AFTER the polymath John von Neumann died in 1957, his friend and collaborator Stanisław Ulam wrote a to a man who did more than almost anyone to advance science and technology in the post-war world.
Ulam recalled that von Neumann worried about science losing public support: “The interests of humanity may change, the present curiosities in science may cease, and entirely different things may occupy the human mind in the future.”
Von Neumann was far too pessimistic: the past 60 years have seen staggering scientific and technological progress (see “The inventions of our lifetime, picked by the people who know“). But times change and public attitudes are fickle. Could his prediction come true in the future?
Advertisement
“I do worry that public opinion might turn,” says Jack Stilgoe of University College London, who researches the impacts and perception of science and technology policy. “If people feel that innovation is benefiting the wrong people, making the rich even richer and overlooking other social needs, then they may well get disenchanted.”
Will we still love technology when robots have taken our jobs, or when insurance companies demand huge premiums because humans are the most dangerous drivers on the roads? Will people smash up self-driving taxis, just as Luddites attacked automated looms?
In some small, angry pockets, the backlash is already in full swing. Former mathematician Ted Kaczynski, aka The Unabomber, has just published a book called The Anti-Tech Revolution. “He seems to think that the only way around this is to radically scale back our scientific and technological ambitions, even if that involves a violent downshifting in human lifestyles,” says sociologist Steve Fuller at the University of Warwick, UK. “The book is quite sane. It’s written like he’s instructing a revolutionary cell how to stop science and technology from destroying the planet.”
Stilgoe is sceptical. “Societies in rich countries have become exquisitely dependent on science and technology, so there really is no possibility,” he says. But if it did happen, the consequences would be terrible. “A change in public mood that discourages all forms of scientific research would produce technological and economic stagnation,” says Harvard University historian of science Matthew Hersch. “We would face technical and financial ruin.” The social ramifications would be horrific too. “When the faculties of colleges and universities stop learning new things, the education they provide atrophies and degrades into dogma, half-truths, and untested assumptions misremembered from error-ridden texts.”
Read more: We’ve seen the future, and it will blow your mind
91av is 60 years old this week, so how will the next 60 play out? We look forward to how science and technology might upturn the world as we know it
This article appeared in print under the headline “What if… The world turns against science?”
