441 



Technocracy and Statecraft in the Space Age 1023 



"The horror of the twentieth century," wrote Norman Mailer, "was the size of 

 each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation. "''* Sputnik I was truly the shot 

 heard 'round the world, and its international effects were manifold; but it did not 

 alter the nature of the international system. The national state remained supreme, 

 cooperation remained a muted form of competition, and military rivalry incorpo- 

 rated the strategic canopy of orbital space. The international imperative stimulated 

 the rapid development of space technology, but it was not in turn transformed by it. 

 When President Johnson, for instance, sent to world heads of state in December 

 1968 the famous photograph from Apolb 8 of the gorgeous blue earth rising 

 beyond the rim of the moon,"There came a response from Hanoi, from Ho Chi 

 Minh, thanking me." Surely, wrote Arthur C. Clarke, this was the best example "of 

 the way space can put our present tribal squabbles in their true perspective."^' 

 Perhaps — but the war continued unabated. 



Discussing science and politics, Bertrand de Jouvenel wrote of three ages of 

 history: the age dominated by priests, that by lawyers, and that by scientists. The 

 politics of the first age were based on divine revelation and a presumption of 

 popular ignorance, and the politics of the second on "human scripture" and the 

 presumption that "We the people" were capable of judging matters-of common 

 interest; the politics of the third age form an anomaly. Deinos still has the 

 responsibility for public decisions but has lost the competence to judge matters of 

 science and technology. "This great age of science is, by way of corollary, an age of 

 personal ignorance."'^ At some point in this century, advanced societies crossed the 

 line into awareness of democratic incompetence. For the industrial West, Sputnik 

 may have been that point. Did the perplexing, frightening, and apparently sudden 

 appearance of space technology humble the West (and perhaps the Politburo) into 

 a reappraisal of traditional management of power by politicians and interest 

 groups? Is the Space Age a time in which control of public policy must fall by 

 default to a technical elite? This prospect obsessed Mao-Tse-Tung as it had Stalin; it 

 also came to trouble Eisenhower. 



The apparent solution to Jouvenel's dilemma after Sputnik was to graft scientific 

 advice onto the existing political corpus, as if science could inform policy without 

 politics informing science. But "where knowledge is power, the pursuit of knowl- 

 edge is clearly a political activity. "^^ Throughout the 1960s scientists and political 

 scientists discussed the relationship of science and government.^* The considerable 



** Mailer, Of a Fire on the Moon (New York, 1969), 34. " 



" Clarke, Report Frum Planet Three (New York, 1972). 164-65. 

 Jouvenel, "The Political Consequences of the Rise of Science," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (December 

 1963), 2-8. 



" Howard J. Taubcnfeld. ed.. Space and Society (Dobbs Ferry, NY., 1964), 46. Illustrating the inability of 

 voters to make technical judgments, Taubenfeld cited a straw poll that asked people what they demanded of 

 federal spending for research and development. Three out of five answered "Don't know" or even "Don't 

 understand what you mean." 



^ See especially Harvey Brooks. The Government of Science (Cambridge, Mass.. 1968); Joseph S. Dupre and 

 Sanford Lakoff, Saence and the Nation. Policy and Politics (tnglewood ClifTs. N.J., 1962); A. Hunter Dupree. 

 Science in the Federal (iovemment (Cambridge, Mass., 1957); Sanford L^kofT, Knowledge and Power: Fs\ays on 



