Listening to the Luddites: "the overwhelming impact of technology on our lives--and the certainty of its increase--require that we have a systemic approach to technology assessment." (American Thought).

• Author: Brown, Arnold

DOCTORS KNOW what iatrogenic condition is, but the term probably is unfamiliar to most laypeople. It shouldn't be. What it means is an illness or problem caused by medical treatment. Think of side effects of medications or the infections many patients pick up in hospitals. Iatrogenesis is one powerful example of an important truth: Science and technology can, and perhaps increasingly do, have negative consequences.

During the early 19th century in England, in the beginning years of the Industrial Revolution, bands of farmworkers roamed the countryside intent on destroying the new machinery for farming, which they feared would cause them to lose their jobs. Known as Luddites (named for Ned Lud, a deranged farmworker who began attacking machinery in the late 18th century), they were the forerunners to those who came to fear that they would be replaced by machines.

The name Luddite now is a label of scorn, applied to people who are considered to be against progress and who reject the advance of civilization. They even can be looked upon as quaint, or somewhat cute, in their stubborn backwardness--like the Amish, for example.

We Americans, especially, devoutly believe in progress. We know we are impelled forward by our technology, and we are deservedly proud of it. It is one of the key contributions to making us a great society and having a thriving economy.

Nevertheless, we should not ignore or dismiss the Luddites, because sometimes they are right. The truth of the matter is, we cannot foretell with any real accuracy what the consequences of scientific technological developments will be. Sometimes, there will be--unforeseen and therefore unprepared for--negative and even dangerous outcomes.

On the other hand, those who automatically expect bad outcomes are probably--at least in most cases--wrong. The original Luddites feared that machines would replace them. What they couldn't see was that the machines would replace their existing jobs, but result in even better new ones for them. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, far more jobs were created than were eliminated. This is what economist Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction." The fact is that, over the last 200 years, Gross Domestic Product in the developed world grew at an average of 1.6% per year, resulting in a doubling of per capita income every 44 years. Before the Industrial Revolution, economists estimate that GDP growth averaged less than two-tenths of one percent per year, and it took 500 years for per capita income to double.

Although Luddism in its early days was about jobs, today it is largely about other things. It's about damage to the environment. It's about potential damage to our bodies and our minds. It's even about threats to our dignity as human beings. So, even though the early Luddites have been proved wrong about jobs, some of their successors may be right--indeed, have been proved right--so we ought to listen to them.

A number of people may object to the term Luddite being used for modern-day raisers of alarm about the future impacts of science and technology. That is a reasonable objection. However, my intention here is to use the term as a generalization, without--I hope--any condescending or sneering connotations.

Someone who raised an alarm was Rachel Carson, a scientist. In her 1962 book, Silent...