From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Feb 01 2003 - 17:33:37 MST
When sad things happen, I increase the abstraction level. The disaster
has something to tell us.
The real tragedy here is that a single accident can be so devastating.
If seven good people have been killed in a car crash it would at most
have appeared on local news, and a plane crash would at most merit a
small national news mention unless it was particularly bad. Right now
the space program is so small, so concentrated both in terms of money,
technology and symbolism that any setback is amplified to a major
setback.
In a mature field there would be many other groups and systems that
would to some extent buffer an accident - if a plane goes down, it won't
freeze air traffic as a whole. But in a highly concentrated field -
human gene therapy, the concorde, the space program - accidents not just
mean the direct loss, but also a setback for the entire field. In order
to avoid risks to the other important parts of the project all activity
is closed down in order to investigate.
But there is a further problem. The early railway crashes did not end
railways, it just led to the creation of safer railways. But the
Hindenburg crash spelled the end of the whole field of commercial
zeppelins. The difference was the spread of active support for the
technology, how many different projects/approaches there are and
especially if the general perception of the technology is that it is
needed. Railroads were generally supported and explored, while zeppelins
were a fairly elite project not giving much benefit to most travellers
(who still went by boat).
We need to get away from this risky, brittle elite project stage for
many of our pet technologies, especially genetics and space. Setbacks
happen, but they should be something to learn from rather the end of the
endeavor.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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