Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

Great (UNFULFILLeD) expeCtatIONS: tO BOLDLY GO Where NO 149
SOCIaL SCIeNtISt aND hIStOrIaN have GONe BeFOre
StUDIeS ON the evaLUatION aND FeeDBaCK OF
INFOrMatION aBOUt eFFeCtS
the third area, social trends, was the heart of the aaaS project. Social
indicators was such a new area of study that it sufered “not only a general lack of
consensus as to what should be measured, but also disagreement on goals, purposes,
and the nature of our society.” the Committee on Space sought “to see if it could
raise the quality of such evaluations by examining carefully the bases for making
such evaluations—the social indicators used in measuring trends.” 58 Bauer and his
colleagues were among the leaders in recognizing the importance and potential
of, as a 1962 president’s Science advisory Committee stated, systematically
collecting behavioral data and providing advice to the government. 59
Social Indicators was written not just to determine how to measure specifc
impacts of the space program but to propose a total information system that
would provide “the earliest possible detection or anticipation of impacts that bear on the
primary mission” of “NaSa or some similar institution.” 60 Contributor Bertram
M. Gross claimed the book was “the frst occasion on which the entire feld
has been surveyed and a comprehensive set of proposals, based upon careful
analysis, has been developed.” 61
appearing in 1966 to favorable reviews, Social Indicators was the most
infuential of the three volumes. political scientist Ithiel de Sola pool, who
worked with Bauer and later organized a retrospective technology analysis of
the telephone, stated that the aaaS project pushed the idea of social indicators
into “the mainstream of american social thought.” 62 perhaps a more objective
indicator of the book’s value is the fact that, four decades after its appearance,
MIt press still sells Social Indicators. the concept has taken root and fourished:
a search of Google Scholar for “social indicators” returns roughly 36,000 hits
compared with 47,000 for “economic indicators.” 63 Several internationally
prominent composite indicators, such as transparency International, are as
much social as economic.
58. earl p. Stevenson, “report of the Committee on Space,” Records of the Academy (American Academy
of Arts and Sciences), 1963/1964, 154-155.
59. Life Sciences panel of the president’s Science advisory Committee, Strengthening the behavioral
sciences; statement by the Behavioral Sciences Subpanel (Washington, DC: the White house, 1962),
pp. 13-19.
60. raymond a. Bauer, “Detection and anticipation of Impact: the Nature of the task,” op. cit., pp.
10-11, 63. emphasis in original.
61. Bertram M. Gross, in Bauer, Social Indicators, op. cit., “preface,” p. xv.
62. Ithiel de Sola pool, “In Memoriam,” PS 10, 4 (autumn, 1977): 517. See also Ithiel de Sola pool,
ed., The Social Impact of the Telephone (Cambridge, Ma: MIt press,
1977).
63. accessed at http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=%22economic+indicators%22&btnG=
Search (downloaded august 7, 2007).