to think that there is something so sacred about the paper book that it should be somehow protected against change. Five hundred years ago, presumably, he would have been similarly enamored of scrolls and monkish illuminations.

For an interview with him, in which he discusses his comment that "The argument of our time is the argument between technology and soul," click here. Others have expressed a kindred thought when they say that as we learn more about the way the universe really works, we suffer a tragic "disenchantment" as we are forced to surrender our cozy beliefs in sprites, miracles, gods, saints, ESP, the Easter bunny, and other fairy tales. See Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).

Some people just wish there were guarantees that human beings can keep on being King of the Hill. This sentiment plays a clear part in the creationism vs. evolution debate, for Darwin clearly said that humanity occupies no privileged position. It shows even more clearly in the reactions to this year's premier chess match.

In February 1996, IBM's "Deep Blue," a chess-playing super-computer, won and drew games against the human world champion, Garry Kasparov. It lost the six-game match, but it still demonstrated a skill at something most people are willing to call "thinking" that left many of us quite breathless.

In May 1997, an improved Deep Blue topped its own performance by trouncing Kasparov 2-1, with 3 draws, and sent the news media into a frenzy. We are, wrote Charles Krauthammer in The Weekly Standard, "creating a new and different form of being. And infinitely more monstrous: creatures sharing our planet who not only imitate and surpass us in logic, who have even achieved consciousness and free will, but are utterly devoid of the kind of feelings and emotions that, literally, humanize human beings. Be afraid." See also Donald Michie, "Slaughter on Seventh Avenue," New Scientist (June 7, 1997).

Is chess playing really "thinking"? When the idea of artificial intelligence was new, workers in the field agreed that it was and set out to achieve it. Even partial success was enough to rouse critics who said that if a machine could do it, it could not be "real" thinking. Deep Blue's complete success, however, seems to have many people afraid that chess playing is real thinking and that human primacy in a very fundamental area--in fact, human identity--is now seriously threatened.

We've lost out in checkers, too. A program called Chinook is the current world checkers champion (see Ivars Peterson, "Silicon Champions of the Game," Science News, August 2, 1997).

On the political side, consider the "brownlash" phenomenon, described by (e.g.) Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich in "Brownlash: The New Environmental Anti-Science," The Humanist (November-December 1996). It is based on the impacts of environmental regulations on individuals and businesses. With individuals, regulations interfere with the freedom to do as one wishes, as when users of off-road vehicles are barred from the nesting grounds of rare shore birds, access to national parks is restricted, and building homes and cottages right on the edge of a lake is forbidden. In nations such as China, the freedom in question is the freedom to have all the children one wishes. With businesses, it is the freedom to develop land (including wetlands), use resources, and dump assorted wastes on land and in air and water with only profit as a guiding principle. And it is undeniable that as environmental regulations have proliferated, so has interference with freedoms we once took for granted.

So have the objections. Conservative politicians and lobbyists for industry, recreation, and home-owner groups struggle to block or weaken every new environmental regulation and to repeal old regulations, often in the name of individual freedom and property rights. They also do not care for environmental research. A few years ago conservatives in Washington were trying to cut funding for Earth-watching satellites on the grounds that the data they would provide might lead to new regulations; apparently, if we don't see a problem, we don't have to do anything about it.

Environmentalists counter that freedom must be tempered by responsibility; individual freedom and property rights must have limits, or we will destroy what lets us and our children live on the Earth. And continued research is essential to keep us from being blindsided by the consequences of our actions. Of course we should watch out for problems, and if we see them, we should take steps to prevent or reverse them.

The conservative case is nicely made in the Heritage Foundation's 1996 "Briefing Book," designed to help conservative candidates get elected. It argues at length that many government environmental policies are unreasonably restrictive, infringe on basic economic freedoms, and are based on bad science to boot. You can find it at Heritage's on-line library.

As an aside, let me note that conservatives often criticize environmental regulation on the grounds that it costs jobs. On the record, it actually creates jobs, if not always for the same people or in the same towns, but there is some justice to the claim. Here in Maine, a woolen mill recently closed. Within months, a lake long polluted by effluents from the mill began to show signs of recovery. That is, cleaning up the environment didn't cost jobs, but getting rid of the jobs did help the environment.

I mentioned population. Both tradition and scripture enshrine the right to have families as large as we wish, but it is becoming obvious to most scientists and even politicians that it is possible to have too many people on the Earth. Indeed, the debate is currently strongest over whether we will be able over the next few decades to expand food production fast enough to keep up with population growth. Many think we will not be able to do it, in which case we must control population growth. The question is how. A draconian system of birth permits, birth control, abortion, and penalties for excess would surely work (as something similar has in China) and may even be essential, but very few people are willing to contemplate such serious infringement of personal freedom, or even to admit that we face a real prospect of catastrophe. So far, UN population conferences have agreed only on boosting prosperity, educating women, and improving health care, all of which will supposedly lead to people exercising their freedom by having fewer children.

As I said above, many of the objections to science and technology seem to be rooted in the very human tendency to feel that as things were in the past, so should they be forevermore. People resent change, unless it is imperceptably slow. And change--rapid change--is at the very heart of the scientific and technological enterprise.

So why aren't people demonstrating against the computer revolution and the Internet?

That's a very good question, for here change has been blisteringly fast.

Perhaps the answer is that in this one area, technological progress empowers even the critics. More than one person has noted the irony inherent in a Sven Birkerts being interviewed live on-line.

Dr. Thomas A. Easton is Professor of Life Sciences at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine. He has been the Analog book columnist for almost 20 years. His latest novel is Silicon Karma (Clarkston, GA: White Wolf, 1997). His latest nonfiction books are Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Science, Technology, and Society (Guilford, CT: Dushkin Publishing Group, 1995, 2nd ed., 1997) and Periodic Stars: An Overview of Recent Science Fiction (San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Books, 1997).