THE ASCENDANCE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
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under a confidential agreement with this company. I'm working with
them; you're working with that other company. They are competitors."
As a result, potential collaborations that could be beneficial within aca–
demic settings are being squashed as a result of commercial interest.
Again, I am a great proponent of transferring the technology out of the
universities into companies, but these dangers are becoming more and
more prevalent.
Gerald Weissmann:
Competition, tough competition, was a fact of life
in the academic world for years before the biological revolution-as our
colleagues in the humanities know. The late Edwin
C.
(Jack) Whitehead,
benefactor of the Whitehead Institute, told me, "Gerry, let me tell you
the real difference between business and academia: in business it's dog
eat dog, and in academia, it's the opposite."
Edward Rothstein:
One other issue, about views of science in American
culture. There are two poles. On the one hand, there is this absolute fas–
cination with scientific innovation and technological invention going
back to the nineteenth century, celebrated in the
1930S
and
1950S
and
to a great extent in recent decades with advances in computers and elec–
tronics and medicine. On the other hand, there is a radical distrust of
both progress and the nature of scientific knowledge, evident in Gerry's
quotation from Norman Mailer. This is the countercultural anti-scien–
tific view that has its roots in European Romanticism. These two strains
seem to run side by side. Any comments on that?
Ray Kurzweil:
This also has its roots in the Luddite movement, which
emerged in the English textile industry around
1800,
when weavers who
for generations had enjoyed a certain livelihood had that business model
turned on its head .
It
seemed apparent to the Luddites that since one per–
son could do the work of twelve, as machines got more and more sophis–
ticated and new machines were coming out every year, employment,
ultimately, wou ld be enjoyed by a small elite. But because human desire
and ambition grows along with opportunity, people didn't want just one
shirt; they wanted a who le wardrobe of shirts. The common man or
woman could have well-made clothing for the first time, and new indus–
tries grew up to transfer these well -made clothes, and to build the
machines, and so forth.
If
you look at the trends, we've had tremendous
growth both in terms of average pay, productivity, and number of jobs.
The education level required for jobs has increased. Employment is one
aspect of human dignity. Both poles are growing. Because the power of
