"Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller, best known for buckyballs and geodesic domes, disliked the common ways of doing anything. While he was a master of physics, engineering and archetecture, he was not fond of technology itself.
What could those "wrong reasons" be?
Think of companies that produce the newest technological devices that become instant market fads. Do you feel any fondness for them in any way?
Think of scientists who are doing research on the human genome, who can find a gene you have as part of your own body, discover it has an unusual or rare quality, then secure a patent on that gene, a patent for which you will receive nothing in royalties.
Think of scientists who find products that have been used for thousands of years, let's say in Asia (basmati rice from India, for example), then they secure a patent on those very same agricultural products that have grown in gardens in Asia for millennia and want to exact a royalty fee from those same poor peasants for growing what their ancestors have grown since before history was recorded.
Getting back to technology, how do you think the stock values for those companies that produce the new devices will fare on the market? You would expect them to do well. Apple, with its iPod, for example, is doing better than it ever has in its history. Apple is making a fortune while many of its customers suffer from hearing loss.
When a new product is developed, which question do you suppose the companies will ask themselves: Will the world be a better place because this product is now available? or Will my company's stock and my personal fortune skyrocket when this product becomes the must-have gift?
The motive of these companies is always money. What's more, they teach their customers--your children, for example--that money is the most important thing there is. They are teaching your children, by example if nothing else, that they should form their lives around their ability to make as much money as possible.
Technology is a marvellous thing. Who would have thought that it could teach a whole society a new set of values?
Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to make the social drift of values more apparent.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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Comments: 15
Keeping up with the rat race means...running with rats.
It also makes us depend on it to a point of making us useless without it.
Of course that doesn't stop me from using it either....oh well....
Of course, we could not be exchanging these messages without a certain amount of it.
I know I've bought into the propaganda that I NEED my cell phone and I NEED my computer. I still haven't bought into the propaganda that I need my iPod, however.
thank you
There is no virtue in deprivation, as several religions preach. The virtue is in moderation, using what allows us to do what we want to do rather than what technology manufacturers want us to do.
Personally I like technology. However, I am not a slave to technology (well, maybe the Internet). I don't feel I am missing anything if I read a book instead of watch TV. I believe technology can be used to make your life easier. I'm a terrible cook, and the microwave has made my life easier. I like to listen to music, and the radio, iPod, computer has enabled me to listen when I want, where I want. I like to watch TV shows, but maybe not when they are on, so Tivo has enabled me to watch when I see fit. Technology has also allowed me to connect with my family, who all live hundreds of miles from me, on a daily basis. So rather than isolating me, dehumanizing me, I believe the opposite has happened... for me.
I must be getting old, I have a hard time keeping up anymore.....;-)
Thanks for the article Bill.
It depends on whether you use technology or technological devices as tools to help you do something easier or faster or to do something you could not have done without it, or whether it becomes an esstential part of your life. You seem to have it under control.
Many others--like Gatherholics--are under its spell.
Then we run out of time to get things done.
Maybe it doesn't really matter, so long as we get the important things done.
Maybe it does matter to us, in which case we had better reduce our work load of commitments and obligations--get rid of some toys, for example.