Science & Tech Quote by Joshua Lederberg

A Nobel-winning scientist talking like an early internet evangelist, Lederberg frames connectivity as lab equipment: a prerequisite for doing modern science, not a lifestyle upgrade. The verb choice matters. He is not “advising” or “supporting” but “chairing a UNESCO committee,” invoking bureaucratic heft to solve what sounds, at first blush, like a technical problem. That’s the subtext: the internet isn’t merely infrastructure; it’s governance, standards, and access. Science runs on communication, and communication is political.

The phrase “global Internet communications for science” reveals a specific intent: widen the circulation of data, collaboration, and publication beyond wealthy institutions. This was a period when the “Net” still read as a frontier and a club; “get onto the Net” treats entry as the key hurdle, not algorithmic capture or platform monopolies. In that sense, it’s historically optimistic, rooted in a pre-social-media belief that networks naturally democratize knowledge.

Then there’s the uneasy, era-stamped language: “third-world people.” It signals a development framework where inclusion is something granted from the top down. Even as he argues for participation, he implies a center-periphery map of expertise. “So they can be part of the process” is both generous and telling: science is a process with gatekeepers, and connectivity is pitched as the ticket in.

What makes the quote work is its quiet insistence that scientific progress is inseparable from who gets to talk to whom. Lederberg is smuggling an equity agenda through a technocratic sentence, betting that access to the network is access to the future.