Chapter 19 Swords into Plowshares
If there was once an Iron Age, this surely must be the Age of Irony. And nothing highlights this more dramatically than the silicon chip. Alone of all our tools, it extends both our minds and our muscles. It represents at once both a magic carpet to the fulfillment of many of our fondest wishes and the way to efficient, economical annihilation.
Pure science goes about its work without values. It examines what is and finds what it will; it lets the chips fall where they may. There is no such thing as pious chemistry or charitable physics.
Technology—the application of science to immediate problems—has always been regarded as a poor stepchild to science. It is, after all, not pure but applied, not impartial ...
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