Why Don't We Live like the Jetsons?

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The government supported science so much that in 1953, President Eisenhower organized the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) to help him make critical decisions. After the Soviet satellite Sputnik’s first successful orbit, the U.S felt humiliated as they were seen as a technological superpower at the time. Succeeding Eisenhower, President Kennedy took office on January 20, 1961 he announced that by the end of the decade, America will have sent a man to the moon and back. He was told that this would be a challenging feat but the U.S had a potential lead over the Russians. Funding was provided and no expense was spared in this project. The advancements made in space technology during that era are still being applied today.The level of funding and support in the 60s isn’t nearly what it used to be. Science, in all its majesty is being used to optimize and make everything efficient. It is ironic that the funding that used to be available during a pivotal time in history is now being drained during another time in history.

Since ancient times, people have always ranked each other, from peasants in Egypt to slaves in Mississippi, there have always been judgment based on perceived superiority. Although those ranks today are not as obvious or explicit they are still there. Athletes and celebrities (sometimes the two go hand in hand) are held in high authority and are envied by many. If someone wished to be possess the charisma, will and talent needed to become a star how would they go about doing it? The eugenics movement is starting to play with the idea of improving the human condition in the most literal sense. By removing “negative” characteristics that include genes that can lead to behaviour that society condemns. This is a more literal relation to the idea of societal influence on technological innovation; however the main point here is that the misunderstandings circling this new tech. At its core, eugenics is a new way to improve humanity and the human condition. The same way penicillin and other medicine try to fix problems that have been plaguing humanity; this is a new way in which humans are trying to fix their flaws. The term “eugenics” was first coined by British scientist Francis Galton in 1883 (Karem, 2000). He suggested regulating family size and even marriage partners based on genetic advantages the parents had. In the early 1900s, scientists in Europe and America suggested that inferior people be sterilized to prevent them from passing their genes to future generations. This does not mean prevent them from having children; it reduces the chances of them passing down their unwanted traits in place of their non-dominant trait. In a eugenics utopia, all undesirable traits would effectively have been bred out of the world, improving the human race and human condition. This is similar to selective breeding to remove unwanted traits in livestock, a practice still done today. Eugenics was slowly dying during the 1920s when it was being portrayed as a science based on unsound principles and shaky ethics. What led to the demise of this movement was that unwanted traits were relative and trends in society changed the criteria for “bad” traits all the time.

The ethical woes emerged from people using genetics and Darwinism as justification for their racism and prejudice. The notion that humans who possess certain unwanted traits (usually stemming from their cultural background) are flawed and must be “fixed” would obviously give rise to racism and prejudice. The most obvious example of eugenics gone horribly wrong is Hitler and the Nazis in WWII. Hitler managed to convince his people that his eradication of the Jews was a good idea because of the success that America has had with its eugenics projects. One of the most well documented forms of sterilization was the concentration camps. The gas chambers were fitted with a gas invented by German chemist Franz Haber (originally used for fertilizer).This gas was the weapon of choice for exterminating Jews and other minority groups in these camps. It is amazing that the kind of hatred and violence that came about from eugenics was the exact thing eugenics was trying to get rid of in the first place. Eugenics, a technology that could have changed humanity for the better will now forever be remembered as an all-time low in human history.

As private companies start to delve into scientific problems requiring complex and sometimes abstract solutions, there seems to be a paradigm shift in how inventors and innovators are able to overcome obstacles that are set in front of them. Private companies, which are not shackled by the chains of public opinion and outcry, can research and experiment freely and are thus pushing the boundaries of what is scientifically possible. Society dictates, knowingly or not the course of science and its evolution. Public outcry can easily turn to public support and accelerate the growth of technology just as effectively as it can hinder it. This era is one of the most important in human history. The next few decades will be shaped by how we, as a society, view and react to the implications of new scientific discovery.

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“Michio Kaku 3 Types