The Glamour of New Technology

Further Quotes

Climate and Ecological Emergency (CEE)

• Nature knows best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is... "likely to be detrimental to that system" (Barry Commoner, 3rd Law of Ecology, The Closing Circle, 1971)
• We think technology will save us. Technology got us into this mess. (Joanna Macy cited here, dated 2021, accessed 29 August 2021)
• Most people in the global North see the ecological crisis as primarily a question of technology, while social movements across the global South recognize that it is primarily a question of justice. (Jason Hickel, 15 June 2021 tweet)
• Well, even if we had the money, and even if solar power were a social good, it’s not a planetary good. And that’s the point. Industrial solar energy doesn’t help the world. It’s just another way to power industrial capitalism. At root, it’s an industrial product designed and built in the global capitalist marketplace to make a profit. Like other products, it leaves behind the wreckage of destroyed land, poisoned water, and devastated communities. (Derrick Jensen, Bright Green Lies)
• There's no technological solution to over-consumption. There's no technological solution to having only one planet Earth. (XR Cambridge, 26 September 2022 tweet)
• Just your regular reminder that those who claim we need new technologies to address the climate crisis are *really* saying that the overconsumption of the richest is more important than the rest of life on earth. We have the tech we need for decent lives for all. (Prof Julia Steinberger, 8 January 2023 adapted tweet)
  
• Idk how I’m supposed to believe that it’s easier to turn Mars into Earth than it is to turn Earth back into Earth (Crazy Bat Lady, 5 October 2020 adapted tweet)
• We search for life on other planets and in other regions of our galaxy. Meanwhile we destroy and ignore the other life on this planet. (A. D. Williams, Inside the Divine Pattern)
  

CEE - Carbon Capture

• Carbon capture [tech to counter manmade climate change] sounds nice and all, but if your bath is overflowing you don’t invest in magical technologies to soak up the water from your floor. You turn off the tap (Dr Charlie Gardner, 13 September 2020 tweet)
• The world's biggest carbon capture facility sequesters 4,000 tons of CO2 per year.  That's about half of Bill Gates' annual emissions. Cutting the purchasing power of billionaires would be more effective than the finest carbon capture technology. (Jason Hickel, 23 December 2021 tweet)
• If a company is “investing in technologies to suck carbon out of the atmosphere” but is not calling for ecocide law, reparations, and huge wealth redistribution now... then, no, they are not serious about tackling climate change. (Sam Knights, 17 September 2020 tweet)
• There's no tech that will ever suck a trace gas out of the air without using a huge amount of energy. Jet engines would be required to suck sufficient amounts of air. And hypothetically a TRILLION TONNES of excess CO2 needs to be removed from the atmosphere. Instantly. (Mark Cranfield, 27 August 2022 tweet)

Health

• We are in the grip of a pandemic [Covid-19] like none other in living memory. While people are pinning their hopes on a vaccine to wipe it out, the fact is most of the infections faced by our ancestors are still with us. (BBC, posted 4 October 2020, accessed 5 October 2020)
• The elite response is never to look at structures but to throw technology at the problem. New energy tech, vaccines, AI-managed and automated social services. But only full-scale reorganisation has a hope of salvaging a decent existence for us and future people and species. (XR Cambridge, 24 December 2022 adapted tweet)
  

Other

• Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. (Albert Einstein)
• The masculine, western, capitalist dream of spaceflight is driven by an unacknowledged fear of mortality. (Alice Gorman, 26 January 2021 tweet)
• The notion that humans could survive for long on another planet is the epitome of how utterly detached from nature the modern industrial worldview has become. All my life I have been disgusted and saddened by how pervasive this is. Our technology has wrought a mass psychosis. (Lisa B, 20 July 2021 tweet)
• Elected officials need to stop chasing shiny objects like Hyperloop while the buses barely run and the streets aren’t walkable. Get the basics right! (Hayden Clarkin, 4 December 2022 tweet)
• Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it. (Max Frisch, Homo Faber)
• Most people are used to relying solely on the help of external elements: appliances, machines, medicines, and so forth. They do not often think about using the gifts and faculties that the Creator has placed within them. (O.M. Aïvanhov)
• Last December I saw an advertisement outside an electronics store. There was a little boy, delirious with delight, surrounded by computers, stereos, and other gadgets. The text read: “We know what your child wants for Christmas.” I stared at the poster, then said to no one in particular, “What your child wants for Christmas is your love, but if he can’t get that, he’ll settle for a bunch of electronic crap.” (Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words, 2000)
• Our technical civilization poses a real danger to itself. (Carl Sagan)
• Technical progress has limits, and even poses danger if it is not made to serve a higher vision of things. We therefore need to go further, and it is by means of the spirit that life will be truly transformed, because peace, freedom and brotherhood are realizations of the spirit. (O.M. Aïvanhov)
  

Resources

Articles

• Artificial Wombs & Laboratory Breastmilk (PWP).
• Cybertron & Elysium (PWP).
• The Conflict between Evolutionary Skills & Modern Life (PWP).
• Megatechnics vs. Biotechnics of Lewis Mumford (Wikipedia) [Megatechnics (what we have now) = suicidal. Biotechnics = be ecologically responsible.].
• 'Kangaroo care' key for premature babies (BBC, 2013).
• Be Wary of Silicon Valley’s Guilty Conscience - on The Center for Humane Technology (Z.M.L., LibrarianShipwreck, 2018) [The Center for Humane Technology claims to want a shift to humane tech that supports our well-being, democracy, etc. But here it is criticised for offering lifestyle tweaks and not systemic critiques, for distilling or softening the tech poison rather than actually presenting an antidote.].
  
• How Bitcoin made right-wing conspiracy theories mainstream (Salon, 2018) [Cryptocurrency is right wing, anti-democracy, anti-equality, and will not fix our social problems. It is also environmentally destructive.].
  
• How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse (Douglas Rushkoff, The Guardian, 2018).
• No death and an enhanced life: Is the future transhuman? (Robin McKie, The Guardian, 2018) [But improving ourselves is far more than physical or memory improvement. Far more important is to better ourselves morally and spiritually?].
  
• Living bridges and supper from sewage: can ancient fixes save our crisis-torn world? (The Guardian, 2020) [From underground aqueducts to tree-bridges and fish that love sewage, indigenous customs could save the planet – but are under threat. Landscape architect Julia Watson shares her ‘lo-TEK’ vision in her book Lo—TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism. “We are obsessed with technocratic solutions to mitigating the effects of climate change, but a lot of the answers are already there, and have been for generations. We just have to look. We need to transform our relationship with nature from superior to symbiotic.” TEK = Traditional Ecological Knowledge.].
• Mobile phone radiation may be killing insects: German study (Phys.org, 2020) [Radiation from mobile phones could have contributed to the dramatic decline in insect populations seen in much of Europe in recent years].
• The curse of 'white oil': electric vehicles' dirty secret (Oliver Balch, The Guardian, 2020) [Highly destructive lithium mining for batteries. Where is degrowth?].
  
• The Myth of Progress, the Human Problem, and the Virtual Frontier (Jared Yates Sexton, 2021; also see here).
• Toronto swaps Google-backed, not-so-smart city plans for people-centred vision (The Guardian, 2021).
• Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities (The Conversation, 2021) ["Active travel" also includes walking].
• The rush to ‘go electric’ comes with a hidden cost: destructive lithium mining (Thea Riofrancos, The Guardian, 2021) [As the world moves towards electric cars and renewable grids, demand for lithium is wreaking havoc in northern Chile].
• Constant craving: how digital media turned us all into dopamine addicts (Jamie Waters, The Guardian, 2021) [Effective tech fasting].
  
• ‘Like slave and master’: DRC miners toil for 30p an hour to fuel electric cars (The Guardian, 2021) [Congolese workers describe a system of abuse, precarious employment and paltry wages – all to power the green vehicle revolution].
• How the rise of copper reveals clean energy’s dark side (The Guardian, 2021).
• ‘What if we just gave up cars?’... (The Guardian, 2021) [New agreement would phase out fossil fuel vehicles but activists want focus on public transport, walking, cycling].
• Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (Johann Hari, The Guardian, 2022) [Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We must rebel to reclaim our minds while we still can. This is a systemic issue!].
• Climate crisis and the dangers of tech-obsessed ‘long-termism’ (Rupert Read, The Conversation, 2022) [Big Tech has corrupted the wise care of future generations into business-as-usual criminality].
• NFT scams, toxic ‘mines’ and lost life savings: the cryptocurrency dream is fading fast (David A Banks, The Guardian, 2022) [It was supposed to be a financial revolution. Instead, crypto has become an environmentally disastrous gift to con artists.].
• We need optimism – but Disneyfied climate predictions are just dangerous (George Monbiot, The Guardian, 2022) [Techno-utopianism is popular as it doesn’t challenge the status quo, and lets polluters off the hook. Monbiot dismantles the political denial of Oded Galor, Bill Gates, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley. System change needed.].
• Hi-tech fixes aren’t the only way to save our soil (Alan Mitcham, The Guardian, 2022).
• No miracle tech needed: How to switch to renewables now and lower costs doing it (Mark Z. Jacobson, The Hill, 2022) [Total global cost $62 trillion, repaid due to energy savings within six years].
• Understanding "longtermism": Why this suddenly influential philosophy is so toxic (Émile P. Torres, Salon, 2022) [Whatever we may "owe the future," it isn't a bizarre and dangerous ideology fueled by eugenics and capitalism. Science and technology will improve the "human stock". Morality is reduced to a computational exercise: "Shut-up and multiply!" The transhumanism and longtermism of Nick Bostrom, Robin Hanson, Nick Beckstead, Sam Harris, William MacAskill, Elon Musk, etc., is just evil elitist eugenics with a new name. Longtermism = Evil.].
• Is There Enough Metal to Replace Oil? (Robert Hunziker, Countercurrents, 2022) [No, not even close! Thus, surely, the need for degrowth?].
• Power-hungry robots, space colonization, cyborgs: inside the bizarre world of ‘longtermism’ (J Oliver Conroy, The Guardian, 2022) [Tech fixes rather than social or political ones. Economic and biological inequality. Undemocratic.].
• Reliance on hi-tech solutions to climate crisis perpetuates racism, says UN official (The Guardian, 2022) [At the expense of marginalised groups, indigenous peoples].
• There’s no planet B (Arwen E Nicholson & Raphaëlle D Haywood, Aeon, 2023) [The claim that our survival depends on colonising other planets is wrong. The only celestial body that can support us is the one we evolved with. Here’s why.].
• Another offering from our tech overlords: A climate change solution without sacrifice (Kurt Cobb, Resilience, 2023) [The propaganda is that technology will solve our problems without us having to make any substantial change in our way of life].
• AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are (Naomi Klein, The Guardian, 2023) [Tech CEOs want us to believe that generative AI will benefit humanity. They are kidding themselves. Hallucinations tackled: (1) AI will solve the climate crisis; (2) AI will deliver wise governance; (3) tech giants can be trusted not to break the world; (4) AI will liberate us from drudgery. (Answers to 1, 2, 4 exist without AI).].
• ‘They’re afraid their AIs will come for them’: Doug Rushkoff on why tech billionaires are in escape mode (The Guardian, 2023).
• Yes, you should be worried about AI – but Matrix analogies hide a more insidious threat (Samantha Floreani, The Guardian, 2023) [The danger is what already exists].
• Nuclear Fusion: Eternal Energy = Eternal Damnation (Don Fitz & Stan Cox, Resilience, 2023) [We desperately need to live better with less energy].
• How do tech bros plan to ride out Armageddon? Living it up on their private islands (Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian, 2023) [Excellent exposé of ‘effective altruism’].
• Dead satellites are filling space with trash. That could affect Earth’s magnetic field (Sierra Solter, The Guardian, 2024) [What if the space industry is our demise?].
• The big idea: is convenience making our lives more difficult? (Dr Alex Curmi, The Guardian, 2024) [All is easier with modern tech – except fulfilling your true potential].
• AI Won’t Destroy the World.  Humans Using AI Will. (George Tsakraklides, 2024).
• Welcome to Your Prosthetic Life (George Tsakraklides, 2025).
• Intergenerational Technological Trauma (George Tsakraklides, 2025).
  

Videos

• Timecrowave (Saturday Night Live, YouTube, 2013) [Funny skit with a deeper message] [4m20s].
• Headz up App (Saturday Night Live, YouTube, 2013) [Tech helps you survive?] [1m39s].
• Honest Government Ad - Carbon Capture and Storage (The Juice Media, YouTube, 2021) [4m44s].
• Honest Government Ad - AI (The Juice Media, YouTube, 2024) [3m54s].
• Dark Gothic MAGA: How Tech Billionaires Plan to Destroy America (Blonde Politics/The Silly Serious, YouTube, 2024) [And install themselves as kings] [29m51s].