Is technology environmentally friendly?
Not need to say that, at the current evolution stage, not a single human activity upon the nature is harmless. It is well known that extractive industries are amongst the most contaminating activities in the world, what to say about the huge impact civil engineering (railway or highway construction) has on nature?
To start focussing on the matter, we should firstly state that nowadays technology is everywhere. From a simple light bulb to a modern spacecraft, the number of technological objects is increasing everyday. Although today we tend to consider technological objects those ones which are built with the last technological advances, we have to agree that many simple artefacts are technological themselves. For instance, every electrical gadget as a simple clock or a fuel drive machine, like machine saws, or simple pure manually driven mechanics are also strictly technological objects.
Furthermore, human activities that at a first sight could be far from being anything but harmless, considered at a closer detail, have a high impact on nature. Let’s consider culture, an immaterial human creation which benefits have been widespread since the beginning of society. Consider now how culture is not only created but broadcast nowadays or lets pay attention to the film industry and its special effects.
As a result of the outlined before, better we should say that every single area of the society´s development has a negative impact on ecosystems. Some kind of state of opinion converges in that technology is far more unsustainable than other human activities and we cannot deny that there is some truth behind that assertion. But at the same time, and that is my own view on the matter, technology help us in discovering ways of optimizing scarce resources, new more sustainable materials and transforming into recyclable or immaterial what in the past were disposable objects. Looking at the question under this point of view we can assure that technology is both, a cause and a solution to sustainability concerns.
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Alberto Uribarri
STEMx consultant
Hobari Foundation (Basque Country- Spain)