[Pil-pc-oceania] More on hi-tech

[Terry Leahy]

I agree with Russ about all this stuff.  We need to constantly evaluate the technological developments as they appear and make comments accordingly, and that does mean keeping up to date.  On the other hand I think it is also as well to acknowledge that the world's people could live quite comfortably with iron smelting and tree crop agriculture and nothing a lot more high tech than that - providing the social structures and knowledge base optimised this technological base.  

We do not need to be mystified by the idea that current high tech solutions are necessary to a high "standard of living" in some absolute for all time sense - although it is also true that in a given social and historical context they may be absolutely necessary to prevent disaster - as in the North Korean example where the absence of cheap oil landed them in famine and starvation. 

I tend to like current communication technologies for their social potential in exchanging ideas around the planet and promoting cultural and aesthetic creation, but we clearly cannot sacrifice our ecology to preserve these benefits and hopefully we do not have to.  

In terms of current technological developments, I am most interested in Branson's $25 million prize for a technology that takes carbon out of the air (other than the obvious ones like planting trees!).  On that topic the most interesting one I have heard of is that being worked on by the writer of the Gaia hypothesis - Lovelock - who is proposing deep cylinders floating in the ocean to bring cold water to the surface to encourage algae growth to suck up carbon dioxide.  Clearly this is a tech fix solution and in the long term it may be no answer, but in the short term we are a long way from any political solutions to reduce emissions to the extent necessary.  

Ultimately, I think the problem with our technologies resides in capitalist economic structures in which capitalists compete to make profits by increasing the sale of products and reducing labour costs - while workers will buy anything to compensate for a life of forced labour.  These two social forces combine to constantly throw up new technologies that do not have environmental sanity as a key goal.  Demolishing these social structures is the only way to alter the balance so benign technological developments are more likely,

Cheers,

Terry

>>> RussGrayson <info at pacific-edge.info> Tuesday, 12 February 2008 4:48 pm >>>
On 11/2/08 10:53 PM, "ian lillington" <ian at masg.org.au> wrote:

> These techno-solutions are probably not what we need but I enjoy browsing them
> Some of them reappear at http://masg.org.au 
> Ian Lillington
 
For me, it raises the point of what we do see as relevant technologies.
Permaculture has never articulated a grand narrative that emcompasses
technological development. The movement itself is made up of people with
widely divergent attitudes to technological types, ranging from the
artisan-hand tool end to the hi-tech.

My attitude has been, and I beleive it still is, that expounded way back in
the late 1960s by an economist by the name of Fritz Schumacher, who wrote a
still influential book called 'Small is Beautiful- economics as if people
mattered'. He coined the term 'intermediate technology' to describe that
which was economical of expenses and maintenance needs and that did the job
well (that's a poor definition - see Wikipedia). It was 'intermediate' in
cost and inputs between the hi-tech of the day and traditional technologies.
Schumacher observed that traditional technologies could be inefficient and
could be improved, thus advancing them to the intermediate technology stage.
Thus, an animal drawn cart could be improved and made more efficient with
the addition of vehicle wheels, which could increase the load carried and
offered less rolling resistance.

Time have changed, like technlogy, since Fritz wrote and I imagine that,
today, he would see many computer based technologies, such as this global
communications systems we are presently communicating on, as appropriate -
'appropriate technology' was a later name applied to his ideas.

As users of this hi-tech communications media, that places us well within
the hi-tech technology camp, though we bring along useful elements of the
traditional and similar approaches in our baggage. After all, in using this
communications technology we rely on a global network of fibreoptic cables,
the near-space network of communications satellites and the areospace
industry that keeps them up there and a terrestial network of microwave
relays that carry our messages.

I suggest that permaculture has spread because, among other factors, it is
carried by hi-tech media such as email, Internet and DVD and, secondly,
because it is the product of a liberal democratic system that subscribes to
the free expression and transmission of ideas, without censorship and
without oversight by government.

I further suggest that sustainability, a sustainabilty that includes the
level of personal freedom compatible with a sustainable society (ie. that
suggested by the ethic, 'care of the people') can last and thrive in only
these conditions. Elements of sustainability might exist in a more
restrictive society lacking the free flow of information, but we know from
the hard lessons of history (the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc) that
repression creates resentment (see Burma, John Howard, China) and, when the
edifice finally crumbles, all that was good with it also falls.

In its approach to technology, I suspect that pemaculture will remain a
'many camps' settlement with some preferring the manual approach and other
taking advantage of the tools offered by hi-tech.

As for the technologies reported in the news links that came with an earlier
message in this thread, I sent them out because they represent the present
focus of sustinablity research.

I know there is resistance to hydrogen energy and I, too, share some of the
concerns. Yet, research moves on. Only a week ago, a Swiss team touring the
world in a vehicle powered by a mix of mains and photovoltaic electricity
stayed over here and made a presentation of their mission. Among those in
attendance was a UNSW researcher of hydrogen fuel technologies. His
responses to some of the objections about hydrogen energy from the audience
suggested to me that some of the concerns about it are being addressed.
Likewise, the mention of the vanadium redux technlogy for storing renewable
energy, already in advanced prototype stage on King Island adjacent to the
wind turbine farm. 

We must be careful at our criticisms of technologies like hydrogen are
rooted in current research, not that of a year or two ago. Doing that means
staying up to date with the science.

I wonder what the attitude of the science fiction writer, who mentions
permaculture in is work in a fovourable ight, would have to say on the
appropriateness of hi-tech?

...Russ Grayson




_______________________________________________
Pil-pc-oceania mailing list
Pil-pc-oceania at lists.permacultureinternational.org 
http://jasper.cmsarchitects.com/mailman/listinfo/pil-pc-oceania