Another one of my favorite Pop!Tech lectures asks the question, “What does technology want?” Kevin Kelly doesn’t give technology a sentient voice, but he examines the behavior of what man creates and makes some startling conclusions. Technology “doesn’t want to be prohibited,” it wants to “increase its efficiency,” it wants to “replicate easily and without restraint,” it wants “to become more complex,” “wants diversity,” and “alters it’s environment to suit itself.” But, he says, it’s not that technology wants to take over the planet, we can live with technology in cities and still have nature coming up to the border of that city. He ends the lecture with a summation that technologies are like children, there are no inherently bad technologies, just bad applications. And it’s our responsibility as the creators of technology to discover the best application for it.
Then I read an article in Wired about the Internet in China and there’s a great illustration where a river is rushing towards The Great Wall and then right over it. I remember someone wrote me an email about China, asking my opinion about censorship and I said that I thought restricted information was better than no information. It seems to me that having the Internet available, filtered through the Chinese government, is better than no Internet at all. (You'll notice that there are no red dots in the giant land mass of China on my ClustrMap.) But this lecture beautifully illustrates how the Internet, as technology, has an agenda of its own and enables people, as this article says, to subvert the sensors and get access to restricted information. Technology wants to be replicated and doesn’t want to be prohibited.
I love this idea of technology, not as something with consciousness but as an organism with it’s own method of evolution and survival. We might give birth to it but it doesn’t mean we know why or how it exists.
Showing posts with label responsibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label responsibility. Show all posts
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
"Someone should be held accountable"
My obsession with The West Wing continues as I start season four. In the last episode of season three, CJ's love interest (the super hot Mark Harmon) was shot and killed in a robbery. It was so upsetting, I actually yelled at the TV "why can't they leave these people alone!" It seems like people are always getting killed on that show. Now I know why. People are always getting killed in real life.
The shooting yesterday, in Virgina, the deadliest in US history, has sparked outrage from the rest of the world about the ease and prevalence of obtaining a gun in the United States. And even though most of the handgun deaths occur on our soil, we're the largest manufacturer of weapons in the world, making this a global issue.
"Mexican authorities reported that 80 percent of guns in the country came from the U.S., 50 percent of handguns seized by Canada's gun crime task force were also smuggled across the U.S. border and 30 percent of guns recovered by Japanese authorities originated in the U.S., the IANSA found."
Gun deaths persist even in countries with zero tolerance policies towards guns in large part because they continue to be made and are bought so easily in the U.S. A London Times columnist asks why Americans continue to tolerate our lax gun laws and a culture that allows so many people to die by something so easily avoidable. I'm embarrassed to be seen as tolerating it and yet when I asked a friend what he thought, he said "it's tragic but unavoidable."
"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," said Dana Perino, a spokesperson for President George W. Bush. "And certainly bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting ... obviously that would be against the law and something that someone should be held accountable for."
How barbaric a society we live in where the government defends people's rights to kill each other! SOMEONE should be held accountable for these deaths? WHO? The guy who killed 33 people and then shot himself? Hundreds of laws are passed to protect us from ourselves without nearly the debate appointed to gun control.
You must wear a seatbelt in a car (11,000 lives saved per year), you must not drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, you must wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, you must stop at a red light.
We have laws protecting us from food that could kill us (even if it's caused by OUR OWN bad eating habits) since heart failure is the number one cause of death in America, laws protecting us from second hand smoke and drugs that might harm us, and we have guard rails in every public place to protect us from falling to our death.
Unfortunately, many of these laws are only passed because companies don't want to get sued. Problem is, there's no one to sue when someone shoots and kills you. If there were, GUARANTEED that person/company would have found a way to protect us from getting shot.
CNN reports that "small arms manufacturing in the U.S. is a $2 billion-a-year industry." Still think those gun lobbyists are protecting our right to bear arms? In the aftermath of 9-11, President Bush said “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
The shooting yesterday, in Virgina, the deadliest in US history, has sparked outrage from the rest of the world about the ease and prevalence of obtaining a gun in the United States. And even though most of the handgun deaths occur on our soil, we're the largest manufacturer of weapons in the world, making this a global issue.
"Mexican authorities reported that 80 percent of guns in the country came from the U.S., 50 percent of handguns seized by Canada's gun crime task force were also smuggled across the U.S. border and 30 percent of guns recovered by Japanese authorities originated in the U.S., the IANSA found."
Gun deaths persist even in countries with zero tolerance policies towards guns in large part because they continue to be made and are bought so easily in the U.S. A London Times columnist asks why Americans continue to tolerate our lax gun laws and a culture that allows so many people to die by something so easily avoidable. I'm embarrassed to be seen as tolerating it and yet when I asked a friend what he thought, he said "it's tragic but unavoidable."
"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," said Dana Perino, a spokesperson for President George W. Bush. "And certainly bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting ... obviously that would be against the law and something that someone should be held accountable for."
How barbaric a society we live in where the government defends people's rights to kill each other! SOMEONE should be held accountable for these deaths? WHO? The guy who killed 33 people and then shot himself? Hundreds of laws are passed to protect us from ourselves without nearly the debate appointed to gun control.
You must wear a seatbelt in a car (11,000 lives saved per year), you must not drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, you must wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, you must stop at a red light.
We have laws protecting us from food that could kill us (even if it's caused by OUR OWN bad eating habits) since heart failure is the number one cause of death in America, laws protecting us from second hand smoke and drugs that might harm us, and we have guard rails in every public place to protect us from falling to our death.
Unfortunately, many of these laws are only passed because companies don't want to get sued. Problem is, there's no one to sue when someone shoots and kills you. If there were, GUARANTEED that person/company would have found a way to protect us from getting shot.
CNN reports that "small arms manufacturing in the U.S. is a $2 billion-a-year industry." Still think those gun lobbyists are protecting our right to bear arms? In the aftermath of 9-11, President Bush said “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Changing the course of capitalism
I watched "The Insider" again the other night. A great, inspiring movie at the beginning of what has become a hot topic: holding companies to a higher moral responsibility. A responsibility to not cheat their employees out of their retirements, to disclose how it is that CEOs make 400-700 times the average employee and to make their products safer for consumption and the environment. It's not enough any more to simply stimulate the economy; more and more, people are demanding responsibility. Fortunately, many companies are waking up to the economic opportunities of this kind of responsibility.
Most of my career as a marketer, I've believed that selling product inherently breeds bad behavior. In order to generate more profit, companies have to produce a product more cheaply. To increase market share their product has to be more addictive and/or necessary. And to sell a higher quantity, the product has to be consumed at a faster rate. I challenge you to think of a product that can be made more profitable or increase market share without damaging the environment, the consumer or some other poor creature.
(I tried to think of something that must be innocuous, like raising fluffy little sheep and shearing them for wool. This sounds really harmless but then I read this. Yikes!)
See, sometimes companies make something a customer wants, and then have to figure out a way to make it profitable. But many times, they're making something they've deemed profitable and then hire PR/advertisers to make people want it:
When the disposable razor came along, marketers only had to show women a picture of a naked armpit to sell razors to women wanting to be more fashionable. But they had a tougher time convincing them to shave (and bare) their legs. They tried for years without success until a very famous war-time poster came out featuring a very sexy Betty Grable with shaved naked legs and women were told it was their patriotic DUTY to wear shorter skirts and sheer nylons. And off the hair came! (We're still one of the only countries in the world where women regularly shave their hair off.)
Then there were disposable diapers, not a hit for the first five years. Then the PR people hired a pediatrician and cooked up a story about how damaging it is to potty-train children too early. It would make them "anal" to be separated by their poo at too early an age. Instantly, they extended the life of their product by at least a year as anxious moms allowed their children longer diaper time. (By the way, "disposable" diapers will take about 500 years to decompose.)
Sometimes, to make a product more profitable, they have to decrease it's shelf life.
Electronics and appliances have a shorter lifespan than they ever have despite our advances. It just isn't very profitable to make a device that lasts several years. And if you make them too cheap, it isn't profitable either. A CD player now costs let's say $60, which is cheaper than the $250 I paid in 1985, but it only lasts a year. Printers are now less than $100 but only last six months to a year! Cellphones? They're practically "disposable." (Like the diapers, the hunks of junk ends up in the dump when they stop working and probably never biodegrade.)
Sometimes, to make people want a product again, they have to lie.
Cigarettes and alcohol are addictive. Fast food clogs your arteries. How can you increase your market share without telling people otherwise? French fries aren't French fries if they aren't deep fried! Tell the consumer you're using a different kind of oil that isn't as bad. Tell them the alcohol has less calories and the cigarettes don't have additives so they're less harmful. They're all lies but how else can it be done? Since only 10% of smokers start after age 20, they have to get addicted young.
Sometimes, experts are used to show how the product should be consumed.
For the last fifteen years, we've been eating a higher protein diet. We've been told it's the way to be healthy and slim. It's not true. Eating vegetables is much better for you than meat but meat is a booming industry. When it's so cheap and yummy, how can we resist? (Inhumane treatment to animals, declining nutrition of the meat, increased sickness due to bad meat and pollution that was unheard of a few decades ago will eventually turn us off). Did you know that 80% of the ocean's contaminants come from ground pollution running into rivers? Now we can't even eat (what's left of) the fish!
So, our consumerism drives the economy but these products make us sick by ruining our health and the environment. We're running at an accelerated pace towards cheaper, more disposable goods but also stopping along the way the admire a new model of goods - ethically produced, better for the environment and maybe even more desirable.
Ultimately, the consumer has to DEMAND the products we want, produced the way we can be happy about, and the corporations will HAVE TO care as much about responsibility as profit.
While hybrid cars increase in popularity, so do Hummer sales. While we are more conscious of recycling, we also create more trash. While the oil industry is stepping up to be more green, they're also illegally dumping tons of toxic waste in the ocean. Are we going in two directions or one direction that's so complex, it has yet to reveal itself?
It just may be that we're finally seeing our modern way of life as barbaric: torturing and killing animals and each other, dumping crap into the ocean, burying our trash, paving over the earth, pushing products that kill people. We're capable of so much more and I think we're just now beginning to see our potential to rise above our filthy, greedy past to save ourselves.
Most of my career as a marketer, I've believed that selling product inherently breeds bad behavior. In order to generate more profit, companies have to produce a product more cheaply. To increase market share their product has to be more addictive and/or necessary. And to sell a higher quantity, the product has to be consumed at a faster rate. I challenge you to think of a product that can be made more profitable or increase market share without damaging the environment, the consumer or some other poor creature.
(I tried to think of something that must be innocuous, like raising fluffy little sheep and shearing them for wool. This sounds really harmless but then I read this. Yikes!)
See, sometimes companies make something a customer wants, and then have to figure out a way to make it profitable. But many times, they're making something they've deemed profitable and then hire PR/advertisers to make people want it:
When the disposable razor came along, marketers only had to show women a picture of a naked armpit to sell razors to women wanting to be more fashionable. But they had a tougher time convincing them to shave (and bare) their legs. They tried for years without success until a very famous war-time poster came out featuring a very sexy Betty Grable with shaved naked legs and women were told it was their patriotic DUTY to wear shorter skirts and sheer nylons. And off the hair came! (We're still one of the only countries in the world where women regularly shave their hair off.)
Then there were disposable diapers, not a hit for the first five years. Then the PR people hired a pediatrician and cooked up a story about how damaging it is to potty-train children too early. It would make them "anal" to be separated by their poo at too early an age. Instantly, they extended the life of their product by at least a year as anxious moms allowed their children longer diaper time. (By the way, "disposable" diapers will take about 500 years to decompose.)
Sometimes, to make a product more profitable, they have to decrease it's shelf life.
Electronics and appliances have a shorter lifespan than they ever have despite our advances. It just isn't very profitable to make a device that lasts several years. And if you make them too cheap, it isn't profitable either. A CD player now costs let's say $60, which is cheaper than the $250 I paid in 1985, but it only lasts a year. Printers are now less than $100 but only last six months to a year! Cellphones? They're practically "disposable." (Like the diapers, the hunks of junk ends up in the dump when they stop working and probably never biodegrade.)
Sometimes, to make people want a product again, they have to lie.
Cigarettes and alcohol are addictive. Fast food clogs your arteries. How can you increase your market share without telling people otherwise? French fries aren't French fries if they aren't deep fried! Tell the consumer you're using a different kind of oil that isn't as bad. Tell them the alcohol has less calories and the cigarettes don't have additives so they're less harmful. They're all lies but how else can it be done? Since only 10% of smokers start after age 20, they have to get addicted young.
Sometimes, experts are used to show how the product should be consumed.
For the last fifteen years, we've been eating a higher protein diet. We've been told it's the way to be healthy and slim. It's not true. Eating vegetables is much better for you than meat but meat is a booming industry. When it's so cheap and yummy, how can we resist? (Inhumane treatment to animals, declining nutrition of the meat, increased sickness due to bad meat and pollution that was unheard of a few decades ago will eventually turn us off). Did you know that 80% of the ocean's contaminants come from ground pollution running into rivers? Now we can't even eat (what's left of) the fish!
So, our consumerism drives the economy but these products make us sick by ruining our health and the environment. We're running at an accelerated pace towards cheaper, more disposable goods but also stopping along the way the admire a new model of goods - ethically produced, better for the environment and maybe even more desirable.
Ultimately, the consumer has to DEMAND the products we want, produced the way we can be happy about, and the corporations will HAVE TO care as much about responsibility as profit.
While hybrid cars increase in popularity, so do Hummer sales. While we are more conscious of recycling, we also create more trash. While the oil industry is stepping up to be more green, they're also illegally dumping tons of toxic waste in the ocean. Are we going in two directions or one direction that's so complex, it has yet to reveal itself?
It just may be that we're finally seeing our modern way of life as barbaric: torturing and killing animals and each other, dumping crap into the ocean, burying our trash, paving over the earth, pushing products that kill people. We're capable of so much more and I think we're just now beginning to see our potential to rise above our filthy, greedy past to save ourselves.
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