IVIV (12): 195-197

[Monte Davis]

John Carvill sez: 
>Ah, so it's a non-issue then? Ok. 

It's "an issue," but one less distinct from the issues faced by everyone
else than is often asserted. 
    
> Functionaries, bus drivers, etc. don't use their creative skills to come
up with new technologies. 

Yebbut... 99.9% of the time, what scientists and engineers are doing is
small incremental steps, most of them "if I don't do it today, someone else
will next year." The clear-cut Decisive Moment, when one person is in a
position to say _non serviam_ *and* doing so makes a substantial difference
for a substantial time, is exceedingly rare. See Robert K. 
Merton on simultaneous discovery: it's the rule, not the exception

> Anyway, I was trying to raise the question of why *some* technical folk
seem to let their fondness for technology blind them to what use that
technology might be put to. I think I see that question being alluded to in
Pynchon's books, notably GR and ATD.

Of course it is. All I'm suggesting is that we notice, *as well as* Pokler,
the large cast of British, German,  American and Soviet NON-technologists
who also contribute their dutiful increment to horrors.

> I take you to be pretty optimistic about technology. 

Not so much optimistic as accepting. It's What We Do, and have been doing
since the technology of "stick a feather crosswise at the back of your
pointy stick and it will go straighter" or the technology of "give some of
that munchy grass seed back to the Earth Mother and there'll be more next
year."

I've spent 40+ years around a lot of scientists and technologists, from
Nobelists to run-of-the-mill, talking to them about their work. My
experience just doesn't tally with the notion that as a group they are more
morally obtuse, or less alert to unintended consequences, than your average
citizen... or your average Sensitive New Age Humanist.