The enduring dream of the technological fix

I've always thought that futurology is bunkum, but I do believe there is value in studying the past's hopes for the future. For me, as a science journalist, the dawn of the nuclear age is a particularly fascinating time because it marked a moment in history is which science really did rule the world. The actions of a small group of physicists determined the course of World War II and changed energy policy forever. There are plenty of people who have chronicled that time, but one of the most fascinating is Alvin Weinberg, who worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory during the Manhattan Project and became one of world's biggest advocates for nuclear power.

Having some time here at MIT (incidentally, MIT Press published Weinberg's seminal Reflections on Big Science in 1969) has given me the chance to research Weinberg's life in a little more detail. In particular, his idea of the "technological fix", by which he meant technologies that could fix social problems. When Weinberg used this phrase, he was largely referring to the way the atomic bomb held out the possibility of ending war altogether. But his vision went far beyond this. He wrote in his autobiography in 1994, "I saw technological fixes everywhere." Television might keep people off the streets and from rioting, he suggested. DDT might halt malaria, he also wrote. Above all, he was convinced that dirt cheap, endless energy provided by nuclear fission would change the world.

As you might imagine, Weinberg suffered quite a bit of criticism from environmentalists (it's interesting that in the years after his death, some greens are now becoming advocates of nuclear power, too, even despite Fukushima). One ecologist at the time derisively described him as the "king of technological optimists". But in truth, he was just a product of his time. Reflections on Big Science was written only a couple of years before the US first sent a man to the moon. Between 1960 and 1964, Weinberg notes, the US nearly doubled its spending on science.

In some countries, that faith in the power of science and technology has never really gone away. China, Japan, Korea, Iran, Israel and India still hold fast to the dream that technology can have a transformative effect on society. The West, it has to be said, is a little more jaded. But if you look for technological fixes, like Weinberg did, you will still see them everywhere. Geoengineering is one big example (to "fix" the problem of climate change), and many scientists still believe that fusion might yet provide us with the endless, clean, cheap energy that fission couldn't.

What I think Weinberg really tapped into with his phrase was not so much a reality (no technological fix has completely fixed anything) but an enduring belief that we can solve our worst problems using technology. Modern pharmaceuticals were arguably born from the idea that we could kill the microbes that cause disease in a single hit, rather than treating the symptoms afterwards, for instance. And even though nuclear power has not become the saviour that Weinberg hoped it might be, he wrote, "Our achievement, 17% of the world's electricity from nuclear fission, can never be taken away." For my part, I still share his optimism. Even if we fail, the trying is always worth it.

And on the theme of technological fixes, this semester during my fellowship here in Boston, I'm studying urban utopias... the idea of the perfect city, made possible by science and technology. I'll be posting some thoughts on what I learn at the end of the year.

(The picture above from The Nuclear Green Revolution blog shows Alvin Weinberg meeting President Kennedy on a visit to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He was one of Kennedy's science advisors.)