Technological Change and the Environment

1. Technological Change and the Environment

2. Technological Change and the Environment • The social creation of new technologies transforms both societies and the natural world upon which human societies depend. • Therefore, in order for us to understand the dynamic relationship between social systems and ecosystems, we need to understand the role played by technology in shaping that relationship.

3. What is Technology? • Technology is how we make “stuff” and do “stuff.” • Organizing and reorganizing social relations to nature. • Produced by social actors and institutions. • Specific social groups make it their business to move technological change in specific directions and for specific purposes

4. What is Technology? • Ex: classroom is, in part, a technology for making or doing stuff. • Social relations • Physical relations • Relationship to nature

5. What is Technology? • Technology is a series of entanglements with social systems and ecosystems, close and far, obvious and hidden. • All technology represents a series of relationships between you and others and between you and the natural world. • Those relationships are not random.

6. What is Technology? • Relationships • Reflect the social origins of the technologies • The goals of those who designed the technologies, • The interests of those who require to request you to use the technologies, and • The ways in which society has been organized to use and change nature.

7. Technological Change • Various phases or periods of development of technology • Lewis Mumford (Technics and Civilization) • Three distinct eras of modern technological development • Paleotechnic: wood as the primary material & the use of moving water and wind as the primary energy sources • Eotechnic: iron as the primary material & the use of coal to generate steam as the primary energy source • Neotechnic: steel as the primary material & the use of electricity as the primary energy source.

8. The Agricultural Revolution • Prior to the technology of agriculture, human societies were primarily organized for a hunting and gathering survival strategy. • The technology of agriculture allowed humans to modify their local ecosystems to meet their food needs, rather than modifying their societies (through migration) to meet local ecosystem conditions.

9. The Agricultural Revolution • In a real sense, the power balance between environment and society was shifted toward greater human agency and greater ecosystem malleability • Humans cleared portions of land • Selected species of plants • Domesticated animals • Pastures were cleared, ecosystems transformed, and species gradually modified to serve human goals.

10. The Agricultural Revolution • Settlement • Building of permanent structures • Accumulation of material possessions • Technology increases reduced labour requirements producing a “labour surplus.” • Large-scale irrigation and other large scale construction • Complex social organization in governance and the production and distribution of a wider variety of goods and services • Labour surpluses also allowed for the creation of standing armies • Many features of both human social organizations and their relationship to ecosystems actually stem from the technology of agriculture.

11. The Industrial Revolution • The industrialization of production generated a vast array of social changes • Creation of new classes • Formation of industrial cities • Societal dependence on enormous inputs of nonrenewable resources, particular fossil fuels • Technological changes increased production and the growing transformation of natural ecosystems • Increasing “withdrawals” and “additions.”

12. The Technological Trajectory • Both revolutions … transformed the relationship between social systems and ecosystems. • Enormous increase in the incentive and capacity to adjust natural systems to meet social needs, rather than adjusting social systems to meet naturally occurring ecosystem realities • But … where is our technological trajectory headed? Why? Who and what determines the path of technological innovation? And what are the alternative pathways?

13. Social Institutions and Technological Decision-Making • Social institutions pursuing specific social goals largely control the progress and direction of technological change … reflective of the power and the political and economic interests of the social institutions that control the process. • The main social institutions are: • Universities • States • basic research enhance military power • Economic competitiveness • Corporations

14. Science, Technological Innovation, and Power • Technological innovation is greatly influenced by a relatively small number of decision makers in governments and corporations who establish research priorities, provide research facilitates, and determine the distribution of funding. • These decision-making processes are generally unavailable for public input and public influence.

15. Science, Technological Innovation, and Power • We must live with the technological consequences in terms of • products that are and are not available • Technologies that do and do not exist, • Employment opportunities that are created and destroyed, and • Public health and ecological impacts that are generated • But generally denied a role in determining those consequences.

16. The Myth of Progress • Research takes a natural course determined by free inquiry and the evolution of ideas and that technologies are touted along a linear progression where one development automatically follows from another. • No institutional agency in the technological trajectory. • This myth of technological neutrality and the ideology of capitalist ethic (private gain yields public good) produces complacency in regard to research and development on the part of the public

17. The Democratization of Technological Innovation • If we are to seriously pursue a more environmentally sound relationship between social systems and ecosystems, we may find it useful to make the technological innovation processes subject to democratic controls • in which the potential social and ecological impacts of technologies can be assessed by informed publics, and • under conditions in which citizens are empowered to determine the goals of research and development, • the prioritization and funding of that research, • and the manner in which technologies will be implemented or prohibited.