From: Dan Owen <dowen@BBN.COM>
Subject: Re: Virtuality and the Dominant Culture:  Review from AFTERIMAGE, 
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 92 10:05:35 PDT



	Timothy Druckery is finally asking questions that we all should
be very concerned with.  Thanks to him for writing the review and to
you, Julian [Bleecker], for forwarding what you did of it over the net.

	This recalls the soiological debates stimulated by the German
sociologist Max Weber who proposed that the intellectual disciplines of
mathematics, science, the social sciences and the liberal arts were
"value free".  By this he meant that the knowledge gleaned in them were
valid outside of any value system.  While this is true, it begs the
question of how the knowledge is paid for and to what uses it is put.  I
know of a scientist who developed a catalyst (for the Navy) which would
allow napalm to stick to human skin (prior to this it would bounce off)
during the Viet Nam war.  When I asked him if he ever considered the
suffering and pain which this would cause to its many victims, he
replied that he was a chemist and that such ethical questions were
outside of his specialization and would more properly be put to an
ethicist or philosopher.  You can't legislate a conscience or moral
responsibility.  The people most interested in breaking the new ground
in knowledge, science and technology are often the least interested in
the moral consequences of their work.  The example of the father of the
A bomb, Oppenheimer, is a good example of the consequences of taking a
moral stand (however late it is taken) of this sort.  After the bomb was
proven to work, he had qualms and began to attempt to limit its further
development and proliferation.  He was discredited and, I believe, had
his patriotism questioned (or was he simply accused of being a
communist?).  The quest for intellectual attainments is often
substantially rewarded by society.  There is often little or no reward
for moral behavior, except of course as its own reward.

	Those engaged in intellectual research have proven themselves
all too willing to make a Mephistophilean bargain in order to be able to
continue and/or complete their research.  Leonardo apparently had no
qwualms in designing many (high tech for their day) weapons, including
the first tank, for his patrons, the Medicis.  Don't get me wrong, I'm
not saying that I am above any of this.  Clearly, though, the deck is
stacked against the moral and ethical development of knwoledge and
technology.

Dan