This week the Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article (subscription required) which discusses the President’s Council on Bioethics and its chair Leon Kass. The article suggests that some “academic observers” believe that the Bioethics Council “is driven by conservative ideology and has rushed to alarmist conclusions about the social and human ramifications of medical research in areas like memory, aging, and embryo cloning.” One professor quoted in the article notes, “Leon [Kass] has been a technological pessimist from the get-go.”

But to ascribe a partisan impulse to technological pessimism overlooks the fact that even as some on the right challenge the teaching of evolution, much of the opposition to nuclear technology and agricultural biotechnology has come from the left. As the article notes,

“Some scholars also argue that it’s misleading to view the council simply in terms of a liberal-conservative political divide. Instead, they say, it’s more accurate to describe the council as taking up debates between supporters of technology and skeptics. The doubters include some on the left who worry about corporations’ controlling and marketing such powerful technologies.”

It would seem that there is much more at work here than left-right politics, and it suggests, perhaps, an interesting confluence of perspectives on technological innovation among groups who traditionally are opposed on many issues. I am unaware of any studies about the politics of technological pessimism, but it would seem that this issue is critical to understanding the potential for technological innovation to contribute to societal needs and limit the potential for harmful effects, both real and perceived, of new technologies.

The Chronicle article can be found here (subscription required).