Technology

For many people who are apprehensive about anthropogenic environmental impairment in the world, thoughts about the role of technology and technological change in that phenomenon are never far away. Technology, according to them, is often either the cause or the solution for environmental degradation. The way modern technologies are designed, some would argue, introduces intrinsic properties that can either irreparably damage or, conversely, eliminate all damage to the environment. More recently, scholars have stressed the importance of viewing technology as inherently ambivalent in its properties. Drawing on empirical studies from recent social science scholarship, they argue that technology can be used by humans to be a force either of good or of destruction, but that choice can be made eventually only by humans.

Some key questions about technology and the environment are as follows:

• What do we mean when we speak of technology in the context of environmental change?
• Historically, how has the relationship between technology and the environment evolved?
• What have been some of the early conceptions of the relationship between technology and environmental destruction?
• What are some of the contemporary issues surrounding environmentally benign technological development?

Technology is first and foremost a human creation that is designed and constructed to serve often narrowly defined utilitarian goals of the user(s). Two points are especially noteworthy in this definition—that technology is always a designed human creation and that it serves utilitarian goals. Technology is thus anything that has been consciously created by humans with a purpose in mind. That purpose, according to this definition, should always serve the goal of maximizing the well-being of the individual or the collective. But by stressing the importance of goals, this definition overlooks the significance of means in achieving those goals. The significance of means is especially heightened in the environment-technology relationship because, as we shall see, much of the controversy in this relationship is because of its inattention to means to attain goals.