In a recent book called Abundance: the Future is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, the authors argue essentially that technology can and will bring about a better world for all. Given the proliferation of the smart phone around the world, for example, they may be right. Diamandis and Kotler, chapter by chapter, tell us not to worry. The future looks promising. The idea that we will run out of resources sooner or later is Chicken Little thinking. When it comes to the future, pessimists (conservatives in the natural world-centric sense) lack imagination and faith in human ingenuity. Nature-bound thinking seems rather finite and arithmetic, not infinite and exponential.
Where does this debate originate in American culture? The following paintings begin to give us the picture. (Even though the details I describe are almost impossible to see below, bear with me.)
Cotopaxi by Frederick Church, 1862
Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1861
Andrew Melrose, “Westward the Star of Empire Takes Its Way, 1867
The origin of this fear of technology stems from the Romantic perspective as cursorily represented by the three paintings above. The first painting, by Frederick Edwin Church, shows all-powerful nature in the form of a volcano in Ecuador. Man, represented by the miniscule artist and easel in the lower left corner of the painting is completely dwarfed by the power of nature he is trying to represent on canvas. Nature will always win and the best man can do is try to capture its all-powerful image, not harness its power. Nature is God.
In the second two paintings, the first, done at the advent of the Civil War, and the second, done after, shows the contrasting views of Manifest Destiny in the Leutze painting and ambivalence about it in the Melrose piece. The Leutze shows Daniel Boone-like figures climbing all over nature in triumph while the Melrose shows the coming of the train or technology mowing down the landscape and settlers leaving stumps where there were pristine trees and a cabin in a clearing that discourages the deer from escaping the oncoming train by crossing the tracks into the human-altered landscape. They must retreat to the right into the remaining pristine forest.
The romantic perspective in American culture has never disappeared. It has gained greater credibility through the evolution of scientific thinking called ecology and has never been “railroaded” out of existence. In fact, it has become a powerful political force on the left with considerable scientific momentum on its side. However, as powerful as it might be today, it is not necessarily always right.
Emerson said, in a collection of essays called English Traits, that “the views of nature held by any people determine all their institutions.” In America today, the Tea Party and the liberals have very distinctly different views of nature. The former essentially sees nature as a mine; the latter paradoxically as a secular sacred trust. Liberals want wilderness preserved; Tea Party members want industry to have free play with nature. The only arenas where the two come together are in organizations such as Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited. Both of these organizations try to sustain or expand their respective target populations and preserve habitats for future hunters and fishermen to enjoy. They have found a way to “have their cake and eat it too.”
Perhaps technology can offer opportunities to do the same elsewhere. For example, conservation-bound thinking would have us forego the thrill of acceleration in a car for great fuel mileage. In this mode of thinking, the Toyota Prius is the car of choice at 50 mpg. Porsche has just announced it has developed a 918 Spyder hybrid that can get 72 miles per gallon and 0 to 62 mph in 2.8 seconds. Yes, it costs $845,000 for the moment, but the point is the technology now exists to make cars fun to drive and truly economical. This is just one example of what technology can do. BMW is not far behind with the i8, a plug-in hybrid that will get more than 113 mpg compared with the Prius plug-in at 95 mpg. Just a couple of years ago these achievements were unthinkable.
So let us imagine, for a few minutes, a world full of robots, abundance, and incredibly efficient use of resources, some of which we have yet to even consider as such. What will we do with ourselves? Once again, for lack of imagination, the Chicken Littles of the world who are worrying about disappearing species and global warming also tend to be anti-technology, although I have never encountered one without a cell phone. They cannot or seem incapable of thinking outside the box of the so-called natural world. To them evolution is the natural form of development; human invention is unnatural, even though the nature-bound folks take full advantage of many human inventions including the ugly but semi-virtuous Prius.
Austerity is seen as a tool for both sides, it seems. Economic conservatives like to employ austerity to fix poverty; environmentalists like to employ it to fix the planet. Less help for the poor will result in less poverty. The poor will presumably work harder to find a job even though those jobs are being taken over by robots or cheaper workers in other countries. On the other side, less energy use will result in a healthier planet through a more primitive lifestyle. Neither idea works unless technology is advanced. It is the old trap of arithmetic thinking.
The truth is primitive man intitiallyused a great many resources. If the entire world suddenly returned to harvesting wild animals and picking fruits and vegetables that occur in minimally cultivated habitats, the world human populations would starve within weeks, some quicker. Primitive life is not sustainable, regardless of what the various Alaska-based so-called “reality” TV shows depict about living off the land in Alaska (and dressing like the folks in the Leutze painting). In fact, even primitive man began to use technology, however primitive, to improve his yield.
The purist form of eco-mindedness would have us leave the lightest possible carbon footprint on the earth. Technology is the only means by which this goal will be met. (For more on why this is so, see the following NYT op-ed: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation-is-not-the-problem.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130914&
The Luddite mentality that distrusts atomic energy, GMO foods, and robot development is probably a good filter that helps maintain the integrity of technological pursuits. But too often each side of this debate exaggerates its claims in order to thwart or dismiss the other in a political war that retards real progress. We need to confront the inconvenient truths in both opposing camps. In effect, we need to stop protecting and embracing wholesale both Chicken Little thinking (radical environmentalism) and Little Red Hen ingenuity (technology as panacea) which results in little more than playing chicken with the future.
Robots will not go away. Sooner or later atomic energy is going to be the favored form of sustainable energy because it is already capable in its most advanced forms of being the most efficient. It can be in its latest iterations the safest and does not plaster our newly treasured deserts with solar panels and wind-turbines. Automobiles will become so efficient and cheap, they will be as prevalent as cell phones throughout the world. In short, technology CAN be a major part of the solution, not the problem that so many environmentalists would have us believe.
On the other hand, corporations need to stop serving short-term interests. They must employ best practices, not merely the short-term most profitable. Corporations need to show how they contribute to a greater good in the long run rather than measure themselves by the dividends awarded to their stockholders.
Since workers will eventually no longer serve as cogs in the industrial machine, they can have the leisure and afford the impulse to help others, one of the most gratifying rewards human beings can experience. This change can revolutionize the way human beings live on earth. Instead of working to live, we can begin living to work.
Technology is the solution, like it or not. Both governments and corporations need to prepare for a new world that no longer requires much in the way of human labor. Instead, societies need to figure out new ways human beings can live meaningful lives beyond earning a living. That may take more than technology to solve. It also may require another look at how mankind views not only nature but human nature itself.
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