Its interesting how the Apollo Program, starting just a few short years after that speech, has become a driving force for the technocrats to push such projects. How many times has the something like the phrase, "we put a man on the moon, we can do this" been uttered in relation to some omnibus R&D project?
Re:The Lost History of Helmand (2009)
by dredmorbius on Tuesday February 11, 2014 @03:12AM
(#7216470)
It's also about this time that the awareness started to develop that there were problems with no technical solution. This was a key point of many of Garrett Hardin's writings. Nuclear weapons and supersonic transport were two of these. Another concept of his was that "just because we've got the technological capability to do something doesn't mean that we should do it".
The whole concept of "Technocracy" interests me to no end. Eisenhower warned not just of the Military Industrial Complex in his famous speech at the end of his presidency - he also warned of the repercussions of state-sponsored research and of those who were conducting it, and for what purposes (check out page 10): http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents...
"..there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."
Eisenhower knew that we were learning so, so much about the world. Our ability to reason was, and is, unlocking so many secrets to the nature of nature itself, that there was a never-ending pressure for top-down, ambitious projects - especially just following the dropping of the bomb and the ending of WWII.