Controlling technology

The notion of controlling technology would have evoked different responses in different eras of the past. As the nineteenth century came and went, scientific discovery and technological invention and innovation were viewed as self-determined processes with their own dynamic that would inevitably lead to improvements in human life. Under such thinking, the idea of externally controlling technology would have been an alien concept. The claim that the control of technology can be accomplished through the mechanism of the market fails to be verified empirically in case after case. I can see only two explanations why such a claim might still be maintained by some: a) the claim is based on ideology, as an article of unquestioning faith; or b) those who make and promote this claim have a vested interest in maintaining things as they are. In view of the overwhelming damage to human life, would a term like genocide be too harsh to describe the continuing reliance on the market to control technology? One approach for controlling technology has not gotten the attention it deserves. Very often, those who are most intimately acquainted with the properties of technological devices and systems, and their potential effects, are the engineers who design and build them. Mechanisms are needed in the education of engineers as professionals to "vaccinate" them with the ideal of service, and to protect them from reprisal when they act to control technology in the service of the public.<>