Technology and Human Progress: Importance of Negative Feedbacks

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Technology and Human Progress Importance of
Negative Feedbacks

• Abhik Gupta
  Dept. of Ecology Environmental Science
  Assam University, Silchar, India

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Technology a Two-Edged Sword

• Technology deals with the societys knowledge of
  and relationship with its tools and crafts
• Human progress through ages driven by technology
• Technology used to control and manipulate the
  environment
• Harmful by-products leading to pollution and
  degradation of environment

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Level of technology adds a very critical
dimension to man-nature relationships Diverse
interpretations of technology by technologists,
technocrats and technophiles, philosophers,
environmental scientists, economists, deep
ecologists and others Martin Heidegger
technology as revealing that brings forth
what is yet unrevealed Appropriate Technology
of ecologists e.g., solar energy In contrast,
modern technology an agent of Enframing Challe
nges Nature as a Standing Reserve, excluding
all other possibilities that Nature may have
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• Heideggers interpretation of a dam on River
  Rhine loss of autonomy and enframing
• Schumacher emphasis on small-scale technology
  more revealing than challenging, e.g., micro
  hydel technology
• A solar panel or wind-energy generators as
  opposed to thermal or nuclear power plants
• Nature losing its autonomy when treated as a
  standing reserve
• And an essential fallout is pollution
• Thus nature is enframed and even enslaved
• Made to perform at the will of man

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Nature is transformed into an object that is
meant to be processed through technology Nature
to be conquered not understood and for
harvesting and not sustaining life Not
engaged in a dialogue Nature having extrinsic
or instrumental value Bubers I-It relationship
with Nature Nature as a Resource in the words
of many ecologists Wim Zweers humans as
Despots or Enlightened Rulers or compromising
(and condescending too) Stewards
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• Why technology is mostly at cross-purposes with
  nature?
• Technological thinking guided only by positive
  feedbacks
• A system guided only by positive feedbacks cannot
  function as a self-regulated cybernetic system
• The system needs to be equipped with negative
  feedbacks
• Negative feedbacks can achieve control (often
  referred to as balance of nature)

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Examples of Negative Feedbacks in nature

• Predator-prey interactions each keeping the
  other in a sustainable state
• A small hymenopteran parasite can keep the number
  of grasshoppers in check, thereby maintaining the
  grass populations in a grassland ecosystem
• The regulator has a minute proportion of the
  total biomass and represents lt 1 of the energy
  flow through the system

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High Energy Effect of Small Energy Components
by providing a negative feedback loop
A
B
C
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Human systems have been overemphasizing positive
feedback and increased production

• Frontier Attitude
• Following r strategy instead of k strategy
• Emphasis on unrestricted growth
• Refusal to accept boundary conditions
• Characteristic of young, unstable systems

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Our dissatisfaction with/the failure of a given
technology gives rise to a new technology to
achieve unbridled growth
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Sustainable Development Calls for New Strategy
and Ethics of Technology and Development
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Ethics and Strategy need to be integrated into
each other

• When our strategies and policies are intertwined
  with ethics, only then shall we have respect for
  negative feedbacks
• Learning to accept to operate within boundary
  conditions with prudence
• A paradigm-shift of technology from linear to
  closed-loop systems
• Industrial Ecosystems
• A balance of positive and negative feedbacks

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• Biotechnology and Nanotechnology has the
  capability to alter the structural and functional
  basis of both living and non-living materials
• calls for a more stringent application of the
  precautionary principle
• Principles of Ecosystem Cybernetics with its
  concepts of Positive-Negative Feedback
  interactions and balance, principles of
  redundancy and of keystone regulation could be of
  great help in directing the future course of
  technology along a safer route

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• THANK YOU

LONG LIVE ABA