Nature vs Technology Debate Explored

11/8/22, 4:49 PM Nature vs Technology - by Rudi Kershaw
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16/07/2016 3479 views
Nature vs Technology
https://www.rudikershaw.com/articles/nature-vs-technology 1/13
Spending a week in a safari tent in the midst of nine acres of raw unmolested
woodland has drawn me to thinking about nature and the divide we see
between
see
between it
and science & technology.
It would be easy to conclude that there is a rift between nature and technology. Our
atmosphere is being saturated with CO2 from the burning of
fossil
of
fossil fuels extracted by
giant machines, the air is filled to bursting with radio-waves such that frequencies are
beginning to conflict, we cut down great
swathes
great
swathes of forest & woodland and lay waste
to entire ecosystems for raw materials or to graze cattle so that our rapidly expanding
and progressively
more
progressively
more obese populations may gorge themselves. Not least of all our
planet is littered with the by-products of our rapidly increasing capacity to
manufacture
convenience
manufacture
convenience goods. You might easily be forgiven for concluding that
science hasn't done our planet many favours.
When you glance at the surface of our situation it can seem quite clear that
technology is ruining everything. But if you take the time to peer beneath the
surface
the
surface
a much more disturbing reality presents itself.
Science is just our way of understanding nature. It is not the understanding of waves
and the electromagnetic spectrum that littered our airways with gibberish.
If
gibberish.
If all the
radio transmitters on the planet were to suddenly fall silent I could still turn on a radio
and hear something. Static is, amongst
other
amongst
other things, the sound of cosmic background
radiation created at the beginning of time as we know it. In the same sense it is not
our understanding of the
combustibility
the
combustibility of accelerants that leads us to pour harmful
mixtures into our soil and risk the suitability of our water or risk the integrity of our
land when
we
when
we choose to frack for natural gasses.
Knowledge is not a tool for good or for evil. The truth can hurt or it can mend wounds
but it is not good or bad. It just is
is.. It is the choices of people
that
people
that are damaging our
environment.
This isn't new. People have always thought very little about the long term
consequences of their actions. Technology has just accelerated our capacity to
achieve
our
achieve
our goals and as such has accelerated us towards the consequences we have
previously refused to think about. Even before the industrial revolution people have
chopped down trees to build their houses, fuel their fires, warm themselves, and for
craft. Even then this was probably unsustainable without some sort of effort
to
effort
to
regrow what was removed. Once the industrial revolution was in full swing we had
machines to haul our fallen trees, factories to produce wares from them, and
so
and
so a
much higher demand for raw materials.
When I look back I can't blame those people. A hand full of lumbar-jacks wouldn't
know that our woodlands would grow scarce. The first railways wouldn't have known
that the coal they burnt would grow scarce and eventually raise global temperatures.
Over the last fifty years however, we have come to know the long term
consequences
term
consequences
of our actions. The same science we blame for our failures has shown these failures to
us. It has shown us the damage our rubbish is doing to our
sea-life,
our
sea-life, the potentially
catastrophic effect our reliance on burning things has had on global temperatures,
and the hole we have corroded in our ozone layer.
And yet we continue to over-consume without regard for our future. The large
automakers do not invest in cleaner renewable fuel sources, happy to let others
take
others
take
on the risk of innovation. The large energy suppliers continue to put off switching to
cleaner, renewable power stations for fear that they will be less
profitable.
less
profitable.
Governments the world over refuse to impose tougher sanctions on the above for
fear that their stocks in them will fall in value. Greed, laziness,
and
laziness,
and risk aversion have
set us in our ways.
Technology may have enabled us to get to this point but it is lack of forward planning
and personal responsibility that has brought us here and keeps us here.
Assuming
here.
Assuming
that we can not wait for human beings to grow a responsible collective moral
conscience, what gets us out of this mess? The very thing that many cry
out
cry
out and call
the cause of our problems. We need new technology. We need it to be cheap,
profitable, clean, and renewable. If the technology can be blamed it is
only
is
only because
we have over used technologies that are inadequate for long term use, when they
should have been simple stepping stones to something greater.
Let us diverge for a moment to think about an example. The construction of housing
has meant removing our wild-life, destroying fields, heath, and woodland. We
flatten
We
flatten
the land, fill in rivers and lakes, cut down trees so that we can build our houses and the
roads that lead to them. Why do we do all this? For
convenience.
For
convenience. Our trucks, diggers,
and cranes can not operate in hilly, rocky, or woodland terrain. Wheels and tracks are
inadequate for that environment so we
ripwe
rip up these ecosystems so we can continue to
use our inadequate tools. The same can be said of our roads. We carve great swathes
and valleys in our landscapes
so
landscapes
so that the wheels on our cars can drive us from A to B.
If you take a moment to wonder why no life on earth evolved wheels the answer
becomes obvious. They
would
They
would get stuck, and then they would die.
The technology exists for vehicles with legs. NASA's recent entry to the DARPA
robotics challenge can navigate any number of strange and irregular terrain. This
technology is currently slow, cumbersome, and difficult to manufacture but imagine a
far future where all vehicles had this level of mobility. Housing estates could
be
could
be built
in woodlands without having to tear down many trees at all and we would need no
roads for transport.
It is not just big companies and governments that resist changes that protect our
future and our environment. This tendency to brand new technology as
unnatural
as
unnatural is
both unhelpful and misleading. Public opinion has been heavily against GM crops
more or less since it's inception completely without grounds.
Research
grounds.
Research into GM
crops, as well as gene therapy, and stem cell technologies have been heavily
suppressed by overwhelming negative public opinion despite
scientific
despite
scientific consensus
that they are safe and widely useful.
To summarise; science is simply our way of understanding nature, and technology is

the tools we build with that knowledge. Science isn't at odds with nature. The
idea
The
idea of
science is more in tune with nature than almost anything comprehensible. The rift we
see between nature and technology occurs when we pick and choose what
we what
we like
from science whilst ignoring or rejecting what doesn't suit us. This is further
compounded by 'making do' and failing to strive for ideals. Stagnant
technologies
Stagnant
technologies find
themselves over-used. There are no hard and fast fixes to our problems. What needs
fixing can only be resolved by taking the conclusions of
the
of
the scientific process seriously
and not hesitating to make necessary changes.
Home
Rudi Kershaw
Web & Software Developer, Science Geek, and
Research Enthusiast

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11/8/22, 4:49 PM Nature vs Technology - by Rudi Kershaw

16/07/2016 3479 views

To summarise; science is simply our way of understanding nature, and technology is

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