The congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) is approaching the end of its first year of operation. Already, it is drawing considerable attention from environmental groups, and for good reason.

Industrialization has made technological solutions a favorite panacea. Nuclear power generation, for instance, is offered as a solution to increased power needs. Such solutions, however, bring heavy costs as well as great benefits. These costs include physical and psychological harm to man, which are expensive to mitigate or rectify where they are not in fact irreparable. The solution to the problems caused by new technologies can be neither a romantic attempt to stop the hands of the clock nor a blind, devil-take-the-hindmost embrace of all progress. It must involve a thorough exploration of the probable consequences of various actions and developments.