Abstract :
Technology, like death and taxes, is inevitable. Modern-day Luddites may occasionally delay technology or its application, but inevitably it marches on. As with any kind of knowledge, technical knowledge is sometimes misappropriated, and scientists and engineers usually end up getting the blame. This is wrong. It is society that controls the ultimate uses of technology. Since a new technology at some point assumes a life of its own, critics who spend their lives chastising the scientific and technical communities for bombs, television, and privacy invasion by computer are tilting at windmills.