Is Eco-Technology The Way Forward?
There's a pretty good argument to be made that the ills of the world are due to modern technology. The combustion engine, electric lighting, powered flight, mass produced products. These and many other such things have all resulted in depleting natural resources and causing pollution quite literally on an industrial scale.
In particular, our dependence on fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) to power these technologies has resulted in a sorry state of affairs. There is now less fossil fuel left in the ground than we have already burned, so at the present rate of progress we will soon be running short. But what we have already burned (since that's how you extract energy from fossil fuel) has built up a legacy of excess Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.
So we're filling up at the Last Chance Gas Station and will soon be running on fumes, waiting for the inevitable breakdown and long walk back. It would be ironic if the final blow was delivered by our own modern transport network in the form of some especially virulent worldwide pandemic.
But is this really how our world ends? And is technology really the evil root of it all? Well probably not. This won't be the first time that humanity has had to face up to the painful consequences of some pretty dumb (in hindsight) behaviour. Yet we're still here.
Fundamentally, technology and humans go together; you never find one without evidence of the other. Technology is in our DNA and no matter how far back in time you look, whenever human remains are found, invariably there are technological artifacts nearby.
Tracing the human race back as far as possible we can never find a period when we actually didn't engage in making clothes, decorations, tools and weapons, or cooking food, painting pictures and making music. These things in a sense define what it is to be human, just as wings or a poisonous bite help define other creatures. We are compelled to invent and employ technology just in order to get by.
Early flint spear heads were an improvement on sharp sticks and would later develop into metal heads, then bullets and ultimately into our present weapons of mass destruction. You can equally trace a direct line from this digitally produced information through mass printing, handwritten documents and ultimately back to those first cave paintings. Or take all the complexity of a modern symphony and unravel the trail leading back to simple flutes carved from hollow animal bones.
Human technology has never stood still - it has always evolved, adapted and improved. Quite often in response to the unwelcome consequences of earlier technology. For example, modern sanitation systems were developed only as a response to the squalor caused by urban crowding as the Industrial Revolution took off on the back of steam technology.
So we can be assured then that even if technology is indeed to blame for the current sorry state of affairs, it is still the only means we have to fix things again. Reverting back to some "Golden Age" before modern technology is a naive and dangerous idea; the solution lies in developing better eco-technologies (e.g. extend use of the internet and embrace high efficiency solar energy and low power consumption light emitting diodes).
These newer technologies use fewer of the planet's resources and cause less pollution, both directly and indirectly (by reducing the need to travel so much for example). Yet at the same time they can enhance our lives and broaden the choices available to us. Sure, one day we'll realise that they too were less than perfect and guess what we'll do then?
In particular, our dependence on fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) to power these technologies has resulted in a sorry state of affairs. There is now less fossil fuel left in the ground than we have already burned, so at the present rate of progress we will soon be running short. But what we have already burned (since that's how you extract energy from fossil fuel) has built up a legacy of excess Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.
So we're filling up at the Last Chance Gas Station and will soon be running on fumes, waiting for the inevitable breakdown and long walk back. It would be ironic if the final blow was delivered by our own modern transport network in the form of some especially virulent worldwide pandemic.
But is this really how our world ends? And is technology really the evil root of it all? Well probably not. This won't be the first time that humanity has had to face up to the painful consequences of some pretty dumb (in hindsight) behaviour. Yet we're still here.
Fundamentally, technology and humans go together; you never find one without evidence of the other. Technology is in our DNA and no matter how far back in time you look, whenever human remains are found, invariably there are technological artifacts nearby.
Tracing the human race back as far as possible we can never find a period when we actually didn't engage in making clothes, decorations, tools and weapons, or cooking food, painting pictures and making music. These things in a sense define what it is to be human, just as wings or a poisonous bite help define other creatures. We are compelled to invent and employ technology just in order to get by.
Early flint spear heads were an improvement on sharp sticks and would later develop into metal heads, then bullets and ultimately into our present weapons of mass destruction. You can equally trace a direct line from this digitally produced information through mass printing, handwritten documents and ultimately back to those first cave paintings. Or take all the complexity of a modern symphony and unravel the trail leading back to simple flutes carved from hollow animal bones.
Human technology has never stood still - it has always evolved, adapted and improved. Quite often in response to the unwelcome consequences of earlier technology. For example, modern sanitation systems were developed only as a response to the squalor caused by urban crowding as the Industrial Revolution took off on the back of steam technology.
So we can be assured then that even if technology is indeed to blame for the current sorry state of affairs, it is still the only means we have to fix things again. Reverting back to some "Golden Age" before modern technology is a naive and dangerous idea; the solution lies in developing better eco-technologies (e.g. extend use of the internet and embrace high efficiency solar energy and low power consumption light emitting diodes).
These newer technologies use fewer of the planet's resources and cause less pollution, both directly and indirectly (by reducing the need to travel so much for example). Yet at the same time they can enhance our lives and broaden the choices available to us. Sure, one day we'll realise that they too were less than perfect and guess what we'll do then?
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