Discuss: Tending the Garden of Technology

> Our current default is to not proceed to the next step until you can prove no harm. That doesn’t work. You have to use inventions to evaluate them, to see them in action.

This is oversimplifying. For example there are strict regulations of genetic modification of organisms, because an accidental release could be catastrophic. Catastrophes have already occurred as a result of ordinary breeding and introductions of non-native species, like the African bee scenario. Precaution is essential with new technology, as the impact can be rapid and vast.

Nowhere in this discussion did I hear about the impact what we are doing is having on the rest of creation: the other species of plants and animals that are going extinct in the path of our technological swath.

I don’t separate the natural from the artificial, all is natural at a basic sense, so I can see technology as sacred. But not “more sacred” than the earth that gave birth to us and a billion other creatures, who seem to have been forgotten by the majority of the world’s people.

Do we want a virtual world with no wild animals, plants? All zoos and gardens, and factories and vast factory farms? Who in the plugged in world will even care if they can go to the movies and see gorgeous worlds in 3D?

plb

Every operation of nature and the systems of civilization is governed by natural forces. These natural forces have been operating for eons. They have a degree of self organization and self regulation that we have been unable to emulate. Our technology has only been able to make use of natural forces, often unwisely. Future technology may make better use of the remaining irreplaceable natural material capital. That, however, would require widespread understanding that has yet to emerge.

Mr. Borst has it right.  Kelly’s term “gambling” refers to natural evolution in a changing environment, which does not occur
with genetically modified plants.
We need the pollinators to keep a “natural” store of living matter, in this case fruit trees, especially in the wild.
I’m sure Kelly would answer that if one genetically modified specie of crop were to be totally destroyed, technology would quickly develop another.  I find this quite laughable.

This conversation (Kelly and these Orion readers) is what the world needs. I’m resubscribing.

By the way, I agree that we need more sophisticated ways of steering technology than government and business currently provide, and I think open standards organizations, such as the Open Geospatial Consortium, my client, are one solution. We’ve entered the information age. Information is about communication. Communicators need common sets of symbols. Standardization is a process to agree on the sets of symbols. The consensus process in many of today’s standards organizations engages users of technology with producers of technology in dialog that solves some of the problems inherent in simple market competition.

Re: We’ve entered the information age.

I think information has been freely available since the newspaper, the broadside and the tract. Being a beekeeper, I know that 100 years ago beekeeping journals came out weekly; now they are monthly with a 2 month lag to print. So we turn to the internet for the most up to the minute news. That, and the private lines of communication, which have been active since the advent of the courier.

No, the problem is the enemies of information: dogma, ideology, apathy, and myopia, to name a few. People by and large seek entertainment and resent the intrusion of new and thought provoking ideas. In my field, the trend is to stay alert to the new, be ready to shift gears, be ahead of the curve.

As far as values goes, where before, people latched on to ideals and then fought for them, I think the new world requires people to seek and understand new ideas—then learn how to explain and promote them. Nobody wants the new shoved down their throat.  It is obvious that the world is changing rapidly, and IT IS hard to keep up. Stay tuned; stay focused!

plb

This conversation seems astonishingly biology-free.  What likelihood is there that if we just keep experimenting whatever sustainable systems that exist on earth in the year 2100 will include and/or be hospitable to human life?

Joan’s right. But ecology and genetics are about information. Steve Talbott’s Netfuture.org newsletter has migrated from information technology to science to biology. I think his perspective is valuable in thinking about these things. Web services and genes are invocations. Web services are contained in a little world of our own making. But in genetics, we are like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice tinkering with invocations of the real natural world that we don’t understand nearly well enough.

> This conversation seems astonishingly biology-free

I assume you are talking about the original interview, because the comments here have been squarely centered on biology.Anyway, whatever we *think*, reality has a way of going differently. Its own way, one might suggest. None of us can predict how it will or won’t go.

I believe we could go on for centuries in the direction of factory food, urbanization, etc. but who’d want to? Aside from the moral aspect of exterminating various species and trashing the womb from which we came, there is the simple aesthetic question: who wants to live in an artificial world?

Maybe beaches, and mountains and wild life will seem like a luxury we used to be able to afford, back in the 21st century. I don’t want to see that happen, but I believe the only way to prevent it is to awaken people to the beauty and wonder of it.

Then they will WANT to keep it, will in fact make personal sacrifices in order to keep as much of the original world intact for future generations. I hope.

plb