Exploring the public resistance to technology in America, one is immediately struck with a paradox. Some technologies provoke organized opposition; others, no less invasive, no more benign, are welcomed, or, at the least, they are accepted with comparatively little debate. The contrast is rather extraordinary when we compare the response to two important technologies that have burgeoned over the past decade: information technology and biotechnology. These are both pervasive and rapidly expanding technologies, and both have their share of social costs as well as benefits. But they have evoked a very different public reaction.

In this chapter, I will first briefly remark on the diverse responses to these two technologies in the United States, and then explore these differences along several dimensions. Note that by resistance, I refer to overt opposition, not to the passive reluctance of individuals to use word processors or to buy bio-engineered products (see Bauer, Chapter 5). My purpose in the comparison is to shed light on the values and priorities that shape the public response to new technologies in America, and to highlight some fundamental contradictions between the rhetoric of support for science and technology and the reality of public attitudes as expressed in behaviour.

Responses to information technologies

Information technologies – from computers to communications – have obviously had an overwhelming social impact and their economic and social benefits hardly need explanation.