Science and Technology : for humanitarian means?
Everything in the world is subjective and can never be pristinely and clearly bifurcated as black and white. Similarly, in the case of science and technology; one can never say that both of it possessed such an angelic behavior as they have also brought several disasters to the world. Firmly I stand with my view that science and technology require a sufficient protection in order to filter it from the latter consequence stated above.
Knowledge and awareness evolved. It is not surprising for early modern scientists to promote and claim that their works were essentially meant for the people, environmentally and naturally friendly as they have facts in their hand. The application of science and technology is not a close system; it is prone and susceptible to the outside influence such as politics and money. The first quarter of the century, science has effectively being employed for the benefit of the human kind as a result from the least interference from both the political and economic interest. As time goes by, science has led to the creation of more and more destructive weapons especially by the nuclear superpowers which has indefinitely caused even more wars and brought instability to the world. From the World Wars in 1940’s, Gulf War in 1970’s, continued with the Biochemical massacre of the Kurds in Iraq until the latest “legitimate” invasion of Iraq, prove that science and technology have several times being massively dehumanizing. These catastrophes happened by letting the political and economic interest to be on the driving seat. However, I can never deny the fact that for every post-war, humanitarian relief with work has never been disappointing with the use of science and technology. The question is, “until when we have to bear the human population’s ‘genocide cycle’?”
Apart from that, science has as well being “exploited” in order to print additional money. World has stood as witness for case like the malfunction of the Ford Pinto in 1970’s; the car manufacturer had proceeded with their business without rectifying the car’s problem, which will force them to increase the cost. Obviously, penny was more valuable to them than the life of a person. I am not here trying to condemn and blame science for all the its miss-used, but to call for a better supervision and protection from a neutral body to make sure that it will be free from both political and economic influence. Together with that, humanitarians must never give up to continue adopting science in their noble work in order to improve their effectiveness and to build better awareness among us, the human beings. Decisively, science and technology are not necessarily beneficial.
-batigol-
January 12th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Well, in the Pinto’s case, the US government was supposed to be the watchdog over such “unsafe” vehicles. If the government was incapable of being impartial (seeing that it is accountable to the people etc) how do you expect another “independent” body to do much better?
January 12th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I think its not the gov that shud carry the blame..its the unethical business approach from Ford..in such a big country with big industries…we cant expect them to inspect every single car…
January 12th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
i mean them as the gov