TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES AND SOCIAL VALUES 65
In his treatise on the role of labour in relation to the evolution of man, Engels has cited numerous examples of the way in which unforeseen consequences of men's actions hit the human race decades or even centuries later, like so many natural disasters. This list could be supplemented with further examples no less instructive taken from recent history.
Social Consequences
While antagonistic relations within society and the haphazard character of social development still persist, even the greatest achievements of the human mind and discoveries dictated by the most noble of motives can boomerang against mankhid. Indeed, could cither Edward Jenner or Louis Pasteur have ever imagined that their discoveries placing at doctor's disposal effective drugs for the treatment of infectious diseases by inoculation, in the long term, would lead to the "population explosion"of the 20th century? Could Albert Einstein have foreseen when he evolved the theory of relativity that he was starting a chain reaction in physics which would lead up to Hiroshima and expose mankind to the threat of thermonuclear war?
This does not, of course, mean that the social consequences of scientific discoveries and technical inventions always lead to unmitigated disaster. The invention of gunpowder not only made war more devastating but also served to undermine feudal fragmentation. The steam-engine not only led to intensified exploitation of labour but also furthered the expansion of communications.
Technological revolution of the 20th century which has invaded the lives of the present generation makes it imperative that man should face up to the problems stemming from the social consequences of his actions. In its long-term, historical tendencies this revolution has much in common with previous technological revolutions in the history of society, but it also possesses qualities that set it apart. This can be explained first of all by objective factors of social progress in the modern age, but the sharp acceleration of social progress, by man's immeasurably increased power over nature and himself and finally by the involvement of the whole of mankind in a single universal process of revolutionary social change,
During other histo rical periods in the past profound transformations in the life of society stretched, as a rule, over decades, if not centuries. One generation succeeded another in a context of practically unchanged economic and social conditions, inherited