Letter to my children: Technology will not save us
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Dearest Beloveds,
When I was in my early tweens I came home from school after a parent presentation from Senator Al Gore about the J curve and global warming.*
I was very upset and Baba took me on a walk. “Dad! There are too many people on this planet and not enough resources! Did you know there is trash in the ocean? There is rain that has so much acid in it that statues are MELTING!”
I remember him taking a deep breath and turning to me. “Don’t worry, Corinna, technology will save us.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, there are very smart people out there who are working on this now and it will be okay.”
My beloveds, I am never going to tell you that technology will save us from the mess we have made on our Mother: the Earth.
There are three reasons why: 1) the physical needs of technology directly harm the earth 2) technology separates us from the present moment 3) technology is the latest iteration of human supremacy that created the schism in the first place.
Let’s dive into each of these three points in turn. This is going to be fun.
#1 - The physical needs of technology directly harm the earth.
I had the odd privilege recently to talk to someone whose job was in data storage. She works in data storage. I had recently read an article about the amount of energy being used to cool data centers and asked her what large organizations are doing to offset their carbon footprint around such things.
She answered my 10,000 foot softball question with a ground level fastball.
It was something along these lines, “The energy needed for the data storage is a problem yes, but there is a whole host of other issues too. For example, I work with museums and they started data backup in the 1980s with floppy disks. Each time technology made a jump to better systems, they jumped to the next one. So now there are buildings with old computers and old operating systems being stored so the floppy disks and the CDs can be read. They are maintaining these buildings with defunct machinery in case someone needs to access those files.”
She took a deep breath and continued, “Moreover, in order to not have a file degrade in these digital storage centers it has to be accessed on a regular basis. Someone has a schedule to call up obscure data on a regular basis to keep the file intact.”
As Baba would say, this situation definitely does not pass the laugh test.** In terms of sustainability, practicality, and responsible stewardship of the earth’s resources that “storage solution” is absolutely absurd.***
A fews weeks later, I read the article in the New Yorker about the town of Spruce Pine, NC, entitled, “The Real Cost of Plundering the Planet’s Resources.” Never heard of Spruce Pine? Neither had I - but “without Spruce Pine, though, the global economy might well unravel.” Spruce Pine is one of the only spots that has the certain kind of quartz that can made into a crucible pure enough for silicon to be heated to 2700 degrees F. The silicon that makes microchips that runs semi conductors. “No production of semiconductors would mean no production of computers, cell phones, automobiles, microwaves, game consoles, fitness trackers, digital watches, digital cameras, televisions—the list goes on and on.” The global banking system, communication networks, etc etc etc.
“Contemporary society continues to rely on raw materials, like Spruce Pine’s quartz, taken from the earth. Indeed, extraction rates, far from slowing, keep accelerating. These days, Conway reckons, humanity mines, drains, and blasts more stuff out of the ground each year than it did in total during the roughly three hundred millennia between the birth of the species and the start of the Korean War. This comes with immense consequences, both ecological and social, even if we don’t attend to them.”
We need electricity to babysit our technology (even more than originally estimated, given AI requirements) and electricity generation is itself various degrees of harmful. I don’t know what is worse - mining for rare earth metals needed for solar panels or mountaintop mining to feed coal fired power plants. Or that, because of AI, we are discussing building nuclear power plants. I wish everyone would take a deep breath and ask themselves WHY do we need all of this energy? Will it make people feel more loved? Safe? Empowered? Connected to their communities and each other.
Hardly.
#2 - Technology separates us from the present moment.
Honestly rereading #1 makes me want to hide under the bed and think of something else.
Guess what, technology is really good for that.
Instead of sitting with an uncomfortable feeling and leaning into it. Why do I feel this way? What is my body trying to tell me about my reaction in this moment? Do I need to cry? Do I need to do my Fists of Anger? Meditate? Go for a walk? Talk to a tree? Jumping jacks? Talk to a friend and brainstorm solutions? Work to fix the problem? Protest?
Technology takes it all away. Come… you haven’t visited Instagram in a while, what is going on there? Do we have time for a movie? Or a podcast? Or just scrolling YouTube clips? You could always rewatch some old Netflix favorites? Have you checked the weather for this weekend? What about the latest news? Come on, just 15 minutes. You have time for that. And this feeling will go away because you gave it space and you will feel like yourself again.****
Beloveds, brushing discomfort under the rug and expecting that to fix the problem does not work. The discomfort you feel in the present moment is the impetus to do something different. Ignoring that feeling by anesthetizing the symptoms with technological morphine creates a vicious feedback loop.
The more you anesthetize, the more your limbic brain is hijacked, the more it is susceptible to hijacking. Each time the loop runs, the stronger the loop becomes.
The good news is, as Arkan Lushwala says in his latest book The Spirit of the Glacier Speaks, “hell only needs to be feared when one gets used to living in it.” (page 91)
#3 - Technology is the latest iteration of human supremacy that created the schism in the first place.
Three books I am reading, rereading, listening to, relistening to again and again and again. And again.
Lushwala’s Glacier Speaks
Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta (thank you MDeG)
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
I want everyone to read and reread and GROK these beautiful books. These books speak of remembering.
Remembering the songs of the trees.
Remembering animacy in what English labels as objects.*****
Remembering we are water protectors.
Remembering that we are not the center of our world.
Human supremacy is a term Lushwala coined as the latest iteration of the white supremacy. The white supremacy that brought us colonialism, racism, etc etc.
Lushwala states. “The healing of the world will be created through the cooperation of everyone who lives on Earth, from the smallest microscopic creatures to the fungi, plants, insects, tigers, whales, engineers, grandmothers, and even the rays of light that descend from the sky and enter the bodies of each of us. The Earth knows how to heal the Earth better than anyone.
White supremacy… [has shapeshifted] into human supremacy, this new disrespectful relationship with nature has also manifested in the behavior of those who have been colonized. In order to adapt to the modern world and get a job, we have had to learn the destructive behaviors of those who touted their supremacy throughout history.” (pages 86-87)
Beloveds, I am sorry I cannot tell you a simple answer for how we are going to get out of this mess we have created on this Earth.
I would love to be able to sit back and shout “technology is going to save us.” But that hubris is not is what is needed. What is needed is gratitude and love.
And patience and rage and honesty and action. Action directed by listening - listening to the wind in the trees, the crickets in the fields, the water flowing, to our inner hearts and nudges from The Good.
I love you so much, thank you for being my beloveds.
*This is a secret nod to the both of you for when you are older to realize what a rarified soup your Momma swam in during my years schooling in DC.
**I made a dictionary of Baba’s distinctive vocabulary for his Life Celebration. Here was that entry:
Pass the laugh test (idiom): A term illustrating the irrationality of an idea
As in, “Expecting a 17 year-old not to drink when out with their friends doesn’t even pass the laugh test. Just call me if you don’t feel safe driving home and I will turn off the light.”
Origin: Practical utilization of the legal concept - the Rational Basis Test.
***And yes, my website is stored in one of these data centers so that you to can access obscure writing that makes my heart soar to send out to the world. BOTH AND.
****This might be a good time to mention Huxley’s Brave New World. Read it.
***** Wall Kimmerer’s Chapter, Learning the Grammar of Animacy, blows my MIND. Saturday is a verb! To be a bay. To be a stream. Apple that being is. English, our global lingua franca, assumes our world is dead - making it easier to destroy, main, poison.
