[diggers350] technology

[Lilia Patterson]

As greenpeace have said in their latest annual review:

the demand for organic food is growing faster than the take up of the
internet.

As jon said:

email and the internet are the only means of mass communication and mass
media which are cheap enough for activists to use in most cases.

I answer that with, as I believe:

The cheapest form of communication, and often the most effective is the
most innocent and the most effective.

talking face to face to a group of people. 

real action comes from commited individuals who share a strong friendship
with their companions. Who will stick by them and defend them throughout
adversity.

What bonds can you make over the itnernet?

Intellectual, perhaps. But the real is based in physical reality.

THe natural world which we are supposed to be defending has no use for the
internet.

Ask an animal to defend itslef by learning how to use a computer.

Computer's rely on language. The written language.

Over 80% of communication between individuals is body language. 

I don't believe the internet frees me. I believe it constricts
communication, it defines communication within the narrowest of parameters.

For activists to rely on the itnernet means using the tools of the enemy.

The process of manufacturing computers is one of the most harmful known to
man. In silicon valley they employ low paid immigrant workers using highly
toxic chemicals.

The technology of upgrading of advancing technology means that computers
become obsolete within a matter of years.

The amount of physical waste produced is enormous.

Recycling schemes may have been set up, but to what degree? 

Nobody wants old computers which are no longer able to 'communicate' with
existing systems.

And so what of information?

What happens with all this information that we get access to?

I feel subject to information overload. I don't feel like I can adequately
deal with all this information that we are supposed to take on board.

Principles of sustainability revolve around minimising flows of resources
to the necessary minimum. These are management principles. 

Just as we might wish to reduce use of paper by using email.

How about reducing use of elecrical resources, which invovle using energy
resources from the national grid, which still means using fossil fuels
contributing to global warming as the main means of producing elecrticity.

ANd what of the very act of sitting at a computer typing away. This is
hardly a healthy occupation communing with nature.

As far as information goes. Sometimes I think we just need to listen to
what's in our bones... listen to what we know is right. 

Some of the activists taht I've met in my time that impressed me most
weren't the ones that I'd heard about, the one's that wrote articles for
magazines, and that knew everything, but were the ones who sat it out in
the trees. were the ones who really knew what being outside is about,
living in the woods knowing the living ecosystem around it, being part of
it, and wanting to defend it becasue tehy ewre part of it.

What are we defending by using the internet? If not our right to use it. To
be part of microsoft's world. part of the computer age. Part of a future
devised by those only willing to make money out of this world during their
time on it. 

Is this the future that we want to be part of?

You live life as you want it.

Do you want to spend the majority of you ritme communicating with your
fellow living creatures, by email? Enclosed in your own prison of your
mind, being zapped by microwaves, sitting mobile for hours as you try to
understand the words through the medium of an innocent machine. A construct
made of innocent plastic and metals. where do we think the resources to
create this machine come from? Why are they mining in virgin rainforests
round the globe? For resources. For metals, for oil. To make our
technological toys.

have you thought about that, you lot?

lilia