Freeman Dyson Quotes
If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.
Dyson, Freeman. Disturbing the Universe. Harper & Row, 1979, p. 6.
The nation was in the midst of a long debate over whether or not new bio-technology was appropriate and desirable for use and there were various efforts to legally curtail their application. These included cloning, stem cell research, radiated foods, fish farming, hydroponic agriculture, hybrid development and cross species organ replacement.
Regulators, like any other group of people, with the exception of an inventor or innovator and his/her team, are ALWAYS way behind the innovators. However, typically the regulators are not even up on innovations after their creation for several years. They generally are not appointed or hired for their technical skills, and Congress rarely provides enough of a budget to hire enough staff to give them the time to keep up with the field. For a professor in a University, this alone requires about half of his time. No agency can allocate that kind of time. Worse, is the ultimate regulators are the legislators—Congress at the Federal level. They often do not invest enough time to read the regulatory legislation upon which they vote, much less keep up with the fields they regulate.
Freeman John Dyson FRS was a British-American theoretical and mathematical physicist, mathematician, and statistician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, and engineering. He was Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College, and a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
