Page 4, The Herald, Friday, October 12, 1979 TERRACE/KITIMAT daily herald General Office- 635-4357 Pubilshed by Clreulation - 635-6357 Sterling Publishers GEN. MANAGER - Knox Coupland EDITOR - Greg Middieton CIRCULATION - TERRACE - 635-6357 KITIMAT OF FICE - 632-2747 Published every weekday at 3212 Katum Street, Terrace, B.C. A member of Varifled Circulation. Authorized as second class mall. Registration number 1201. Postage pald In cash. return postage guarantead., + NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT The Herald retains full, compiate and sole copyright In any advertisement produced and-or any editorial or Photographic content published in the Herald, Reproduction Is not permitted without the written permission of the Publisher, EDITORIAL British Columbia’s Heroin Treatment Act, legislation which provided for the compulsory treatment of any person who showed a positive reaction to a test for recent opiate use, was ruled invalid Tuesday by the 8.C. Supreme Court. The court found that the province went beyond its jurisdiction and Into the realm of the federai narcotics laws In enacting legislation which, In effect,- made It Illegal to have used heroin. Civil libertarians reacted immediately against the legislation when It was In- troduced and many social workers and. social psychologists criticized the legisiation. t was felt by many that the new law was merely a political move, an attempt to taunt the federal government into taking steps to avold a further erosion of power. Police In Vancouver used the legislation as an excuse to process large : numbers of addicts for the threatened compulsory treatment. While this may have had a cosmetic effect for Van- couver, plagued by the junkles and the resulting theft and prostitution, It did not deal with causes of offer any long range solution. Local police will tell you it simply dispersed the addicted throughout. the province. tee wae Ky . eter » i : » ‘ The Social Credit government now says it will keep the drug treatment centres open for voluntary admissions.. if they do this, and the courts also see this resource as an alternative to prison for drug users convicted of other crimes, we may be taking the first step toward a social program which sees drug dependence as a social problem rather than a legal one. 7 wey LETTERS TO THE EDITOR organizers also face ‘Dear Sir: 7M. Garg One of the ways that governments--provincial and federal~are trying to shore up a faltering, mismanaged economic system is cut- backa. Sometimes, like when Skeenaview or children's homes are being closed or pregnant women or young people are denied UIC or welfare, these culbacks are highly visible. There is, however, more subtle ways being used to deny working people their righta every day of the year. Examples of this is the refusal of the provincial government to employ sufficient personnel for labour relations and workers’ = compensation offices, Thare is only one labour relations officer in Terrace for this whole area in spite of years of pleas to the Government and our previous MLA. While the present officer is very capable and conscientious, when she Ia ill or on vacation no one can deal with com- plaints about employers who mistreat employees or neglect to pay wages. Yes, Virginia, that happens! @ non-union workers are hardeat hit by this, union problerns. In many cases employers facing possible unionization, will fire workers ‘‘suspected” of having joined the Union, Yea Virginia, that alao happena| Therefore, fast action is receasary, but of course cannot be accomplished when the officer is on holidays. A similar deplorable state of affairs existe at the Workers’ Compensation Board which used to have two inspectors. One quit last summer and has not yet been replaced.’ The other is presently on sick leave: again this is no reflection on the inspectora who are doing a good job, it is a reflection of a government that in apite of the fact that almoat 60 loggers were killed on the job last year in B.C. are More concerned balancing the books than the workers’ welfare. One bright spot; rumour has it that in spite of Joe Clark's elimination of 90,000 obs he is going to have to eep some employees around to tell tHe unem- ployed that ney will not be able to get a job nor quallfy tor UIC. Yours truly, John Jensen Letters Welcome The Herald welcomes its readers comments. All letters to the editor of general public interest will be printed, We do, however, retain the right to refuse to print letters on grounds of possible libel or bad taste. We may also edit letters for style and length. All letters to be considered for publication must be signed, CONNECTION For Experts Only? The rapld growth of sclence has created a widening gap between scientists and the general public, despite efforta at communication by some experts, such as Professor Paul D. Saltman of the University of Callfornia, San % PO Tete This is the third of a weekly, 15-part general In- terest, non credit, education. series on technology and change, called Connectioa., offered by the Open Learning Institute. : Each week, an article will appear in this paper. Starting Sunday, September 20th, at 8:00 p.m. on Channel 9 (Cable TV), you can watch the weekly PBS television series, Connections, part of this multi- media continuing education program. As well, you can purchase a Viewer's Gulde from the Open Learning Institute (see coupon at the end of this article), In this article, historian Derek J. de Sol, Price discusses the problem posed by an elite group of technical experts in our society. _ NEWSPAPER— . How terribly technical - By DEREK DE SOLLA PRICE The force of science and technology controls much of the modern world. It holds the purse-strings of civilization. forms the basis of military might, and dominates the quality of life and the possibilities of the: future for every person on earth, Why then does it seem beyond the control of the people, beyond their comprehension? Why do ~eientists talk learned gobbledegook and behave: like an elite power group, protecting their mysteries’and the basis of their power? At the same time, why does the mass of humanity seem herded into a world of nuclear rebellion, megadeaths, food additives, con- spicuous technological consumption, and mindless computerization? The rapid growth of science and our increasing dependence on high technology have produced a widening gap between scientists and the general public — a gap that has been only partially bridged by education — and that only in the few most developed nations, From the beginning science and technology were like any other field in which some people were cleverer than others, Right at the start of history in Mesopotamia five thousand years ago, a most sophisticated and complicated craft of arithmetic and mathematical treatment of astronomy developed. It was incredibly successful and accurate — and as incomprehensible to the common person as higher mathematics has been ever since. It set a pattern that has persisted right down to modern mathematical physics and the other sciences related to it. Mathematics from the start involved not only a special talent but alao a long, difficult investment in years of learning. We do not know the practical func: tion — if any — that these mathematical skills had. Were the learned Mesopotamian priests and the Greeks, Arabs, and medieval and Renaissance scholars that followed them deliberately hiding their skills from the common people? There was no con- Cd t OPEN au | spiracy of an elite. 4 TWO REVOLUTIONS — INSTITUTE In the course of history two great changes in technology caused scientific knowledge to become more elite. Around 1500 A.D, came the Gutenberg Printing Revolution. The book very quickly changed the entire society. Presses were built and run by craftspeople in the cities rather than by scholars in monasteries and universities, and both the writers and the readers of the new books were a new class. : What happened with the opening up of science to its new public? Certainly there was a general democratization, but the arcane mysteries of highly technical knowledge persisted. Then in the 17th century came the Scientific Revolution. The telescope and other instruments changed the status of our attempts to understand the universe. Before, it had depended only on brainpower, and all philosophers worked with the same evidence. Suddenly Galileo saw mountains on the moon, satellites around Jupiter, thousands of stars nobody had seen before. It was a discovery of an artificial method of- = oe eee revelation (which the church could not then accept),, and it changed the universe that was to be explained. From then till now, the effect of technology upon science has been the most powerful means of im- proving our tnderstanding of both the natural universe and manmade technologies. SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS To cope with the new flood of learning, enthusiasts Technology and change began to band together into societies. Making use of the presses, they began a fresh tradition of scientific journals in which they published items of new knowledge as they came in. At first it seemed IWlicit to publish atoms of knowledge in this way without maturing them into a life’s work book, but the method flourished pa ticularly well with geience, and a societypotay and readers /0f 8 fc research papef®¢re enormous rapidity. The papers themselves became a world body of literature peorperating the new un- derstanding of science and technologies. Had the technologies of communication and in- struments bred a new elite? Certainly they developed a new set of words and a special impersonal literary © Style appropriate for new thoughts, Some scientists were noblemen, physicians, clergymen, professors, but others were artisan instrument-makers, working surveyors and navigators, and mechanics or just enthusiasts, like modern stamp collectors or bird- watchers. What happened, however, was that the enormously accelerated pace of new knowledge and ever- increasing sophistication of theory continuously removed the new scientific understanding from the majority of people simply because with each generation, despite increased education, more had to be learned, more skills had to be acquired. te ated - By the 18th century'.the exponential growth of new knowledge (doubling every ten years) and new technologies had reached the point where workers like the Luddites' in England broke the machines that threatened their livelihood. Even the sctentists could not keep up!” . -_Encyclopaedias and summary abstracts of research ie 7k ‘ , DO YOU WISH TO LEARN MORE ? The Open Learning Insitute is the B.C. sponsor for this serids of weekly telecasts. A viewers guide, especially pre- pared to exptnd upon the issues probed In this series and the associaed newspaper articles is availuble from the institute. . To order, return the coupon belaw ta:— Open Learning Institute 7671 Alderbridge Way Richmond. B.C. V6X 129 Plaase send tie oO viewers guides ts) at $3.45 carh. Uncles poste wd handtingh Panmvenelasing $2... 0000000000, Bs cheque or mines order Nat eee AMUIESS etc te etree eee eee CU ee eee eee ee Posh Cole. ————— TELEVISION COURSE _ papers to wrap up the learning into digestible form offered one solution. The great French Encyclopaedia was frankly political in its attitude toward the technical knowledge of all skilled trades, publishing all the alleged secrets that might oppress the populace by forcing them to toil as apprentices rather than read and become masters. In the same spirit, new , Gemocratic elements in society forced disclosure of * technical secrets as a published ‘ patent, in exchange for a commercial monopoly on the new device. Needless tosay, the encyclopaedias and patents did not solve the problems of nonscientists, but merely enabled the basic problem of availability of knowledge to grow another stage. NEW TECHNOLOGIES Around 1800 there was another crucial growth in science: Galvani and Volta, looking for the secrets of life, found current electricity, Within a single generation, electricity transformed chemistry into a wealth of new substances and new understandings. The 19th century saw such new technologies as fer- tilizers and soil chemistry, dye chemistry and ex- plosives, steam engines and locomotives, as well as electrical energy. The steam engine had grown from a "low" (non- scientific) technology of water-pumps, but the chemica) and electrical high technologies required the sclentific knowledge of the day. In industrial nations education had to be expanded to produce the technical workers, and popularization prepared the public for the new age. By 1900 the wealth of the major nations and the qualify of life for their people were linked more to the new technologies, low and high, of manufacture than to the natural wealth of the land. Increased un- derstanding brought forth more and more high technologies, __ By 1950 the wealth and power of nations and lives of all’ people began to depend ever more on the high technologies and their inevitable link with sciences that were increasingly technical and learned, and beyond the understanding of the general public. In the last quarter century, new efforts to popularize science andgnake it understandable to the lay person have lent increased urgency to the problem of the closed shop of science, But workers suffering from the impact of new technologies, appropriate and inap- propriate, have broken the machines like the original Luddites. Today the popular rebellion is against nuclear reactors and genetic engineering, and in nations like ran, — everything technical. We cannot all be scientists (nor want to), and we cannot ignore the existence of the world’s stock of science. But we are of necessity all consumers of more or Jess free choice in the technological world, NEXT WEEK: Joseph C. Giles, co-author of “By the Sweat of Thy Brow: Work in the Westera World,” discusses the effects of technology on the worker, ABOUT THE AUTHOR ; DEREK DE SOLLA PRICE has been Avalon Professor of the History of Science at Yale University alnce 1959, He holds doctorates in both experimental physics and in the history of science. A consultant on science policy to several governments and in- ternational bodies, he has published some two hun- dred scientific papers and “Science Since Babylon” and Selence.” six books, including “Little Science, Big