Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won't Save Us Or the Environment

Welcome to our all-you-can-eat buffet of eco-predicaments, a remarkable achievement brought to you by our old friend, technological innovation. Our friend isn’t evil. He’s a hilarious charismatic trickster who excels at making comical mistakes. Every brilliant idea blows up in his face, flattens him with a boulder, or rockets him over a cliff. He never gives up. He never learns from his mistakes. He never succeeds.Like the trickster, Americans are famous for our manic techno-optimism. Economic growth and material progress make us giddy with delight, and seventy-two percent of us believe that the benefits far outweigh the harms. The planet doesn’t matter. Technology will certainly enable the kids to have a somewhat life-like experience, riveted to their glowing screens. A sane person can only conclude that we live in a world of illusions.Techno-Fix, by Michael and Joyce Huesemann, takes us on a voyage through the hall of illusions. It provides readers with magic x-ray glasses that allow us to see right through heavy layers of encrusted bull excrement and clearly observe our way of life in its bare-naked essence. It delivers a super-sized serving of precious common sense that should be a central part of every youngster’s rite of passage, but isn’t.The human species invented techno-addiction, a dangerous habit that seems impossible to quit; we always need bigger doses. This addiction has put quite a kink in our evolutionary journey, repeatedly blowing up in our face. Science and technology are the mommy and daddy of most of our severe problems. No other species has developed a fascination with endless growth. The other critters have remained in balance for millions of years, limited by predators and food supply, nature’s brilliant time-proven design.The Huesemanns note that we took a different path. “Humans have used powerful technologies to escape these natural constraints, first by using weapons to eliminate large predators, then by inventing agriculture to increase food supplies, and finally by employing sanitation and medical technologies to increase their chances for survival.”Our devious experiments at controlling and exploiting nature have created a thousand nightmares. We’ve zoomed right past seven billion, giving the planet quite a fever. Still, the mainstream mindset is convinced that life is always getting better and better, and that technology will overcome any challenges on our joyride to utopia. We have no doubt economic growth can continue until the sun burns out, and nothing will ever slow us down. According to Huesemann’s Law of Techno-Optimism, “Optimism is inversely proportional to knowledge.”The mainstream mindset is so weird — it celebrates the benefits of technology, and steps around the stinky messes, pretending not to see them. Innovation is never a free lunch. Every benefit has costs, and it’s impossible to predict every unintended consequence. When serious problems are discovered, we tend to resolve them with additional innovation, which generates additional unintended consequences. We can delay paying the bills for our mistakes, but every debt must and will be paid. It’s something like quicksand.A century ago, the benefits of the automobile were immediately apparent, and the staggering unintended consequences were not. This technology has caused huge damage to our health, our families and communities, the ecosystem, and the unborn. Car problems are still growing, as billions of people in the developing world are eager to live as foolishly as Americans do. The car and the television are our two biggest techno-bloopers, according to the Huesemanns.Foolish fantasies are the deliberate consequence of the mass media and advertising, which are tremendously successful at persuading folks that the purpose of life is to transfer as much stuff as possible from nature to landfills. “Needs” are what is necessary for survival and health, like food, shelter, and community. “Wants” are things we have no need for, stuff we have sudden impulses to acquire. They are infinite in number, constantly changing, generally frivolous, and often useless.The path to consumer happiness and high status involves devoting a substantial portion of our lives to doing various sorts of work. For many, the work is less than meaningful or satisfying. The reward is trade tokens, which are used to acquire wants, and each purchase provides a brief consumer orgasm. The thrill is soon gone, the gnawing returns, and we are compelled to go back to the mall and get another fix.No matter how hard we thrash our credit cards, we never arrive at our destination — wholeness and contentment. “We are chasing a mirage, thereby remaining forever dissatisfied and unhappy.” In the last 50 years, rates of depression in the U.S. have increased tenfold, and continue to rise (rates among the Amish are far lower).Depression is also a result of our mobility and isolation. Until the industrial era, most people spent their entire lives in stable communities, and formed long-term social bonds with the people around them. Before the hell of automobiles, daily life included pleasant face-to-face encounters with others. Before the hell of glowing screens, people spent little time sitting alone.Luckily, technology has a daffy response for any problem. It’s far easier to develop techno solutions than social solutions. Rather than attempting the social challenge of creating a way of life that isn’t so lonely and dreary, technology can simply chase away depression and anxiety with happy pills. It’s easier to build new road systems than it is to convince people to give up their cars. It’s easier to provide life-saving surgeries than it is to encourage people to vacate their couches and eat a healthy diet.The Huesemanns harbor special loathing for the medical industry. It’s extremely expensive, and remarkably ineffective. Intelligent, low cost preventative care is not the focus. New treatments are constantly being developed. The dead generate no profits, so we keep very sick people alive on machines; we transplant organs. Death must be delayed by any means necessary, regardless of cost. “If it can be done, it should be done.” We need to remember that old age and death are normal and natural.The last section of the book provides the theoretical solutions to our predicaments. This plan requires world leaders that will eagerly cooperate in rapidly and radically reconfiguring the way we live and think. It requires a humankind that is spiritually connected to nature, people who abhor pollution and mindless consumption, folks willing to make enormous sacrifices in order to ensure the wellbeing of future generations of all species. Energy will be renewable, non-renewable resources will be shunned, and all wastes will be safely biodegradable. The Huesemanns warn us that the transition might not be easy.

At some point western humans will wake up. I hope it is not too late. There are so many opportunities and hope. We can learn from the waste and pollution we have created and find happiness on the way. There are answers that will bring joy to all life on Earth; they just might not be the answers we have been lead to believe. Techno-Fix is a big step in the healing direction.Somehow, western humans remain like the crowd in The Emperor’s New Clothes, except for a few, Michael and Joyce Huesemann being the observers that see a truth others are unwilling to see. The child, the beginner’s mind, coming up with the answers that are obvious but not popular or easy. It is so easy to ride the hysteria of success, even if it is short-termed. We all have seen the rise and fall of so many trends or ideas within our fast moving life to know that everything we are told is not entirely true. That’s right, it isn’t. The way we use technology is one of them. Not technology itself – I am writing this on a computer to an online bookseller, I often teach online. I have many of the baubles of the millennia, but not necessarily the latest – every six month march to the advertiser’s beat. I am there, hardly a Luddite, but I see what the Huesemanns and the sage EF Schumacher sees, another way – an appropriate technology.Techno-Fix is a clear headed telling, researched and written by two credentialed scientists. Dr. Huesemann has a long-standing sustainable conscious that deals with sustainability in a way that far surpasses what is in the mindset of those who feel they are sustainable because they recycle or turn off their light when they leave the room. A good start but not even close. He realizes that to reach a sustainable existence for everyone there are multiple changes that will have to be made including consumption, population, and our mindset. There are no easy ways out. Technology, now accepted by so many with wide-eyed wonder, is a ruse created to make us buy more, to distract humans from their importance on Earth- a highly evolved species that seeks happiness, but often perhaps in the wrong places.While a search for happiness (there must be an app for that!) might not be what you expect in a book about warnings of materialistic technology, the authors realize that a singular “fix” is not the only answer, but one of many, but such an important one these days when so many are gee-gawd by the latest and greatest.Think about the whole picture, about the resources and energy, about those immutable laws of thermodynamics – or the ever appearing and true statement that there is no free lunch. Everything has a cost, and when we use energy and resources for an endless array of technologic distractions, we are creating endless waste and not living up to the human potential. Are we headed for what another array of authors note, our own extinction? Or can we really think about what our actions indicate and make decisions that really will bring us happiness?

I love the accessible language and explanations. It challenges you to think differently about the quick fix issues presented by politicians.

The book may be a bit too pessimistic but it raises some very valid points and will make you think twice about your actions. It tackles not only the issues of environment but addresses medicine, technology, businesses and society. We studied this as part of a university course but I can recommend it to anyone.