Is technology really progress?

I must admit, that despite all of the years of environmental activism, education, and awareness that I have experienced, I have never read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. I read an excerpt of the book for the first time today, and I was in awe at her beautiful writing style and the simplicity with which she described how we poison ourselves with chemicals that we use to poison others (insecticides, herbicides, pesticides, items which Carson terms "biocides").

Carson’s view of the world, and mankind in particular, is not a positive one. She describes how people are willing to accept risks to themselves and future generations to eliminate a few “pests” in ways that are not natural. The question that Rachel Carson does not directly ask, but hints at, is: “does progress lead to self-destruction?” Maybe what we term “progress” is not really progress at all, but rather a step backwards. As we progress as a species, we are really destroying ourselves. Carson’s chemical culprits are not the true blame, but rather progress in general.

Current technology requires that those in the Western world have cell phones, computers, internet, cars, gadgets, televisions, and endless amounts of essentially unnecessary products. I call them unnecessary because they are not, in reality, truly necessary to survival. We don’t need coffee or cell phones or the newest fad item (iPad, anyone?), but modern society convinces us that we do. We don’t need 400 different types of utensils and kitchen appliances and devices, but fast-paced modernity’s need for convenience dictates that we do.

Even though we are well past the 1960s and the hazardous DDT that Rachel Carson was warning us about, we have not moved forward in a more environmentally friendly manner, as we would all like to think. Though environmental pollution laws in the Western world have reduced pollution in the West, that pollution has not been reduced, but rather moved elsewhere, where pollution laws are more lax and minority groups and poor or ignorant populations can be taken advantage of in the name of Western consumption and profit. We like to think that we have saved us from ourselves, but we have not. We have created a new type of problem by trying to mitigate the problem.

Technology is the modern-day deadly “chemical” that Rachel Carson describes as the death of us. In an effort to develop new “gadgets,” we have made old ones obsolete, and they end up in landfills. We have progressed at the expense of poorer, less-developed populations all in the name of technology. The ever-increasing number of electronic and plastic devices come from materials that are acquired through destruction of the natural environment and the exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources. Technology is not making the world more environmentally friendly, but is instead contributing to environmental destruction.  

Even though Rachel Carson convinced us all of the error in our ways, she did not foresee the problems of the future. Though we are not directly poisoning ourselves with ultra-hazardous chemicals in the Western world any longer (at least we think so), we are still poisoning ourselves with technology. Only time will tell of the dangers that will be faced by the generations of people that have been raised in a world of “conventional pollution”, wireless technologies, and plastics combined. Will Carson’s warnings still hold true today, under a different guise?

 I had an enlightening discussion with someone earlier today about technology, and how generation Y will be the first generation to have grown up entirely with computers, wireless technology, and other "modern" appliances and conveniences. This same generation will be the first to show what a lifetime of exposure to these things will do to us. Perhaps sitting with a laptop in our laps and wireless on will draw unnecessary radiation to our reproductive organs, and make us all sterile. We can only hope not.