NEGATIVE - CRITIQUE OF TECHNOLOGY 162

TECHNOLOGY BRINGS HUGE EVIL — GENERAL

TECHNOLOGY IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF MOST GLOBAL PROBLEMS

Barry Commoner, Dir.. Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Queens College, MAKING PEACE WITH THE PLANET, 1990, p. 15.

What we call the "'environmental crisis" -- the array of critical unsolved problems ranging from local toxic dumps to the disruption of global climate -- is a produce of the drastic mismatch between the cynical, conservative, and self-consistent processes of the ecosphere and the linear, innovative,but ecological disharmonious processes of the technosphere.

NEW TELECOMMUNICATIONS BRINGS GLOBAL DISASTER

Joseph N. Pleton, Former Dir., Strategic policy, INTELSAT, "Telepower: The emerging global brain," THE FUTURIST, SeptemberOctober, 1989, p. 10.

[Growing telepower) will bring us telewar, technology-based terrorism, technological unemployment, and information overload.

TECHNOLOGY HAS NOT SOLVED PROBLEMS, BUT CREATED THEM AND CAUSED US TO BE INDIFFERENT

Murray Bookchin. Social ecologist, REMAKING SOCIETY 1989, p. 20.

The certainty that technology and science would improve the human condition is socked by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, by massive hunger in the Third World, and by poverty in the First World. The fervent belief that liberty would triumph over tyranny is belied by the growing centralization of states everywhere and by the disempowerment of people by bureaucracies, police forces, and sophisticated surveillance techniques in "democracies" no less than in visibly authoritarian countries. The hope that we would for= "one world," a vast community of disparate ethnic groups that would share their resources to improve life everywhere, has been shattered by a rising tide of nationalism, racism, and an unfeeling parochialism that fosters indifference to the plight of millions.