MIT271:  Technology & Human Values
March 21: 
Technological Optimism
Administration
•	Reading schedule alteration:
•	Next Tuesday: 
•	Postrel 
•	AND AN ADDITION: Tenner “Revenge Theory” pp. 102-103
•	Next Thursday: 
•	Schiller
•	Stackhouse
•	Test back next week
Freeman Dyson
 
•	More fully developed account of his techno-optimism
•	Three rapidly advancing technologies together have the potential to create a more equal distribution of the world’s wealth
Some technologies serve social justice:
•	Public health
•	Synthetic materials
•	Household appliances

But such class-equalizers tend to move a burden to women      But some technologies do not serve social justice:
•	Personalized medical care sacrificed to high tech medicine
•	The “digital divide”
Technology drives ethics
•	As much as ethics drives technology
•	So we need to push for greater ethical input into technological development
The sun, the genome and the internet
Together can revive village life, because:
®	Solar energy is distributed equally
®	Genetic engineering can make solar energy broadly available: energy crops
®	The internet can provide the necessary information