John von Neumann on Technological Prospects and Global Limits

Abstract

The slow recognition (and, albeit in a field known for its oscillations of opinion, current dominance) of the view that natural resources are not a binding constraint on human development often leads the unwary to the inference that there are no other constraints. It is as if once humanity is well fed and supplied with abundant raw materials, nothing can preclude an economic nirvana. In an insightful paper written in 1955 about technological prospects in the next 25 years, a period now safely behind us, John von Neumann drew a more modulated picture. The paper, which appeared under the title Can We Survive Technology? in the June 1955 issue of Fortune magazine, is reproduced here in full with the permission of TimelLife Inc. It also appears in Vol. VI of von Neumann's Collected Works published by Pergamon Press in 1963 and distributed by Macmillan. The Hungarian-born von Neumann, 1903-57, was one of the century's great mathematicians. He also played an important role in the Manhattan Project and in subsequent programs of weapons development; was a major figure in the development of the electronic computer; and made seminal contributions to the social sciences, most notably through his 1944 book The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, coauthored with Oscar Morgenstern. Although long associated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, when this article was written he was serving in the full-time post of Member of the US Atomic Energy Commission. As is clear from the propositions setforth in the paper, von Neumann was an unabashed technological optimist. He foresaw free energy, the transmutation of elements, and control of the climate-futures that seem rather more distant today than they did 30 years ago. His forecasts on other matters, such as industrial automation, proved more prescient. But the most notable aspect of von Neumann's analysis is the identification of an absolute limiting factorspace-thatframes the accelerating technological change of industrial societies, in eftect negating the presumed beneficence of technology. Due to the finiteness of the globe and the size of existing political units, von Neumann argues, further acceleration of technological progress can no longer be absorbed, as it was in the past, by an extension of the area of operations; hence it becomes a source of instability and deepening crisis.