Technology: From the Beginning a Weighing of Pros and Cons, Benefits and Costs

This is an excerpt from my 2021 book Sensible Decarbonization: Regulation, Risk, and Relative Benefits in Different Approaches to Energy Use, Climate Policy, and Environmental Impact

    In their 1997 book, The Axemaker’s Gift: Technology’s Capture and Control of Our Minds, James Burke and Robert Ornstein wrote that technology has long been seen as a Faustian bargain where nature is altered with both costs and benefits and most of the time the benefits significantly outweigh the costs, particularly in the short-term.[1] We co-evolved with our technologies. Our technologies continue to evolve, to change things for the better. The net effect is always toward human progress. Mechanical engineer Adrian Bejan developed what he calls a first principle of physics called the Constructal Law.[2] Evolution, he says, is based on this principle where many things in nature can be seen in terms of flow systems where access to flow is the driver. Not only is there biological evolution but evolution of all flow systems and many human endeavors can be viewed as flow systems. We speak of the flow of money or capital and of the evolution of technology. These systems are perhaps more metaphorical, but they share some similar flow constraints.  The evolution of nature is toward greater access to flow, he says. Derived from the flow systems of engineering the Constructal Law is perhaps more a way of seeing, a shifting paradigm of how we view nature.[3] Similarly, some biologists are seeing biology more as a process as the recent book Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology documents.[4]

     Matt Ridley, in How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom suggests that human innovation is a kind of continuation of biological evolution, a process of refinement through recombination of previous human technologies.[5] Thus, it is cumulative. It also involves much selection. The concept of evolution suggests it as a path from one condition to another. In the strange mathematics of Chaos Theory there is flow or pull toward the “strange attractor” which has been likened to flow of water down a sink drain via gravity. In any case, technology evolves in response to selection of what works best, most effectively, most affordably, and most efficiently. Materials flow. Electricity flows. Scientific paradigms evolve, or change. Flow is change. Inputs flow in. Outputs flow out. Raw materials are often the inputs and waste, pollution, and carbon emissions are often the outputs. Our capitalistic economy and the technologies that it uses drive the inputs and outputs. We can circularize as we are able and as is economically feasible through recycling everything from waste heat to physical objects. Outputs, traditionally seen as external to economies, are now being internalized more as pollution, carbon emissions, and waste are captured, treated, neutralized, sequestered, reformulated, reused, or otherwise managed to reduce environmental harm. Unfortunately, CO2 is notoriously hard to circularize economically and after combustion the carbon in fossil fuels and biomass unites with oxygen so that the CO2 is 3.67 times heavier than the carbon in the original fuels. That is why a liter of gasoline with a weight of 0.75 kilograms makes 2.3 kilograms of CO2, over 3 times the weight equivalent.[6] Carbon emission sources are also mainly point sources, highly distributed and decentralized, which eludes capture potential.

Fig. 1.1 Source: materialflows.net

     We still rely every day on some of those very early technologies like farming, animal domestication, and mining which have evolved considerably to feed and supply materials and services to vastly more people. According to biologist Ruth DeFries in her book The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis, the history of technology is one in which immediate problems are solved, then new problems created by the technology are identified, sometimes endured and sometimes mitigated, then new and better technologies replace them and go through the same cycle, which she calls ratchet-hatchet-pivot. Basically, we innovate when we have to innovate. We use technology to solve problems created by technology. It is part of our presumed evolution towards more overall human wellbeing.[7]

     Past technologies provided a more direct route from resource or technique to utilization of that resource or technique. Modern technologies include information and communications technologies (ICTs) that do indeed use a lot of resources (about 6-7% of global electricity) but also provide vast benefits like convenience, much better services, and cutting resource use on a relative level by replacing outmoded ICTs. These technologies also have a lot of regulatory issues so there is opportunity to compare ICT regulations with environmental regulations. The internet in particular has benefitted from a lack of regulation. It has also benefited from being free to all after paying service providers. Social media and video platforms have also generally stayed free and profitable with just the mild annoyance of advertising.

     Modern smart phones epitomize doing more with less as an example of what is known as dematerialization, an idea that derives from a similar idea from the visionary R. Buckminster Fuller, that he called ephemeralization. We no longer have to buy watches, calculators, GPS, cameras, video cams, compasses, levels, radios, CDs, TVs, and many other things that we can get on our smart phone if we want. That means far less materials get used to make all those devices. Modern conveniences like plastic also help us do more with less. Plastic is lighter than glass, metal, and most other materials. Lighter weight means more of it can be transported with less energy and emissions than other materials. Lighter weight means vehicles that get better gas mileage. Density and speed also offer technological and energy efficiency advantages. Robert Bryce’s 2014 book Smaller, Faster, Lighter, Cheaper, Denser: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong is all about how innovation keeps making these improvements which are slowing materials use and resource use and increasing value and utility. The book is full of data and cases of technological innovation and shows conclusively that technological progress is improving both economy and environment. Bryce emphasizes density as a key to improvement. Dense cities, dense food production, and energy density all offer economic and environmental advantages, greater efficiency, and less materials use.[8] In contrast, degrowth advocate Bill McKibben argues for low density food and far less per capita energy use. Some say he argues for lowering the standards of living in affluent countries. Developing countries have a specific and dire economic need for higher per capita energy use. Cheap and available energy enables higher standards of living for them. Ausubel wrote in that same 1997 paper: “The logic of dematerialization is sound. Over time new materials replace old, and theoretically each replacement should improve material properties per unit of quantity, thus lowering the intensity of use. Furthermore, as countries develop, the intensity of use of a given material (or system) declines as each country arrives at a similar level of development. The new arrivals take advantage of learning curves throughout the economy.”[9] The digital revolution has replaced the drudge of the age of paper, maybe with only slightly overall less materials use, but far less work, better access to data, and less deforestation.

 

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[1] Burke, J. and Ornstein, R., 1997. The Axemaker's Gift. New York: Putnam's.

 

[2] Bejan, Adrian., 2013. Design In Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization. New York: Anchor Books.

 

[3] Bejan, Adrian, 2016. The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything. New York: St Martin's Press.

 

[4] Nicholson, D. J., & Dupree, J. (Eds.). (2018). Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. OUP Oxford.

 

[5] Ridley, Matt, 2020. How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom. Harper Collins.

 

[6] Learn the facts: fuel consumption and CO2 – Natural Resources Canada (nrcan.gc.ca)

 

[7] DeFries, Ruth, 2014. The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in The Face of Natural Crisis. New York, NY: Basic Books.

 

[8] Bryce, Robert, 2014. Smaller, Faster, Lighter, Cheaper, Denser: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong. PublicAffairs.

 

[9] Ausubel, Jesse H. (1997). The Liberation of the Environment. In N. A. Engineering, & J. H. Ausubel (Ed.), Technological Trajectories and the Human Environment (pp. 1-13). National Academy Press.