One more con from Big Tech

Let us imagine for a moment a scale of 0 to 100 where 0 means something that is natural, organic and genuinely sustainable and 100 means the most extreme inorganic, toxic technology. A typical technological innovation will start off at perhaps 80 because what drives the technological innovators is certainly not the advancement of the environment. It is the advancement of the innovating company’s stock price. The way modern technology has advanced is through the abundant exploitation of more and more elements and materials into more and more complex combinations, alloys and interconnections, using more and more toxic chemicals and environmentally destructive processes, with constantly accelerating and shortening lifecycles, thus constantly accelerating the production of more and more linear toxic e-waste that has less and less fewer and fewer possibilities for reuse and recycling.

So, when a brand new innovation comes out, the very last thing on its mind is the environment. It’s at 80 destruction. The technologists have started off with the cultural belief that they can—and should—use as much materials and energy as they want. Whatever is necessary to get to market first, to gain competitive advantage. Then, either through some public or commercial pressure, they begin to focus more on efficiency, after the high of the innovation breakthrough fix has subsided a little. Boring efficiency improvement work now. So much efficiency to be gained in a system that was originally designed with hardly any concern for energy, materials or waste. Wow! In a couple of years, the horrendous 80 goes down to a truly horrible 70.

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