The Chasm Ahead by Aurelio Peccei (review)

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 471 ing itself, involving all kinds of institutions and individuals in and out of government. Thus there is no substitute for politics in the process of choice. H. L. Nif.burg* The Chasm Ahead. By Aurelio Peccei. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1969. Pp. xvi+297. $7.50. This book investigates a theme of such great significance and with such passionate optimism that it is tempting to dismiss it as the poetic excess of an overextended systems analyst. If such a judgment were made it would be doubly unfortunate. First, the author has dared to write his own synthesis of the systemwide threats and conflicts which presently disturb the global environment and which promise to wreak incredible havoc within the next few decades. Admittedly, his work is liberally sprinkled with “planispheres of truth,” New Approaches to sociopolitical tensions, Great Changes of Direction in macrosystems planning, and sweeping diagrams of “planetized interests.” These con­ ceptual splendors notwithstanding, the book provides a lucid and sus­ tained analysis of the revolutionary transformation of contemporary history; writing on the technologies of war and industrial growth, the author is able to make a second distinctive contribution. Peccei is a thoroughgoing optimist who not only believes that reason can pre­ serve the global system and improve the conditions of human life; he also suggests a “Project 1969” which can immediately set about the task of redesigning the political controls of a divided and warring world. Peccei is a thoughtful industrialist who is a director of Fiat, Olivetti, Italconsult (an Italian think tank), and the Committee for Atlantic Economic Cooperation. He is well versed in the development of Euro­ pean technology, American industrial planning, and the literature of technological forecasting. In the first part of his book, on the yawning “gap” between the rate of technological innovation and industrial growth recorded in the United States and in Western Europe, he has provided an Italian counterpart to Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber’s best selling, The American Challenge. Peccei updates the French analysis of the Atlantic “technology gap” but shares its basic despair: “Starting with a rather matter-of-fact ex­ amination of American investment in Europe [which now is equal in size to the total GNP of Britain or France] we find an economic system that is in a state of collapse. It is our own. We see a foreign challenger breaking down the political and psychological framework of our socie­ ties. We are witnessing the prelude to our own historical bankruptcy.” He provides vivid data to demonstrate the manner in which Ameri­ can research and development, management procedures, computer and * Dr. Nieburg, of the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, is the author of Nuclear Secrecy and Foreign Policy, In the Name of Science, and other books. 472 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE automation technologies, and corporate marketing strategies could re­ duce the “new Europe” to the status of an industrial satellite of U.S. industrial wealth. He extends the imaginative concepts of Marshall McLuhan to note that Europe has refused to move beyond the General Motors age—which is “mechanical, linear and sequential”—while Amer­ ica has broken through to the “technetronic” (pace Brezezinski), or IBM age—which is “electronic and simultaneous.” The implications of these divergent trends of development are sensitively explored and shrewd remedies are advanced to bridge the gap. Great emphasis is placed upon the bridging activity since the author insists that a compact and unified Atlantic platform must be built if the problems of the rest of the world are to be firmly resolved. The second emphasis in the book is placed upon bridging the gap between the expanding growth structures of the West and the nonmar­ ket economies of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Treaty allies. In this regard the author leans heavily upon the “convergence strategies” suggested by a Soviet nuclear physicist, academician Sakharov. In his clandestinely published manifesto, Progress, Co-Existence, and Intellec­ tual Freedom, Sakharov had warned both the East and West that “the division of mankind threatens it with destruction. Civilization is im­ perilled by a universal thermonuclear war, catastrophic hunger for most of mankind, stupefaction from the narcotic of ‘mass culture’ and bu­ reaucratized

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