I deeply believe that this society has now thrust upon it a kind of moral imperative to focus efforts on the utilization of general systems concepts … - Richard F. Ericson

This is a time in human affairs when, In the context of the foregoing analysis, the “radical” point of view is likely to prove to be the “conservative” one: we may well be in the early stages of a “cybernetic revolution” worthy of “1984” and “RUR.” Thus, to accept as potential reality what may seem an alarmist view, may turn out to be the only perspective which secures viable options by promoting mankind's welfare.

From society's standpoint, modern science and technology appears Janus-faced : It has given us wealth in one sense, and poverty in another; it has harnessed nature to man's basic needs in ways and to extents undreamed - of only a few decades ago, but it has fostered a continuingly lowered "quality of life".

Much of philosophy concerns man's search for holistic concepts which will help him see a meaningful pattern in the complexity with which his perceptual world confronts him. What is new is the rapidly growing intensity of the quest, and the modern context of the search. Plato's Republic is from a world quite different from that of Boguslaw's. The New Utopians.