John’s column today (I guess I could link to it, but everyone has read it –right?) makes a good point about the reflexive opposition you’re apt to get from the crowd of American Luddites and technophobes who hate the idea of progress (although how many of them still listen to LPs rather than compact disks, or dry their clothes on a line rather than using a dryer?) whenever any scientific or technological breakthrough is announced.
Back in 1989 when there was a flash of interest in the apparent possibility of “cold fusion” to create tremendous amounts of energy at low cost — which hasn’t scientifically panned out, but I read recently that there are still some scientists who think it may be possible — the technophobe guru Jeremy Rifkin said that “giving the world abundant, cheap energy would be like giving a machine gun to an idiot child.” Creeps like Rifkin could at one time have been ignored as cranks, but today there are a number of federal statutes that allow the cranks to tie up new technologies with lawsuits over their imagined doomsday effects.
