I have been reading a lot about technology, and theories about the downside of technology, anarcho-primitivism was one train of thought I was following for a while. Also read "The Good Life" by Helen and Scott Nearing about their homesteading experience. For a long time I have been struggling with a visceral dislike for modern technology, that I could not justify or reason out. I dislike complications, noise, things I can't fix myself, disposable goods and the incredible waste brought on by obscelesence. Gadgets replacing tools for minimal gains in convenience. For example, toasters. Why do we need toasters? First of all, how important is toast to our enjoyment of food anyways? Sure, crispy bread is nice at breakfast, but do we really need it? And how much of our desire for it was manufactured by the manufacturers of toasters? Second, you can make toast in a pan, or one of those grate things that holds the toast over a heat source. Not that hard. Yet we have an entire seperate appliance for the preparation of this one food. An appliance is a tangle of complicated electronics encased in a shell of plastic. It's a complicated device, hence some aspect of it is bound to eventually break, and generally the owner of the appliance will not have the knowledge to fix it. Maybe in the early days of toasters, one would have it repaired. Nowadays, it would generally go in the trash and off to the closest department store to buy a new one. This...disgusts me. And the toaster is just one example of the unnecessarily complicated, wasteful crap we have in our lives. Minimal gains in convenience in exchange for massive waste. I much prefer tools. What follows is a list of appliances followed in parenthese by the tools that could be used instead. Microwaves (stove). Stove (wood stove). Coffee maker (french press). Food processer (knife). Electric mixer (spoon). Dish washer (sink). Drier (clothesline). Car (bike). Etc.
I don't hate technology in general. How could anyone? If one defines technology as human innovation, obviously that's something that will always be around, and we should be happy about. There needs to be a distinction between bad technology and good technology. Bad technology = Unnecesarily complicated. If something can be done with a simple tool, why create a complicated machine to do the same thing? Complication leads to a greater chance of breakage/obselescence (hence waste). It also leads to a loss of independence since complicated things require specialists to fix them. And a loss of the skills/personal involvement of doing something with a tool. It's the lack of decision making that bothers me. No one looks at technology and says "this will actually improve our lives," "this will hurt us in the long run," "the trade off between convenience and waste is not worth it." I suppose the decisions are being made by the market, but as usual without factoring in all kinds of hidden costs.
First of all, resources are precious. Oil for plastics, metals, etc. They are not infinite. Are they really being priced taking into account that we only have so much of this stuff? If they were, would we be able to buy toasters for $20 that are made to break within 2 years? If we had looked at fossil fuels back when we first discovered their potential, and said to ourselves - "wow, this stuff is amazing, but we only have so much of it so let's put it to the best possible use" - maybe we would have used it a lot slower, for more important things, and not burned through it making appliances we don't really need. Maybe we would not have become so incredibly dependent on it. I think now, as it becomes clear to more and more people that we will run out, those thoughts will occur.
Second, waste is awful. This is an a priori position. Maybe it's my Yankee sensibilities. I don't know. I just feel that waste is ugly and morally wrong. Waste not, want not. If you make something, make it as well as you possibly can so it lasts as long as it possibly can. If something wears out, take it apart and use whatever you can for other things. And make it as simple as possible so it is easy to reuse. A toaster is hard to reuse - all those resources broken into tiny bits and all mixed together. A metal pan would be easy to reuse - melt down and make something else.
Third, pollution and trash are awful. Because they're bad for our environment, aka - that which we depend on for our very existence, the thing that provides the things that allow us to exist. I keep my body clean, I keep my house clean, I also want to keep my town, state, country, world clean. Why? Health I guess. Ultimately of my own body. If my body, house, town, state, country, world, is dirty, my chances of ill health are greater.
Fourth - and this is admittedly a bit more personal and esoteric - when we cease doing something by hand, or with tools, we lose something. The skill of making things. The pleasure of making things. The meditative process of being absorbed in creating something. The beauty of a handmade thing, the inherent inexplicable beauty of a thing in which the human input is visible in the product. The preciousness of those objects. The knowledge of the natural origin of an object, and the steps required to make it.
I wish there were some way to build better decisions regarding technology into our economic system. Perhaps predictions as to how much of a resource we have, and pricing said resources accordingly. I don't know why natural resources are not publicly owned. How can anyone, other than all of us, own a natural resource? Then we could control the use of the resource based on its' abundance, rate of renewability, etc. and charge private interests for the use of the resource accordingly. We could also find a way to make trash and pollution part of the private equation. I think that's a major problem of the private market - they use precious, finite natural resources as if they are free and infinite, and bear no responsibility or cost for damage to the natural environment. The only way to factor in these costs, I suppose, is through government intervention, which private interests fight tooth and nail with the wealth and power they have accumulated through said abuse of natural resources and environment. This also ties into the concept of scale, hence bringing us full circle to the "buy local" issue again. Only big companies can manufacture this complicated crap. Only big companies are capable of large scale resource depletion and environmental degradation. Only big companies can use their wealth to manipulate our governments into continuing to allow them to do this. So perhaps another approach to remedying the problem of bad technology, would be dealing with the issue of scale...thoughts for another post.
