Why I’ve Come to Question My Inner Luddite
Recent technological innovations are proving that technorealism is a thing.
When it comes to techno-optimism and the twin climate and ecological crises, I have been mostly a Luddite when it comes to solutions. The fact that our entire economy is so dependent on burning shit—our most dependable and enduring mode of technology—hasn’t exactly given me confidence that we will find technological solutions to these problems. The absent response on the part of our political innovations since the 1992 Rio Summit has provided the evidence. Moreover, none of the technological answers we have found seem to deal with the root cause of these crises, so any solutions are likely to cause more.
In this regard, I’m still very sceptical. However, in recent years, I’ve come to embrace the idea that the future is anything but forecastable. Believing firmly that we are headed for an apocalypse no longer seems like a good bet.
My first lesson in this was believing that the world was standing on the brink of a peak oil crisis in the 2000s. There was much written on the subject at the time (I have several books on the topic), and “the science” was “clear”. But 9/11 had caused a big push in North America to become energy independent, and, low and behold, US energy firms figured out a way to squeeze oil out of rocks, not to mention making the country one of the world’s biggest energy producers in the process. By 2018, oil production had risen to a new high. Fracking is not anything I’d ever want in my backyard, but its rise proves a point—you should never underestimate our fellow human beings, especially capitalists.
Simply put, humans are extremely creative and ingenious. We have a ridiculous amount of stored knowledge from generations of thinkers at our disposal, and a truly incredible technological capacity. A great many of us care about what is happening ecologically to our planet and are working towards solutions. Moreover, the ones that aren’t interested still respond to crises. The fact that we’ve done so little, so late on environmental crises means we will have to live with their consequences for centuries to come, but there will be responses and there will be solutions—of that, I no longer have any doubt. How those will transpire is the question.
And in that regard, there is much to consider. This week’s announcement of a fusion reaction that created energy gain is rather huge for obvious reasons. At the same time, it is expected that solar will soon be cheaper that coal. Tech like precision fermentation has me excited about possible solutions to agriculture that would allow for potential rewilding in the future. And these are just a few of the rather incredible innovations happening at the moment (read this piece by Noah Smith to get an overview of the successes we’ve had recently).
In our political innovations, there are also reasons (albeit limited) for optimism. The growing push for citizens assemblies and deliberative democracy appear to be a legitimate method of overcoming deadlock in our representative democracies and are also inclusive.
None of this, of course, should be used as a case to put the blinders back on. We have done too little, too late—that is fact. We are still in for a world that is much less certain than it was before, and the suffering that is baked into our climate will happen. We must learn that lesson and discuss deeply the reasons why it happened (hint: unfettered capitalism). We should act now and heed the calls to launch a global effort to cut fossil fuels out of our energy consumption at a scale on par with the Second World War’s mobilization while working towards alleviating as much as possible the coming suffering through mitigation and adaptation.
What is more, none of these technological solutions truly deal with our disconnection from nature, each other and reality as whole—perhaps the truly Luddite concern. Any technological solutions will continue to disrupt and wreak havoc on untold populations and estrange us further from our pre-modern roots without behavioural changes in our societies.
Nevertheless, the gains that could come from a political push to resolve these crises should we keep our relationship with each other and the planet front of mind have the potential to be truly transformative—technologically, politically and perhaps spiritually.
And it is with this outlook in mind that the apocalyptic sense of doom which has pervaded our thought for the past decade is feeling, if not exactly overblown, then at least naïve. Rather than techno-optimism, perhaps technorealism is in order. We just can’t know the future; it is not, with the exception of fracking, written in stone. Thankfully, not everyone has fallen into this trap.
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