Tommy Denton

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As the old adage has it: Just because you're paranoid doesn't necessarily mean somebody's not out to get you. Or at least get your money.

Like the Luddites of the early 18th century, many modern naysayers strike out against the technological advances they believe will render them obsolete or otherwise at an economic or psychic disadvantage.

Yet contrarians of the Luddite persuasion aren't necessarily wrong in their warnings.

The original Luddites were textile workers in England at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The factory owners had installed modern machinery that seriously damaged the workers' wages and threw many of them out of jobs. In retaliation, they stormed the factories and smashed the machinery.

Ever since, the term "Luddite" has been assigned to any group of people opposed in principle to technological change.

In the case of the original textile workers, and to a certain extent to their modern-day successors in the declining U.S. industry, the definition has a ring of truth. Change brings dislocation and a certain level of transitional chaos, and those unable to adapt to the radical changes wrought by technology tend to get dragged under the rip tide of systemic technological transformations.

Some fears raised by the contrarians are clearly laughable. Remember, there were protests against rail travel in the 19th century, when the opponents argued that the sheer force of travel at 15 mph would be fatal to human beings. Then there were those who recoiled at the very thought of flying in contraptions. If God had intended people to fly, he would have given them wings.

But people branded as Luddites aren't always wrong just because they raise their voices in warning against unseen perils. In the early 1960s, Rachel Carson wrote a troubling book, "Silent Spring," in which she warned that indiscriminate use of pesticides was inflicting enormous damage on the environment and wildlife.

Farmers, scientists, government regulators and most everyone else supposedly informed in such matters dismissed "Silent Spring" as alarmist claptrap from one of those Luddite troublemakers. Only years later did the evidence -- near disappearance of some species of birds and reptiles -- awaken the "progressive thinkers" to the truth of Carson's warning.

The same was true about the same time of those who warned against the overuse of antibiotics. They were dismissed as irrational Luddites, even as doctors prescribed antibiotics for everything from infections that should have received those medicines to the common cold, despite the fact that many ailments were caused by viruses and thus impervious to antibiotics.

Farmers also pumped livestock with antibiotics as a cheap, easy way to keep the animals healthy and to fatten them.

Now modern science has discovered that the indiscriminate use of antibiotics has spawned a new and dire problem: antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the threat of menacing new strains of such diseases as tuberculosis, malaria, syphilis and pneumonia.

Despite last week's reinforcement of research showing that one in four U.S. women carries the sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer, voices of caution have advocated the same level of prudent skepticism in their calls for assessing long-term consequences before hastening to mandate legislatively the vaccination of all girls as young as 11.

A prudent society does not dismiss its Luddites out of hand. Many thoughtful advocates of technological advancement urge careful evaluation of the implications of how applying such modern technology as robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology could reduce human beings to servants of super technology rather than its masters.

A just and practical society should create a systematic technology-assessment process that more closely unites science and technology with public policy. That would allow more effective integration and better management of the stunning changes caused by scientific and technological innovation.

Too often, the satisfaction of achieving scientific breakthroughs "because we can" outstrips concerns about whether such endeavors ultimately are in humanity's best interests.

Thus, the brave new worlds of human cloning, space-based missile defense, the almost unfathomable capacity to store and transmit extremely sensitive personal information and a host of other issues appear to be benevolent opportunities to exploit once the technical details are worked out.

But humankind has learned before that its knowledge can, unchecked by a moral and ethical sanity check, outstrip its wisdom.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.