Utopian Dream Research Articles

Techno-Bandits: How the Soviets are Stealing America's High-Tech Future (review)

264 SAIS REVIEW Techno-Bandits: How the Soviets are Stealing America's High-Tech Future. By Linda Melvern, Nick Anning, and David Hebditch. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. pp. 305. Reviewed by Sheila Bindman, M.A. candidate, SAIS. Techno-Bandits: How the Soviets are StealingAmerica's High-Tech Future is promoted as a book that reads like a fast-paced international thriller, and indeed, authors Linda Melvern, Nick Anning, and David Hebditch substitute a large measure of sensationalism and espionage-cum-anecdote for factual reporting and concrete analysis. The book begins with a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and then proceeds relentlessly from there: It is a compilation of vignettes about Western business executives who betray their countries for "Soviet gold." Despite an interesting history on emerging American export controls, interagency rivalry in Washington, and increasing tensions among the Western allies, the book never quite makes the transition from "mission impossible" to serious study. While a number of chapters are devoted to "The Trader Spies" and "A Bandit Family Tree," only in their conclusion do the authors raise any significant questions about the assumptions, objectives, and viability of Western export controls, and the motivations of those who work assiduously to contravene them. The role of the businessman in East-West rivalry is never clearly articulated, and the Soviets are portrayed as mere backstage manipulators, presenting shopping lists and then checks to those calculating British, German, and Austrian spies and greedy American manufacturers who exploit Western economic abundance and intellectual freedom. Moreover, no clear distinction emerges between the patent infringement rampant in today's microchip industry and Russian efforts to acquire the benefits of Western technology minus the costs of research entailed. Soviet actions seem mere industrial espionage writ large. The inconsistency of American policy towards East-West trade is better documented, veering from active encouragement during détente to sometimes overzealous supervision under Reagan, and the authors examine the bureaucratic mismanagement and lack of prosecution that hamper export control efforts. Still, the book's tone fluctuates between stern condemnation and amused condescension, and the issue of technology transfer is depicted as both a serious threat and a comedy oferrors. For a study purporting to be an in-depth exposé of East-West technology transfer, Techno-Bandits unfortunately provides more on the bandits and less on the underlying issues. The New Diplomacy. By Abba Eban. New York: Random House, 1983. pp. 401. Reviewed by Steven Kasten, M.A. candidate, SAIS. In international politics, "success is relative to perceived possibilities and diplomacy is the art of appraising the feasible." Abba Eban's book represents a call for the acknowledgment of the limits of the contemporary international system, limits that preclude the realization of Utopian aspirations regarding arms control, U.S.-Soviet rapprochement, and international legal organization. ...

Essay Reviews: All Things to All People: Fifty Years of American Schools

When Americans discuss the condition of their educational system, as they have done constantly for more than a century and a half, they do not usually talk simply about schools and teachers. They talk about their society and their world. When they dream greatly, they often focus those dreams first on their schools. When they fear for their security or their comfort, they often look to the schools for both the sources and the solutions of their problems. Visionaries and idealists work to make education a vehicle for their social philosophies or their Utopian dreams. Conser­ vative elites demand that schools serve to enforce social discipline and preserve or­ der. Nationalists hope that education will advance the cause of social unity; minorities insist that schools should help to preserve racial, ethnic, or regional distinctiveness. The educational system, Americans seem to believe, can be, indeed must be, all things to all people. The result, of course, has been constant, inevitable disappointment. In 1946, Robert Maynard Hutchins, then president of the University of Chicago, wrote a response to the ambitious proposals of a presidential commission on higher education. In it he expressed as clearly as anyone the educator's frustration at the expectations society had imposed on his profession. Hutchins spoke of the omnibus fallacy that there is nothing which education cannot do and it can do everything equally well. He warned that Americans should pause before plunging ahead with a major expansion of their educational system and try to determine first its goals and directions. Hutchins's warnings seemed to fall on deaf ears at the time. But now, nearly forty years later as Americans grapple with what is widely believed to be a serious crisis in education, concern about this omnibus fallacy has been revived. It is that concern, apparently, that has spurred Diane Ravitch, the author of several

Amorphous silicon solar cells

The direct conversion of sunlight into electricity has been a utopian dream. The ability to generate electricity in this manner is, of course, exciting since it utilizes nondepletable fuel and is nonpolluting. However, since the 1950’s, the approach to accomplish this aim has been primarily through the utilization of expensive crystalline silicon solar cells. We describe here how noncrystalline materials, that is, amorphous materials, can be produced as continuous, large-area, thin-film devices with efficiencies, stabilities, and costs which will permit them, for the first time, to compete realistically with conventional fuels such as oil, gas, uranium, and coal.

2083 A.D.—A Reflection on Arts and Crafts

2083 A.D.—A Reflection on Arts and Crafts by Al Cornett INTRODUCTION This report was prepared as a supplement to my participation as an arts and crafts representative in a symposium held in December, 1983, at Lees College at Jackson, Kentucky. The title of the symposium was "The Next Hundred Years, Perceptions of the Future of Eastern Kentucky." It was an opportunity to put some thoughts on paper that had incubated in my mind for several years. One reason for living at Slade, Kentucky, isolated from close neighbors, is that as an artist I needed the isolation to develop my own techniques and philosophies of the arts. In doing this I fell into the intriguing task of discovering myself—finding out the intricacies of the real me. Doing this only led to greater and greater areas of curiosity—areas perhaps to which one can never have hopes of finding an end. During the sixties I read Harry Caudill's book "Night Comes to the Cumberland." It lit a spark that turned into a roaring inferno of questions and doubts for Me—questions about what was happening to America at the time. At the same time the sixties were "talking" to me. I should have realized then what time it was. 34 It took the work of another historian to enable me to adequately understand why certain economic transformations were transpiring. "The Great Frontier, " by Walter Prescott Webb, has greatly influenced my life. It is the constant to which I return when looking for that little golden thread of truth woven into the news media's jumbled up fabric. Webb, back in 1950, accurately predicted today's energy shortages, social unrest, political trends—practically everything ! Webb was intelligent enough to realize that events happening hundreds of years ago influenced and caused present and future situations. I owe much to Harry M. Caudill and Walter Prescott Webb. Regarding the arts and crafts it must immediately be recognized that the vast majority of excellent artists and craftsmen cannot financially survive in today's world selling paintings and crafted items to the masses. The masses do not have enough wealth. I want to emphasize this point. Through the ages the best artisans have always been supported by wealth. In a society without wealth, talented artists and craftsmen must retreat to areas or people that have it. In a sense we are all commercial artists, the bottom line being financial security. Hopefully there are artists still painting for the sheer joy of expression. May their hunger not be in vain. We, the people of the world, could accomplish so much if a way of coexistence could be found. If we could unite in one common effort toward the benefit of mankind. If we could be permitted to develop and use our scientific knowledge for the overall benefit of everyone— if we could keep our fingers off the red buttons! These are big "ifs" but I'm afraid we have too much territorial imperatives and savagery still within our genes to prevent any great advancements in the humanities in the near future. So, as with any study or discussion, we must remain as objective and rational as possible, realizing that our technologies have outstripped the humanities. When projecting into the future one is torn between the positive Utopian statement as, "Here is how it could be" and the more rational approach as "Here is how it will be." Being a realist helps tremendously. If we want to know how the world really works then, first, we need a realistic view of the world. We need a realization—that most nations are ruled by the worst elements of human nature—and their actions are guided by the worst of man's enemies, such as greed, ambition, irrational hatreds, paranoia, envy, jealousness, etc.—that history does repeat itself—that nations follow predictable patterns—that most world events are part of a chain reaction—and, finally that most geopolitical/financial-economic events are joined, and influence each other. Apathy and complacency can destroy and render Utopian dreams asunder. Therefore, it is hoped that this paper will cause reactions that are perhaps hostile, but nevertheless positive. Obviously, to put...

Positive Science and Discoverability

Several 17th- and 18th-century natural philosophers and methodologists aimed to establish a body of positive scientific results which were more than hypothetical or conjectural. They made exaggerated claims for the truth and empirical pedigree of their scientific conclusions. Since the mid-19th century, investigators have been more circumspect; and, increasingly in the 20th century, reflective scientists have become explicit fallibilists. They frequently acknowledge that current results are unlikely to endure.Seemingly in keeping with the working scientists own attitude, many, perhaps most, contemporary philosophers of science—in the wake of dramatic revolutions in several sciences and philosophical attacks on the quest for certainty—now take for granted the hypothetical, the conjectural nature of all Interesting scientific claims, particularly deep theoretical claims. According to these philosophers, the lesson we have learned from 19th-century methodologists is that 17th-century discovery programs, which aimed to justify theories by “deduction from the phenomena”, were only utopian dreams.

Paradise, the Golden Age the Millennium and Utopia

What is the difference between the earthly paradise, the Golden Age and the ideal city? This question is most important for whoever is interested in the various ways human societies have had for imagining an ideal state of perfection or social harmony. If we are not to confuse such different systems of representation as mythical thought, millenarianism and Utopia, it is absolutely necessary that we do not reduce the descriptions of an earthly paradise and a Golden Age to simple precursors of the ideal city of the Utopians. It is especially important not to call “Utopian” every representation of the ideal society, Utopia being only one— and the most, recent—of its modalities. The Utopian dream Translated by Jeanne Ferguson takes up and at the same time alters the paradisiacal and millenarian imagination: it would be difficult to believe that the passage of primitive societies to great urban civilizations, then to modern society occurred without major repercussions on the vision of these societies, that the ideal state of social perfection did not vary from one to the other.

Russian Stereotypes in the Freud-Jung Correspondence

Your Russian (and I must tell you again how I admire your patience, or rather your resignation) probably has some Utopian dream of a world-benefiting therapy and feels the work is not getting on fast enough. I believe their race more than any other lacks the knack for self-inflicted drudgery. By the way, do you know the story about the “glass rear end”? A practicing physician should never forget it.Freud to Jung, June 3, 1909From 1906 to 1914 C. G. Jung and Sigmund Freud exchanged 360 personal letters, most of them mailed between Zürich and Vienna. These years saw the consolidation of an international Freudian school by 1909 and multiple schisms within the movement, from the defection of Adler in 1911 to the final alienation of Jung himself. Given the era and the specific localities, it is not surprising to find that Russians and Russian political issues now and then figure, oddly and elliptically, among the welter of topics raised in the Freud-Jung Briefwechsel. Out of the fragmented data an incident of sorts emerges, with a Russian cast in the role of seductress (later heroine), Jung as victim (and unwitting villain), and Freud himself intervening “Sherlock Holmes-like” (as he put it) to help solve the case. Beyond its intrinsic and eccentric appeal, the material holds a three-fold historic significance for the Slavicist.

The Lost Utopia New Images of America in German Literature

Amerika, du hast es besser/ Als unser Kontinent, das alte,/ Hast keine verfallene SchlOsser/ Und keine Basalte./ Dich stOrt nicht im Innern/ Zu lebendiger Zeit/ Unntitzes Erinnern/ Und vergeblicher Streit. Goethe's poem of 1827 and some of his other works expressed the utopian hopes of a time when the United States became the embodiment of the future to all liberal and progressive Europeans. They fervently believed in the American dream laid down in the Declaration of Independence all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In the twentieth century many writers have used the American dream of individual freedom as a general metaphor for the human condition, the problems and possibilities of man in society. This is the central insight of Richard Ruland's work, America in Modern European Literature: From Image to Metaphor,' which offers a large kaleidoscope of visions ranging from Kafka's grotesque satire of the utopian dream to Brecht's lurid scenes of alienation, from Mayakovsky's futurist images of political struggle and technological progress to Saint-John Perse's poetic quest for personal rebirth and cultural renewal in the vastnesses of the American continent.

Tensions and conflicts in the third World

In no other time in history -living as we do in the atomic age -have the problems of humanity been so severe in their causes and in their consequences. Inequality has become for us the most outstanding institutional form of conflict among nations and peoples. In 1975, in this world of crisis, three out of every four human beings belongedto the Third World. In the year 2000, which is our immediate borderline in the challenge for survival, approximately five out of every six human beings that is, 80 per cent of the total world population will be living in the peripheral regions. ' None of these figures are new to you. I offer them here only to point out an aspect of which we often lose sight; that within the next nineteen years, the US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand will represent only 13 per cent of the world's population while the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, on the other hand, will make up a mere 7 per cent. Above and beyond possible and foreseeable changes that might take place in these two regions the East and the West it seems impossible to speculate regarding peace and development without there being an adequate solution to the dilemmas of the South. In a few words: although the East-West contradiction could lead to a nuclear war and the general destruction of civilisation, on the other hand a fruitful dialogue between the North and South could mean a stage of reconstruction as well as bringing about the most important change that mankind has witnessed in recent centuries. That is, the creation of a New International Economic Order, the only logical outcome of the North-South dialogue. The only alternative is a yearly get-together for rhetorical discourse, a dialogue of the deaf. The contemporary world's greatest challenge lies ultimately in the discovery of a formula to integrate science and technology into the struggle against misery, poverty and the misuse of economic and military power. This can take place, it is not a Third World utopian dream, for the world possesses the outstanding and significant human resources and a great reserve of human wisdom. We have more educated people living today than during the whole of human history. Are we to

Chronicle and Romance Modes in Henry V

IT IS CUSTOMARY TO DIVIDE PLAYS written during the Elizabethan period upon subjects related to English history into two groups: chronicle histories, which draw their source-material, in the main, from the work of non-dramatic prose or verse historiographers, and romance or pseudo histories, which incorporate characters from history within a completely imaginary, usually comic, plot. It is further agreed, by the principal authorities, that only the chronicle histories had any important influence on Shakespeare's contribution to the genre.1 There are grounds for questioning this assumption, which cannot be discussed in detail here;2 an interesting case-study of an individual play has, however, been provided by Anne Barton in an important article on Henry V (1 599).3 Relating Shakespeare's play to earlier romance histories-such as George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield (1587-1593), Peele's Edward I(1590-1593), Heywood's I Edward IV (1592-1601) and Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester (1 598-1601)-which, like Henry V, make use of the motif of the disguised king who mingles unrecognized among his subjects, Barton argues that Shakespeare took the opportunity to re-examine the tradition, not without a certain cold detachment. The nostalgic but false romanticism' of the earlier plays, with their Utopian dream of a world in which King and commoner could meet on equal

Collective Immortality: The Syndicalist Origins of Proletarian Culture, 1905-1910

This pamphlet ivas written iviih an eye to the tsarist censorship. Hence, I was not only forced to confine myself strictly to an exclusively theoretical, particularly economic, analysis of facts, but to formulate the few necessary observations on politics with extreme caution, by hints, in allegorical language—in that accursed Aesopian language— to which tsarism compelled all revolutionaries to have recourse whenever they took up their pens to write a "legal" work.V. I. LeninCollectivism was a Utopian dream that flourished in Soviet Russia in the 1920s and later became part of Soviet ideology. Eisenstein's early films, conductorless orchestras, and mass workers' choruses all aimed at inculcating the view that a collective—be it the party, the proletariat, or the masses—was to replace the individual as the determinant of social and political values. The popular "proletarian culture" movement that flourished during the civil war (1918-21) was one form of collectivism, but there were many others. Yet, as a body of ideas, collectivism in Russia preceded the 1917 Revolution by a decade or more and made a crucial contribution to bolshevism. Indeed, in the years after 1905, collectivism had as much a claim to bolshevism as did the party-centered authoritarianism of Lenin.

Rousseau & the Concept of Happiness

Although Rousseau's thought has had a vast influence on political ideas and diverse political movements, the seeming absence of a coherent and consistent philosophy has puzzled his interpreters. Some have tried to get at the bottom of apparent inconsistencies in their search for the unity underlying his thought. This article is a sympathetic and plausible interpretation of Rousseau's understanding of happiness as the unifying basis of his moral and political philosophy, contrasting his theory with other kinds of moral and political thought. Happiness for Rousseau is, not a utopian dream, but a condition attainable by different kinds of people in a wide variety of circumstances.

MACHINE TRANSLATION AND MACHINE‐AIDED TRANSLATION

The recent report for the Commission of the European Communities on current multilingual activities in the field of scientific and technical information and the 1977 conference on the same theme both included substantial sections on operational and experimental machine translation systems, and in its Plan of action the Commission announced its intention to introduce an operational machine translation system into its departments and to support research projects on machine translation. This revival of interest in machine translation may well have surprised many who have tended in recent years to dismiss it as one of the ‘great failures’ of scientific research. What has changed? What grounds are there now for optimism about machine translation? Or is it still a ‘utopian dream’ ? The aim of this review is to give a general picture of present activities which may help readers to reach their own conclusions. After a sketch of the historical background and general aims (section I), it describes operational and experimental machine translation systems of recent years (section II), it continues with descriptions of interactive (man‐machine) systems and machine‐assisted translation (section III), (and it concludes with a general survey of present problems and future possibilities section IV).

Utopian Dream as Psychic Reality

Utopian Dream as Psychic Reality

Training Professional Tutors: Utopian Dream or Utilitarian Investment?

Training Professional Tutors: Utopian Dream or Utilitarian Investment?

Psychological Assumptions and Utopian Aspirations: A Critique of Work in America

Psychological Assumptions and Utopian Aspirations: A Critique of Work in America

Mexico According To Quetzalcoatl: an Essay of Intra-History

The seal of Utopia stamped the history of Mexico from its colonial origins. Thomas More's Utopia was published at Louvain in 1516, three years before Cortez disembarked on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and twenty years later Vasco de Quiroga, the first bishop of Michoacan, attempted to realise Utopia in his diocese. When, in the first years of the last century, the learned traveler Alexander de Humboldt made investigations which resulted in A Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, he was able to verify the Indians’ continuance of the country of the “venerable Vasco” (tata Vasco) Besides a hagiographic legend (one could cite a great many of them) and besides an equally significant regional tradition, the historian establishes that the Utopian aspirations and Messianic hope had been permanent characteristics of the national conscience of Mexico throughout its formation.

Pour une sociologie des « idéations collectives n

The author rejects the form of sociology which reduces the objectives of religion simply to the products of quite other factors. In the first part of his work he deals with the col~ lective formation of ideas and with the theology of the world of the imagination ; he sees here the possibility of a dialogue between, Sociology and Theology. The next stage of his argument — entitled « collective formation of ideas and the sociology of consciousness » — demonstrates that there is such a close and constant relationship between these, two concepts that they should not be separated. A sociology. of collective consciousness is also a sociology of social facts. Normally «Realsoziologie » studies the forces of making for cohesion and « Bewusstseinssoziologie » those making for disintegration. Finally, in a, passage entitled « collective formation of ideas and the anthropology of dreams », the author makes a strong plea for a sociological approach to Utopian dream worlds, or to the dreams which make up such a world, or for a sociology of the world of the imagination, as suggested by R. Bastide.

Mrzonki o pokoju. Wojna nemezis ludzkości

The main thesis of the article is as follows: war shares a lasting and unbreakable bond with human life and state politics and, despite the Utopian dreams of never-ending peace, conflicts are the sine qua non building blocks of a country’s policy and the development of the human race. Why? Because a state is an imperfect, yet the most perfect among the civilisationally achievable means of organising the lives of people who, for various reasons, display war inclinations. This paper is a political sciences analysis of the problem from the perspective of history of political philosophy. To achieve the research goal, the author first analyses the Utopian visions of peace ruling over war and the designs of eternal peace, putting forward subtheses on the primate of peace over war and the human drive towards peace which was to be determined by 1). religion, 2). proper upbringing and education as well as the new organisation of a society and its reflection in the federalist project. These theses are debunked and proven to be wishful thinking as each human being and each state have violence in their genetic code.

Mrzonki o pokoju. Wojna nemezis ludzkości

The main thesis of the article is as follows: war shares a lasting and unbreakable bond with human life and state politics and, despite the Utopian dreams of never-ending peace, conflicts are the sine qua non building blocks of a country’s policy and the development of the human race. Why? Because a state is an imperfect, yet the most perfect among the civilisationally achievable means of organising the lives of people who, for various reasons, display war inclinations. This paper is a political sciences analysis of the problem from the perspective of history of political philosophy. To achieve the research goal, the author first analyses the Utopian visions of peace ruling over war and the designs of eternal peace, putting forward subtheses on the primate of peace over war and the human drive towards peace which was to be determined by 1). religion, 2). proper upbringing and education as well as the new organisation of a society and its reflection in the federalist project. These theses are debunked and proven to be wishful thinking as each human being and each state have violence in their genetic code.