Freeman Dyson : The Optimistic Scientist interviewed

I think the technology optimistic view is the correct one, but we have to work hard and be careful to make that vision happen.

Freeman Dyson identifies the growing rigidity of scientific organizations as a real and serious problem

Amateurs and small companies will have a growing role in the future of science. This will compensate for the increasing bureaucratization of the big organizations.

Dyson is a global warming heretic.

Dyson also says:
The western academic world is very much like Weimar Germany, finding itself in a situation of losing power and influence. Fortunately, the countries that matter now are China and India, and the Chinese and Indian experts do not share the mood of doom and gloom. It is amusing to see China and India take on today the role that America took in the nineteen-thirties, still believing in technology as the key to a better life for everyone.

In China and India rapidly growing wealth and technological progress create a mood of optimism.

Pessimism versus optimism:
Pessimism: has entrenched techno-scepticism and environmental anxiety and assuming misuse of technology versus with the Club of Rome type proclamations of the “Limits to Growth”.
Optimism: has advanced biological, genetic and geo-engineering as industrial trappings of social progress and environmental protection. The vision of endless technological advancement, terrestrial progress and the greening of the galaxy. Dysons has a line famously predicting that “we shall learn to grow trees on comets.”