447 



Technocracy and Statecraft in the Space Age 1029 



intellectual.'*^ If a major new technology or group of technologies catches on, its 

 acculturation can involve pervasive social change. The space program, hke the 

 railroads, came to alter law, economic organization, and the fundamental relation- 

 ship of the public and private sectors to make room for its growth. Like the 

 railroad, the space program was also a cultural expression and influenced not only 

 institutions but also intellectual and artistic sensibility.^^ In short, society was obhgec^ 

 to accommodate the new technological system, and the result was a social 



invention."** , , ■ .1 



Can space programs be understood in this way, even though they apparently 

 touch few people directly, involve a small percentage of gross national products, 

 and seem absent from popular consciousness?^' In fact, space technology is at the 

 state of maturity that railroads had achieved in roughly 1860 or that radio had in 

 the 1920s. Most Americans, pursuing their immediate goals in light of immediate 

 experience, could not imagine the revolution abornin'. Yet the patterns of social, 

 economic, and political response to the spread of railroads, or radio, were shaped in 

 their early decades. The railroads in particular have come to stand as the primary 

 symbol of industrial take-off and the transition from agricultural to industrial 

 society How can we'describe the postindustrial society associated with the Space 

 Age-^ Zbigniew Brzezinski coined the term "technetronic" for a "society that is 

 shaped culturally, psychologically, socially, and economicallv by the 'mpaci of 

 technology and electronics, particularly computers and communications. This 

 neologism is problematical. Every society is shaped to some significant degree by its 

 technology and method of communications, and few would argue that our society is 

 shaped to a quantitativelv greater degree, or in a qualitatively different way, than it 

 was during the industrial early twentieth or agricultural eighteenth century. But 

 technetronics do not aid us in understanding the origins or causal connections 

 among the social phenomena of the new age. The familiar word "technocratic ' will 



do instead. 



do instead. , • u r 



What seems to have happened in the wake of Sputnik was the triumph ot a 

 technocratic mentality in the United States that extended not onlv to military 

 spending, science, and space, but also to foreign aid, education, welfare, medical 

 care urban renewal, and more. Now, "technocracy" is a familiar word in modern 

 history, meaning the management of society by technical experts. As such it is an 

 ideal type, for such a society has never existed, not even in the Communist world 

 Despite the post-Sputnik boom in scientific advice, politicians and other influential 

 groups manage society no matter how compelling the occasional technical con- 



« Mazl.sh. ed.. The Ra.lroad and the Space Program: An Exploralwn m Histoncal Analogy (Cambridge. Mass.. 

 1965), Introduction and 1-52, esp. 11-14. „ •. , r- „ ,;c^„ f,^^ iKp 



^' Leo Marx, "The impact of the Ra.lroad on the American Imagination, as a Possible Comparison for the 

 Space Impact," in Mazlish, The Railroad and the Space Program. 202-16. 



^« Mazhsh posited some generalities for historical inquiry: all social inventions are part of a --P'" '" ""^ " 

 and result; none is uniquely determining in its impact; all aid some areas "fde;eopmentwh^e blighting othe, s, 

 ,11 rlevelon in staues' all reflect a national "style." Mazlish, The Railroad and the Space Program. .M-3.-.. 



- Amran s^Tdin ^n space has fluctuated between 0.3 and 1 .0 percent of gross national pr.Kluc.; Soviet 

 spending is estimated at a steady 1.5 to 2.0 percent; European spending less than 0^1 P^^«"'- 

 ^ Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America, RoU m tli, Technetronic Age (New York. 1970). 9-14. 



