The revolution will not be blogged, either

In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond observes that the vast majority of technologies create more problems then they solve, and in the aggregate, technology virtually always fails to keep up with the unintended consequences it generates. The more we’re able to do, the more net damage we do. He observes about people who advocate one or many technical solutions to our environmental problems all seem to be making the same basic error in reasoning,

All of our current problems are unintended negative consequences of our existing technology. The rapid advances in technology during the 20th century have been creating difficult new problems faster than they have been solving old problems: that’s why we’re in the situation in which we now find oursleves. What makes you think that, as of January 1 2006, for the first time in human history, technology will miraculously stop causing new unanticipated problems while it just solves the problems it previously produced? (Diamond, 505)

To me, this query of Diamond’s is an important reminder that we have blinders on when it comes to the real feasibility of our solutions. For example, let us consider one commonly discussed solution to global warming – telecommuting. If only we could just get all those workers out of the office, we wouldn’t have to heat those offices, we wouldn’t have people sitting in traffic, etc… And that might even be true. Now it is worth noting that this is a solution heavily weighted to the benefit of rich folk – the person who cleans your toilet, the person who builds your house, the person who cooks the dinner you normally get by take out, those folks aren’t going to be permitted to telecommute – in fact, some will lose their jobs. But that in itself isn’t an argument against widespread telecommuting.

But the problem is that all those telecommuters would be buying more and better technology for their homes in order to be able to do the work they normally do at the office, and spending more time overnighting documents, heating their own homes, and doing all sorts of other things. Now it might well turn into a net gain – you never know. But it is worth noting, for example that recent evidence suggests that all of us on our computers are a huge global warming problem http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2640428.ece – as bad as flying all over the planet. All those new computers would be built and shipped, as would all that new software, and those extra laptops and fax machines, and the old ones would go leak mercury into the groundwater in Lagos (I bet you didn’t know that when your computer dies, it gets to take a long vacation to a poor nation to be disposed of – lucky it!).

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