Above is a photo of a presentation I attended a few winters back about the Manhattan Project. Pictured is a collection of rocks gathered from nuclear test sites across the globe. This lecture was held in an art gallery and part of a broader initiative entitled the Body Cartography Project: "1/2 Life" which sought to “address the environmental problems of nuclear residue and indestructible plastics”. Speaking was a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota who worked on the project and witnessed the testing. Hans told the story of his recruitment into the project stating that he had one semester of science (I don’t think it was even a physics course) when he enrolled into the army. He was of course a grunt-worker in the lab performing menial tasks and gradually gathered information about the project on his own. He was cut off from friends and family completely for the duration of his time there. In describing his viewing of the Trinity test, you could see the memory in his eyes and his only response to the question of what it was like was, “Awesome”.
This story relates to the interconnections between universities, the military, governments, and scientific pursuit discussed in most detail in “Science, Scientists, and the Military”. The “need to know” basis experience of Hans could hardly be an anomaly in continued sensitive research. Could he be held partially responsible for the bomb by ensuring day-to-day logistics of the base? The moral debate surrounding the supposed innocence of scientists is still relevant today. In discussing the responsibility of scientists while conducting research, my physicist roommate made the distinction between science and technology in that scientists created knowledge and then others decided what to do with it. This hands off approach is clearly problematic as the quote from the paper suggests, “It was physicists who saw the explosive implications and it was physicists who pushed the project forward after briefly considering in 1939 the idea of keeping the work secret and perhaps achieving a moratorium at least on publication, if not on further experimentation” (Mendelsohn,189). I have this debate often with my “hard science” friends. They usually mention the drive and joy of solving a problem as the catalyst for research. But how could one knowingly disattach such results from the work that they do? Even as a social scientist, I find most war technology to be awe inspiring, interesting, and all the rest. Yet milliseconds later the realization of what they are used for creeps in and ends those emotions. The impetus for technological innovation on military grounds has been incredible, yet why can’t we channel that energy for, say, reinvesting in renewables? These are some questions I hope to explore over the next few years.
On a different note, and one that I am sure to return to, the opening paragraph of the Carlson piece has the reader imagine a child’s response to describe the image of the scientist. He then goes onto say that children are a mirror for cultural change. I have a nephew going on 4 and I am continually astonished at some reflections of society enacted through his play. I will keep my analysis to one example for the time being. Originally Tommy began to explore “name and find” games as I will call them through books. (“Can you find the blue butterfly?) More recently, he has been playing interactive games on PBSkids.org (and will adamantly demand to play them at any time which could throw me into a long discussion about technology, instant-gratification and a host of other issues, but I digress). One day over winter break, he said out loud, “Let’s find the toy-box,” pointed at the toy-box and exclaimed, “click!” My mom becomes irritated with me when I attempt to analyze societal issues through my nephew, but I couldn’t help but find this enactment to be a perfect example of the blurring between technological or more specifically, online behaviors and real-life interactions. I suppose I wouldn’t label this as a negative outcome of learning games online, however, it is simply indicative of the way in which technology changes our actions.
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