We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

Carl Sagan repeatedly warned in the late Cold War and early information-age years that modern life was becoming ever more technologically complex while public scientific literacy lagged behind. The remark is typically associated with his popular-education efforts—especially his 1990s critiques of pseudoscience and the erosion of critical thinking—when he argued that democratic societies cannot make wise policy choices if citizens don’t understand the scientific and technological systems they rely on. The line encapsulates his broader concern that ignorance of how science works leaves people vulnerable to manipulation by propaganda, superstition, and commercial or political interests.

Sagan points to a dangerous mismatch: our daily survival and prosperity depend on scientific knowledge embedded in infrastructure (medicine, energy, communications), yet most people interact with these systems as opaque “black boxes.” The quote is less an insult than a civic warning. If citizens cannot evaluate evidence, probability, and uncertainty—or distinguish science from its imitations—then public debate becomes easy to hijack by fear, charisma, or conspiracy. The deeper implication is that scientific literacy is not merely technical training; it is a form of empowerment necessary for responsible self-government in a high-tech world.