From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Thu Oct 05 2000 - 12:58:53 MDT
Here's something from one of the radical green lists I monitor:
>Attitudes to protect you against the one-sided information onslaught:
>1. Since most of what we are told about new technology comes from its
>proponents, be deeply skeptical of all claims.
>
>2. Assume all technology "guilty until proven innocent."
>
>3. Eschew the idea that technology is neutral or "value free." Every
>technology has inherent and identifiable social, political, and environmental
>consequences.
>
>4. The fact that technology has a natural flash and appeal is meaningless.
>Negative attributes are slow to emerge.
>
>5. Never judge a technology by the way it benefits you personally. Seek a
>holistic view of its impacts. The operative question is not whether it
>benefits
>you, but who benefits most? And to what end?
>
>6. Keep in mind that an individual technology is only one piece of a larger
>web of technologies, "megatechnology." The operative question here is how the
>individual technology fits the larger one.
>
>7. Make distinctions between technologies that primarily serve the
>individual or the small community (e.g., solar energy) and those that
>operate on a scale
>outside of community control (e.g., nuclear energy). The latter kind is
>the major
>problem of the day.
>
>8. When it is argued that the benefits of the technological lifeway are
>worthwhile despite harmful outcomes, recall that Lewis Mumford referred to
>these
>alleged benefits as "bribery." Cite the figures about crime, suicide,
>alienation,
>drug abuse, as well as environmental and cultural degredation.
>
>9. Do not accept the homily that "once the genie is out of the bottle you
>cannot put it back," or that rejecting a technology is impossible. Such
>attitudes
>induce passivity and confirm victimization.
>
>10. In thinking about technology within the present climate of technological
>worship, emphasize the negative. This brings balance. Negativity is positive.
>
>--Jerry Mander
>Author of "In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the
>Survival of the Indian Nations
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