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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Technology
  • Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 22:20:50 EST


> > Technology is our only hope for keeping things running in this modern
> > world of billions and billions of people. If the technology doesn't
> > come thru we are all in a big hurt.
>

The topic was finely treated in this thread, and I didn't have time to
contribute at the time, but I thought these observations fit:

1) The hope in technology epitomized by "After all, we put a man on the
moon" has one glaring flaw. We put a man on the moon because we had
unlimited
access to fossil fuels. If we did not have oil and NG, could we put a man on
the
moon? Maybe, but it would take depriving the environment and its people of
a great deal to do it.

Put more simply, could we make, say, a plastic keyboard without fossil oil?
Yes, you could grow oil crops and use wind or tidal or solar energy to refine
and process it into plastic. But the effort and amount of resources it would
take would make the keyboard very expensive in terms of human endeavor.

Fossil fuels are a one time deal in human history. We have NOTHING that
approximates what we get from them. Our technological ability WITHOUT oil
comes
to very, very little. Our faith in same is misplaced.


2) Has technology made us any happier? Instead of taking some joy in what
technology brings us, it appears to me that instead there is only the
creeping
fear of being without it. Yet we often mistake that unrealized (as yet) fear
for happiness.




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