32
ECOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
giving way to genocidal devastation. We must consider the absurdity of fighters
in the Polish resistance protesting the Holocaust on the basis of objections to
the high 'technology’ of gas chambers alone.
Low technologies that are supposedly fulfilling a benign function, are not
always liberatoiy on a social level. Along the coast of Northern California,
stretch miles of gargantuan windmills: while representing a low5 technology,
these monstrosities also represent the state’s techno-fix to the problem of
doling out 'energy’ in a centralized and bureaucratic fashion, blotting out the
glittering sea shore along the way. Similarly, the enormous solar collectors in
the Southwest represent a low technology of preposterous proportion. Rather
than promote local and direct expression of technological ethics, such large
scale technologies promote instead the centralized power of the state and
corporations who engineer and execute the design of their own choosing. It is
indeed crucial that our technological practices do not degrade natural
processes. Yet it is also necessary that we do not harm the social world by
usurping community self-determination. There is no recipe for a ‘good’ or
'ecological’ technology independent of a truly democratic context..
So, we might ask, if technology is not deterministic, if it is informed by
particular social relationships, is it in fact simply ‘neutral? Are technologies
blank slates to be written upon by those in power? Nothing could be farther
from the truth. While there are many technologies, such as a knife, which
contain a wide spectrum of potential functions, good and bad, there are many
technologies which by their very design are ‘loaded’ in positive or dangerous
ways
For instance, a nuclear bomb is structurally biased by its design and
function to kill inordinate amounts of people quickly or to ‘peacefully’
intimidate political leaders into submission. Llowever, while we might say that
a nuclear bomb is not neutral we could not say that the technology of nuclear-
bombs alone determined the events in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Although the nuclear bomb represented a necessary condition for the
nuclear bombing of Japan, it did not constitute a sufficient condition. The
sufficient condition was comprised of a set of social relationships: a hideous
amalgam of foreign policy and a technological expression of that highly
undemocratic and capital driven system, called ‘nuclear technology’. Given
enough time, money, and undemocratic power to develop ‘technology’, those
in authority can dream up some pretty lethal inventions.
Similarly, organic fertilizer is structurally biased in a clear direction, albeit
a positive one. It is constituted by the very intention underlying its design to
enhance, rather than deplete, the composition of soil and water. However,
while we might say that the technology of organic fertilizer is not ‘neutral’, we
could not say that the technology of organic fertilizer will actually determine
that die world’s soil and water will be enhanced. Rather, it is a set of social