New Technology Ends Many Debates

In the mid eighties when I was first immersing myself in new age culture and alternative medicine, it seemed to me that science was not progressing much anymore. And that it was actually leading us astray. A typical view formed in many bastions of liberal academia. However, technology has often ended many debates.

A friend shared an example of this philosophy titled: Decolonizing The Revolutionary Imagination: Values Crisis, the Politics of Reality, and Why There's Going to Be a Common-Sense Revolution in This Generation

I am not nearly so pessimistic. I think a lot of the problems described in this article will be altered irrevocably and positively by modern technology. Which ironically is somewhat beholden to the military and corporations for its continued development. I am going to
assume for the sake of argument that most folks reading this would prefer not to spend their days ploughing fields. So it comes down to whether the modern world we want can be achieved without the consequent harm that seems to accompany its growth. While technology is a double-edged sword, I think each succeeding phase of technology has answered that question yes over and over again. The apparent destructiveness of technology is seen when limiting oneself to a short term perspective. But since the overall trend in technology throughout all of human history seems to be towards more democracy, less servitude and toil, the question is not whether to advance, but rather how to do it ethically and avoid the short term pain that has usually accompanied this growth.

If it were not for the internet, the all news, media and entertaintainment would be owned and filtered through 5 large corporations. That was their plan for many years and they never saw the internet coming. All the while, there were those who wrote with dread of the upcoming era when we would all be brainwashed by right wing demagogues. Now ain't that just a pipe dream anymore? Personal technology liberated desktop publishers in the 80's and webmaster in the 90s. The internet, a product of the US defense department, is beyond governmental control and thus there will never be a time when information on this planet can be completely controlled ever again.

How about fossil fuels, a major arena for corrupt money, intrigue, war and pollution. It may not be soon enough for some of you, but their use will decline dramatically over the next 20 years with fuel cells, hybrids, solar, wind, hydrogen and biodiesel. All of this will initially be quite bound up with the acquisition of more and more money by the already rich. With that point, I completely agree with the author of the article above. But if ultimately they can't control the media and also can't control energy, how will they continue to get your money? By scaring you into funding an endless war, perhaps. But I digress.

If the information we need for health and other things is freely available and we live in a clean environment devoid of fossil fuel emissions, then we are still left with at least one pressing basic issue. How do we supply the needs of housing and food? In other words, we still need to earn a living. It is in the workplace where we are most shackled to powerful employers. However there is a exponentially growing trend in miniaturization and increased computing speed that already allows the processing of data and even the production of goods on demand in a way not possible before.

One can be a software company with a laptop and internet connection. CDs can be burned by the hundreds in small countertop devices. One can have a internet broadcast station or professional quality video editing studio for few thousand dollars instead of a few hundred
thousand. Many things now done in factories in huge volumes for economies of scale will be able to be done using table top appliances to meet smaller markets and on demand orders. This new frontier of personal technology may thwart the last bastion of corporate dominance as more and more small companies and individuals unexpectedly replace large corporations as the dominant economic force. This is not the plan, of course, but it keeps seeming to play out that way. The latest of these powerful democratic trends has been labeled Web 2.0.

And what will be the end result of all this? It may be that we will finally emerge in the world only a technological utopia can yield, one of good health, satisfying work, little violent crime, global peace and prosperity. This world certainly never existed in the past (no matter what bong driven ecofantasies one might harbor) and as long as the model of scarce resources dominates economic thinking, it will never exist in the future. But the difference is that in the past the resources were indeed scarce. The ones we speak of today are as unlimited as the life of the earth and the human race: wind, sun and information. It is estimated that information already dominates the value of most major production goods like computers and cars. The actual value of the raw materials in these goods is actually quite small in comparison.

With such an abundance of wealth and little need to fight over physical things, is it possible that the craven drive to dominate will disappear? Or perhaps will it be that technology will so liberate the masses on some fundamental level that the formerly rich and powerful will no longer have the evolutionary niche they once enjoyed. What if you had a machine that turned your garbage into furniture or clothing, for example. Something that will be dramatically altered by nanotechnology, for example, is the recycling of all materials at the molecular level into other things. Waste will really be a thing of the past. Every ounce of pollution we have ever created could be nontoxically "uncreated". Ethical technology placed at the service of a progressive community may actually be our last hope. Sadly, many environmental scientists believe we have passed the point of no return. In other words, it is too late to correct our mistakes merely by going green. Perhaps we need a new progressive ecovision that merges a green spirit with a silicon brain.