5. KEY POINT!
• TECHNOLOGY REMOVES US FROM NATURE!
• BUILDS A ‘NICE LITTLE WORLD FOR US TO LIVE IN.
• INCREASES THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US AND THE RESOURCES WE USE.
• ‚EVERY TIME WE INVENT SOMETHING NEW, WE FORGET HOW TO DO
SOMETHING‛.
• MORE TECHNOLOGY = MORE DESTRUCTIVE IMPACTS
Our relationship is now more distant.
7. A QUOTE
• Our culture has seldom been inclined to confront
the profound changes that accompany
technological innovation. Like a carrot prompting a
cart horse, technology entices us forward in a way
that keeps us from noticing much about the road
ahead, each offering results in such a slight
movement that by the time we realize we are far
from home, no serious re-examination of our fate
seems possible.
— Attributed to J. Robert Oppenheimer, Ethics for
New Life Forms
8. WHY IS THIS SIGNIFICANT?
• Do you know who this author is?
• If you do, it might make the quote make a bit more
sense.
• Look it up!
“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”
J. Robert Oppenheimer created the first ever atomic
bomb, which was dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945, killing over 200,000 people.
9. SHOOT FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER.
• Humans are very curious – we love to look at the
carrot (technology) and not the road ahead
(nature).
• It is easy for us to become blinded to the effects of
our marvellous advances as we enjoy the comfort
they bring.
• Vicious cycle – create technology, don’t notice
effects, get further separated from nature, make
new technology with even bigger effects, get
separated more, don’t notice effects etc, etc.
10. EXAMPLES
• DDT – 1940‘s
• this stuff is awesome!!!!!! Get a plane and spray it on
your crops –it kills all the bugs and you get way
more crops! MAKE MONEY MONEY, MAKE MONEY
MONEY – Boo Yeah!
• Buuuuuuutt…..
• 1960‘s - It seeps into our water ways and kills all the
fish and birds.
11. CFC’S
• Chlorofluorocarbons – we can use this to make
fridges, aerosols, cleaning products and all kinds of
cool stuff – it‘s non toxic, doesn‘t react with other
chemical‘s and doesn‘t burn. How smart are we?
• Oh Oh – It wrecks the ozone layer.
12. POWER GENERATION
• 1700‘s. ―I just invented a steam engine. What you
do is heat up some water and when the steam rises
it turns things – so we don‘t have to. All we need is
something to keep burning, like coal, or gas, or oil.
We can get machines to do all the jobs that are
really hard for us – we‘ll all be rich!‖
• 21st century – ahhh actually it turns out that the
world is getting hotter because there is too much
carbon in the air, which traps in the heat. And, our
population got real big and there‘ more people in
the world than the earth can support – whoopsie.
13. COLTAN
• Look, mobile phones – now we can be on facebook
instead of litsening to that boring idiot with the power
point – awesome!
• Circuit boards for mobile phones require coltan – coltan
comes from central Africa.
• Gorilla habitat is being destroyed to mine coltan.
• Extensive civil war through this region – armies in
Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the Congo are all
financed by the sale of coltan – usually with local slaves.
• Watch the video and read info about coltan mining at
OES blog
• Anyone seen ‗Hunger Games‘?
14. ALBERT SPEER
• Born in Germany in 1905.
• Licensed architect by age of 23.
• Speer‘s creative genius as Hitler‘s Armaments
minister is credited with keeping WW II going far
longer than it otherwise would have.
• Jailed for 20 years after the war.
15. • ―after years of frustrated efforts I was wild to
accomplish things – and twenty-eight years old. For
the commission to do great building, I would have
sold my soul like Faust. Now I had found my
Mephistopheles”.
• “One seldom recognises the devil when he has his
hand on your shoulder”
16. WHAT SHOULD WE DO INSTEAD?
• ―To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution
of intelligent tinkering.‖
- Aldo Leopold
17. WHAT, JUST BAD STUFF?
• Widespread impacts of industrialisation led to
romantic movement – appreciating beauty and
celebrating nature.
• This led to establishing National Parks and
preservation societies.
• Provides us with greater access to the natural world
– photos, stories, transportation, comfort while in
there.
• Watch the ‗Wild Fashions‘ video and read info
about surfboards at OES blog
19. KEY POINTS
• TECHNOLOGY REMOVES US FROM NATURE.
Our relationship is now more distant.
• Technology gives us access to natural
environments.
• THERE IS AN ‘UNEASY REALTIONSHIP’ BETWEEN
TECHNOLOGY AND PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT THE
NATURAL WORLD.
20. GEORGE WRIGHT
―The limited empirical evidence available suggests
that the increasing use of technology in outdoor
recreation will have fundamental effects on the
emotional relationship between humans and the
natural environment, resulting in a lessened
emotional attachment to the land, especially in local
areas. This may be critical to our future relationship to
the land‖
21. ALDO LEOPOLD
• ―Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-
earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen
that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that
industry supports us, forgetting what supports
industry.‖
22. • ―Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for
granted until progress began to do away with
them. Now we face the question whether a still
higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things
natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the
opportunity to see geese is more important that
television.‖
• ―The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.‖
23. • ―But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-
clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a
hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic
health as to have lost the capacity to remain
healthy. . . . Nothing could be more salutary at this
stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora
of material blessings.‖
