Passage Two
Science and Technology

Optimism and empowerment. As the century drew to a close, the potential for human invention and understanding appeared boundless. Scientific understanding expanded daily, from the fundamental building blocks of matter to the source code of all life to the origins, and perhaps the eventual demise, of the universe. The technological advances of the 1990s ushered in what appeared to be a social and economic revolution that would rival the Industrial Revolution two centuries earlier, creating a new society of technologically connected citizens with a world of digitized information, commerce, and communication at its fingertips. The new “Digital Age”, represented by the “Information Superhighway” was not all-inclusive, threatened to leave many behind, including older citizens and those who could not afford the new technology. Still, by 1999 more than three-quarters of the U. S. population was “plugged in” to the new digital society, and most Americans felt that technological advances were improving their quality of life. Optimism was the reigning tone of the decade. New advances in science and technology seemed to promise eventual solutions to problems ranging from eliminating toxic waste to grocery shopping—genetic engineers developed microbes that would eat industrial sludge and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab worked to devise a refrigerator that could sense when it was out of milk and use the Internet to order more. The 1990s allayed the fear that a technologically advanced society was necessarily heavily centralized, with Big Brother watching every move. Instead, with the creation of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and their emphasis on decentralization, equality, and the open sharing of resources, many individuals found that greater access to information increased their sense of personal freedom and power.

Ethics and the Natural. With the explosion of knowledge came public concern over where all of these new discoveries and technologies might be taking society. The cloning of an animal in 1997 suggested that human cloning had become viable as well, raising concerns—no longer quite theoretical—that humanity might be moving toward a “brave new world” of genetically engineered people. The Human Genome Project, launched in 1990 with a mission to decode the entire human genetic makeup, held promises for an end to genetic disorders, but threatened to open the way for “designer babies”, who could be genetically altered to suit their parents' wishes. While many argued that plant and animal breeders had been fooling around with genetics for centuries in order to better the lot of humankind, others pointed out that new advances in genetics allowed researchers to cross boundaries set by nature, implanting human genes in animals in order to turn them into medicine factories, creating plants that produced plastics and glowed in the dark, even attempting to create “terminator” seeds that stifled their own reproductive capacity in order to maintain the seed manufacturer's cash flow. The question of what was “natural” came under serious consideration, as no aspect of the environment and the organisms in it seemed safe from genetic tinkering. Yet, while experiments with human cloning or customizing a child's genetic makeup seemed abhorrent to most Americans, there was general support for genetic research that could help to identify and cure genetic diseases or make food sources healthier and more plentiful for a growing global population.

Privacy. Privacy was an overarching concern with many of the technological and scientific advances of the 1990s. The Internet was an amazing new tool for sharing information, yet it was also a powerful means for finding information that was intended to be private, including government and military secrets, the source codes to proprietary software, and even a neighbor's social security number. Companies and individuals alike worried that their private information would be compromised when sophisticated computer technologists could “hack” into protected computer systems and erase or steal important data. Computer viruses, self-replicating codes written by malicious individuals, could steal into personal computer systems through e-mail or the Web and wreak havoc with the data stored there. Protecting privacy over the Internet was not easy, and many people worried that government attempts to intervene would only cripple the development of the Internet. Similar fears were sparked when concerned groups lobbied the government to outlaw pornography and other disturbing materials on the Web in the name of “protecting the children”. While most Americans agreed that children should not be exposed to such material, attempts to regulate the content of individual Web pages and newsgroups conflicted with the idea of the Internet as an open, decentralized mass medium, where even the most absurd or repellant ideas could receive a hearing. Digital surveillance in the workplace also became an issue, as some companies spied on their workers' use of the Internet and e-mail.

Genetics and Privacy. Advances in genetics also threatened personal privacy. With the Human Genome Project scheduled to be finished early in the twenty-first century, and private companies competing to win patents on genetic discoveries, many individuals worried about what scientists might do with a complete understanding of the human genetic code. While genetic diseases could be discovered and perhaps cured, this information might also be used to discriminate against people predisposed to certain genetic malfunctions, or to group individuals based on their genetic data. The idea that scientists would own patents on the human genetic code was disturbing, as well, as it meant that human life could become a proprietary resource.

Big Science and Little Science. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) continued to wow the world, sending the giant Hubble Telescope into orbit to gather and transmit never-before-seen images of deep space that offered increasingly tantalizing clues to the origins of the universe. The search for extraterrestrial life continued during the decade, as NASA scientists found possible evidence of bacterial life in a meteor from Mars, and distant planets were discovered that might contain water. NASA sent space probes to land on the surface of Mars, sent national hero John Herschel Glenn Jr. back into space to study aging, and made plans to build an International Space Station with research teams from other countries. Still, some critics wondered if all of the money spent on space research might not be better used to fund new discoveries here on Earth, almost as if the diversion of space was no longer as necessary when there were so many new and interesting projects going on right here. One of the most fascinating new realms of study was nanotechnology, a field of research that attempted to manipulate matter at the molecular level, building new devices atom by atom that could be used in miniaturized manufacturing, drug-delivery system, and tiny minicomputers. With the discovery of a new family of carbon molecules known as fullerenes, nanotechnology researchers had a new raw material to work with. The science was still very experimental at the turn of the century, but researchers and government officials saw great potential for this science of the tiny.

This article is mainly about ________.

The phrase “plugged in” in the first paragraph is closest in meaning to ________.

Concerned about the potential effect of the Human Genome Project, most Americans would ________.

The development of genetic science might threaten personal privacy in that ________.

What is the critics' attitude towards the large scale of space research as mentioned in the last paragraph?