Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Praying to the God of Technology

Technology is a wonderful thing; it simplifies our daily lives, lets us communicate across borders and seas, and elongates our once short lives. So it is no wonder that so many people assume that technology is will save us from ourselves and this ecological mess we have created. People and governments have been putting all of their faith in technology, worshiping the idea that if we ask a computer to reduce carbon emissions, eventually it will magically get rid of the greenhouse gas threat. Cornucopians would be priests in this new technology based religion, they firmly believe that mankind and can use technology to save the Earth now and a million times over.

While, I am all for using technology for to help combat the effects of global warming, I am fully against relying purely on technology to get us out of this mess. Bill McKibben and several other writers we have read in class have warned against putting all our eggs in the basket of technology. They say we can use technology but they point out that if we use technology to solve our problems today, the same technology will simply cause new problems tomorrow.

As I have said in previous blog posts, we need to change our lifestyles and our consumer culture in order to really combat climate change. And depending on technology will only encourage our consumer culture and may actually prevent change in the long run, rather then save us.

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