MISSOURI WATCH: THREE CHEERS FOR FALLIBILITY

Perhaps the most understandable human response to the increasingly frequent boast that modern technology is infallible is to point to the fallibility of the claim. As mere mortals who find ourselves more and more at the mercy of some new electronic gadget, we would be wise not to develop a world-class case of paranoia or at the very least a bad case of nerves characterized by an uncontrollable eye twitch or the involuntary tapping of our right index finger.

Hardly a day passes without some announcement of a major "scientific breakthrough" that will either cure some previously incurable disease, make life easier for the five billion human specks who inhabit this small terrestrial piece of rock or rid our lives of some scourge, ranging from the African fruit fly to the Missouri Misery, a.k.a. the 52-week-a-year sinus infection.

Several years ago, modern science breathlessly announced complete victory in the war on the South American fire ant, which arrived in our country sometime in the 1930s and proceeded to make life miserable for anyone who suffered the sting of its mandibles. Indeed, the fire ant was so formidable that it was capable of biting through electrical wires and knocking out electrical power of entire neighborhoods.

Armed with DDT and laboratory prepared toxins, scientists set about to destroy the unwelcome pest that allegedly ate metal just to keep in practice. After three decades of constantly spraying fire-ant territory with the killer compounds, however, the U.S. government had no choice but to declare unconditional surrender. It turns out the pesticides had all along been doing less damage to the invader than to its predators. Pouring chemicals in the living rooms of the ants actually increased their population.

Hence, the fallibility of science's best-Laid technological plans that often go so thoroughly awry.

No invention has been more widely hailed in recent times than the computer, which as it turns out is no more invulnerable to the perversity of objects and systems than the magic Fruit Fly elixir. Hailed some 10 years as only the latest innovation for a tidy, eco-correct paperless office, today's computers turn out more paper than a printing press, helped along by that other great "paperless" invention, the Internet.

Of course we may have to wait for all the marvels of the computer until the next century, which as it turns out, wasn't scheduled on millions of computers that now require further expenditure to recognize the year 2000. Without this expensive adjustment, you will find yourself celebrating the millennium as you bring up the year McKinley was president.

And of course science is still trying to explain why, after the expenditure of billions of dollars, many of them going to a fellow named Bill Gates, America's rate of productivity remains virtually at the same level as when science developed another electronic wonder, the electric can opener.

Nor do the ironies of modern medicine bode well for the disease-free future that has been painted ever since barbers performed open-chair surgery. Today we are faced with wave after wave of deadly, drug-resistant microbes, and we are quickly running out of antibiotics to fight them.

Nor do the examples stop there. Remember when technology developed equipment designed to make football safer? Well, it turns out that the safety designs created more injuries than when Gerald Ford played the game without a helmet.

Today's fire-fighting equipment is so effective that it douses small forest fires before they can burn up the debris that fuels larger, unmanageable ones.

And years ago agricultural science developed kudzu, a miracle vine that was forecast as the perfect soil protector. Kudzu is now the bane of thousands of farmers in states south of the Mason-Dixon line and is rapidly heading north. In the meantime it is covering just about any immovable object in its path and, reportedly, has even covered over numerous southerners under the influence of moonshine.

At the start of this piece, there was a word of caution against developing paranoia with-out mentioning that medical science admits it may never find a nontoxic cure. This may be the technological impasse mankind has been looking for. It could even be the last hope for survival of the human race.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.