Talk:Sydney J. Harris

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Two things: Add reference to famous articles and add link if name is misspelled[edit]

Hi,

I'm new at this so forgive any protocol mistakes.

I think Sydney Harris'famous columns entitled: “Things I learned en route to looking up other things.” should be listed on his wiki site. They are quite famous and mentioned in several places on the web so I think it should be on his wiki bio.

This method of learning even affected the culture, as whenever someone learns something fabulous while looking for something else, it reminds them of his columns. (If old enough to remember the 1980s.)

One source is: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-3797728.html

I also found one blog that plagiarized the phrase right down to the "en route".

Also, when searching on Sidney Harris the user should be provided a link to the bio webpage since they probably just spelled Sydney wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Harris Takes me to the bio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Harris Takes me to From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search Sidney Harris can refer to:

a science cartoonist. a character in the Honorverse.

but it does not mention a columnist who wrote for the Chicago Sun Times. Junedunne 22:55, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Moving "How We Can Master Our Technology"[edit]

I am moving this essay into the discussion, because although it is certainly worthy of inclusion (somewhere), I don't think it belongs in the actual biographical entry on Sydney Harris. Dibowen5 18:35, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

He also wrote the following essay, "How We Can Master Our Technology":

First we invent something. Then we put it into production. Then we buy it and use it. Then, and only then, do we begin to wonder if we haven't been too heedless and hasty. It's happening now with the snowmobile, as the latest and most dramatic example of this process, but by no means the most important. Only now, after millions have been produced and bought, are we starting to recognize and control the possible damage they can do.

If we are going to become the masters of our technology, however, and not be dominated or overwhelmed by its consequences, it is imperative that we set up a new agency to work alongside the old United States Patent Office; to determine the "social utility" of new devices. The Patent Office decides only whether a gadget or process will work and whether the applier is entitled to an exclusive right. The new agency should have the power to determine-after the broadest public hearings-whether any invention should be permitted to go into production before its social costs and consequences have been adequately worked out. This would slow down our rate of technological process-which is not a bad thing in itself-and would also give us time to prepare for the environmental impact of industrial changes.

While the snowmobile is both a boon and a blessing to winter-bound citizens in many areas, it is already a blight and a menace in these same areas. It came on the market unregulated, without strict registration or licensing, and has been dangerously abused by thousands of idiotic and unqualified operators. No rules were set up, no trails laid out, no speed limits established. Snowmobiles have chased animals to exhaustion and death, have killed off planting of seedlings in forests and have upset the whole ecology of wildlife and wilderness in places never before touched by human predators. This, as I said, is only a minor example of our past indifference to the social consequences of new technology, but one we can see quite vividly. There are others, more obscure and more dangerous in the long run, which must not allowed to proliferate before it is too late to take anything but the most dramatic measures to curtail them.

We have treated our future with the utmost contempt, using our world as a place to plunder, to pollute, to create massive problems for short-term gain. And we have consistently failed to calculate the social costs of these "advances"-for which we are paying, not only through the pocketbook but through the nose, eyes, and lungs as well.