An article almost half a century old, but more relevant than ever. Goodman's proposed solutions are interesting, but would appear to have an even more remote chance of being implemented now than in 1969. Some choice quotes:

I myself believe that space exploration is a great human adventure, with immense aesthetic and moral benefits, whatever the scientific or utilitarian uses. Yet it is amazing to me that the scientists and technologists involved have not spoken more insistently for international cooperation instead of a puerile race.

In The Two Cultures, C.P. Snow berated the humanists for their irrelevance when two-thirds of mankind are starving and what is needed is science and technology. They have perhaps been irrelevant; but unless technology is itself more humanistic and philosophical, it is of no use. There is only one culture.

The current political assumption is that scientists and inventors, and even social scientists, are “value-neutral,” but their discoveries are “applied” by those who make decisions for the nation. Counter to this, I have been insinuating a kind of Jeffersonian democracy or guild socialism, that scientists and inventors and other workmen are responsible for the uses of the work they do, and ought to be competent to judge these uses and have a say in deciding them.