by Maceo Carrillo Martinet
Daily Lobo columnist
I don't believe in the myth of technology any more.
You know what I mean - the myth that technology will solve all of our problems, and that technology has contributed to the well-being of this world. For too long technology has been guided by those seeking to make a profit from people and nature. For too long technology has been used to exploit the land and subdue people's ability to think for themselves.
I began having my doubts about technology when it was said it was going to make us communicate better. When televisions were first introduced into our lives we were told it was going to be an education revolution. The first commercials about television showed how kids could spend time learning in front of the television while dad caught up on reading his newspaper and mom was in kitchen cooking.
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When computers first came out they said computers would help revolutionize humanity's ability to communicate. While dad caught up on some yard work, and mom was in the kitchen cooking, our kids could spend quality time learning about the world through the Internet.
If our ability to communicate is supposed to be so advanced, then why were we so quick to go to war in Iraq? We should never forget that millions across the country and the world spoke out against the war even while we heard government officials and their media pet-puddles yapping at their feet about the threat of nuclear war on every television set, as well as the outright lies from the government about the connection between Saddam and al-Qaida's terrorism. The fact that so many came out against the war was a heartening signal that those who control technology do not have complete control over our ability to think critically about this world.
If technology has helped us communicate better, why is domestic abuse so prevalent? Why are so many of our young men and women incarcerated? Why are so many of our youth born into a life of incarceration, where their ability to grow as human beings is stunted and abused because of their lack of money or because of the color of their skin?
Why are more and more young people finding friends and lovers through the Internet? Is this another reflection of how society is becoming disconnected from itself, or is it just becoming rewired?
I don't believe in the myth of technology because it helps keep us in a state of fear. We continue to fear someone who looks a certain way. We continue to fear that we smell bad or have too many pimples. We continue to fear having to talk honestly to one another for fear of being hurt. We fear what we don't know, and our advanced technology has done little to help reveal the beauty this world contains.
Technology will only solve our problems to the extent that we solve our own internal problems. The United Nations commissioned 1,360 scientists from 95 countries to assess how humans have changed the world's air, landscape and waters. One of the key messages in their report released in January was that the future looks grim for our children unless human attitudes and actions change. Changing our attitudes and actions will not be solved through technology as it exists and operates today.
Until we change where we get and use energy and water, we will always be haunted with the myth that technology will solve our problems without effort on our part.
Until we change our relationship with the world from one that sees humans as superior to everything on Earth to one that is based on reciprocity and respect for nature, then we will continue to be haunted with the myth that we are making things better for our children.
We have to reweave our tangled connections. We have to reinvent the enemy's language and recycle its technology. Let us not be shocked and awed by our technology just because of the amount of destruction we can cause with such a small device, or the amount of memory we can store in such a small device.
Let us be shocked and awed by technology that can sustain not only us but the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat.
We do not have to believe in the myths anymore.
