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Chapter II
Pages 20-28

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From page 20...
... Finally, political and technical decisions now tend in­ creasingly to generate complex chains of interacting consequences that go beyond the immediate obj ectives of those decisions. These circumstances impose serious limits on the relevance of historical materials and, at the very lea st, require that they be used with special caution, and that their use be tempered with particular imagination.
From page 21...
... As early as the Civil War, American naval vessels were used in the initial effort to lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable, nominally a private enterprise. Indeed, the federal 21 Digitized by Goog Ie
From page 22...
... The federal government now exerts a pervasive influence on the development of technology through support for highway construction ; water-resource devel­ opment programs ; subsidies for airport construction ; management of air traffic control ; promulgation of safety regulations in hundreds of industries ; extension of tax credits for capital investment and depletion allowances for underground mineral resources ; agricul­ tural price supports and the soil-conservation program ; aid to education programs that acquire audio-visual 22 Digitized by Goog Ie
From page 23...
... Among these are the Interstate Commerce Commission ; the Federal Communications Commission ; the Federal Aviation Agency ; the Federal Power Commission ; · the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration in the Interior Department ; the National Air Pollution Control Administration and the Environ­ mental Control Administration in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare ; the Environmental lmpact Office of the Department of Transportation ; the Federal Trade Commission and the Bureau of Standards in their consumer-protection activities ; the Food and Drug Administration in its regulation of new drugs and therapeutic devices ; and the Atomic Energy Commission in its j oint roles of development and regulation. Decisions on budget allocations for technology wholly or predominantly dependent upon the federal govern­ ment-whether to go forward with the development of a sea-water desalting plant or with a project like Plow­ share ; whether or not to proceed with the supersonic transport ; whether to open a sea-level Panama canal ; whether or not to develop a nucl ear-powered merchant marine ; which new energy source or conversion method to push (shale oil, direct conversion, or coal liquefaction, for example)
From page 24...
... Within this set of governmental and market processes, the initial assessment of the costs and benefits of alterna­ tive technological possibilities is ordinarily undertaken by, or at the behest of, those who seek to exploit one of the possibilities in question for their own purposes. Those purposes may be the enhancement of med�um-term return on investment and corporate stability and growth, in the case of private enterprise, or the maximization of benefits to particular constituencies, coupled with bu­ reaucratic survival and expansion vis-a-vis other organi­ zations or governments, in the case of public entities.
From page 25...
... Of course, even this kind of assessment, which values each technological development solely in terms of its likely impact upon a fairly narrow set of obj ectives and interests, takes place within a social and legal environ­ ment that structures the assessment process in important ways. Institutions like property and contract, supple­ mented by bodies of rules and incentives of many kinds (as expressed through principles of tort liability, tax law, patent law, copyright law, antitrust law, zoning law, and so forth)
From page 26...
... The many obvious difficulties of entering into such multiple agreements, however, ordinarily rule out this potential mode of adjustment. Only when the deleterious impact of a development upon remote groups or interests is sufficiently severe to generate sustain ed and organized opposition through legal, political, or diplomatic chan­ nels can that impact create any negative feedback (through litigation, regulatory legislation, treaty, or otherwise)
From page 27...
... ; nuclear-reactor assess­ ments are concerned only with control of the hazards to human health and safety posed by radiation and ex­ plosions-that is, those features that most spectacularly distinguish nuclear reactors from conventional ways of generating electricity. A number of agencies, organizations, and individuals conduct ad hoc assessments of the effects of those tech­ nological developments that have already generated particularly acute concern, and others conduct similar studies of currently significant problem areas (threats to privacy, highway safety, air pollution, and so on)
From page 28...
... 28 Digitized by Goog Ie


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