Does politics trump technology?
For 35 years, the idealistic fragment of my generation has been arguing that only politics can save us. Not technology. Looking back on the carnage of the 20th century, though — over 100 million dead because of various passionate political causes — I think its maybe time to stress genetic engineering and the like over social engineering. The recent book by Paul Hawken and the Lovinses, Natural Capitalism (RAM #3), contains the loose threads of an argument for putting technology before politics. Robert Shapiro, CEO of Monsanto — one of Hawken and the Lovinses clients — was very explicit on this subject in a speech before the State of the World Forum in 1998 (www.pharmacia.com, then click on Monsanto, then speeches): The issues of better social and economic systems, of fairer distribution, of better environmental regulation, are, of course, . . . critical. But they are secondary to the need for new technologies, in the sense that provision of new technologies is the precondition for