WORLD TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN DESTINY

This book is the result of a conference sponsored by the Congress for the Liberty of Culture, and it was conceived, prepared and directed by Raymond Aron. Among the participants were George Catlin, Bertrand de Jouvenel, George Kennan, Robert Oppenheimer, Manes Sperber and Eugene Rostow. The national backgrounds range from America through most of western Europe to India, and the professions from political science through economics and sociology to nuclear physics. A series of prepared reports start the ball rolling, before the open discussion on various problems of the West and the USSR in relation to industrialization, the underdeveloped countries, etc. The originality of the work lies in the fact that these ""eminent theoreticians"" were asked to make ""concrete predictions"". Certainly a welter of fascinating thought emerges, but the main trouble is that there are too many ""eminent theoreticians"" and too little space for their individual theories to develop coherently. And at the end, it is difficult to remember who stands for what.