From: "Brygg Ullmer"
Subject: Dyson, Green and Gray
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 1997 20:55:13 -0500
In everything we undertake, either on earth or in the sky, we have a choice
of two styles, which I call the gray and the green. The distinction between
gray and green is not sharp. Only at the extremes of the spectrum can we
say without qualification, this is green and that is gray. The difference
between green and gray is better explained by examples than by definitions.
Factories are gray, gardens are green. Physics is gray, biology is green.
Plutonium is gray, horse manure is green. Bureaucracy is gray, pioneer
communities are green. Self-reproducing machines are gray, trees and
children are green. Human technology is gray, God's technology is green.
Clones are gray, clades are green. Army field manuals are gray, poems are
green.
Why should we not say simply, gray is bad, green is good, and find a quick
path to salvation by embracing green technology and banning everything gray?
Because to answer the world's material needs, technology has to be not only
beautiful but also cheap. we delude ourselves if we think that the ideology
of "Green Is Beautiful" will save us from the necessity of making difficult
choices in the future, any more than other ideologies have saved us from
difficult choices in the past.
Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, p227