Office of Technology Assessment, United States Congress, science, technology, policy
Kate Dailey | Newsweek: The Human Condition | September 3, 2009
This blog entry introduces Darlene Cavalier, the Science Cheerleader, who advocates “ensuring that adults grasp how science influences their daily lives.” She is also an advocate for re-establishing OTA.
The Science Cheerleader invites people to sign a petition to re-open OTA. It can be found here.
In his long career of public service, Senator Edward Kennedy championed good governance, as demonstrated by his enduring support for the Office of Technology Assessment.
Speaking on March 2, 1972 in support of the legislation that created OTA, he said:
Technology Assessment refers to matters of the utmost importance and urgency to those of us in the Congress and to each of our citizens. Like it or not, science and technology have become central to our civilization, to our economic strength, to the preservation of our environment, and to the quality of our lives.
What citizen does not have vital data on himself stored in some computer memory cell? Who is not at the mercy of far-reaching power blackouts and brownouts? How many citizens are impervious to the transportation snarls that strangle our cities? What family will not someday be dependent on the outmoded medical technology which prevails in far too many of our hospitals?
Which one of us doesn’t daily take some chemical additives with his food? Or hasn’t used some medication which FDA hasn’t yet certified as effective? Who doesn’t breathe the pollution in our air? Or regret the filth in our rivers and streams?
We live in a world increasingly shaped by man, and technology is the principal tool he uses to shape it.
He favored OTA as a way of assuring that new technological developments would be “channeled so as to achieve the maximum benefit for humanity.” The transcript of the hearing can be found here in the archive. (The quote above is from pages 35-36.)
Senator Kennedy was the first chairman of OTA’s Technology Assessment Board and served on its Board throughout OTA’s entire existence, until the agency was disbanded in 1995.
Near the end of OTA, on July 20, 1995, Senator Kennedy again spoke on the floor of the Senate in defense of OTA:
In the years ahead, as we move into the 21st century, there will be even greater need to rely on OTA for impartial assessment of technology-related policies. The world of science and its impact on public policy are becoming more complex, not less. Technology is central to every aspect of American life, from biotechnology to law enforcement, from agriculture to education. It would be a serious mistake to limit our ability as a legislature to evaluate and respond to the scientific and technological challenges facing Congress, the Administration, and the Nation.
Joel Makower | two steps forward | July 23, 2009
This blog post highlights former OTA analyst Sunil Paul’s recent initiative, Gigaton Throwdown , which asked, “What would it take to aggressively scale up clean energy to have a major impact on job growth, energy independence, and climate change over the next ten years?”
The project involved dozens of people and asked how a single technology could reduce carbon dioxide emissions and greenhouse gases by a gigaton (1 billion metric tons) by the year 2020.
“The markets for clean technology involve a coordinated effort in three principal areas: technology, policy, and capital. Each of these plays a role in scaling technologies, clean or otherwise, and each of these “levers” must be pulled in proper sequence so as to create sustained, orderly markets that can exist without subsidies.” Makower said.
The report concludes that seven of the nine technologies analyzed have the potential today to scale up rapidly and massively by 2020. “We sort of already get the technology pieces of it,” Paul said. “And we know there is a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines that is ready to invest given the right kind of long-term opportunity.” What’s needed now, he says, is political leadership and action.
The complete Gigaton Throwdown report and more can be found at the initiative’s website.
American Association for the Advancement of Science | July 22, 2009
According to a AAAS Policy Alert, Andrew Wyckoff has been appointed as director of the Science, Technology and Industry Directorate (STI) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The Directorate’s mission is to provide analysis of science, technology and industry to inform government decisions about growth, employment and well-being.
Wyckoff, a former OTA staffer, has been a key science and technology analyst for OECD in Paris for almost fifteeen years.
The Honorable Robert M. McNamara reflected upon the Cuban Missile Crisis, among other topics, at a forum for the 20th anniversary of OTA. He concluded that we should seek to return to a non-nuclear world as far as achievable and he recommended that the international community redouble its efforts to limit the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
The Soviet Union, Cuba, and the United States brought the world to the brink of a nuclear disaster in October, 1962, as a result of the distortions of misinformation, miscalculation, and misjudgment of their political leaders, according to McNamara, a former Secretary of Defense and former President of The World Bank.
“In this age of high-technology weaponry, crisis management is dangerous, difficult, and uncertain. Therefore it is crisis avoidance that is important,” McNamara said. The combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons carries a very high risk of destroying not tens or hundreds of thousands of lives but of destroying nations.
Stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them, according to McNamara, would require some form of collective security action by a multinational institution such as the United Nations.
“To begin with the council should agree to prohibit the development, production, or purchase of any of those weapons,” he said. Any country violating that ban should be subjected to strict economic sanctions and if sanctions failed, then U.N. military action would be necessary. Countries currently possessing these weapons- including the United States- would be subject to international inspections and control, and would be asked to approve a treaty prohibiting their first use.
McNamara said that a system for collective action would allow reductions of military spending and the huge savings could be used to address the pressing human physical and infrastructure needs across the globe.
“If development that meets the needs of all social groups is to occur, if democracy is to spread, there must be … a relatively equitable distribution of resources. That is not occurring today,” McNamara said. He pointed out that in many parts of the world, military expenditures strengthen the political influence of the armed forces at the expense of the civil groups and economic systems function primarily to befit a relatively limited number of people.
“I think the international community needs to identify ways in which it can reward those countries that reduce security and related expenditures in favor of development,” McNamara said. He strongly urged linking financial assistance to developing countries to their movement toward optimal levels of military expenditures.
” If together we are bold, if east and west and north and south dare break out of the mindsets that have guided …our actions for the past four decades, we can reshape international institutions, …we can reshape relations among nations, …and we can dramatically reduce military expenditures, which have been a derivative of those relationships and we do so in a ways which will lead to a more peaceful world, a more prosperous world, for all of the peoples of this interdependent world, McNamara said.
“It’s the first time in my adult life that we have had such an opportunity. Pray God we seize it,” he concluded.
OTA’s Forum on Technology and Governance in the 1990′s was hosted by the Technology Assessment Board for Congress on January 27, 1993. Robert McNamara’s full presentation and others with questions and answers are available at the OTA Archive.
On January 27, 1993 – in OTA’s 20th year – the Technology Assessment Board hosted a forum for the Congress on upcoming socio-technical issues. The original program is available here. The video from that session is available in nine parts below.
Welcome and Opening Remarks:
Dr. Roger Herdman – Director, OTA
Congressman George E. Brown, Jr. – Chair, Technology Assessment Board
Senator Edward M. Kennedy – Technology Assessment Board
International Security (15:20)
The Honorable Robert M. McNamara-
Former Secretary of Defense
Former President, The World Bank
International Security (cont’d.)
International Security (cont’d.)
International Security Q & A (1:40)
Congressman George E. Brown, Jr. – Chair, Technology Assessment Board
International Security Q & A (cont’d.)
Introduction (4:30)
Dr. Roger Herdman – Director of OTA
Congressman Amo Houghton, Jr. – Technology Assessment Board
Sustaining the Global Environment (7:50)
The Honorable Gro Harlem Brundtland-
Prime Minister of Norway
Chair, World Commission on Environment and Development
Sustaining the Global Environment (cont’d.)
Sustaining the Global Environment Q & A (12:10)
Sustaining the Global Environment Q & A (cont’d.)
Introduction:
Dr. Roger Herdman – Director, OTA
Congressman Don Sundquist – Technology Assessment Board
Congressman John Dingell – Technology Assessment Board
Economic Competitiveness in America (5:00)
Dr. Laura D’Andrea Tyson-
Chair-designate, President’s Council of Economic Advisors
Introduction (4:50)
Congressman Don Sundquist – Technology Assessment Board
Remarks (43:25)
Dr. John H. Gibbons, former Director, Office of Technology Assessment
Introduction
Congressman Don Sundquist – Technology Assessment Board
Senator David Durenberger – Technology Assessment Board
Healthcare (3:30)
Dr. Arnold S. Relman-
Professor of Medicine and Social Medicine, Harvard School of Medicine
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, New England Journal of Medicine
Healthcare Q & A (48:00)
Congressman Don Sundquist – Technology Assessment Board
Introduction
Congressman Don Sundquist – Technology Assessment Board
Senator Orrin G. Hatch – Technology Assessment Board
Education (4:50)
Mr. Derek Bok -
President Emeritus, Harvard University
Education Q & A (50:00)
Congressman Don Sundquist – Technology Assessment Board
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