SAVING TIME - LOSING GROUND

摘要

This paper argues that the relation between technology and nature is a dialectical one. Technology shapes the landscape, and the landscape reacts back. The consequences can be simultaneously beneficial and costly, as well as paradoxical and contradictory. Contemporary society continues the primal motivation to fashion tools in order to make life easier and more certain. Recent years have seen an almost Cambrian explosion of new technology. The genie is out of the bottle and can never be put back, resulting in a profound tension between the social and physical world. Growing populations and economic activity spread impervious surfaces, giving rise to ever more costly flooding, erosion, and pollution. In urban sprawl, people seek to return to natural landscapes; however, as they do, they destroy the very goal they seek. The tension is dynamic - as technology accelerates, so does the volatility of nature's response. The author calls for a renewed emphasis on technology assessment, arguing that new technologies need to be evaluated for their impact on the natural landscape just as with real estate development processes.