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From: ljdickey%water.waterloo.edu@RELAY.CS.NET (Lee Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: The Impact of Inventions
Message-ID: <2177@hplabsc.HP.COM>
Date: Mon, 6-Jul-87 17:31:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.2177
Posted: Mon Jul  6 17:31:29 1987
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Prentiss Riddle writes:

>...all the decisions (and especially if we let them use the short-term profit
> motive as their one and only golden rule), I have even less faith in the
> government's ability to coerce them to behave responsibly through required
> "social impact statements."  

It occurs to me that there may be a parallel between evolution of life
forms and the "short-term profit motive" Priddle mentions above.  If I
understand what the biologists are saying to us, it is that every
biological characteristic that happens as an evolutionary change and
survives, does so because it is of immediate benefit to the posessor of
that characteristic, and not because of some long term goal that may
benefit a life form that may happen to come along at a later date.  I
interpret this to be a form of "short-term profit motive" in a
biological setting.

This is not particularly relevant to the discussion at hand, I merely
present it as curious idea.  Please do not read "evolutionary social
Darwinism" into my words either.  I do agree with P. Riddle's statement
that 

> we *all* share responsibility for the consequences of new (and old) 
> technology: as consumers, voters, and workers, among other things.  We 
> all need to remember that just because technology is doable doesn't mean 
> it should be done ...

L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo.