{"id":13903,"date":"2015-10-28T07:14:25","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T12:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13903"},"modified":"2015-10-28T07:14:25","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T12:14:25","slug":"shrinking-the-technosphere-part-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13903","title":{"rendered":"Shrinking the Technosphere, Part IV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shrinking the Technosphere, Part IV<\/a><\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
In the previous parts of this series, we started picking away at a very big subject: what a successful strategy for bringing about rapid social change would look like, such social change being necessary if we were to avoid the worst ravages of catastrophic climate change. This change must introduce \u201cnaturelike\u201d technologies that would bring the technosphere back into balance with the biosphere.<\/p>\n

To be effective, this strategy must rely on technology\u2014but not in the usual sense of fancy gadgets or gewgaws, of which the following examples spring to mind:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Smartphones and other such gadgets. (\u201cStupidpeople\u201d no longer know how to get by without them.)
\n\u2022 Windmills that take plenty of coal and diesel to build and maintain, swat migratory birds out of the sky and produce energy in a form that cannot be stored effectively.
\n\u2022 Majestic sailing ships that transport fair trade chocolate, coffee and wine to delight effete foodies in \u201cfirst world\u201d countries.
\n<\/a>
\nNo-no-no! The technology in question is\u00a0political<\/i>\u00a0technology, designed to overcome the awesome force of social inertia and to cause society to move in a direction in which it initially doesn’t want to move.<\/p>\n

Political technology offers ways of:
\n1. Changing the rules of the game between participants in the political process
\n2. Introducing into the mass consciousness new concepts, values, opinions and convictions
\n3. Directly manipulating of human behavior through mass media and administrative methods<\/p>\n

Since the term \u201cpolitical technology\u201d was new to most readers, we made a detour in order to put it in context. To recap, political technologies can be used to pursue the following aims:<\/p>\n

1. To improve everyone’s welfare by pursuing the common good of the entire society, as it is understood by its best-educated, most intelligent, most decent and responsible members. Political technologies of this kind result in a virtuous cycle, building on previous successes to increase social cohesion, solidarity and setting the stage for great achievements. (These are the good kind.)<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shrinking the Technosphere, Part IV In the previous parts of this series, we started picking away at a very big subject: what a successful strategy for bringing about rapid social change would look like, such social change being necessary if we were to avoid the worst ravages of catastrophic climate change. This change must introduce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[5154,141,5712,4995,1789,10316,4503,786],"class_list":["post-13903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-biosphere","tag-climate-change","tag-cluborlov","tag-dimitry-orlov","tag-nature","tag-shrinking-the-technosphere","tag-social-change","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13904,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13903\/revisions\/13904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}