T is common knowledge that a major factor in improving the living standards of any society is an increase in productivity, the amount of useful work performed per worker. Such advances must obviously depend on the availability of practical knowledge as to how productivity can be increased, and this knowledge has come to be known loosely as technology. As a society becomes more technologically advanced in general, production in those areas that lack technology will become proportionately more expensive and, thus, will eventually command political attention. In contemporary American society, "social" areas such as welfare, police and fire protection, education, library services, and physical and mental health services are some areas that now fall into this category (see, e.g., Baumol & Eymonerie, 1970). At the present time, it is by no means certain that significant increases in productivity can be accomplished in some of these areas, at least as we know them today. Given this situation, there would appear to be three alternate courses of action: (a) accept the increasingly greater expense; (b) attempt the development of appropriate technologies; or (c) experiment with radical changes in ways of meeting the basic societal needs represented by these areas.It seems a fair bet that the solutions that will eventually be reached will involve a complex combination of these and perhaps other avenues of approach. However, it is my hypothesis that the most prominent and also the most viable direction will prove to be through the development of suitable technologies. I wish to direct this hypothesis toward one particular social-behavioral area, namely, mental health.
NEEDS AND CAUTIONSTo state a need for technology in social-behavioral areas is certainly not new; in fact, a number 1 Requests for reprints should be sent to Richard I.
