How’s your faith in technology? September ? 1986

The Soviet disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is the latest example of what some have seen as the dangers inherent in modern technology. America’s progress toward space was stained by the Challenger shuttle disaster and tarnished by the Titan failure.

Has technology outpaced humankind’s ability to control it? Or are such accidents the price of progress? Can technology be managed or regulated into safety? Or is bureaucracy part of the problem?

We’ll publish your response next Saturday. Send comments to PEOPLE’S FORUM, the Daily News, Box 6616, Anchorage, 99502. LETTERSMUSTBE RECEIVED BY NOON THURSDAY. Please limit letters to 200 words and include a daytime phone number.

Technology necessary for our survival

Increasing the rate of scientific discovery and application is a requirement of human survival. If a return to a lower or zero technological growth level of culture were attempted the immunological potential of populations would decline to the point that large-scale eruptions of both old and new varieties of epidemic and pandemic diseases would eradicate the human species entirely from this planet.

The type of nuclear power plant failure which occurred in the Soviet Union could not have happened in the U.S., France, or West Germany. The Soviet designs deliberately took an unnecessary risk for the sake of cutting costs. Let this result of cost cutting insanity act as a catalyst for reviving President Lincoln’s battle for the Bank of the United States so that our democratic republic can once again become committed to scientific and technological progress.