Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
— ARTHUR C. CLARKE’S THIRD LAW
All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.
— DAVID BROWER
Men have become the tools of their tools. ... Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
— HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Like many people, I have an ambivalent relationship with technology. Sometimes the relationship is pleasant, even joyful. At other times the relationship becomes more adversarial. In solitude, I have only my own ability to keep the machines I depend on functioning. I often feel at their mercy and question my wisdom in creating such a high-tech environment for myself. On previous wilderness retreats, I took nothing more complicated than a fishing reel, and it was a relief to not have to deal with mechanical devices. The downside was that if I’d been seriously injured, I would have had small chance of survival, since no one knew where I was and I had no way to tell them. This time, for my own peace of mind and to comply with requests from friends, family, and the university, I brought a satellite telephone.
Then, one thing led to another. Since I would need electricity to charge the satphone, I brought a wind generator, solar panels, and storage batteries. Since I would have electric power, I decided to bring 12-volt lights and use a laptop for journaling. In such a fierce climate, a chain saw would be useful, and, of course, a boat with outboard motor would be more pragmatic than a kayak for exploring the rugged seascape. Having only one outboard is risky, so I brought a backup. As long as I was bringing gasoline for the outboards and chain saw, why not add propane and a propane stove for cooking? I wonder: Could I have survived in any sort of comfort without these technological aids?
It’s become clear to me during the past months that using one machine fosters dependence on another. When in the boat and far from camp, I’m glad to have the satellite telephone in case the motor fails and leaves me stranded. I feel at the mercy of the outboard because it can break in a way I don’t have the replacement parts, tools, or skill to repair. I’ve never felt this vulnerable when relying on a canoe or kayak. I’ve always felt that unless I broke an arm, I could make it back to camp or out to civilization. The feeling of vulnerability due to my dependence on faulty machinery is unpleasant. The frustration and anger I experience while trying to repair the outboards and chain saw when they refuse to run is even more painful. Thus, having technology for my own peace of mind is often counterproductive.
The existence of technology in our lives has become so ubiquitous that what was once a rare luxury has become not only a necessity, but a seemingly eternal reality. Electric lights, refrigerators, stoves, running water, and toilets are as fundamental to many people as air, gravity, or their own bodies: simply there and rarely noticed — until there is a breakdown. We often avoid this shadow side of our dependence on technology by relying on others to maintain the machines we believe we need to survive.
Ah, but when our machines are working well, what an amplification and extension of power and perception. On days when the sea is calm, I sometimes stand in the bow of the boat as the motor sends me flying across the water and out into the universe. What freedom, what joy! In those moments, I’m a cyborg with human mind/spirit and mechanized body. To me, as a male, machines often seem like phallic amplifications; I wonder how females feel. Does the focus change from amplification to extension? Do the drive of the wind generator and thrust of the outboard give way to the solar panel’s quiet concentration of energy and the satellite telephone ’s broad embrace?
Satellite technology is truly amazing. Sitting on a far-flung rock, I can reach out and connect with people far, far away. I can point a small GPS gadget toward the sky and locate myself exactly on the Earth. Does this wonder cast a shadow? Is there loss as well as gain?
At the beginning of each month I send a check-in email and wait for replies. As my attention focuses on connecting with people who are somewhere else, I tend to feel tight and withdrawn from my immediate environment. My involvement with technology distracts me from settling into solitude. And not only do I become perceptually cut off from my surroundings, but I also often feel less spiritually and emotionally connected with the people I’m contacting. It’s as though I lose awareness of our underlying unity when I focus my attention on linking electronically via technology and language.
Relying on the Global Positioning System to locate myself also tends to take me out of the immediate environment. Instead of paying close attention to and identifying landmarks along my route of travel, I can simply read a number from the display screen and find my position on the map. During my first months here, I relied on thermometer, barometer, and clock, instead of my direct perception of the world around me. Such instruments are clearly useful, but in depending on them we lose some of the immediacy of our relationship with the environment, with other people, and with ourselves.
The absence of internal combustion engine noise is profoundly relaxing. We have become so inundated by noise in our culture we no longer know what it is to live without the racket of machinery. It’s glorious. Machine noise is often physically painful to me. However, this seems to be so only when I’m not running the machine! In solitude I find the noise of the chain saw intense but not unpleasant. However, if someone else were running the saw within my hearing, I would experience it as very disturbing.
Although I sometimes feel wild joy standing in the boat, flying across the sea, driven by the throbbing motor behind me, I’m also aware that the noise disturbs my tranquillity. The dolphins, on the other hand, seem attracted to the sound or vibration. They never approach when I’m paddling the kayak, but often have come to play around the motor-driven boat.
The banshee howl of the wind generator is seriously intrusive, and I’ve mostly shut it down and minimized my use of electricity. I feel more comfortable with the solar panels that passively gather and convert sunlight than I do with the generator and its often wild activity.
IN AND OUT OF TOUCH
Cell phones and email can narrow and impoverish our experience of the world. As the shadow side of allowing us to remain in contact with our social group, cell phones and email tend to buffer our engagement with the people physically near us. To the extent we are actively linked to those we already know, we are less available to interact with strangers we might encounter along the way. This is particularly evident when traveling in foreign cultures.
During the last forty years, I’ve often traveled and lived in Latin America. In the past, when I set off with my backpack into remote areas, I knew I’d be out of contact with the people back home for weeks or even months at a time. I only rarely received mail along the way via general delivery, and pausing to write letters or postcards was an infrequent and significant event. Traveling alone, my only social interactions were with local people or with other travelers. I always felt I had stepped over the edge and into the unknown.
But on this trip to Chile, before going into solitude, I felt I hadn’t stepped cleanly out of my familiar social group. Daily, I visited internet cafes to engage in electronic conversation. As I became aware of myself doing this, I noticed many other “travelers” doing the same. We were all maintaining active relationships with friends, lovers, and family back home. This made it more difficult and less imperative for us to engage fully with the people around us.
I’m not suggesting that electronic connectivity is entirely negative in our lives. I’ve met many interesting strangers via email, and my relationships with Patti and others live via email and telephone. But I am aware that these relationships tend to distract me from engaging as fully as I otherwise might in person with those in the community where I live.
If this is the personal price we pay when we use technology, there are also deleterious impacts on the people who manufacture these machines (but who sometimes don’t have access to this same technology), on our common environment (particularly air and water), and on our nonhuman neighbors. Technology enriches our individual lives, and we are loath to give it up, but we pay an enormous collective price for it.
SHOPPING FOR ILLUSIONS
Technology has the capacity to amplify and extend our desires. Consider the shopping list that bloomed in my mind during the months of July and August. What I experienced seems iconic of our culture ’s relationship with material goods.
It began with a small hole in the chimney. I noticed it when I’d been here for only about five months. It seemed evident that the chimney wouldn’t last the full year, and I’d then be left without the means to heat the cabin. I considered alternatives, such as removing the damaged sections and running the shortened pipe straight up through the roof, but none of the alternatives seemed acceptable. The rusting chimney, in and of itself, would probably not have pushed me to consider breaking solitude by asking the CONAF officials to bring me a new one, but the outboard was running poorly, and I was also worried I might run out of ibuprofen and antibiotics. Once I decided to ask German to bring in a few items, I discovered more and more things it would be nice to have.
Slowly the list grew, and, via email, I sent Patti on various wild-goose chases in Texas as she faithfully fulfilled my requests and talked to outboard repairmen and other technicians, trying to determine exactly what it was I thought I so desperately needed. For quite a while I couldn’t see what was happening, and my shopping list lengthened to include electric supplies, cheese, onions, and many other goodies.
The bubble of desire grew in my mind, and what had been things it would be nice to have just in case became necessities I felt I needed for my survival. Fortunately the CONAF boat didn’t arrive when promised, and this gave me the opportunity to see how subtly and easily my desires became identified with my physical survival. Then, poof, the bubble burst as I realized I didn’t really need anything I didn’t already have.
We have seriously confounded luxury with necessity in our culture, and can no longer differentiate between what we want in order to maintain a particular lifestyle (with its social relationships and sensual pleasures) and what we actually need for physical survival. We have confounded social identity with biological and spiritual being to the point of believing we will die if we lose our social standing, which is often based on the material wealth we have accumulated. This accelerating spiral of desires becoming necessities is driving our suicidal rush to destroy the Earth we depend on for our actual physical survival.
Our rush is not only self-destructive, it is unnecessary. Recent studies suggest that wealth and happiness do not necessarily go hand in hand. Once the basic necessities of life — food, water, shelter, clothing, and health care — are provided, additional material goods often do little to enhance our sense of well-being.