Is there a darker side to technological advances?

For once, it’s a quiet Monday morning and I have set aside an hour to read some papers online. Technological advances mean that I don’t have to pay for the content of these papers (yet) and that I don’t even need to leave the comfort of my home. Just boot up the computer while the coffee brews and enjoy the download speeds that go with a broadband connection. While my ‘netvibes’ site provides connections to favourite newspapers and news sites, the recently turned 11 year old ‘google’ search engine is always there ready to help me with anything extra I may want to find. So with the means to enlightenment at my fingertips I start this day in a positive state of mind.

Technology is making my life easier and more interesting. But is there a darker side to our penchant for technological advances? According to ‘Good Environmental Choice-Australia’ the creation of the average computer will require “240kg of fossil fuels, 22kg of chemicals and 150kg of water”. It’s important to note that some of those 22kg of chemicals are non-biodegradable and toxic.

With this in mind, I read Elisabeth Rosenthal’s article in today’s NYT about how 20 million containers of waste are shipped from Europe to poorer developing each year. This waste shipment is underpinned by a desire to avoid the high costs associated with recycling goods in Europe.

While some of this material will be recycled, the act of recycling can, and often is, problematic. A CBS documentary provides graphic details of the darker side to technological advances. The human misery associated with recycling has been documented in a photo report and in a magazine article about the Chinese village of Guiyu. The photos posted on Alistair.ruff’s photostream on flickr are equally confronting.

Each time we update to the latest mobile phone or some other high-tech electronic gadget we are encouraging the mining of ‘coltan’. This is a rare mineral ore that contains tantalum which is needed to manufacture these gadgets. Unfortunately, the mining of coltan is causing rapid deforestation in central Africa and endangering the habitat of many African primates, including the Western Lowland Gorillas.

With these issues in mind, it’s rather apt that today is Confucius’s birthday. His philosophy of morality and justice at both a personal and governmental level give us pause for thought. So I finish this despatch in a less jovial frame of mind but with a gritty determination to track down some less harmful ways to recycle electronic gadgets:

1. Old mobile phones: See the Taronga Zoo appeal

2. Planet Ark recycling depots