From: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!wagner Newsgroups: net.followup Title: Re: Computers and Society; Foresight and Technology Article-I.D.: utcsstat.331 Posted: Thu Sep 23 08:02:42 1982 Received: Thu Sep 23 08:29:57 1982 References: whuxk.118 So far, most of what I have read on this topic has taken the attitude that exploration of future technology and its impact will lead to a go/nogo decision by someone/some agency. It would be nice if the study of a product would result in significant changes to minimize the undesirable social effects, but simply publishing the results of the study would be of significant social value. As for who should make decisions to withdraw products ("how could we withdraw cars now"), it is to be hoped that the availability of good product evaluations would force obviously bad products off the market. If they arent obviously bad, then they must be good for someone, and therefore probably should stay. Here we do get into libertarian philosophies, which I am not qualified to discuss. In summary, impartial evaluations of new technologies/products are of significant educational value even if they are not used by a government agency or other censoring body to pass judgement on the technology/product. Michael Wagner, UTCS