IMPACTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
- ASPECTS CONCERNING ENVIRONMENT AND HOLISTIC WELL-BEING
By Prof.Dr. Erkki Pulliainen, MP
The worldwide important key question now is, how man uses the creativity which has resulted in elements from ethic norms to very sophisticated but, at the same time destructive and/or ecologically unacceptable technical solutions.
Although man has a huge intellectual potential, he/she has so far never consciously really influenced the direction of human life's great changes on this planet, and he/she has never understood the influences of his/her behaviour and reproduction on his/her values and attitudes. Man's previous cultures have not known this, the present one does owing to the findings of science. This sets great, and in many respects decisive, responsibility on the present advanced civilized democracies and political leaders.
In order to pick up lessons from past experience for the planning of the future we have to review the main points of man's deceased cultures and the previous phases of the present technoculture.
The Harvard professor Marvin Harris has shown that deceased cultures have followed the same pattern in their development. At the very beginning there was a breeding pair, a man and his wife, which successfully raised its offspring. During the next generations the population further increased in numbers which resulted in demand for increasing the efficiency of both food production and building new shelter. In the prevailing conditions a situation was finally achieved in which further improvement of efficiency was impossible within the area at their disposal.
If the efficiency has been maximized, the only relevant choice has appeared to be to increase competition for the essential natural resources available. Competition tends to favour acceptance of habits previously held as unacceptable, i.e. bad habits ritualize. In many deceased cultures, among others, killing of children has been held "natural" in this phase of the change. This kind of development must have finally led to the crash of the whole culture. This has also taken place. Today we can look at ruins of buildings left behind these cultures in South and Central America, for instance.
The era of industrialism can be divided into periods, which can be named according to some industry or industries. Our planet is so small that also here one or two sectors have been dominant during each of the 40 through 60 year-long periods. Each period has been finished by the saturation of markets when "all have been doing the same things". The four past periods were as follows:
I. The period of the steam engine and cotton;
II. The period of the steel industry and railways;
III. The period of the electric industry and chemistry, and
IV. The period of petrochemistry and the motor industry.
The electronics of the third period still "live" today in the solutions of the period of information technology (IT). It represents sustainable development more than the previous periods, since its main solutions demand less material and consume less energy than the great majority of those of the previous periods. It is another question, whether people will decrease their overall consumption or not for this reason.
Everyone of the major periods passed have lasted, as already mentioned, 40 through 60 years. Now it is clear that the IT period did not last so long. Its highlight is clearly shorter than 40 years and its climax is already behind us. This means that we should prepare to the next period of economic depression during the next few years as well as to the next rise, whatever it may be.
The events in the world stock markets in the beginning of this century showed that the so-called market forces may not have any sense in their profit demands. They do not accept the fact that in a finite world infinite growth is impossible. This ignorance can only lead to a worldwide steep crash in the stock markets. Due to the lack of liquid money it has stopped the rapid expansion in the IT sector and leaves further development to take place in less hectic conditions.
IT constitutes a 1700 billion US dollars market. The corresponding figure for the motor industry has been said to be 1200 billion US dollars. Recalling the situation in the beginning of the 1930's the expected depression between the two major periods can be raised to an action with the volumes of this size class. There will be, however, basic differences in this respect as compared to the past.
The most significant differences are that there will be no dominant sector to characterize the next period(s) and that we cannot speak about economic growth in the old, conventional way. The next period might be called a "multiaction" one. It will gather its main activities from those necessities which formed as such, since the people and especially companies of the previous periods had neglected their environmental duties. They also include the agroforestry establishments in the desertificated areas.
Sustainable development presumes that old energy systems are replaced with those using renewable energy sources and that energy and material-consuming technical solutions are replaced by energy saving ones. Many of the findings of the periods of electronics and IT are thus still, in principle, useful. They are also used in environmental technology which in such may achieve a 500 billion US dollars market. Biotechnology tends to grow, but environmental risks will strongly limit the markets for its solutions.
Services have already played a significant role in the post-industrialized society of the IT period. Since they usually mean low consumption of energy and material, their importance even increases both during the transitory depression and the successive multiaction period.
The science of ecology studies the relationships of plants and animals to their outside world. In the same way we can speak about the "ecology of man". Limiting factors play an essential role in the life of animals. One of them is above all others, namely the one called "a masking factor". It masks the influence of all the other limiting factors. When man sets his foot on an ant so that it dies, man has been a masking factor in the life of this ant.
Masking factors also concern man. Human population growth is becoming a masking factor which threatens man as a species. Man can accelerate the destructive development by commencing to fight for the remaining natural resources. The war in Kuwait was a prologue of this kind of possibility and the present war against terrorism another one. When we recall the life curve of the deceased cultures, the competition for resources growing scarce is to be expected. Since nations as units and alliances have heavily armed in case of a war, we must work hard so that the competition does not change into a war. Then war would be a massive masking factor.