“The truth has to be repeated,” wrote Pakistani scholar Eqbal Ahmad. “It doesn't become stale just because it has been told once. So keep repeating it. Don't bother about who has listened, who has not listened. The media and the other institutions of power are so powerful that telling the truth once is not enough. You've got to keep repeating different facts, prove the same point.”
Repetition is precisely how Corporate America does it — the same messages pounded into our brains until we submit. That pounding is usually accomplished via technology and thus, it becomes extremely useful to deify the gizmos and gadgets utilized to keep the masses distracted and pacified.
That's why we so often hear: Technology is neutral. It's only as good or as bad as those using it.
It's repeated so often that few of us even stop to question its validity. Therefore, even though I've written about this several times before, I will heed Eqbal Ahmad's words and once again discuss some of the reasons why technology is definitely not neutral.
Technology = Toxic Waste
How about 6.92 million tons of e-waste generated by Americans — about 46 pounds per person — in 2019? We’re talking about roughly 100 million cell phones, 41 million computers, and over 20 million TV sets tossed into landfills annually. Can you imagine how astronomically high that number is for industry-produced waste?
Reminder: The non-recyclable components of a single computer may contain almost 2 kilograms of lead and 70 percent of the entire toxic waste stream of landfills is e-waste.
Plus, while the developed world quenches its insatiable (but highly manufactured) thirst for the newest and latest doohickey, much of the subsequent e-waste is “exported” to countries like India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Ghana. Our once beloved devices are then burned, buried, and discharged into waterways before finding their way into the air, food, and drinking water of the locals.
Technology = Alienation
"With the present means of long-distance mass communication, sprawling isolation has proved an even more effective method of keeping a population under control, henceforth a one-way world," warned Guy Debord more than a half-century ago.
We have social media but we're sacrificing social skills. Is there anyone happy with the way smartphone culture has changed human interactions?
As green anarchists remind us, technology is "more than wires, silicon, plastic, and steel. It is a complex system involving division of labor, resource extraction, and exploitation for the benefit of those who implement its process. The interface with and result of technology is always an alienated, mediated, and distorted reality."
Technology is not available to everyone
Not even close. In Australia, almost 99 percent of the population has access to the Internet. In Asia, that number is 64 percent. Pretty stark difference, huh? Get ready for this one: In North America, 90 percent of the population has access to the Internet. In Africa, that number is 22 percent. If you think it can't get worse than that, try this on for size: On the continent of Africa, some 77 percent of people cannot even access electricity! In fact, about 79 percent of the Third World has no access to electricity. Technology is not neutral.
Technology devours nature
Thanks to the automobile culture, in the 20th century, an area equal to all the arable land in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania was paved in the U.S. This means highways, off-ramps, parking lots, and other car-centric structures — each replacing countless, priceless eco-systems.
Easily the most crucial issue of all, this one cannot be simply "fixed." Rather, we need an entirely new perspective. Translation: The last thing we need is a move into a more high-tech, digital, transhumanist world. What we need has already worked not too long ago:
Self-serving slogans of indoctrination like "technology is neutral" are not easily challenged, of course, and doing so may require a similar brand of replication. This reiteration has the added value of refreshing one’s memory, e.g. it really helps to have facts to back up your critiques and stances.
Coda: In 2010, when they discovered nearly 6 million tons of lithium in Bolivia, the feeding frenzy began instantly — promising "big changes" for South America's poorest country. Big changes, indeed.
I say we should just dig this Lithium instead: