garote | Carl Sagan, Politicians, etc

'Contact' is a book by Carl Sagan about a how humanity might react to the discovery of an intelligent radio transmission from beyond the solar system. The narrative is split between the reactions of the general public, and the reactions of a handful of scientists who have been actively searching for the radio signal when it arrives. The most motivated of these scientists is a woman named Ellie Arroway, a character who serves as an anchor for the plot as well as a convenient stand-in for Carl Sagan himself, advocating his ideas and philosophy in discussions with political figures, religious leaders, fellow scientists, and others.

The story has also been adapted into a successful movie with Jodie Foster in the lead role, and in a shrewd cross-marketing maneuver, the original manuscript has been re-released in audiobook format, read aloud by Jodie Foster. Her spirited portrayal of Sagan's character in the film flows effortlessly into the public persona she has already established as an actress, and so in the minds of listeners, the audiobook snugly occupies a mental territory between herself and Sagan. We hear the author's original words delivered by the voice that feels most appropriate for speaking them.

(Feelings aside, the most appropriate narrator of 'Contact' would be Dr. Jill Tarter, the director of the Center for SETI Research. Many people say that Jill is actually the person whom the fictional Ellie Arroway is based on.)

Anyway, I'd like to change course, and tell a more personal story. I've walked from my workplace to the movie theater, listening to the audiobook version of Contact on my music player, and wearing some in-ear headphones to defeat the noise of the traffic. In a backpack I've stowed an old hand-held PDA and a folding keyboard - two amazing devices that cost me three hundred dollars new, but now sell online for less than twenty bucks. Technology moves fast!

I've kept listening to the story during my ride up the escalator to the theater lobby, and as I sit down in my fourth-row seat. The alien signal has already arrived and the research compound is overrun by news and military personnel. Ellie Arroway is arguing with the advisor to the President of the United States, about whether to enlist the help of other nations so that they don't lose the radio signal after the Earth rotates their own antennas out of range.

Here, I stop the audiobook, and rummage around in the backpack for the PDA and the keyboard. I perch the little device on my lap, and start typing furiously, before my thoughts are drowned in the noise of the eminently approaching movie:

"Sagan has set up a dichotomy between scientists and politicians. The scientists want to communicate with each other, independent of political boundaries, so their research can proceed as smoothly as possible. The politicians are worried about the impact that the message may have on the balance of power in the world. To the scientists, the suppression of information can only lead to inefficiency. To the politicians, information is power, and power must be dispensed carefully to avoid threatening situations.

This dichotomy carries a satisfying impression of truth, even though it is obviously a stereotype. Even if there are no starkly drawn battle lines between actual people, we can easily imagine what we might call a "scientist" culture, attributed to prominent scientists everywhere who want their research to be known, and an opposing "political" culture that scientists sometimes clash with when politicians try to restrict the flow of information. These social forces are at work inside all of us -- sometimes we act more like the stereotypical scientist, sometimes we act more like the politician, depending on the circumstances. If we come across information that is helpful to everyone, we cheerfully discuss it with whoever shows an interest, like the scientist would. At other times we may behave like the politician, and hoard information so that it cannot be used against us, or so that we can profit from its use before others do.

For example, if some random stranger comes up to you on the street and asks what time it is, and you have a watch, you look at it and tell them the time. There's no good reason for you to lie about what time it is to a stranger, or conceal the information, because no matter how many people know it, the information is not made any less useful to you. In fact, the more people there are who know the time, the better off you are. Everyone's life is enhanced by spreading that information around. Likewise with driving directions, baseball scores, stereo instructions, gardening tips, et cetera.

But what if you're a demolitions expert working for the city, and some stranger begins asking you questions about the most efficient way to place explosives to demolish a local building? You'd ignore him, or possibly report his curiosity to the police, because you understand that the information you possess is not useful to everyone; it is only useful for specific tasks that should only be performed by specific people. Even if you were not personally employing the knowledge of how to blow things up, but just researching it, your desire to exchange ideas would be tempered by your desire to direct the results of your research to some beneficial end -- and that means doing your best to safeguard it from disgruntled lunatics. Sometimes the damage people can cause is limited only by their lack of information.

If you were a politician, you would understand this idea as well. You might in fact have regular contact with those disgruntled lunatics, watching as they try to consolidate their power with a little industrial espionage. You'd want to keep dangerous information out of their hands, but you'd be at a disadvantage because you might not know what's dangerous. If enough technical jargon is involved, the recipe for a chocolate cake can look just like the recipe for a chemical weapon.

So in protecting your constituents, you would want to err on the side of caution. That usually means burying someone's research. It's frustrating when the research is actually harmless, or time-critical, and could save many lives. The only way to avoid making a mistake like that as a politician is to trust the opinions of the scientists involved in the research. If they say it's harmless, it probably is harmless. Likewise, if a scientist makes a discovery that has big military implications, he or she must get politicians involved as soon as possible - because the politicians keep much better track of the disgruntled lunatics.

In Carl Sagan's book, there is just one character - the assistant to the President - who seems to understand both sides of the issue, and he has a private talk with Ellie Arroway shortly after the alien signal begins creeping into the radio array. He leans over the desk, pointing his finger, and essentially says, 'You should have informed us of this immediately. Our work may not be interesting to you, but your work is very interesting to us, and we need to be involved.'

Of course, if you're a scientist and you think that all politicians are disgruntled lunatics, you're making a mistake. And if you're a politician who can't trust scientists to conduct their own research - trying to legislate against it on sentimental grounds, for example - you're making an equally bad mistake. (The "moral majority" should not legally steer scientific inquiry, when it's not even even capable of steering pop culture.)

But sometimes there is no good way for knowledge to be judged. For example, the Chinese made gunpowder for thousands of years and used it only in ceremonial fireworks, but the instant that knowledge passed into Europe, people began plowing lead shot into each other and blowing up ships. The controlled distribution of that knowledge decided the outcome of many battles - but the Chinese sage who first showed the formula to his visiting Western delegate probably had no idea what trouble he was starting.

Why was gunpowder immediately put to use killing people? Was it the economic climate of Europe that triggered this innovation? Or the religious climate? Or some combination with other inventions that pointed the way? In any case, the Chinese empire cannot be accused of some grave oversight in letting the knowledge spread. Gunpowder did not foreshadow the invention of the gun any more than the theory of relativity foreshadowed the invention of the atomic bomb. The knowledge went everywhere, and helped all kinds of people, and it just happened to contribute to the manufacture of a weapon as well.

Even if we sweep all talk of weapons and criminals aside, we find that some truly benevolent knowledge, like the recipe for penicillin, is often patented and guarded jealously in order to allow the sponsors of the research to reap material rewards for their work. For example, there have been dozens of costly legal battles in recent years, between the original inventors of a drug and the purveyors of a cheap 'generic' brand, with billions of dollars at stake. Some of the scientists involved in this research have labored heroically, only to be refused a share of the profits due to last-minute boardroom hijinks. Should the scientists have made all the money, or just their sponsors? Or should no one make the money? It's a complicated issue.

So everyone - even scientists - can act one way or the other, can hoard information or spread it around. And everyone, even politicians, can spread information that they honestly believe is harmless, up until someone creates a weapon from it and goes to war. Both camps are just as concerned with the mis-use of knowledge, as they are with the use of it, and both camps can make honest mistakes. So, there is no firm basis in our chaotic reality for Carl Sagan to paint scientists and politicians with such broad strokes, or for us to put them at opposite ends of a spectrum. It's certainly not a case of Good scientists vs. Evil politicians, like the film made it out to be."

The theatre is still filling up around me, and the lights are still up, so there's still plenty of time before the movie starts, so I change the subject and keep typing. (I'll have to continue this in another entry.)