Lecture on Science and Technology

In 1985, Vonnegut gave a lecture on science and technology at the Kresge Auditorium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was first published in Fates Worse Than Death in 1991 and reprinted in the third volume of the Library of America's Vonnegut set in 2014.

Summary

In his family, Vonnegut's father and grandfather received degrees in architecture from M.I.T., while his brother Bernard took a doctorate in chemistry and their Uncle Pete flunked out. Their uncle ultimately became a self-employed building contractor, but Bernard knew that as a research scientist, he would have to work for someone else who provided the room and equipment for his work. Most graduates in the sciences will face this same dilemma and have "to make somebody else's technological dreams come true" to survive. Bernard, who graduated in 1938, might have been forced to make the dreams of Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, or Stalin come true, had he been living in another part of the world. Instead he worked for a bottle manufacturer in Butler, Pennsylvania. Thus it can make quite a difference to both scientists and the rest of humanity whose dreams they help come true. Hitler's dream of massacring people in industrial quantities required "maximum ease of operation and efficiency", and the results in places like Auschwitz and Birkenau can only be described as A-plus work. Those who make the car bombs exploding in front of embassies, department stores, movie theaters, and religious institutions are likewise doing their job phenomenally well.

Josef Mengele, 1944

Vonnegut notes that, in general, women seem to dislike immoral technology much more than men, and can be seen far more frequently at demonstrations against such devices, often with their children. He proclaims that "the most effective doubter of the benefits of unbridled technological advancement" was a woman, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who created the idea of Frankenstein's Monster. Having now become "fruity" and "feminine" himself in late middle age, Vonnegut says that if he were President of M.I.T., he would distribute pictures of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's Monster all over campus to remind students and faculty that much of humanity is now living in fear of being killed by such technological irresponsibility, which goes on around the world continually, often with American sponsorship.

He proposes that M.I.T. create an oath based on that of Hippocrates, which is a completely human document that has never claimed of being of divine origin. While such an oath doesn't prevent practitioners from violating it, it at least publicly announces that one who does so is "a scumbag", such as Josef Mengele. Like the Hippocratic Oath, its core should proclaim that scientists must help rather than harm humanity, which Vonnegut hopes most of his listeners already wish to do anyway. Its primary part should state that scientists should benefit all life on the planet, according to the practitioners' ability and judgment, and not for hurt, and thus they "will create no deadly substance or device, though it be asked" nor counsel others to do so. All graduates at M.I.T. should be happy to take such an oath, and he leaves the writing of the rest to them.

See Also

• "Address to the American Physical Society", a speech on scientists and weapons research
• "The Scientific Goblins Are Gonna Git Us", review of Unless Peace Comes, a book of essays on weapons development