In Tech We Trust

Hello Readers,

If you are coming to the website to find information about my dissertation survey, please see the post that will point you to all the pages you need. Otherwise, please read on about this post's discussion topic "In Tech We Trust" (no need to click anywhere, just scroll).

This week's post was prompted by a recent New York Times article by Elisabeth Rosenthal. The article highlighted America's technological optimism, the belief that given time and effort a technological fix can solve just about any problem we might get ourselves into. Ms. Rosenthal focuses on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and she indicates that this event is a potential turning point away from America's blind optimism in technology.

She also points to Carbon Capture and Storage technologies (often referred to as CCS), which are being heralded by the coal industry as its future source environmental sustainability, as well as past technological fixes such as the "green revolution" in agriculture and vaccines for childhood diseases. However, she ends on the recent situation where an Icelandic volcano brought air travel over Europe to a literal standstill for several weeks. Overall, the message that Americans (and much of the rest of the world) continue to be absurdly confident in the ability of technological innovation to overcome the forces of nature that make our lives difficult (e.g. volcanoes, viruses, drought) is pretty clear.

However, I would like to ask about technology's ability to overcome our own habits and social expectations. The BP oil spill is an easy example to pick on, so I will use that. At this point, it is very easy to point to BP executives and managers and tell them they should have been more vigilant, more prudent, and more safety-conscious. And to make it clear: yes, they should have been!

Recently, the media has been pointing to BP's poor accident record and safety violations. However, I would be curious to see if any of the other oil companies have been doing any better or if BP is really a rogue oil company that was taking chances where no one else would. For some reason I am skeptical of the latter case.

In fact, I am particularly skeptical, because I have a hard time believing that BP is particularly exceptional in its expectation (or PR statements) that there was no way that anything would go so wrong that it could not be fixed. On the contrary, I think BP is the rule rather than the exception.

Take a moment to think about it. (I'll probably get some sampling bias on a blog like this, but...) Please take some time to answer these questions for yourself.

Do you believe/expect that man-made climate change is occurring (or will occur in your lifetime)?
Have you drastically changed your personal habits to prevent it from getting worse?
Have you taken action to ensure your community/state/country is doing all it can to prevent climate change from getting worse?
Do you expect that by the time things get really bad energy technology and other industries will have caught up with us and solved the problem?

If you are being honest with yourself (and you are American and you've read this far through my blog), your answers were probably "Yes", "Well, sort of", "I voted for that liberal candidate, does that count?", and "Yes". I realize that I'm generalizing, so I am likely not 100% accurate, but the point I'm trying to make is that we need to question our faith in the certainty of technological fixes. It seems as though technology has been keeping pace for so long, we as a society have stopped questioning it.

Although, it has not happened in recent historical memory, it is possible that unchecked social forces (read as expectations) can outpace technology and lead to societal downfall. Of course, in the age of globalization it is important to remember that there are several other unpleasant steps between where we are now and complete failure, so it is important not to see this as an all or nothing game.

On the other hand, I am not in favor of technological pessimism either. I do not think that the advancement of technology will necessarily result in a doomsday scenario. Instead, I would like to advocate a middle ground. In this middle ground, rather than relying on technology as a future fix for the problems we are creating today, we shape our society in a responsible manner that only relies upon what we already know we have.

We need to use an ex ante approach to technological solutions (i.e. mitigation using current and developing technologies) as much as possible rather than an ex post approach (i.e. expecting technology will allow us to adapt later). While simultaneously moderating our social habits and expectations until technology catches up with us in a manner that minimizes environmental damage. Otherwise, we will continue to build an environmental debt in addition to the current economic deficit we are running.

At this point, I would like to note that I am not suggesting which means of 'enforcement' is the most appropriate. I am an ardent believer in taking responsibility for your own actions. However, I recognize that in actuality that is not sufficient to ensure social progress, so I will leave this last point as an open-ended question: what will be necessary to move society from a blind to a cautious optimism in technology?

Thank you for your time!

Sean Diamond