Is Eco-Technology The Way Forward?
October 31st, 2009
It’s easy to argue that responsibility for many of the world’s biggest problems can be laid at the door of modern industrial technology. That’s because there is abundant evidence for it: cars, planes, electrically powered devices of every kind and massive amounts of transportation. The net result has been depletion of the earth’s precious resources and pollution on an unprecedented level.
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 it would seem that the good times are gone. Soon the barrel will run dry and we shall have to sober up with sore heads and a hazy memory of how we got here. The final touch might be a pandemic of biblical proportions with the contagion spread to all parts of the globe thanks, ironically, to our modern transportation networks.
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.
The point to understand is that humans and technology are inseparable – it’s part of our fundamental makeup. Any time an archaeologist unearths an ancient set of remains and identifies them as human you can be fairly sure that fossilized evidence of the technologies of those times will not be far away.
Since the dawn of human history it seems we have made weapons and tools, worn decorations and clothing, preserved and prepared food, painted and played music. Unique among all other animals we really for our survival not on thick fur or powerful claws, but on our capability to develop and deploy technology.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Mozart’s Magic Flute has its origins in the hollowed out animal bones that our ancestors fashioned into crude early flutes, or that the weapons of modern warfare can trace their lineage back to stone arrow heads. Consider as you read this, brought to you as a stream of ones and zeroes, that digital communication evolved from printed media, which was a step up from handwriting which itself developed from painting which seems to have started when we still lived in caves.
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 one thing is certain then; technology may have gotten us into a mess, but it is also our only hope of salvation. It is futile to try and rollback or un-invent existing technology, whatever its failings. The solution lies in superseding it with new so-called eco-technologies such as ultra low power LED lights, thin film solar panels and ever expanding use of the Internet.
The eco-technologies promise to be orders of magnitude less wasteful and waste creating and also help avoid much of the excessive travel that has become a feature of modern life. But they also offer possibilities to actually improve our lives and widen our horizons. That said, it’s almost certain that in the future we will find out that these technologies themselves fall short of all we hoped for, and what do you suppose we will then do about that?
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