Southeastern Massachusetts University - Scrimshaw Yearbook (North Dartmouth, MA)

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For many people the most distasteful of all these problems is the fact that there is already insufficient .toil to go round - that it is now necessary to allow vast numbers of people to do what they want to do simply because they personally believe that their activity is important. The guaranteed income proposal mentioned above recognizes this reality, and it has therefore been attacked from both ends of the political spectrum, and from every point in between, on the grounds that the proposal would promote the lazy society. For example, August Hecksher, who served as President Kennedy's special assistant for cultural affairs, declared: The very idea of large populations doing nothing but pleasing themselves goes against the American grain, and then went on to npmake A proposals for job allocations andincome distribution which Gerard Piel has described as instant feudalism'. . . We have not yet been ' willing to recognize the true extent of the challenge posed by the drive toward unlimited destructive power, unlimited productive power, the elimination of the human mind from repetitive tasks, the organizing drive of the computer within na cybernetics system. We have not yet been willing to recognize that we live today in the truly lazy society - a society where we allow technological trends to make our decisions for us because we have not yet been willing to recognize that man's A,1I. . 4 :K i . ' - ' 9 .0 , . . n power is now so great that the .minimum requirement for the .survival of the human race is individual responsibility. , i Man will no longer need to toil: he must find a new role 'l in the cybernetics era which must emerge from a new goal of self-fulfillment. He, can no longer view himself as a super-animal' at the center of the physical universe, nor as a super-efficient taker p of decisions self-fashioned in the model of the computer. 'I-Ie must now wiew himself as a truly creative being in the image of a -9 ,Q

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eeflri foe-74' '1e,.1feZe'f59?Z:QPfi QiSf?? '5i2f.',slffkt 'f',, f,:5!3Qi?417ff,jl'Z11,,g,- m e, t i t 2 Qi f - seq .:': ,-'f Q-f.fji'i1'?f131'-,1512---1 the ff,-'A 2932 -'1 f---N 2- 2. typ 2 ..: , ff -t ,c's:Ef1 ?S:l:s.if 3fy5'i55-ff,:-- X-gin? Q 3 iw., ' .end ,,-fi.,-.Q ..,. yn. J, ..., ,,, ann :,...,..f , ,,. . , V , Yaleeioefhvse-twhviwefhwk 'fin 1311? :not IAA onlyabout the zprqbiemeeqfvzfeeefefy. bin-gene about the individual. 'For AA, example, the patient will his .doctor the basis . .of his babilityvtol Q-understand him. as a biological system., ,ratherif than v value A his apparent qruags-imagical' techniques as in our ' -. fe K - -- Hg, ffag, .'. ' ,. ' WI ig, lI?'l!glWllT1Tllal'lF' ,,.. ,, .. 'fr e'.,I'3!i- ' ' .121 - ' 3 ,, +1 lf -' V ' QQVQIIJIJII-IJIQI flabl- ' iiia' Iam sure that many humanists will be ShOCked by my acceptance of the system-thinking for they fear that man will be destroyed by the rationality implicit in systems thinking. In this view the rational is synonymous -with the concept of the logical solution to any problems inherent in a task, the choice of ,the one best way to do something, the constant search for the efficient. Compared to any system ,or smoothly running organization, man's thought processes are less rational, more subject to accident and distortion. According to this thesis , it follows that man must inevitably end by acting according to the instruction of the efficient UVbl0lU11'lllCh1llg IIICULIGILISIIIS YYLUUII 115 himself created for his service, to carry out his wishes, to fulfil his needs. But the efficient, knowledgeable servant becomes the administrator, the teacher and thus, the master. This is the case put forward by Jacaues Ellul in his book originally PUb1fSh6d in France in 1954 under the title of La Technique, and just published in the United States this fall under the title The Technological Society. It is impossible not to concede the immense strength of Ellul's arguement, even though it was based on the organizational efficiency drives existing before the emergence of the computer and its accelerating drive toward maximum- efficiency. My acceptance of system-thinking is based on reality: on my willingness to face up to the fact that there is no way to avoid the development of computer systems in the second-half of the twentieth century. Our only hope is to accept this reality and to use all of man 's energy to recruit technological drives for the attainment of our fundamental goals. . Let me conclude: the fundamental effect of cybernetics is anti-entropic as Charles, Dechert has pointed out. The increasing efficiency of organization permits greater output with less energy input. In the industrial, scarcity age, this process could only have worked to our .advantage for demand exceeded supply and energy sources were always insufficient. In the cybernetics-based abundance era, however, we are being con fronted with the need to place restraints on both production and the new energy sources, lest their drives destroy us. The danger of exploding production is no less real than that of destructive explosions. It is incorrect to assume that because we have presently unfulfilled' global production needs, we can absorb any extra amount, and rapidly. We are living in a world of exponential growth. But Dennis Gabor, Professor at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, has pointed out: ' .... exponential curves grow to infinity only in mathematics. In the physical world they either turn round and saturate, or they break down catastrophically. It is our duty as thinking men to do our best toward a gentle saturation, instead of sustaining the exponential growth, though this faces us with very unfamiliar and distasteful problems.

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