Why should it matter that humans are now "over-dependent" on technology? What can be done to alter this?

Question

What is the relationship between humans and the environment in this age of growing technoogy?

How, specifically, does the over-dependence on technology produce a negative impact on the relationship between humans and the environment?

The function of technology is to help humans increase their chances of surviving ... right?!?

Ideally, technology also improves the quality of human life.

But, recent developments in the genetic engineering of food, and the distribution of fast food, show that technology also has the power to imperil human survival; and to reduce the quality of human life.

How?

What can be done to alter this situation?

Answer 1

Watch "Survivorman"

Answer 2

Look up Peek Oil. We are running out of most resources. Technology is going to have to find a way to cut GW, make new energy, increas electricty without pollution. As for GW here is what we know: Blacktop (roads and parking lots) and buildings heat cities; Air pollution causes lung (and other) diseases, deforestation causing more destruction (duststorms, hurricanes/cyclones all increasing deforestation) and destroys the ozone layer while heating earth surface; fires cause mud slides, deforestation and pollution-more heating surface temperatures; CFC's destroy the ozone layer raising skin cancer rates and killing off endanger species and increased surface temperatures; lighting produces ozone near the surface and raises air pollution levels-more heating; the suns increased magnetic field are causing increases in earthquakes (more destruction), volcanoes (wow, great distruction), sun spots and leading to more heating. Cars, airplanes, ships and most electricity production causes pollution, warmer temperatures and destruction. But most of this is in our control outside of the sun (Volcanoes, sun spots and earthquakes are part of the sun magnetic strength): We need to fix our part! That is why I founded CoolingEarth.org an geoengineering web sight.The USA Mayor's are on the right track, we can have control and economic growth. The fed gov is way out of step-even Congress. We also need a pollution surcharge to balance the field and advance new technologies. Where we are with global warming has never happened before. CO2 has never lead to temperature change, but temperature change has led to increases in CO2. The models are having to be made with little evidence!

Answer 3

I think your question is interesting.  I'm going to answer it from the perspecitve of a small farmer/housewife-farm wife who does things a bit more like they did in the 1800's.

Hubby and I live/work on a permaculture farm.  I raise meat goats, and meat rabbits, as well as a garden, fruit trees, alfalfa hay, and rapeseed (canola) to make our biofuel.

"Why should it matter?"

Because I have found people simply do not understand where and how their food gets to them.  I have also found that people are basically clueless.

I cannot tell you how man times I've heard, "well it doesn't matter I get my food at the grocery store, not from a farm."

Last winter hubby and I went to the mall, to see a movie (about the only reason we EVER go to a mall).  There were two teenage girls there who I'm sure thought themselves adorable.  They were dressed in tendy t-shirts, windbreakers, bluejeans, and rubber flip-flops.  Did I mention we live in Idaho, at 4700 plus feet elivation...it was NEGATIVE 38 degrees out side, and snowing lightly, with a 10 mph wind.  (Hubby works on commercial wind turbines, so we pay a lot of attention to the wind)  

So once you add wind chill in, that means the outside temperature was more like NEGATIVE 62 degrees.  The teen girls saw the same movie we did, and left the same time we did.  We watched them hopping through the slush in the parking lot in their flip-flops.

We stopped and filled the truck up with fuel, since we like to keep the tanks full in that kind of weather.  Lucky for those teenagers we did stop.  Because of the weather, the time of night, ect and how rural we are, the road turned from city to country quickly.  Who should we pass in the ditch?  You guessed it!

In that temperature those young ladies would have had less than 10 minutes, before suffering serrious frost bit.  We pulled them out of the ditch, we used our cell phones, and called both sets of their parents, told them exactly where they were, and how they were dressed.  They only lived 20 minutes from the mall.  They would have died, had they tried to walk home.  They were totally dependant on the heaters in the car, and the climate control weather in the malls to keep them alive.  Complete and utter stupidity.

"What can be done to alter this?"

Nothing as far as I can tell.  Many people are what my husband and I deam as "agressively stupid."  It cannot happen to ME....bad things only happen to OTHER people....someone will rescue me....those are their life motto's.  There is no help for agressive stupidity...only results.  The only thing that can be done is teach the young children before it's too late.  Give them real and honest responsibility (taking the trash out once a week is not responsibility), hold them to it...teach them to THINK, and use common sence.  Teach them old fashioned ways of doing things.

"What is the relationship between humans and the environment in this age of growing technoogy?"

Most humans do not have a relationship with the environment anymore.  Their world is all climate controlled.  At most they experience environment, when they dash from the house to their car, and car to offic building, or store.  They live in an artificial world, with artificial climate, and environment.  They can tell you what season it is, by the decorations that are up at stores, and the fashions on display.

That's why they are so completely and totally unable to care for themselves when the environment rips away all the artificial protection...whether it is a simple power outage, or a hurricane that takes their entire house, they are unable to deal with it, and have not idea how to provide even the most basic care needs.  (Could YOU sterilize your own drinking water, or build a fire without matches?  I can.)

"The function of technology is to help humans increase their chances of surviving ... right?!? "

Some of it is.  Some of it of course is simply to keep the economy running.  The problem of course is becoming dependant on technology for EITHER reason...survival, or economy.  We can grow our own food, and feed ourselves, as well as provide fuel (even for vehicles), water and heat for ourselves should every last bit of technology and the economy collapse.  Most people wouldn't have a clue on how to do something so simple as plant a garden, or butcher a live animal to eat.

"But, recent developments in the genetic engineering of food, and the distribution of fast food, show that technology also has the power to imperil human survival; and to reduce the quality of human life.  How?"

These questions are now all sounding a bit too much like I'm answering your homework questions, so I'm going to leave off answering there.  If you are trying to get someone to do your homework for you, by posting the questions here...shame on you.  If you don't learn to think for yourself and expent your own mental energy, you will have no better chance of survival that the girls in the flip-flops.  You will doom yourself to a life of being the rescue-e, instead of the rescue-or.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Great pride in being self-sufficient and independant.

Answer 4

You've turned to technology to answer a question about humans' over-dependence on technology. Can you say, "irony"?