To Boldly Go...

Technology is perhaps one of the most uncertain variables in human history.  In 2000, the iPod did not exist, neither did social networking as we know it today.  In 1950, the internet did not exist. The advent of the internet and computers revolutionized communications technologies and infrastructures; it paved the way for globalization and fundamentally changed the way people related to each other. Instantaneous communication became possible.  Woah. Take a moment, and think about that.  Just try to list all the ways modern technologies have changed the way you live your life.  The natural thought, then, is what next? What will be the next internet?  

Before I continue down this particular road of thought, I'm going to take a step back.  Hold the idea of the revolutionary ability - and precedent - of technology throughout history to fundamentally shift the way the world functions, I'll get back to that eventually. Right now, though, let's take a page from last week with a return to author Michael Maniates. In an article written in Global Environmental Politics Volume One Number 3  titled Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World? that was in my required reading for this week, a passage struck me with familiarity: 

When we asked our students - who were among  the brightest and best prepared of the many with whom we'd worked over the years - why, after thirteen weeks of intensive study of environmental problems, they were so reluctant to consider as "solutions" broader changes in policy and institutions, they shrugged. Sure, we remember studying these kinds of approaches in class, they said, but such measures were, well, fuzzy, mysterious, messy, and "idealistic" (36, Maniates). 

This struck me, because this past Monday in my International Environmental Politics class, I was one of those students.  Our professor asked us to divide into groups and write out how we thought the Washington DC area would change in fifty years if A) substantial sustainable policies were enforced and B) if life continued as usual. When we returned after a half hour or so, our solutions were modest, showing small changes, but nothing revolutionary - exactly like the students in the Maniates quote above.  Now think back to how I began. Fifty years ago, the internet as we know it, computers as we know them, did not exist. Why couldn't we - a class of students that are the progeny of this modern technological age - come up with more creative advances for the environmental future of Washington DC?

I realized the analytical step I had missed last week in my blog post while contemplating how to respond to this week's discussion question.  Last week, I was - I most definitely still am - guilty of "a privatization and individualization of responsibility for environmental problems [that] shifts blame from State elites and powerful producer groups to more amorphous culprits like 'human nature' or 'all of us'" (43, Maniates).  It certainly is much easier - and palatable - to blame human nature, or society, or normative cultural values on the current state of environmental degradation we face in the world.  It is hard for me to actually internalize and comprehend that I should be taking civic action - moreover that I can take civic action that could influence change in an environmental context. In this same vein of thought, it is easy to consider the small changes that could be made.  Anything more would involve work. It would involve tackling hard problems, hard issues, it would require me to stop pointing fingers and to start doing something about the situation I find myself in.

This brings me back my original point (yes, there was one!) about the potential for technology and the environment.  I want technology to be a positive force in my life - in the life of the world and the environment.   While I will neither confirm nor deny the positive or negative impact of, say, Facebook, on my life I do hope that technology has the potential to help us surmount the environmental challenges before us.

This potential can only be realized if we imagine it, though.  Small advances - higher efficiency cars, sidewalks that generate power for the streetlights at night by people walking on the sidewalk during the day - aren't enough.  We - and I'm very hesitant now in my use of "we", lest I fall back into the trap of individualizing the blame - need to imagine bigger.  We need to throw some crazy ideas into the mix.

At the end of our class on Monday, one of my classmates mentioned a contest she had heard about where a company is challenging universities and colleges to come up with designs for toilets that do not use water.  The winner of this contest will have their design produced, and these super-efficient toilets will be on the market.  This is the kind of innovation we need: groups of people posing problems, and other groups solving them - or at least attempting to.  Much is gained in the attempt of a concrete solution. So think crazy! I've heard of sidewalks that generate the energy to power streetlights at night from the people who have walked on the sidewalk during the day.  What if roads generated energy for cars from the cars that drive on them?  Everything has to be considered possible. We should also look to the natural world for ideas; plants photosynthesize, they turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.  What if we could find a way to engineer photosynthesis on a grand scale?  Can you imagine?

Granted, there are many problems that technology might not be able to solve - for example, the overfishing of most of the world's fisheries.  Technology will not re-populate the schools of fish that industrial fishing has devastated.  In that regard, technology has had a negative impact as it also has in the lumber industry - in the destruction of the world's forests. There are also a plethora of variables and factors that hinder technological advances which I do not have the time to get into at this juncture.

My overriding, perhaps 'messy', perhaps 'mysterious' and definitely 'idealistic' hope is that there are problems technology can tackle if we have the creative drive to try.  If we can dare to imagine.