Course Review

In many ways, this course has been seriously helpful as a budding technoscientist.  There are so many things I can praise this course for and only a few things I can criticize.  Overall, I rated this course well in course evaluations, however there are a few problems with it.  Luckily, the problems are super easy to fix, and they aren't with the course content.  However, there are a few things that have been relatively ineffective.  We can make this course better through a few minor changes.

First, this course has been extremely effective as a catalyst of productive thought and intelligent inquiry into how technology affects society.  Our textbook, although criticized by many as simply Breyman selling his friend's book, has been extremely well written and generally really insightful.  I never once picked it up and thought, "Why are we reading this garbage."  Which is much more than can be said about other textbooks.  However, it's more than just tolerable.  It's actually good.  I could go to it for clarity on specific topics.  I could reference it in discussions.  Woodhouse may be off in his own world from time to time but the bulk of the text is fantastic and the ideas and tools for thought are elegant and well described.  That said, it is still a textbook.  Even with the multitude of real-world examples and applications Woodhouse brings up, it still cannot deliver all of the content we need to make this course as helpful and as driven and moving as necessary.  That's where the readings come in and we arrive at our first change.

The readings are overall very good, however they need some reworking on some topics.  Articles and shorter pieces of media are king in today's society of taking in information as quick and as efficiently as possible.  I think here we can draw from another portion of the course that I can absolutely praise.  We should use more video and non-text media in the weekly at-home assignments.  Any assigned reading above two pages simply did not get read.  Do not throw 20 page papers at undergraduate students and expect them to even remotely tolerate them.  As soon as undergrads see an academic paper and they see the page length, they tune out.  Frankly, it is hard to blame them.  There are so many other forms of media out there that are more pleasant to ingest.  Why would they read a 20 page paper when they can watch a 10 minute video with diagrams to show them what they need to know and explain a topic.  Offer supplemental readings and take some videos like the ones we watched in class, and assign those instead.  In no way and at no time is it reasonable to expect undergraduates to read a research paper when they could simply type the topic into google and learn just as much or more in a much more enjoyable manor.

Back to praise, the readings that were not lengthy were generally very good.  They are provocative and writing about them was not terribly hard after I became adjusted to the course and the type of writing expected.  On top of that, my TA was so fantastic in communicating expectations that after about one grading period I had adjusted my reading and writing style to that which is expected of me for the course.  For a course meant to teach good reading and writing skills alongside regular material, this is paramount.  I personally feel I have become a better reader from taking this course.  Granted that it is not due to the longer readings, which I will admit that I read very little of, for reasons described earlier.

I will move now to the most important part of my suggested reforms.  Eliminate required in-class note-taking from the course.  Required note-taking in class is pointless when the slides are distributed.  I would get more out of lecture if I could just listen to Breyman, as he is a great speaker in my opinion, instead of having to clack away at my keyboard while I miss important points and examples which develop understanding outside of the readings.  As for note-taking on readings, I believe it should also not be required, however on this I am willing to compromise.  Notes from readings deliver the same content as do our blogs.  However, they are very helpful to most who want to write better blogs, as they allow all the best points to be summarized, almost like an outline sometimes.  So with that said, the notes should not be graded, but could be required.  That is, people would turn them in, however the content of those notes should not be judged, because poor notes generally lead to a poor blog if there is a real issue and currently we are being hit twice for a problem that should only be punished once.  We are hit once for the notes and then once for the blog made from the notes.  Instead, just grade blogs and as a critique suggest better note-taking.  This only subtracts from one grade but allows students who benefit from better note-taking to benefit while not infringing upon those who do fine without taking notes, but instead referencing the article itself.  If any note-taking turn in is required, use a cloud-based platform like Evernote.  That way note turn-in is as easy as typing your TA's email and hitting send.  These specific critiques on the note-taking should be regarded as the most important issue I present.

The wikipedia project has been a positive learning experience overall, but only with immense effort from our TA to explain how we should be doing things.  With higher clarity in the instructions, this exercise teaches research skills and good reading and writing techniques for research which is relevant to so many of us.  Specifically, I would suggest better pruned resources, supplied by more than just one person and with more time.  I would also suggest a more refined process to the workflow, articulating to students the phases required to process information into a summarized piece of media.  For example, phase one might be dividing work among the group and two could be digesting and notating the research materials, summarizing and connecting with outside sources (read: googling the topics).  This kind of a layout of the project would have made things less confusing and allowed more groups to deliver better results more of the time.

Overall, for a class attempting to teach new technoscientists to view technology differently from how literally every other course would have them look at it, this class accomplishes its goals with flying colors.  I feel that this class has communicated different views of technology in so many articulate and sensical ways that have never been presented to the students by other sources.  The actual content of the course needs very little work, but the student experience needs a good bit of help.  I have outlined for you exactly how to fix the problems faced by students in the course.  I really enjoyed the class and overall think it was a great experience and I hope this will help to shape an equally good, if not better, experience for people in the future.

Human Enhancement, or nah?

Humans have been enhancing themselves since the days of the cave men.  For thousands of years, we have sought ways to be smarter, stronger, more fearsome, more deadly, more respected, more efficient, and so on.  In the innovations along the way, we have created tools to do work for us, to help us do better work, and even tools to help us think better.  Everything from cave paintings and spears, to computers and algorithms is a tool.  Everything we equip ourselves with is a tool, even if we do not always think about it like that.  Human enhancement, is no new prospect.  Some might argue that enhancement can make us inhuman.  However, in the frame of mind I have put forward, it is what makes us human.  Using this mindset as a devil's advocate, we can critically view some proposed human enhancements.

First, let us look at smartphones as a human enhancement.  The benefits of having this technology are astounding, when you break down what is really there in your pocket.  All the information in the world is now accessible within a few taps, or even by verbal command.  That kind of power is astounding to think about, yet it is a convenience we take for granted.  On top of information, smartphones also facilitate instantaneous communication between any number of people anywhere in the world.  At your fingertips is a direct line to any person you could desire to talk to.  However, that capability comes at a cost; yet another thing we often overlook.  As much control as we are awarded through the devices we use every day, we also relinquish some control we previously had.  The platform is inherently connection based and the ability to connect to anything at will also comes with others being able to connect to you at any time.  To some extent, this is a benefit, but it relinquishes control of your data.  Every single thing you do on your phone is recorded and documented.  There are ways to see some of the things they collect.  For example, if you have an Android phone you can use a Google service to access your location data for the entirety of your time with your phone.  Years and years of exactly where you were are logged and stored.  Some people are bothered by this notion, but most of those people also still use their smartphone because they know the benefits outweigh the costs.  However, their worries are not to be ignored.  It is plain to see that this system lends itself to an authoritarian system of government and in the wrong situation, that data could be used very maliciously.  Yet, we are prepared to hand over every conversation, every word we type, every phone call, every website and app, our location, and everything else collected on by our phones.  We are prepared to hand all of that over to gain access to the connectivity it offers under the impression that the data collected will never be sold.  Personally, I'm for this technology and do not mind having my data tracked, but in a different world with a different style of government, these innovations could make our lives very problematic.

Using the smartphone tradeoff to examine a new frontier for human enhancement, we can take a look at human augmentation.  That is, the notion that we can put technology in or on ourselves to enhance our capabilities.  An example of this would be bionic eyes, or HUD contacts.  Another might be body-boosting nanobots that heal injuries and cure cancer.  Right there, you can see just how beneficial these augmentations can be.  However, we also know about these kinds of tradeoffs from the storytelling of Deus Ex.  Many people believe in drawing the line before augmentation, and if you have ever played a Deus Ex game, you could see why they would think that.  However, how different is giving control over our bodies from giving control of our data?  How different is using this tool from using a shovel or a smartphone?  We already make intense tradeoffs, and although yet again this innovation lends itself to a centralized system of government and power, it still could provide immense benefits; think Terminator or Billion Dollar Man.  We might be able to step back and say now that we have drawn the line, but in the 1990's if someone had said that by 2015 all your data would be available to the government and to private corporations, maybe the line would have been drawn then.  Personally, I might be for this technology for my own use, but I worry what it might entail for our children.

When these kinds of innovations happen gradually over time, people tend to allow things they would not have if they had seen the bigger picture.  What is one small sacrifice for some more functionality?  Not much until the Illuminati has all your data and Obama is looking at your dick pics.  Hopefully we can learn from our past mistakes, and make the correct decisions regarding these new technologies.

Technology, Work, and Leisure

In a perfect world, there is no money.  There is no higher or lower classes or castes.  There are only people and there are things but their value is ambiguous.  The value of people's time is priceless.  This is the opposite of how human life is valued today, where time is worthless and lives are priced at $250,000.  We would value, above all else, happiness, livelihood, and effort.  The work done by one person, in any field, would be equal to any other.  Those of us who chose to mop floors would have their time viewed as equal to those who write computer programs or manage manufacturing.  There is no specific value to a profession, only to the person's time.  This kind of a world is definitely considered "Utopian" by today's standards.  We can't imagine a world without money or without a class system.  We find it hard to believe that their could be anything besides what exists for us today.  How would it happen?  How could that be?  It would require: A system where work is work for the good of society, not for a monetary value and a sense of togetherness between people, an educated populace with a lack of greediness or selfishness.  It would deliver happy, healthy people with little-to-no poverty and an overwhelming notion that everything we do, we do for our own good.

Work and receive everything you need to be happy and healthy.  Want to become a doctor?  Do it.  Want to become a computer programmer?  Do it.  Want to mop floors?  Do it.  All of these professions would make the same "salary."  Not money, but goods and services required to be happy and healthy.  We, as a society, will need a wide range of work done in order to function, just as we do today.  But those who decide higher education is not for them will not be thrown to the wolves, and those who do choose to pursue an education will do so at no cost.  What they are doing, in both cases, is extremely important to the infrastructure of this society.  We need both students and janitors.  There is no difference between the work done by one and the work done by the other, in value.  Each will get a place to live, with adequate space.  Firms can poll people for demand for products or services they oversee.  But there is no profit to be made.  They would only exist to produce for humanity.  Those producers can then meet the demands of the people by putting to work the right amount of resources and work into a product or service.  The people can choose what to produce.  I won't pretend to know all the details, but it can be worked out.

The relationships people would need to have would be so incredibly different from how we relate to each other today.  There would be much more 'we' and nearly no 'I.'  We would function for the good of everyone and there would need to be a universal acceptance of cooperation.  Everyone in society works and devotes their energy into their profession for each and every other person's good as well as their own.  That kind of mindset means that every person is kind and grateful to others around them.  Think like how people tend to act towards those serving in the military.  Everyone contributes for others.  For example, a restaurant and its workers all serve food to people.  Those people go to work and produce the grilles for cooking, the plates and silverware, the chairs, the building itself!  And for all of that, they serve food in return, and their attitudes towards others would be that of those engaged in a mutually beneficial business deal.  We would all immediately be friendly with everyone else because we are all working as one; in a large flowing mutually beneficial deal.

In this kind of a community people would have to labor less.  There would be a job for every person willing to work.  That means we all work less.  The 40 hour work-week would never even be conceived.  There would be no need to rush processes or be crazy efficient such as to treat people as capital.  There can really be no deadlines because deadlines are scheduled for profit, mostly.  We would not work on a time crunch, because time is valuable and precious and we all are entitled to our own time to live and be happy.  We do not owe all of our time and emotional well being to some corporation to survive.  We survive because we all deserve it.

This kind of Utopia does happen to have a name.  It's Communism.  It can work.  But it has a lot of requirements that mostly involve people understanding the system and cooperating.  We could have a society that binds together and helps others, instead of helping who can pay and turning away those who cannot.  As humans we would be entitled to our own lives, not required to serve those with more only to receive less.

Nanotechnology as a Supervillian

Nanotechnology is coming and it's a tidal wave.  The discovery which acts as the earthquake has yet to take place but all around the world are the miniature tremors that indicate the coming tectonic shift that will change life as we know it.  Many, as suggested in the "Tiny Primer on Nano-Scale Technologies," will see this coming technology as an exciting and overwhelmingly good event, as many of us at RPI are inclined to believe.  However, in the context of this analogy, we would be zealous cultists claiming that the wave will lift us to heaven instead of crush us under the force of its waves, as on-lookers stare; judging us for our ridiculous beliefs.  We must look away from our privilege if we want to analyze this coming event.  The technology will bring changes, and harsh ones.  Perhaps more harsh than others like it have brought in the past, which says a lot as we glance back in history to the effects of technologies like the combustion engine, crop harvesting equipment, and the internet, just to name a few.  These effects will not be evenly spread over society, according to history.  Many who are not so privileged will carry the burden while the wealthy and white benefit.  The burdens may include further displacement of jobs, health impacts for those working with new materials, and perhaps the most scary, impacts we cannot predict.  We can mitigate, or perhaps even prevent, these unfortunate outcomes, but "we" won't.

The coming technological storm may, to us, seem like a storm of puppies and rainbows, and on a scientific level we know how interesting and absolutely genius some of this stuff will be, but we are the ones who will be consuming the end products from this technology, not seeing its externalized costs.  This is just as it is now with current production methods and costs to those less fortunate than us.  From the new nanotech, we will see a reduction in use of natural, fibrous materials and an increase in synthetics.  This will displace farmers growing cotton, or hemp, or other materials.  We also will likely see a reduction in recycling for a time, this kind of thing could have impacts on the waste business, and the people working in it.  Maybe we could see nearly all blue collar jobs displaced, if we are simply feeding materials into machines to make buildings, furniture, and just about everything else.  We don't need construction workers if it can be done with the press of a button instead.  These people cannot just pick up some other job, specifically, they cannot just become white collar workers.  That is not how they are trained and it is almost definitely not how they desire to live, although it may be how the technology reforms society.  We will see a need for more data analysts, more programmers than ever, more nanoscientists, and accompanying technicians.  In the long run, this is no big deal, but in the short run, it is detrimental to the living and well being of people all over the globe and right here in our own country.  On top of displacement, we could also see serious impacts on health and treatment of workers.  Take nPB as an example.  The glue killed everyone that ever worked with it, and nanotechnology could do just as much or worse to those working with it, for all we know.

That is just the problem.  We do not know how nanotechnology will affect society.  Most of its impacts are very hard or impossible to predict at all, let alone with any accuracy.  These things could be like the nano-carbon Buckyballs, or "Unluckyballs" that are harmful to the atmosphere.  We have no idea what is going to be coming our way with this technology, because we do not know what we are making yet with it.  However, we do have tools to mitigate and prevent these bad things from happening.  Remember ITE?  It is guidelines like ITE that will help us to be cautious in what we adopt, looking at how exactly it will affect the population, the Earth, specific demographics.  With the proper watchful demeanor towards these technologies, we can phase in the ones we know are good, gradually transition to the ones that will be problematic, and block the ones that will only bring ruin.  Granted, this is easier said than done, but we will have a better time if we are watching where we are going.  An ice hockey coach tells their players, "Keep your head up."  Instead of looking down at the puck, the player is to watch where they are going and what is going on around them.  This is how we have to be with nanotech.  Those entrusted with developing it need to be watching what is going on, not just on the thing they are doing.

Even though we know how to mitigate and prevent these problems, even if only to some extent, those in charge will not take these precautions.  The capitalist machine will churn out the new technology, monotize it, and profit without a single care for the external costs and for the detrimental effects of their work.  As we talked about before, we have to educate the people engineering these technologies to do the right thing and do what they know is best when they are faced with terrible decisions.  Management is not changing, so engineers are going to have to shoulder the burden if we are to mitigate any damage at all.  So, even if we can mitigate and prevent damage, do not expect corporations to do the right thing.  Instead, expect government to facilitate the corporations doing the wrong thing.  Nanotechnology can be a superhero, but unless we shape it correctly, it will be a supervillian instead; with laser eyes and jet packs and tentacles and the whole package.

Engineer's Dilemma

Historically, efficiency has always butted heads with responsible action.  We see this in what is probably the most striking example, using efficient, but polluting, chemicals or using more natural, less polluting substances to accomplish the same thing.  One might be faster or require less materials or funding, most likely externalizing a cost, but an externalized cost is still a cost to someone, somewhere, or something.  How can we be efficient, whilst still being responsible and selfless in our endeavors.  Perhaps an engineer in a corporation is the one implementing this corporately selfish, but efficient, methodology.  Where do you draw the line between valuing your job and what is best for the companies, and then in turn your, success, and the professional responsibility you have as an engineer to do the right thing.  Through reformation of the values of those who might put the engineers in this tight position, we could abolish the dilemma from ever starting.  There are multiple ways this could happen, however unlikely to succeed they may be.  First, is through a sense of internationalism, or environmentalism.  Second, is a radical change to the system we live in where corporations are accountable for the externalized costs they put on the Earth and its inhabitants.  Through this change, the dilemma can be a thing of the past.

Our first suggestion, instilling a sense of internationalism, or environmentalism in the minds of all those who put these engineers in such a position as to choose between company and the rest of the world, is a bit far-fetched but would still solve our problem.  If everyone felt less faithful to themselves and their personal success and more about the success of Earth and humanity as a global entity, we would not be in the position we are today where engineers' consciences are tested.  Instead, the others who have already decided on doing the "wrong" thing for the good of the company, would decide to do the right thing.  This, in a way, externalizes the dilemma to management.  However, before instructing engineers, these things are generally known in the first place, and thus they experience a similar dilemma already, they just make the wrong choice a good chunk of the time.  If management did better in their dilemma, engineers would not be put in the bind they, all too often, are put in.

The second suggestion I have put forth, is more reasonable in ends, but means are still questionable as to whether their are truly possible.  Even if this suggestion can never be achieved to its fullest extent, even a partial implementation could relieve the engineers enough to call the dilemma history.  If there was a system, perhaps implemented by a universally governing body, such as the U.N. or something similar, that would hold corporations accountable for their externalized costs, then the once efficient thing to do now costs more than the once costly thing to do.  We can now force responsible inefficiency into the actions of corporations.  These corporations, if they want access to the markets they can sell their goods in, must conform to an analysis of externalized costs.  For example, if a mining company takes advantage of its workers, subjecting them to dangerous conditions needlessly and/or paying them too little, we can hold the company accountable.  "Well, Acme, I can see you are using slave labor to produce your goods, so therefore, until you address that problem your goods cannot be sold to any nation's consumers on this long list of countries."  Only through true accountability can the pressure be turned onto the companies creating problems in the first place.  If a company is doing something highly environmentally dangerous, they can be stopped. Though, the costs associated with this sort of system would surely be grand, they are worth the lives of all seven billion human beings on this earth.  Currently, continuing on this track, we will see the Earth destroyed and its inhabitants with it.  So what cost is too much for the survival of humanity?  Do not put this burden on the engineers, when it could be put on the management who maliciously bestows the dilemma currently on the engineers.

Through changes to the way we treat corporations, we can remove the dilemma engineers face every single day designing the next generation of products.  If we cannot have good people, we certainly can have corporations that do not run amuck throughout the Earth, ravaging her people and her bounties.  Instead, we can hold responsible these people who make decisions neglecting the costs they burden others with.

Overconsumption: Engineering Conscientiously

With the most recent set of readings, (1, 2, 3), we have been presented with the problem of overconsumption.  Things that contribute to the issue of overconsumption are things like wasted food, or excess chemicals from producing a product.  These waste products end up polluting our ecosystem.  Waste is so embedded in our culture as a society that, as consumers, we do not even see just how crucial creating tremendous amounts of waste is to our daily lives.  Behind the scenes, we create some 32 times the weight of an average product in waste.  That is, to obtain a one pound product, 32 pounds are expended and sent to landfills in order to facilitate fulfilling that need and getting that product to the consumer.  Many of these wastes are due to the use of engineering processes that are not socially and environmentally responsible.  To tackle the source of the problem, Woodhouse proposes reforms to education and even mentions RPI's very own STS program in the process.  His changes have a proposed goal of teaching more Engineers to be more conscious of the environmental impact of their field and teaching them the best practices for reducing waste and creating a better product or better process to waste less.  This is a great place to start, and now I'll be suggesting yet another reform, this time outside of education.  With a standards system for what companies can actually claim for their products, we could produce an ecosystem of environmental certification that actually requires manufacturers to cut down on waste to achieve the certification.  This, paired with a reason for companies to desire it, can create a positive change toward less waste.

Consumers do care, to some extent, to be more environmentally friendly.  If they have the ability to buy a product that is more environmentally friendly, and there were some proof, it would sway many buyers in that products direction.  This creates a labeling system that we know all to well today where products label themselves as "environmentally conscious" or something along those lines and slap a nice sticker on their product that they can justify one way or another.  If there were a standard for what you can say about your product environmentally speaking then these labels could be done away with and replaced only where actually applicable.  Standardizing these claims with heavy requirements and large-enough benefits will help facilitate an effort from corporations to create a product that actually is environmentally friendly, not just a product that claims to be.

If companies want these products to seem environmentally savvy with a nice certification of environmental consciousness then they have to work for it.  The requirements would be determined by experts who can put a specific allowance of waste in the manufacturing process of the product and say exactly what is and what is not allowed to take place in the process.  This also allows them to disallow harmful chemicals on top of regulating how much waste is produced.  These sorts of requirements would ask a lot of the makers of a product, but in return would provide benefits like a standard consumer symbol that works such that consumers can make a quick decision to buy a product that is doing the right thing simply by seeing the logo and picking that one instead.  If a company wants that over its competitors, they have got to play ball.  If they do not, others can and will and they will be left as the bad apple.  This could create a tool for consumers to use where they do not have to think or research, simply look for the logo and make the decision.  Other benefits could include tax incentives or subsidies for the certification.

As Raptitute.com said in its fantastic article, "Your Lifestyle is Being Designed," the eight hour work day takes all the time consumers have our of their day and although we could do without many of the luxuries we decide to purchase every day, there are many products we must buy to go about our daily lives (which some can and should argue can also be fundamentally changed) and with these products there is not always time for a consumer to make an educated decision between work and trying to make the most of the time that's left over.  This gives them a tool to make an informed decision at a glance without having to ask questions.  There is nothing stopping a socially conscious standard as well for knowing whether human rights were sacrificed in the making of a product.  The important part is that it be extremely stringent and make sure that the companies are working for the certification.  It is also important that over time these requirements get stricter and stricter to move us towards a better less wasteful culture.

Deliberative Democracy in Action: Political Innovation II

In this weeks readings(1,2) we investigate deliberative democracy in action instead of in theory.  We can use the toolkits we've discussed in class and apply them to these situations presented in the readings.  These tools will help us get a different perspective on the problems we face and look for new solutions.  First identifying problems in our own government, we can observe a tool being used to solve real-world problems just like ours and then look to take a similar mindset to reform our own government to better address our identified problems.  Deliberative democracy and other interesting political innovations in the form of reforming government can better serve our governments providing bold and progressive legislature that is representative of the desires of the people, and better structuring the legislative branch to work for those same people.  

Deliberative democracy has shown results where the current U.S government has failed to come up with a solution.  Obama has recently appointed a "blue ribbon commission" to study the federal deficit.  These blue ribbon commissions are commonly seen as an admission defeat, since they have not come up with much to show in the past.  It's simply a way for the government, in this case a president, to say, "Well, we can't fix this, so study it or whatever."  It's a way to appear to be doing something but not actually do anything.  This type of bureaucracy is exactly what leads us to desire implementations of deliberative democracy in the first place.  Deliberative democracy can generate the bold and concise legislation that is needed in these cases and it would be a defined process with a timeline and once it was done we could move on.  Things would get done.  We can change them later if we need to but it's better to make an educated decision and be done and move on than it is to do nothing.  In a small portion of China these things are being deliberated on already.  The coastal region of Zeguo, population 120,000, uses deliberative democracy to deliver a bold and credible piece of legislation that comes from the people annually to decide the budget.  These decisions are overseen by a panel of experts to offer their knowledge, fielding questions for the decision makers.  The people have proven that deliberative democracy works.  They even implemented wind-powered energy solutions that cost more but provide a more sustainable source of energy.  The people make an educated and intelligent decision, even when they know it will cost more in taxes.  These are exactly the decisions that the usual representative democracy we have cannot seem to make efficiently.  This method of decision making allows people the chance to do the right thing in a collective of their peers.  All that is needed is a resource of knowledge and a deadline and the people produce real results.  This tool is a great way to create a real process to make decisions.  It's something that can work and actually takes deliberative democracy out of the "New England Town Hall" style methods we recall when we hear the name.  Looking through the conceptual filters provided by our political innovations we can see from a different perspective and better the political systems of today; learning from the past and applying ideas in the present for a better future.

Things like the example from China show that deliberative democracy works, so why not try going larger scale with our own government.  We can now apply our observed tool to a different situation.  An example of this could be to get rid of a state-level two-tiered house and senate and replace them with a single assembly that has the same amount of delegates.  These elected delegates would then represent a smaller fraction of the state.  This kind of division allows a representative to represent the needs of a smaller group of people, whose voices can actually be heard.  The delegate can manage 300,000 people instead of 1 Million on a state-level.  That's a 70% reduction!  The lowest level of elected official would be 5% of the current 1 Million in the example in the second reading.  This kind of representation gives people more power to make their own decision.  The candidates for these positions could be deliberated on by a smaller group of people, reducing the need for big-spending on campaigns.  That takes the money out of politics; something that so desperately needs to happen.  The U.S. is falling apart from the corruption and spending on these electoral campaigns.  If there wasn't a pay-to-win philosophy to elect officials, we might not have such a terrible time getting things done in Washington.  The people who are there are the people that actually produce results and want to be there. not just whoever payed the most for the seat.  It also cuts out lobbyists, another thing we need to implement from our theoretical toolkit of political innovation.  These things could be implemented today and we could see real results.  No more "mass parties that field partisan candidates who compete to represent millions of people presumed to have the same interests are, after all, relics of the early industrial age of mass production.”

These political innovations can help our country do away with clunky old government and come in with new, maybe even digital, forms of dealing with the legislative branch, assuming we even stick with the checks and balances style government we see now.  These political innovations can be applied as tools to gut the slow pay-to-win government we hate and replace it with a system that better represents the people.  On a smaller scale, we can use these conceptual tools to better see ways to tackle tough problems.  No more standing around and waiting for people who don't actually represent anyone talk about things they don't understand.

Economic Innovations (Part II)

Since beginning this semester's journey through Science, Technology, and Society this week's blog post really serves as a sort of mid-term assessment.  We look back at the problems we have encountered all semester, separating the real ones from the ones we've recently been faced with on House Of Cards Season Three, and we apply our newly acquired toolkit of economic innovations to make honest attempts to solve the problems we face in today's society.  Recently President Underwood has suggested throwing entitlements out the window, to provide funding for government subsidized jobs.  Actually, wait that's HoC again.  In reality, we have other equally complex issues.  I will discuss the problem of toxic chemicals such as nPB deteriorating the very workers that use it.  The problem of nPB could be easily solved with the economic innovations we have explored; particularly worker cooperatives.

The worker cooperative is the concept that all employees of a company, no matter how small or low a part they play, should have equal representation in the company's decision making process.  The system works on a one-person-one-vote principle which allows the equal representation of laborers among white collar paper pushers among CEO's.  We've seen this innovation work over multiple periods of time, both old and new.  Although, it's an understatement to say it works, rather we should say that it can be a catalyst for success.  Without the representation awarded under the worker cooperative concept, money takes precedence over health; profits win out over humanity, and dividends eclipse the livelihood of workers and their families.  We see the worker cooperative solve these problems; or rather we see that by nature, the worker cooperative never instigates these issues to begin with.

Cooperation, instead of corporation, can make all the difference for those at the mercy of a capitalist market.  Under capitalism, you pay, or you get nothing; connecting that to corporations, if you're out of a job, you lose everything.  These workers can be so driven to terrible work upon hard times that their safety is placed on the back burner in exchange for a roof over their head.  Roofs, however, cannot do very much for the dead, as we see in the story of nPB.  nPB is a nasty chemical adhesive that drys quickly but emits neurotoxic fumes that ravages the nervous system, transforming it into useless tissue.  The workers, faced with the threat of losing all they have worked so hard to earn, choose to work in terrible conditions forced by the managers and big-wigs of these companies; who take home the dirty money generated by sacrificing the lives of workers.  The worker cooperative concept removes multiple factors causing the bind faced by the workers.  With a worker cooperative, the CEOs aren't allowed to pull in profit while others suffer because workers have just as much of a say in what chemicals are used as the CEO and managers do.  No worker in their right mind would vote to use a chemical that kills them.  Through this internal participatory budgeting, nPB would no longer be used.  The workers could choose to put money into accumulating a stock which would allow use of slower-to-dry water-based chemicals.  They could, as a collective, choose to lose out on one batch-worth of profit for the company to allow for a slower drying period.  Other than this, the company could choose to increase the environmental standards experienced by workers, increasing their quality of life, and surely the quality of their work.  The worker cooperative takes care of all of these issues without the need for government intervention, all while keeping CEO salary roughly below 3 times the worker salary, allowing for a shared wealth and a shared prosperity.

Technology cannot only be found in microcontrollers and printed circuit boards.  We can also find it in political innovation, but political innovation doesn't need to be the limit.  We can further spread technology into economic processes allowing for innovations driving the progression of humanity in a lucrative and fair way.  We see that the worker cooperative never allows the nPB debacle to start in the first place, saving lives and profits alike.  In today's top-down work environment, we give greed the opportunity to oppress humanity, and according to history, greed will win out, given this opportunity.  Through economic innovation, workplaces and many other undesirable technological outcomes could be avoided.  Do not let technology oppress workers when workers can wield technology and take their economic livelihood into their own hands.

Intelligent Trial and Error, or Lack Thereof

In a cringe-inducing article, Ian Urbina of the New York Times takes us through the environment of workers exposed to extremely toxic and dangerous chemicals for pay.  That is, they work in factories making furniture.  However, the workers are the ones paying the real price to produce these goods.  Workers exposed to chemicals, like the nPB described in the article, surrender their bodies over for a measly hourly wage.  When they cried out for help and reached out to OSHA to fix conditions, they were ignored.  Workers in a position like this cannot afford to walk away, as they convince themselves that providing for their children and putting roof over their head is more important than the use of their body, and, in many cases, their lives.  We now look to see how Intelligent Trial and Error could have helped in their dilemma between work and well being.  Many parts of the Intelligent Trial and Error schematic are missing from the situation described by Urbina in the case of nPB in Carolinian furniture factories.  Since there are so many, we'll work methodically down the schematic presented to us in the textbook, starting with Effective Deliberation.

Effective Deliberation may be one of the parts most strongly present in the nPB debacle, although that does not say much.  The participants were absolutely informed as to how bad the work was and what exactly they were getting themselves into.  That does not make it their fault or dismiss liability from the company for their injury or death.  Although the discussion on dangerous and hazardous chemicals in the workplace harming workers was probably not started as early as it should have been, there is no reason to say that it was not brought up early enough to save some lives.  The diversity of the concerns were decently well represented, however that never allowed any real public decisions to be reached or implemented.  Overall, there is a looming knowledge of the problem and an even larger presence of apathy towards fixing the issue.

There is certainly no Fair Decision-Making Process as described under ITE present in the case of the workers affected by nPB.  The workers were not fairly represented, because if they had been, their voices and lives would be worth as much as the CEOs damning them to an early grave.  The process may be semi-transparent in that it is clear to see how decisions are made and reasoning behind the continued use of nPB.  That said, the burden of proof was absolutely placed on the workers who were slowly but surely turned victims.  The workers proved that nPB kills by demonstrating the act itself in a real human anatomic theatre.  With all the workers give up for their paycheck, none of their sacrifice could buy them the authority to decide their fate, as dictated by ITE.  They were sentenced to death under the "reason and logic" of profit over people.

 Going back in time to before all the despair caused by the nPB flumes coating workers lungs, we can examine the Prudence suggested by ITE.  There were obviously not enough, if any, sensible precautions taken to avoid harming workers with the chemical.  The suggested $18 gas masks would have been a good start, but apparently the lives of hundreds of workers is not worth the $1800 price tag to outfit the factory with simple respirators.  There was no erring on the side of caution or a very gradual scale up of the use of these chemicals.  They were implemented and as workers dropped like flied, they wheeled the old ones out and the new ones walked in, essentially getting tagged in by the corpses passing them in the reception area.  No flexibility was built into these factories as a foresight. We see complaints from companies that replacing the equipment would simply cost too much.  They obviously do not value the life spent to keep their factories running.

No Active Preparation for Learning from Experience was made by companies subjecting workers to the nPB fumes.  No one seems to understand why we need to stop using the glue, or rather they do understand but don't have the humanity to do what is right.  I don't call that recognition under any circumstance.  Although the chemical companies obviously ran tests on nPB, some even ceasing production, there doesn't seem to be any sort of recognition of the safety levels suggested from the testing.  What good is testing without learning from the results.  The companies certainly pay the price of settlements with these workers and their families to the tune of some half-million dollars paid out, although I don't believe they were set aside ahead of time as suggested by ITE's forth tenant.  The real tragedy here is no strong incentive for these businesses to do what is right.  When faced with the decision of profit or humanity, CEOs obviously can't make the correct and humane decision, so why are they not being coerced to the tune of government subsidy.  Perhaps the lack of OSHA funding described by Urbina explains the lack of learning from the dead.

Giving tenant number one a run for its money, the fifth and final guideline of ITE outlines a need for Appropriate Expertise.  Based on the amount of data and statistics used by Urbina, there are obviously experts at hand to analyze the situation, but unfortunately these experts may not be the kind  required to actually do something about the nPB.  You don't need tests to see what happens to the workers of companies like Royale.  The studies and substantial advisory assistance didn't stand a chance against good old southern greed.  There is no protection in place to protect against the conflicts of interest present in making the CEOs of these businesses choose between their careers and companies and their workers lives.  The kind of experts needed for that would be OSHA regulation that actually bans ALL risky chemicals like nPB, not just specific ones, forcing the CEOs to move to a more hazardous alternative.  Even past this, there has not been more than a few seeds of coverage from the media.  Urbina's article is the first and only time I, myself, have heard of these indecencies to human life.  Perhaps a more vocal mass-media presence would be more effective in helping free these workers and put these CEOs in jail, but if history serves to tell us anything there will be no justice here.

In conclusion, nearly all of the 20 suggestions of ITE are not present here.  Any that are are not truly implemented.  Between the lack of incentives and protection against conflict of interest and the lack of actual action to protect the workers from the nPB fumes, such as the filters proposed in the article, we see that ITE could most likely improve the situation for Carolinian furniture factory workers.  Intelligent Trial and Error as a mental tool, or guide to a desired perspective would save lives and perhaps the souls of the CEOs and managers at Royale and other companies, although something tells me it is too late for them now.

GMOs, 2 Fast 2 Furious?

In an egregiously long paper, which specifies no author, GMOs and the many consequences of their existence and usage are discussed.  Through an incredibly detailed and sesquipedalian perspective, the anti-GMO argument is brought forth for all to slowly read; between highlighting words and clicking "Google This Word."  Despite the difficulties of consuming this media, the argument delivered by the author is still understandable.  The use of Genetically Modified Organisms is not to be waved off or played down.  Reading even one or two pages of this document makes it extremely clear that there is much more than Big Brother would like you to believe in the predicament of genetically modifying organisms, particularly crops for human consumption.

The "unintended" consequences of replacing natural crops with genetically modified crops are the kinds of things that you see on commercials for medication complication settlement claims.  There's just not enough testing being done here, and the victims are the ones being essentially forced to consume the products of these modifications.  Specifically, the ones who have no choice as to where they can eat, those living in and around poverty will be bearing the brunt of the effects of genetically modified crops.  If there are ways to combat the six transnational corporations who have such an iron grip on the industry, they exist through government intervention.  We read that Europe has been successful in their efforts to prevent planting of genetically modified crops through the requirement of additional testing to conclude that the modifications do not cause health and/or environmental problems.  In other words, the Europeans have brakes on their technological advancement vehicle, where the United States has had its brake lines cut by the legal corruption of lobbying present in Washington D.C. and only have steering and acceleration capabilities, although those are probably compromised as well.

In studies cited by the paper, we've seen indisputable evidence that GMOs cause a multitude of complications in health and in the environment, yet they still advance because there are no brakes on our vehicle here in the U.S. and other parts of the world where these crops are mainly planted.  Causing a three-fold increase in tumor production and other health complications in mice through independent study and the incredible problems presented by soil contamination through Monsanto's Bt toxin and other agritoxins is not enough to get the brakes checked.  Things like that can be overshadowed by money in the pockets of politicians and loopholes in the systems meant to protect people from the dangers of too-rapid innovation.  The brakes here are government intervention like that of the Europeans.  Without the pre-requisite of proof that these organisms aren't harming society, there is no measure to the harm that could already be on its way to our dinner tables, into the soils, and into the lives of those who till them.  The only thing stopping this aside from intervention is a full scale catastrophe within the view of American citizens, and the right media coverage, not tampered with by the mega-corporations who indirectly control the media.  You can see how that might be difficult to wish for, not to mention impossible to pull off.

Benefits stemming from the overly rapid pace of innovation in this case are, as mentioned, solely for the corporations.  The companies producing the seeds and requiring wasteful repurchasing every season and making money selling the needed toxic chemicals to grow these plants are the ones reaping benefits.  The harm, on the other hand, is placed solely on the farmers, both those who are now former farmers, replaced by machinery needed to accommodate these genetically modified crops, and those who are forced to pay more for less crop because no other seeds are available, thanks to Monsanto and company's monopoly.  The reality is that the companies force the farmers to lose more of their profit margin, simply because they have control and can make them, something which should be illegal.  The government intervention is so plainly necessary.  If the process was slowed down and the products were tested instead of simply giving control to these companies and allowing them to do as they please.

Normally trial and error testing is the way to combat too-fast innovation.  It allows society to fully test, with math to back confidence in an innovation, and understand the consequences presented by a new discovery or invention.  In this case, that testing is thrown to the wind and we advance full throttle.  The only question from here is "Where are we headed?"  And the only indications we've seen lead us to believe it is a one-way trip to Tumorville, where we're all dead because the only food available kills us and all because it was more lucrative to six CEOs than it was healthy for seven billion human beings and counting.

Fairness: Social Justice and Technology

In a very well written and engaging paper, Freeman Dyson dives into familiar and easy to understand examples of how technology and social justice intermingle.  Writing first about how a movement in the technology of home appliances displaced an entire workforce.  Although, it was more than a workforce, really, an entire class of people.  These new-age appliances may not have filled the entire role of the servant class, however they bridged the gap enough to make the provider(s) of a home be able to also handle the maintenance and operation of the home.  This sounds great at first, but as I said before, the gap was only bridged, not closed.  There is still much that needs to be done, and just because the stove is electric doesn't mean the food cooks itself.  This leads to the women of the these homes becoming constrained, as Dyson describes.  The women of the 1920's were more free than those of the 1950's.  Though we have since changed how things are done in most cases, this shift is still a great observation and a lot can be learned from it.  Going back farther, we explore that the invention of the printing press stripped many of nuns of their freedom, though it did give others access to education in many ways.  These examples of how technology drives ethics and shifts in social climate help give proof of concept for a much grander (and more positive) shift that is currently still held only in Dyson's dreams; a shift where technology provides for humanity, rather equally.

Dyson describes his hopes and even a means to achieve them.  His means, unfortunately, are exactly what are to be expected from the aspirations of the 1990's and early 2000's.  Technology, now, is not all it was promised to be back then (even if I have become more than I was promised to be).  It has fallen short of Dyson's expectations so far and his dreams are no where in sight from our current perspective; that is, his dreams as a whole.  However, there are some aspects of technology that have come to fruition with resemblance of Dyson's thoughts.  The easiest to point out is the Internet.  We have achieved an extremely widespread mesh of devices through the primitive means of copper, fiber, and radio which Dyson insinuated were not quite up to the task of connecting the world.  It is true that the connection today is still not up to snuff with our friend Freeman's vision, but on a positive and hopeful note, his dreams are directly being researched at this moment by the capitalist powers-that-be.  We see balloon and satellite internet as the solution to connecting those with the poorest chances of fitting eligibility for connection to the current networking scheme, which is still generally driven as a payment-dependent distribution of service though the tyrannical Internet Service Providers (ISPs) we know in our decade.  On a negative view, these same providers of connection actively work against an open and free Internet every day by throwing money at politicians to allow them to cap speeds and provide more bandwidth to the highest bidder and near-none to the lowest; something that does not fit into Dyson's vision or any definition of social justice.  Aside from the fight against ISPs the idea of a mesh network above the clouds connecting the world is absolutely a possibility and a goal for many.

Unfortunately, we fall short of the other technological expectations, with no real breakthroughs in sight for "energy trees," although his proposed effects of these trees appear to be sound.  So why have these ideas not been realized?  Why, besides perhaps a naturally slower pace for technological progress, have we not achieved similar world to Dyson's proposed solar-driven Earth?  I would say it is less the pace of technological development in itself, but rather a lack of driving force for these developments.  Until now, nearly 20 years later, these kinds of ideas of liquid fuels from solar energy have been unheard of.  Never have I heard of these ideas under any sort of development.  Although some would argue they seem Utopian and far-fetched, it is more likely that the ideas derive less profit than others for the cost of their development.  How do you sell energy trees?  Even if you could, there is simply no straight forward way to develop them.  They cannot take the same development paths as products we see receiving the coveted R&D work-hours today; smartphones, cloud services, etc.  They take the shadowy route similar to that of curing diseases.  We all hear cries for help and funding for cures to cancers of all kinds, diabetes, and many other conditions, but if they were receiving any sort of real donations, the commercials would be unnecessary.  This, coupled with a Google search, proves to be true.  The amount of money raised for researching and curing diseases pales in comparison to the for-sale product research and for-death military research being conducted.

It is things like this that Dyson fails to address.  How do we achieve these things, in very specific detail?  Many times it is who, not how, that is relevant.  Who will be overseeing these balloon/satellite networks if they are ever to be deployed?  Who does this genome research and by whom is it funded?  Dyson understands to some extent the ends, but his ends do not exactly match up very well with current means to developing technology.  His yearning of social progress and a desire for equality, equity, and basic human rights is simply not shared whatsoever by those funding development; rich, old, white, male investors.  As these desired technologies develop at a more relaxed pace, starving for funding, we will see just how close to his mark Dyson's perception of social justice via technology is.  We have seen social justice be affected by technology in the past, but not in such a positive way as he hopes for, and not to the benefit of women and/or the poor; two severely underrepresented groups of people affected by technology.  The benefits experienced by the servant class of England were certainly not intended consequences, I can assure you.  In order to progress your desired technology faster, you must monetize it with reasonable payoff for required investment.  At the moment, we are just not close enough to see rapid work done towards this by way of Capitalism.  Perhaps clean energy will come as water levels truly begin to rise and eschew the wealthy from their waterfront estates.  Until then, Dyson will be let down by our money-driven system of "progress."

Unintended Consequences

In an article posted on The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr gives a narrow perspective on all the negative impacts of trusting computing and technology with knowledge, over human beings.  He really shows his age and disconnection from the issues he discusses when he puts the term "exponential growth" in quotations as if he does not believe Moore's Law holds true.  Although the specific example used by Carr is pretty compelling, it does not detail the larger picture.  The article should be titled "Pilots and a few other positions are having this specific problem where they forget how to do their job," but that is not as nice and I know that not many would read it, myself most likely included.  I understand that what Carr outlines as the major problem here is where specific high-risk positions have problems generated from the technology replacing the workers in the workplace.  Those workers become, mostly, data interpreters instead of what their previous position was, like a pilot in Carr's example.  However, Carr seems to imply through his writing that he believes this to be a more universal problem than it actually is.  Instead of addressing this as an overarching issue, this specific interaction of technology with pilots should be addressed by the respective governing bodies of the professions affected; most likely by more software to prevent the rash and newly de-skilled actions of panicking pilots.

Carr gives a classic "look how old I am, technology is the devil" sort of view on how technology is stripping away "who we are."  What Carr fails to understand is that the way technology is evolving, it is not "stripping away who we are", it is literally doing exactly as he details when he describes the systems flying the planes and driving cars.  The software is turning something we as people do as a skill into something we do not do; something we do not have to think about or cognitively process in our lives.  It turns a skilled labor into an unskilled labor.  It turns the need for a skilled laborer into the need for an unskilled laborer.  Carr fills a five gallon bucket with ten gallons of previously required water and then is extremely surprised when the excess five gallons of water spill everywhere, "Look at all the water we are wasting with these new buckets!"  As this is happening, gallons upon gallons are being saved by using the software to do the skilled work more efficiently.

Carr says, "...when we automate an activity, we hamper our ability to translate information into knowledge" and he misses the point.  Technology is changing how society works.  Creating more jobs for computing-oriented programming and design, and removing other types of skilled labor.  Technology, and indirectly its manufacturers, are not making skilled laborers dumb, it is making them unskilled laborers.  During the transition, we lose the skill of those who are already supplanted in their previously skilled roles, unless they take that skill elsewhere.  They get the short end of the stick, as more and more kids are trained to fill the newly needed skill-oriented programming roles of computing, instead of the previously needed roles of pilot and stock-broker, used as examples by Carr.

These replacements are something that can be generally predicted (most likely by software), however the ability to actually save the wasted brain power of replaced laborers may not be so easily done; especially in a Capitalist environment where doing so is most likely not profitable.  As Carr says, learning is inefficient and requires time that corporations simply don't have in the budget.  The undesirable consequence of wasted labor (not even addressing the lost jobs from technological improvement), is certainly a byproduct of technological progress.  If it was possible to automate the jobs of these people being displaced, and simply place them elsewhere and have them perform a new skilled task for the same money, it would be done, but new training is not cheap and might require as much as a new degree.

What I am saying is not that I have a better solution to preserving the wasted skills of the labors of these formerly required skilled workers, short of retraining them for new positions, or the much more desirable but not currently possible collective thought solution.  I will leave that task up to those much smarter than myself.  I simply state that we are not rotting because technology helps us drive our cars, lift heavy things, heat our homes, and many other things that free up our time for more intellectual (or perhaps just different in the case of a well-trained skilled labor) pursuits.  Carr asks, albeit rhetorically, "Who needs humans anyway" and the answer, even if he was not looking for one, is that with time, no one will.  The moment we can safely and truly upload our consciousness to the cloud and we stop being human beings is the moment no one needs humans anymore.  That day could be coming, and it will be faster than expected.  When it does, people like Carr would exclaim that we lose who we are, but who we are is more than what we do presently and who we are as society is a hell of a lot more than how we exist presently.

Robotic Warfare, Foolish or Futuristic?

Leo Marx, through an arduous reading experience, explores a landscape in which two, perhaps opposing, views on technological progress exist.  I believe that the current view of technological progress expressed by a majority of Americans in 2015 is certainly oriented in the same manner as his described "technocratic" view of progress.  Many people, especially older folks who experienced the adversarial culture to technological progress, represented by nuclear development of power and weaponry in the 1960's, something mentioned in the paper, definitely hold onto the skepticism and attitude that enables easy distaste of technology that is present in Marx's "enlightenment" perspective.

The Economist recently detailed many types of war-waging robots and asks the question: "Do armed robots make killing too easy?"  In other words, just as many acts today, such as social interaction, have become more casual, does the existence of these robots mean war will become a more casual act?  Based on their provided statistic, which I believe to be understated, it may seem that way, "In the past eight years[,] drone strikes by America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have killed more than 2,400 people in Pakistan, including 479 civilians."  479 civilian lives taken by the barbaric American tactic of 'Well, we thought it was him because he was tall.'  What The Economist is really asking here is, Does the existence and use of these robots devalue human life?  Perhaps that answer should come from one of the 479 civilians or the many living today who can only find peace in a cloudy day, because it covers the sky above them.  Is this specific technological progress actually a depiction of universal progress?  Many argue that it is not; under the ideas of Marx's "enlightenment."  If this is universal progress, then why is it not positively affecting all human beings?  That is what universal implies, after all.

In Marx's essay, he addresses that the advance of the assembly line, and other efficiency-minded advances displaced the jobs of workers.  This continues to be a topic of discussion to this day.  Although we have absolutely moved into the Jeffersonian idea of keeping our work-shops in Europe China, we have not necessarily taken an enlightening stance in doing so, depending on perspective.  From one perspective, we are abiding by Jefferson's enlightening request, but in another perspective, we damn an entire culture, that being the lower classes of many "less-developed" parts of the world, to poverty; surely considered a social injustice that Marx claims enlightenment aims to avoid.  What may be enlightening to us, might be delivering that same oppression, that enlightenment attempts to overthrow, unto another people.  With yet another perspective, the same one held by those older folks mentioned earlier, perhaps due to a lack of actual experience with modern technology and new positions created through technological progress, we lose American work-hours to those damned by our actions in other parts of the world.  The only difference between that circumstance and the drone predicament is that instead of work-hours lost to new assembly practices, lives are lost to a more casual method of killing.

The Economist definitely appears to take the enlightening stance with "Robots go to war," not touching on the benefits to soldiers nearly as much as the costs to those affected by the warfare.  Although the nature of the technology itself may not be reducing human life.  That is to say, that organic life is not devalued by the existence of synthetic war-waging machines, just as it is not devalued by synthetic life, to take another step in the direction of synthetics.  Drones are to guns as guns are to swords.  They do not necessarily do the killing, but those (indirectly) wielding them have proven that they can do more harm than good.  On one side, the drones keep American lives safe and out of combat situations, regardless of that cost.  Looking from another perspective renders that the drones take more lives than they save.  The cost of the pursuit of unmanned combat will be measured in casualties, not in dollars.  Although the monetary cost is yet another thing to keep in mind.

Those who practice skepticism of technology do so because they have seen that technological progress can harm society as much as it can help.  In other words, technological progress is not the same thing as universal progress.  That is not to downplay the positive effects that a large portion of technological innovation can have.  Technological innovation is paramount to humanity, and that should not be undermined, however, just because we can travel to Mars does not mean that we are better as a society, when a large portion of the global population lives in poverty.