¶ Technology: Enchantment vs. Disenchantment (3)
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Index Entry
Technology: Enchantment vs. Disenchantment:
"when Einstein said to me, ‘young man, you amahsse me… I can’t imagine any of my ideas having, even the slightest practical application.’ He wrote his theories for a small audience of astrophysicists and cosmogonists. But it was his original idea of getting energy out of matter that led the scientists to seek his authority in warning President Roosevelt about the heavy water research the Germans were up to… and that led eventually to the bomb at Hiroshima.
"And since then the scientists have just laid eggs while the financial and political exploitation system hatches them. The scientists’ specialization gives them no control over such matters; they have nothing to cope with–they just stay in their laboratories and lay eggs.
“But the question was about competition and acquisitiveness… all of which was okay when there was not enough to go around. I can understand selfishness being rationalized as it has been in history: exploitation of colonies in the nameof God and the King… Cortez in Mexico and so on: 'I’y people are a little holier than yours so we’ve got to have a fight about it.”
