Technology cannot redeem us or the environment!

" it is inherently impossible to design new technologies that are guaranteed to never have negative effects of any kind. "

Hint - this story will not resonate nicely with people who worship technology.

Every time you acquire a new gadget, new software or new technology, does it make you happy? I know it makes me feel satisfied (for a bit) and stay at par with my peers and near society. We are dazzled by the newness of the machine, at times astonished by its speed and most often lured in by a new promise. Ever wonder why? Are we hard wired to do so? Buy the latest Apple Watch for a “A healthy leap ahead!” Or sign a contract with TESLA to “Power everything”. Vote for the Green Colored Party because of a “Global Shift”. Get future ready with “AI-assisted decision making, for war zones to factory floors”. Install Tiktok and “Make Your Day!”. There are a million more examples of such vainglorious, less-than-12-word mantras. Fact is, that every new technology presents itself in the best possible light.

For decades now, confirmed by beautiful models, the happy actors, the friendly newsreaders, the convinced scientists, economists, ‘white collar’ folks, the jabbering tech-pundits, bureaucrats, vloggers, influencers and who-else-may-benefit, by bending over for the latest technology. Lets ignore all these people for the moment.

Why we believe and sign up for technology (and all the promises) is subjective. What is objectively true about us, at the receiving end of technology, is a deep taboo that we live with across the world. A prohibition against challenging high modernist technology and its non-stop expansion and innovation. More problematic if we speak about its negative destructive aspects. We may be ridiculed, attacked, censored, worse jailed or killed when we try debasing, divesting or even dream of destroying it. “In modern industrialized societies, there is a strong taboo against challenging the faith in science and technology and their supposed contribution to « progress » Any questioning of that faith is seen as heresy…” - Joyce Huesemann & Michael Huesemann, 2011 New Society essay.

Their radical, rebellious book ‘Techno Fix’ takes a bold and detailed bashing of our global fixation with technology and it’s preposterous power. Our current form of thinking is wired for short-term benefits, which makes us ignore and not care about the wide ranging, long-term, negative consequences. To begin with, a majority of modern technology that human beings created do not put human well being at the center of their outcome.

How we view, use and celebrate technology in it’s current form, bears an eerie resemblance to how people believed and devoted themselves to various religions and gospels during the ancient and medieval ages. The industrial revolution and the consequent techno-scientific breakthrough during the last 150 years, that we have learned to marvel has given us two new religions. Technology and Science. Joined at the hip like Siamese Twins. Both ever expanding in form and complexity, still yet bearing certain old world characteristics, fertile with promises of salvation, provided we remain subservient to its overarching presence and follow the commandments. ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ A dark, medieval and muddled logic begins to reappear within our understanding and universal acceptance of modern technology. As every new form of technology can be viewed as an explosion, temporary in nature, setting a new transient order, but “always at the expense of adding greater disorder in the surroundings.” - Joyce Huesemann & Michael Huesemann ‘Techno Fix’. This condition at an universal level is best explained by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. “For each unit of ‘order’ (neg-entropy) created in the human-based economy, more than one unit of ‘disorder’ (entropy) is created in the surrounding environment”. The law is basically pointing at us human beings, tied to a finite planet that has been exponentially messed up by our gigantic technological systems. Most often way beyond the control of a single nation, corporation, system, institution or individual.

For example, total passenger flights per day are about 94,000. The CO2 emissions of all the passengers (millions) put together creates not just massive pollution, but over time, causes multiple irreversible disorders in the atmosphere and across natural systems on the planet. Enjoy your next long distance flights while you can, and perhaps pay a small carbon tax, to feel less dirty or less complicit!

A strange paradox appears when we reckon with the long term consequences of science and technology in areas such as health, medicine and reproduction. The Huesemanns make the paradox succinctly clear, as follows. “Until very recently, on average six out of ten children died before reaching reproductive age, assuring that only the most vigorous, those who were best adapted to the relatively harsh environment, passed on their genes to future generations. The human environment, however, changed drastically following the Industrial Revolution when better nutrition and improved sanitation increased childhood survival rates… because of inventions such as immunization, antibiotics and more recently post- and even pre-natal surgeries, more than 95% of new-born children in developed nations survive to reproductive age.”

That is indeed an amazing achievement in a relatively short span of time (last 220 years human population has multiplied 8 times). Our ancestors were far less in numbers because there were fewer possibilities to live longer. Yes everyone deserves a healthy life and opportunity to reproduce, but how is that even possible for all 8 billion people today or 9 billion in 2028, or more if you wish to multiply further.

Our deep faith in technology to solve big problems, tasks or mysteries has served us very well, as long as we have the capital and energy to do so, or the money to buy it. Be it your first game-console or laptop or new EV or what-gadget-you-love, technological innovation has provided us rapidly and consistently till now. At the apex of this modern techno-industrial civilization (the mid-1980s) certain folks critical of this unprecedented speed, luxury and propensity did foresee deeper not-so-visible dangers embedded with all techno-utopian societies. All three pre-conditions for environmental and societal collapse are present in current technological societies 😧 One, of rapid growth in resource use causing massive pollution. Two, limited or finite resource availability and waste absorption capacity of the earth. Three, the delayed responses by decision-makers when limits have already been exceeded (or soon will be). The third is so obvious when we get to know what is going on inside United Nations Climate Summits, with Green New Deals, Carbon Capture / Storage, Electric Vehicles, Solar Farms, Wind Farms etc etc.

Ask your local leader about the above three conditions of collapse, and there is a high probability that are they are clueless, worse in denial of such science. Well, ask your best friends instead!

The mainstream media, big institutions, the experts and almost every leader across nations are milling the same story in different languages and mediums. New technology and it’s owners by themselves cannot win over all of us. They need the mainstream media and the elites, as key agents, to spread the necessary propaganda, policies and promises. The current surge of green energy business, constantly heckling us to choose and change, when we watch CNN, BBC, FOX, Al Jazeera, RT, CNBC, New York Times, Democracy Now, CGTN, El Mundo, Dragon TV, ABC, India Today etc etc, is one such example. To understand this global indoctrination, check out the model of propaganda developed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in mid the1980s. “The ‘societal purpose’ of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state.” Regardless of being Left or Right, be you American, African, European, Latino, Chinese, Indian etc etc, all mass media is controlled by those who are able to pay for the access to it.

This situation is described by Edward Herman’s “power law of access” and the “inverse power law of truthfulness,”. The greater the economic and political power, the easier it is to gain access to the media which equates to “more freedom granted, to tell complete lies”. All these mass media transmissions and thousands more, in essence have become extensions and enablers of techno-capitalism, baptized by mainstream science and well paid experts, backed by millions of yes men, women, even teenagers and children. The voice of ‘Hopium’ manifests on mainstream media in many ways. Bright Green Lies!

Take the example of famous author and feminist Rebecca Solnit, who goes on and on saying “it is not too late..” and how we will combat and fix the climate crisis, however always staying very far from any climate based destruction and hard science. A self-serving quasi-feminist or a serf of greenwash capitalism, Solnit and a host media like The Guardian are merely doing job. Nicely trashed here!

If we do not know what is true, how can we contribute in a positive and useful way to society? Technology has provided us with systems of information as well as addiction - earlier it was the TV and now social media, streaming, online gaming, virtual reality etc. The biggest and the most powerful institutions of mass media have a vested interest to shape and steer individual, political and environmental activism. “After wasting more than 3500 hours per year on the mass media, there is simply very little time and energy left for people to engage in any kind of citizen activism… Mainstream media across the world serves as a weapon of mass distraction.” ‘Techno Fix’. The ‘view framed inside mainstream media’ isolates us from reality. Does one even need it anymore?

If we do not get out, into the real world, into nature and experience the natural world for ourselves no amount of technology, information and solution-based-clicks can help us, to actually care about environmental issues. So when we read an alarming newsletter, press a button and make a modest donation, the call-to-action most often has no tangible positive impact 🤑 Example 🤠

Instead ask - why almost all technological and industrial activities leads to unavoidable environmental disruptions and irreversible damage? What type of technology serves humanity in a non-destructive way? Technology in it’s current form, is mostly involved in converting the useful into useless. Be it green or not!

A vast number of people are already convinced that technology will lead us towards a “Net Zero World” and most nations will become “Climate Neutral” by 2050. The enablers of this grand schema are embracing “bold new actions” and “quantum investments” (Net Zero Europe 2050). Missing across the table of “stakeholders and policy-makers” is a crucial bit of reality, expressed in the Commoner’s Fourth Law of Ecology that “There is No Such Thing as Free Lunch.” Exploitation of nature, will always carry on, in one form or another. An ecological cost will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from “useful to useless”. Famous icons of environmentalism like Greta Thunberg, Bill Mckibben, Roger Hallam, Julia Butterfly Hill, Sandrine Dixson, Leonardo Decaprio, David Suzuki, Vandana Shiva and Wangari Maathai to name a few, are all for renewable energy being the “best solution” to combat and overcome the problem of unsustainable fossil fuel use and global warming.

Great! but not so fast and not so simple. On one hand these influential personalities are omitting a set of outcomes: such as loss of habitat, huge rise in mining and extraction, consequent environmental harm, all of which are necessary for large-scale green energy installations (which may cover hundreds of square kilometers across continents). On the other hand, they are tacitly mute about the equally destructive technology behind green energy storage. Take for example, dozens of battery factories and new energy grids being constructed by LG, Hyundai, Tesla, NorthVolt, Panasonic in America, Europe, Africa, Korea, Japan, China and South America is not being challenged by these folks, nor by policy makers, suppressed by mainstream media and by a wide range of politicians, irrespective of which type or nationality. Its a given that renewable energy will be a key component in future circular economies of scale and importance.

But I do not believe these self-styled experts nor the technology they are pimping, simply because “Ignorance of relevant scientific and technical detail underlies most expressions of exuberant technological optimism” Techno-Fix. To encapsulate the point of view, we must learn to avoid all system-supportive propaganda, which serves market forces, internalized assumptions and self-censorship. Such propaganda is most often masked, but inherently coercive. “Optimism is inversely proportional to knowledge 😧” Techno-Fix

Many people believe that life in ‘primitive cultures’ during ancient times was miserable and full of predatory dangers and uncertainty. A convenient myth spun over the last 100 years, that life in today’s technological society is a great deal better than earlier times. Ironic that the remaining ‘primitive peoples’, are still not convinced, and given the choice, prefer to stay outside the technological grid. Opt to not be as ‘developed’ or be ‘addicted to technology’. Not even integrate into a high modernist society. Those who challenge and objectively speak against new technologies are labelled as “anti-progress” or “primitives” or worse derogatory terms like ‘Luddites’ (machine smashing laborers in 19th century England). Across the world, the idea of ‘progress’ is used to suppress criticism and enforce passivity.

Further, this so called progress helps avoid debate about the introduction of new technologies. We are pushed down, time and again by the logic of ‘You can’t turn back the clock’. It should be obvious to the level headed, about who is being controlled and by what. Does every major technology improve our well-being? Add any happiness in non-materialistic ways? Not so sure, if we step beyond the optimism.

Clearly a new definition of progress is needed (or even multiple ways of perceiving it) which is not solely defined by technology and mainstream science. As Joyce and Michael urge us to strive further, by saying, “a world where progress will no longer be seen as technological control and exploitation of nature”. We as individuals and maybe even as a species, are surely in need of real progress, rather than this crazy techno-optimistic trajectory that we are going down… Tech(N😧)

Read TECHNO-FIX by Joyce Huesemann & Michael Huesemann

Example of Techno-optimistic Bullshit! “You’re looking at a market that’s growing almost exponentially here over the coming decades. We will be dependent on virgin raw material for quite some time. But when you reach a 1-car-in-1-car-out type market, then obviously, we could have a very circular supply of minerals here. And that is the game changer…” TECH BREW EUROPE 💩 ☠️