(This article is a heresy, especially coming from a
self-proclaimed champion of innovation. It's not quite polished enough
to be a Dangerous Little Meme yet. But there's definitely something
here. I'm expecting a rough ride for it, but I'm ready.)
The thing about technology is that, since the dawn of the human species, every technology we have introduced has ultimately, and inadvertently, made things worse. That statement sounds categorical, so let me explain.
The human species is not very well endowed with natural gifts for
survival. Compared to most other creatures, we are slow, clumsy,
earthbound, and lacking in both fur and claws. Prior to the ice ages, we managed to
do quite well regardless, largely by sticking to our natural habitat
(the tropics, mostly tropical rainforest), eating mostly vegetarian, and using our unusually
large brains and unusual ferocity to compensate for our lack of
physical gifts.
With the onset of the ice ages, however, life for us (and most
other life) became quite quickly more difficult. Our solution was to
invent (usually copying models from nature) technologies that extended
our speed, agility, ability to fly, ability to stay warm, and ability
to find and hunt prey. Each of these technologies improved our short-run ability to survive, but each unintentionally created huge, intractable long-term problems:
- The invention of the arrowhead and knife allowed us
to kill and tear the flesh of, large mammals. This provided an abundant
source of food. It also ultimately led to the extinction of these large
mammals, and produced as a consequence the first true famines.
- The invention of agriculture allowed more people to
live per square mile, but, as Jared Diamond has explained, it produced
as a consequence the first instances of human slavery, massive
malnutrition, desertification, soil exhaustion, factory farms, the End
of Water, malnutrition (and a
much shortened life expectancy),
a huge number of new and debilitating human diseases (like
previously-unknown tooth decay), and the need for political hierarchy
and military force.
- The invention of transportation technologies allowed us to
move ourselves and our food and other needs to places we would not
naturally be able to live in. This produced as a consequence the
ability to move slaves around the world, and to send prisoners of war
to death camps. It has also produced the death of the oceans, thanks to
transportation inventions like factory super-trawlers and the Exxon
Valdez.
- The invention of human-controlled fire allowed us to keep
warm in places we would naturally freeze. But as a consequence it has
brought about massive and global deforestation (as much a contributor
to global warming as manufacturing and transportation) and habitat
destruction.
- The invention of the steam (and later electric) engine allowed
great increases in production and productivity. It has also led
to the commoditization and devaluation of human labour, a quantum
increase in pollution (which in turn, along with mining processes,
produced new, deadly chronic diseases), a fragile and severe dependence
on oil (and because of that dependence, many of the major wars of the
last century), and infrastructure and energy grids that are hugely
vulnerable to attack, natural disasters and supply-outs.
- The invention of medicines and other health technologies has
eradicated some terrible diseases and reduced human suffering. It has
also produced staggering human overpopulation, gender selection of
babies (that has skewed population in many countries heavily in favour
of males), novel and effective new forms of torture,
vulnerability to old and new (overcrowding-related) pandemic diseases,
hugely increased risks of bioterror attacks, and murders of the poor
and homeless for organ harvesting.
- The invention of communication technologies has enabled a
breathtaking increase in our knowledge of the world. It has also
enabled the rapid and effective spread of propaganda, which has sparked
global wars, increased disinformation ("Saddam was behind 9/11") more
quickly than information, and enabled genocides to be more effectively
provoked and carried out.
- The invention of money has enabled effective trade in goods around
the world that cannot be produced locally. It has also ushered in
unprecedented disparity of wealth, currency and stock speculation and
frauds that have ruined millions of lives and produced the Great
Depression.
- The invention of nuclear power...(well, you get the idea).
We're in a constant race to keep up, and political, economic and
media propagandists keep telling us we're winning, that 'good'
technology has outpaced and will outpace 'bad' technology. But we
cannot win this race. All
technologies have unnatural consequences that are unpredictable and
readily exploitable. It is not in our nature to understand and preempt
the dangers that any new technology can introduce (just look at the
untested ingredients in our unprocessed foods, the recalls of
improperly tested drugs and foods deliberately poisoned for profit, the
tens of thousands of chemicals introduced into our air, water, food and
homes with no knowledge of their long-term effects). The Precautionary
Principle (which says 'don't do anything unless there is compelling
evidence it
will cause no harm') is a brilliant idea, but one that is
preposterously
impossible to enforce -- it is contrary to everything we do, everything
we believe in, and everything our modern systems are built on.
And we're just getting started with technology's 'promise'. In the next few years, new technologies like these will be introduced (because they can, and because there's a human market for them):
- Robots designed to wage war, with no moral scruples, and quite possibly with biological parts
- Freak animals grotesquely bred to 'grow' replacement, harvestable human organs
- Fully genetically selected (gender, hair colour, eye colour, other attributes) babies
- Experiments among the obscenely rich to achieve immortality, and to escape the Earth for another planet
- Security-compound communities for the affluent, completely closed off to non-members ("just leave it by the gate and go away")
- Mandatory sedative and other behaviour-modification drugs administered by the
state, initially to unruly children and prisoners, and then to the 'difficult' aged
and anyone deemed by the psychological orthodoxy of the day to
be 'mentally unfit'
- Mini-nukes and bioweapons, developed by affluent states, with the
same so-called 'deterrent' and 'preemptive' purpose that the bombs dropped on
Nagasaki and Hiroshima were developed for
We will initially express revulsion at these technologies, because
they don't seem to have any positive or popular function. But then
we'll shrug and realize that they are just extensions of technologies
developed for 'good', and that if there's a 'market' for them, or if
the propagandists developing them can argue (as they will) that their
end purpose (portrayed in glowing, or urgent, terms) justifies their
unsavoury means, we will simply insist that, like factory farms and
foreign torture prisons, they be kept out of our sight and mind, so we
don't get stressed about them.
A couple of years ago I gave up believing that top-down political
or economic changes, or spontaneous social revolutions, will save us
from ourselves. They never have. But I've always had a soft spot for
innovative technology. In the short run, it can work wonders. It's like
the addictive painkillers taken by the terminally ill -- for awhile,
everything seems wonderful, but then the pain is back with a greater
vengeance, and you need even more, of a different, stronger drug
because you've built up a resistance to the old one. The one that
worked for awhile is now worse than useless, because it longer has any
effect, yet you're still addicted to it. It's no longer enough.
It's never enough. Photo: from Wikipedia, under Rust
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