e-portfolio for Kelly Fanty

Second Draft of Paper 4

When one imagines the future of the world, it is easy to get carried away and propose that in fifty years we will all be driving hover cars and living like the Jetsons. As appealing as this fantasy may seem, it does not appear to be very realistic. It also fails to acknowledge any kind of environmental impact or sacrifice. Using David E Nye’s “Sustainable Abundance, or Ecological Crisis,” Carolyn Merchant’s Ecological Revolutions, and an excerpt from Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger’s Break Through as evidence to present their distinct opinions on the future of the world. Using their opinions on the current state of the world, I will form my own predictions about the future of our world. Fifty years from now promises new technological development, but at what cost to the environment?

David E Nye, whose essay focuses on the level of Earth’s carrying capacity being in the hands of the people, would likely make a very ambiguous and winding prediction for the future of the Earth. He would bet that although many people were concerned about the environment, some cultures, such as the United States, were unable to let go of their consumerism in favor of less demanding living situations. The resulting world population of 2064 would be widely varied in economic or material wealth. People would use new forms of technology to power their lives and homes, as the inflexibility of American society would dry up all of the oil resources. Nye’s prediction would also include a negative outlook on waste management. The environmental effects of the use of fossil fuels, as he predicts in his essay, “another 100 years of intense use of fossil fuels will accelerate global warming, increase desertification, and cause many coastal areas to be flooded by rising seas” (Nye, 96). Fifty years from now we’ll be halfway to that prediction. Despite some individual’s best efforts, Nye would predict that those countries with the strongest economic initiative would dominate the world. They would differ from each other, but environment would remain on the back burner until profits were at risk. Like Nye’s essay, his bet would include cultural differences that would affect the continually declining state of the world.

Carolyn Merchant, on the other hand, would be very concrete in her predictions. Her book includes detailed descriptions of the two major ecological revolutions that have occurred in New England. She labels them the colonial and the capitalist revolutions. It is likely she would predict the third major revolution to occur within the next fifty years. She takes a deterministically negative view of the interaction between Earth and technology, saying, “Nature is a whole of which humans are only one part…Through science and technology, we have great power to alter the whole in short periods of time” (Merchant, 9). She sees the world as something that people take advantage of, and her bet would include a grim ecological forecast, where humans are unwilling to give up the use of technology in favor of a more Earth-friendly system. As a result, technology replaces more and more of our natural resources. These resources are not only valuable for the products we make out of them, but also the health and beauty they add to our world, as well as the other organisms that need them. Based on her book, it is safe to say that merchant would be in favor of abandoning a large portion of technology, but realistically knows her opinion is not the popular one.

Nordhaus and Shellenberg collectively have a different opinion from Merchant and Nye. They open their book with a brief overview of their influential essay, “The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World.” In this essay they criticized the “doomsday” approach of most environmentalists, and quoted Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of inspiring images rather than negative ones. They attribute most of the world’s environmental crises to the way activists approached the general public, and the discontinuity between the problems and the proposed solutions to these problems. It is likely that their bet would be the most optimistic of the three. They would predict that by 2064, science would have developed new technology for major problems like energy consumption and pesticide control. They state:

Few things have hampered environmentalism more than its longstanding position that limits to growth are the remedy for ecological crises. We argue for an explicitly pro-growth agenda tat defines the kind of prosperity we believe is necessary to improve the quality of human life and to overcome ecological crises (Nordhaus and Shellenberger, 15).

Unlike Carolyn Merchant, Nordhaus and Shellenberger are supporters of economic growth, because when people are not worried about sustaining life, they are more willing to focus and put effort into sustaining earth and its resources. Their prediction would include a more stable economy that allowed a global focus on sustainable resources. Their predicted solutions would be in the technological field. Embracing new, eco-friendly technology rather than abandoning technology as a whole would create the sort of future that Nordhaus and Shellenberger would expect. In their essay they cite developments in transportation, microchips, medicines, and other innovated resources as the answer to our biggest problems. They would also predict that these changes came about due to a change in environmentalist methods. Although I believe that they would predict an overwhelmingly optimistic future, the world would not be without its flaws. They would expect damage to have occurred from our current use of resources, but hope that we would be able to reverse at least some of the damage.

Given these three distinct opinions, I am able to form my own predictions about 2064. Given the vast history of environmental change, it is not easy to predict what new developments will occur and how people will choose to use them. I would bet that by that time there would be some serious damage incurred from resources we are abusing right now. I predict that although there will be severe damage, there will also be new technological developments designed to replace the most harmful products used today. If people use this technology to its advantage is questionable. I suspect that although most people will have adapted to what are currently considered new innovations, what gets developed between now and then will not be fully integrated into society. I also feel that although there will still be a huge economic range, it will be somewhat decreased from today, where it ranges from countries full of people who can’t feed themselves to societies where people don’t know what to do with their money. Between all these new advances and the damage of past technology, I feel that our world would look much different than it currently does.

No one ever knows for certain what the future holds. Especially in terms of undiscovered technology, it is difficult to predict what will be discovered. Nye, Merchant, and Nordhaus and Shellenberger would all make different bets for our future based on their opinion of today’s environmental issues. Given that they were not all written in the same year, different predictions are expected. Although since both Nye and Nordhaus and Shellenberger were within the past 3 years, it is Merchant, whose book was published in the late eighties, who lacks a complete background on updates in technology, ecology, and environment, affected by modern society. The only thing one can be certain of, however, is that the future will be different. It is impossible for our world to stay exactly the same.

Second Draft of Paper 3

Imagine a world so crowded, the government issues tasteless food tablets and you are assigned to a small, crowded room to live. The fear of overcrowding has been around since the 20^th century. David Nye addresses the issue of overcrowding in his essay, “Sustainable Abundance or Ecological Crisis?” He discusses the various views on ecological crises in today’s society, and how cultural differences affect the carrying capacity of the earth. He states that the amount of people the earth can hold depends on what the people ask of the world. I agree with him in that the world will be much healthier and hold more people if we treat its resources graciously rather than demanding every ounce of what’s available.

Nye presents the pre-20^th century opinion of the effect of technology on the world first. People used to believe that mechanization and industrialization would only help the people of the world. They did in fact decrease working hours, increase wages, and make more goods available to the general public. Nye says, “Although social classes persist, they [technological liberals] argue, the life of the average person continues to improve” (88). The elimination of slavery was helped by industrialization, which helped, at some level, to reduce poverty. With each new development in fields like farming, business was transferred to the areas that supported the new technology best. Nye references Daniel Webster and Edward Everett, “They argued that more technical skill and more mechanical power led to a higher level of civilization” (91). The idea that technological power made a civilization more intelligent or important was long held by many Americans, and was used as a promotion tool for mechanical equipment. For many years, the increased use of technology ignored potential environmental side effects.

What these people didn’t realize, Nye now explains, is that the ecological effects of industrialization have the potential to completely eliminate earth’s resources. He says, “Another 100 years of intense use of fossil fuels will accelerate global warming, increase desertification, and cause many coastal areas to be flooded by rising seas” (96). From pollution of cars and factories to pesticides and poisons in farming, the earth is deteriorating at a much faster rate than it is building. The constant desire for more things from food to cars drove the technological advances. The use of farming equipment allowed great surpluses of food to be gathered, but not all varieties of soil are able to produce healthy crops year after year. This led to the use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Nye references Rachel Carson, who explored the detrimental effects of the pesticide DDT on the environment. The use of pesticides ended up wiping out an important species of bird in the ecological circle. Many scholars in Great Britain were promoting technological pessimism. Ideas like Frankenstein, man’s uncontrollable machine, and the idea that men are now mechanical at heart were used to denounce technological advances.

Even in areas now heavily wooded, there is evidence of the past landscaping used for farming. Nowhere is free of technology’s footprint, but many European countries have tried to bring nature back. The Netherlands, for example, decided to stop the draining of water from the Zuider Zee, and “learned to see the tamed Zuider Zee as the equivalent of a giant lung in the country, providing moisture, cleaner air, fishing, ecological diversity, and recreation areas” (Nye 106). Europeans also reintroduced the use of the hedgerow to help restore the ecological cycle and help control wind in fields. Though once Europeans had been envious of the options and luxury of the United States, they now maintain the same high standards of living, “but use only half as much energy per capita” (Nye 105).

The carrying capacity of the world has been estimated to be between 2 billion and 15 billion by various experts. How realistic these estimates are depends on what the standard of living for all citizens is. When people are not afforded luxuries, and just given the bare minimum of food and space, the carrying capacity is much greater than if people drive large SUV’s and eat meat. Thomas Moore believed that reducing human wants would increase the amount of leisure time. With greater leisure time would also come a larger carrying capacity. Many scholars promoted the idea of living on the bare necessities in order to increase happiness, as man often lets his possessions control him. Rather than going to either extreme, man should look for ways to reduce his ecological impact, and often this can be achieved without reducing the quality of life.

I believe Nye correctly portrays the vast variety of ecological destruction from nation to nation. When you look around the United States, you see sprawling shopping areas with huge parking lots full of SUV’s. You also see grassy lawns maintained with excessive watering and pesticides. The American consumerist ideals have overwhelmed our resources, and now we import much more than we export or produce ourselves. In contrast, many European nations have sprawling wilderness with compact urban centers, where more people use public transportation and smaller cars. In further contrast, there are developing nations who just need food and shelter. When mechanized countries (such as American) offer help, it would be better to teach them low-tech methods for sustaining their economy rather than co-dependent, expensive technological equipment.

If the whole world lived like Americans do, the carrying capacity would be significantly lower. As Nye says, “Ultimately, the world’s carrying capacity is not a scientific fact but a social construction. Nature is not outside us, and it does not have fixed limits” (108). With proper use of resources, we are able to control earth’s capabilities, but we must work in tandem rather than against Mother Nature.

Nye, David. "Sustainable Abundance or Ecological Crisis?" Technology Matters. 87-108.

This video describes the efforts of Taylor and Ford to have control over the factory. By studying and creating a system, Taylor was able to micromanage the workers to follow his own plan, and work to the best of their abilities. Ford created the assembly line in order to keep his systematic workers moving at the designated pace, feeding and being fed by the entire factory as a system. These ideas have been applied to the production of almost everything, like the hamburger. While the assembly line is the most efficient way of producing something, this technology removes the need for skilled workers with a greater understanding of their trade. It removes all personalization. With the level of control managers gained with assembly line systems, it is easy for them to abuse their power and push the workers too hard. The assembly line revolutionized factory work and is a technology that has greatly increased productivity in the workplace.


ROUGH DRAFT OF PAPER ONE

With the increased development of technology comes a new set of problems. Each new advance designed to make life easier presents one more thing that man must depend on and be subjected to its limitations. Ralph Waldo Emerson stated such a theory in 1846, while technology was just starting to develop. More recently, David Nye expanded on the idea of the level of control technology has over us. His point of view is much more complex than Emerson’s as he gives evidence to both support and contradict Emerson’s statement.

Emerson’s poem “Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing” (1846) presents a long response to the subject of slavery and the hopes of ending it. One part in particular creates a powerful metaphor for the control technology has over us. He states “Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.” With this statement he references the ultimate position of dominance, the saddle. By stating, “Things are in the saddle,” he means that what man has created for his own use holds power over us, and controls us. Emerson also says, “The last [thing] builds town and fleet, but it runs wild, and doth the man unking.” He is further enforcing his earlier statement with this sentence. Technology, or “things” were created to make man’s life easier, but the extent of their power has “run wild” and replaces mankind in the place of power. Emerson is very firm in his argument that technology controls man, despite the fact that man is one who created technology and things. He seems to believe that there are separate rules for man and thing when he says, “There are two laws discrete not reconciled, law for man, and law for thing…” By saying “not reconciled” he seems to be implying that man and thing cannot work together without one overpowering the other, and given the rest of this section of his poem he is confidant that it is thing that controls man. Although man has created technology, he is controlled by it and allows himself to be “unkinged” by the very thing he creates.

Davide Nye’s essay “Does Technology Control Us?’ presents a significantly more complicated argument. Nye presents examples of man both rejecting technology’s influence and being consumed by it. Firstly, he presents the samurai class in Japan, who were introduced to guns and perfectly capable of making them, but refused to use them to maintain their culture and honor. Also referenced are the Amish, who use technology like phones as little as possible, and reject mechanical farm equipment in order to remain self-sustaining. These examples show that society can reject technology’s influence. Nye references various historians and sociologists’ views on how rather than technology forcing itself upon mankind, it is society that chooses to allow technology to overcome them. In addition to this evidence, Nye also presents views on “technological determinism” which is the belief that technology has the power to change society, when Nye concludes that its not technology but the society that uses the technology that allows change to occur. Nye states, “Awareness of particular tools or machines does not automatically force a society to adopt them or keep them” (20). In short, it is the society that chooses the amount of control they allow technology to have over them. What past societies have chosen affects what technology we are dependant upon today.

On the other hand, Nye provides examples and facts that prove how dependant on technology we are in accordance with Emerson’s statement. He cites multiple historians and experts who claim that technology progressed faster than society, such as Toffler who argued “Technological change had accelerated to the point where people could barely cope with it” (27). Toffler was not alone in his belief that technology would surpass man’s capabilities, and somehow stall its progress. Other important historical figures including Marx, Ogburn and McLuhan are cited commenting on technology causing social change. Marx argues that what he refers to as mechanization will end poorly for the working class. He claimed that what was once a man’s refined skill would now be the simple job of operating a machine. Nye presents many such examples of how technology will control society’s progress and ultimately mankind.

Emerson’s argument against technology gets vastly more complicated with Nye’s essay. Although Nye presents many arguments supporting Emerson, he also provides strong evidence about society’s ability to reject technology as a whole. While Emerson claimed that technology had complete control over us, Nye complicates the argument by looking at more factors than just results. He explores the societal effect of each technological development and examines what effect past choices have on the limitations of current situations. While Emerson simply states that things have the power in the relationship between man and object during the current time, Nye references history and scholars on the various ways society has rejected or accepted new advances. Given the more complex argument Nye presents, Emerson’s thesis is significantly complicated.

While Emerson has a very strong statement, he doesn’t provide much evidence, as it is an idea in a poem rather than an essay, such as Nye’s argument. Even so, Emerson’s stand is much more convincing than Nye’s based on the state of the world today. Mankind uses technology in almost every aspect of life today and allows its limitations to control us. We as a society are subject to what our things allow us to do. Despite Nye’s arguments that society can escape technology’s power, the history of the United States has set up modern civilization to be consumed by technology and its advances. I believe that society has the option to either embrace or reject something new, and whatever they embrace eventually consumes them until they need something new to get out of it. Society breeds its own dependency on technology and enters into a vicious cycle that is extremely difficult to leave.

Works Cited:

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing.” (1846) Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York, Boston, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company: 1899

Nye, David E. Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT, 2007. Print.