Spencer Heath Archive

Item 523

Dictation to Spencer MacCallum at 11 Waverly Place, New York City

November 5, 1961

For the best part of a century, it has been a common lament that social evolution has not kept pace but has lagged far behind technological evolution — that the under­standing of and utilization of the forces and materials of nature has gone far ahead of any corresponding understanding and utilization of the forces operating in the social structure of freely interfunctioning men. This has been more apparent than real; for the development of the free enterprise, capitalist system has indeed expanded to a degree fairly comparable to the technological advance. Under proper consideration of this, the recently available atomic energy need cause no dismay. It is in fact the beginning of an enormous step forward, for power becoming increasingly available has been up to now the fundamental basis of all technological development. And the new great power now coming to be available is the guarantee of vastly greater technological evolution than ever before. But this will not necessarily widen the gap. For, coincident with this, there is springing up almost unobserved a potential of social power at least comparable and quite possibly transcending all previous social energy as atomic power is seen to trans­cend all previous technological energy.