Discuss: Tending the Garden of Technology

I am an historian by trade, so agree that even before the printing press, we learned of innovations.  Yes, the internet is a wonderful tool, and I use it.  However, new ideas are not always better ideas any more than innovation is better than the old. By choice I spend many hours teaching children and adults about the values of the natural world.  Even though we may be able to manipulate parts of it, humans are animals so are part of this natural world and dependent upon it.  I do try to read the latest science/technology articles, but am more interested in a sustainable environment, clean potable water, food for all, population growth.  Technology may be able to provide help, but I don’t believe it to be “our savior.”

> new ideas are not always better ideas any more than innovation is better than the old

Hi. I used to think (back in the sixties) that Nature could heal what we have done to her, if we reverted to some more primitive life style.

I am afraid we have passed the point of no return for that. (See Bill McKibben’s End of Nature). So I think that new ideas will be required, if only to rectify the last century’s “new ideas”.

I don’t worship the new, but I think that creativity is part and parcel of nature, evolution, and who WE are. Creation is all about new; or at least, renewal.

plb

I agree (read all, as far as I know, that McKibben writes)I should have said not “necessarily” better.  I find that in this country most people act reactively instead of looking forward for possible problems.  I was somewhat surprised many years ago when I found that as a “liberal arts” person, I was outhinking the MBAs at the company I worked for at the time on economic matters.  I had been schooled to realize that when solving one problem one has to envision further problems that will arise from that “solution.”  I agree with you re creativity.  I’m very interested in the new energy technologies, especially solar, not interested in building a better mousetrap which will use more energy, just because we can do it.

I am interested in the lack of mention of the vital role that compassion plays in enabling the state of science to exist (sharing, inquiry, reflection, etc), which in turn enables language, the arts, civics and all we know as civilisation to exist. Link this to Kevin’s statement:
“What we have is a long-term trend of increasing diversity, complexity, and specialization—all characteristics of self-sustaining systems. That could be a galaxy or a sun or intelligence…A galaxy is a system composed of individual technologies, complex enough to have its own self-sustaining qualities including self-preservation. It is self-perpetuating and self-increasing….These systems are evolving evolution. They are increasing degrees of freedom…”
What does this say about America? It is increasingly a monolithic culture in which power and wealth are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. Copyright, electronic surveillance and fear further reduce diversity daily. A few psychopathic corporations rigidly control all markets. All systems increasingly rely on one technology- the addictive use of mineral oil. Indeed mineral oil is symbolised as energy – and there is no greater denial of diversity and complexity than this. Worse - energy, power, fossil fuels and Bulk-generated electrical products are all symbolised as the same. Our grand parents knew of electrical phenomena. We only know of electricity and this does not exist.
This is profound evidence of a vast lack of science and a dis-information age. By Kevin’s definition America (and my country Little America, sometimes known as New Zealand) does not have self-sustaining qualities, including that of self-preservation. Why not? Perhaps we lack compassion.
Re the global spontaneous eruption of ideas and technologies. We should not undervalue the role of changes in Earth’s climate. And in our petroleum driven culture it is hard for us to imagine how humans have walked thousands of miles propagating ideas. And imagine you are an archaeologist in the future studying the great complex of motorways and tall buildings that suddenly sprung up in the twentieth century. If all fossil fuels were gone this eruption of technology would seem magical.
Here’s a thought: Technology is most holy for the person who most fully enjoys compassion.
http://www.bonusjoules.co.nz

Evolution is natural forces slowly at work on Gaia in a proven, self-organizing and self-regulating manner. The development of civilization, Tityas, is by technology manipulating natural forces with little self organization or self regulation because it is driven by that intangible, money

There is no doubt that the information explosion comprises a vast amount of twaddle with a little knowledge thrown in and wisdom drowned out by the noise. It is not new knowledge we need. It is understanding of the oldest. Natural forces control everything that happens in Gaia and in Tityas. They have controlled the evolution of Gaia for eons. Our technology just uses these natural forces in Tityas in a willy nilly fashion.

> Evolution is natural forces slowly at work on Gaia in a proven, self-organizing and self-regulating manner.

Isn’t anyone going to respond to this? That isn’t the definition of evolution.

>  It is not new knowledge we need. It is understanding of the oldest.

Hmm. Are you sure? What is the oldest knowledge, anyway? Our ancestors were hunters, hunted the mastodons to extinction as I recall.

If you mean Buddhism, Buddhism teaches that there is not good and bad, there is just the One. We make it good and bad by identifying what we like and do not like.

Nature has no plan, no morals, no qualms about kill or be killed. It’s survival of the fittest and if the fittest is Ebola Virus, so be it.

We are still in the minority here, friends. The bulk of the living world is bacteria, insects, slime and plankton. They were here first.

plb

Although we see continual patterned structures such as fractals, this does not mean there is a “consciousness” toward a rational process of evolution in Nature.  Every day there are chance mutations which are mostly rejected because not viable in the present environment.  Read J. Weiner’s book , “The Beak of the Finch” and you will see present day change through adaptation which created a new specie of that bird.  The science books we read in school are written after the fact of a “discovery, and the authors want to show order and logic that lead to the result, whereas the discovery is often by accident, or as some on us would say by way of serendipity.  I tend to believe in chaos rather than order being the norm.  Yes plb, Nature will be here long after we are gone as a specie.  I’m sure you have read “The World Without Us.”