Science and technology have come to pervade every aspect of our lives and, as a

result, society is changing at a speed which is quite unprecedented. There is a

great technological explosion around us, generated by science. This explosion is

already freeing vast numbers of people from their traditionalbondage to nature,

and now at last we have it in our power to free mankind once and for all from the

fear which is based on want. Now, for the first time, man can reasonably begin

to think that life can be something more than a grim struggle for survival. But

even today, in spite of the high standard of living which has become general in

the more fortunate West, the majority of people in the world still spend nearly

all their time and energy in a never-ending struggle with nature to secure the

food and shelter they need. Even in this elementary effort millions of human

beings each year die unnecessarily and wastefully from hunger, disease, or flood.

Yet,in the West, science and technology have made it possible for us to have

a plentiful supply of food, produced by only a fraction of the labour that was

necessary even a few decades ago. In the United States, for instance, one man on

the land produces more than enough food to feed fifteen men in the cities, and,

in fact, there is a surplus of food grown even by this small proportion of the

American labour force. We have considerablyextended our expectation of life.

We have enriched our lives by creating physical mobility through the motor-car,

the jet aeroplane, and other means of mechanical transport; and we have added

to our intellectual mobility by the telephone, radio, and television. Not content

with these advances, we are now thrusting forward to the stars, and the conquest

o space no longer strikes us as Wellsian or Jules Vernian. And with the advent

of the new phase of technology we call automation, we have the promise both of

greater leisure and of even greater material and intellectual riches.

But this is not inevitable. It depends on automation being adequately ex-

ploited. We shall need to apply our scientific and technological resources to

literally every aspect of our society, to our commerce, our industry, our medicine,

our agriculture, our transportation.

It is fascinating and encouraging to observe the development of this immense

process, a process in which man appears all the time to be engaged in the act of

creating an extension of himself. In his new technological successes this appears

particularly true. He is extending his eyes with radar; his tongue and his ear

through telecommunication; his muscle and body structure through mechaniza-

tion. He extends his own energies by the generation and transmission of power

and his nervous system and his thinking and decision-making faculties through

automation. If this observation is accurate, as I believe it is, the implications are

far-reaching. It might be reasonable to conclude that the direction of modern

science and technology is towards the creation of a series of machine-systems

based on man as a model.

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