The irony re: technological innovations

Steven Welzer
Jul 19, 2021

It’s not that they’re bad or faulty or inadequate. They’re amazing. What’s problematic is a particular consequence.

They over-expand our domain of possibility, experience, choice.

The technologies enable. They enable us to consider going so far, doing so much, broadening our scope.

Over-broadening our scope. Anathema re: human scale.

That’s why our lives have become so complex and stressful. Why our attention is all over the place. Why we generally are not even aware of what we’ve lost in the bargain.

It’s a jolt to the modern sensibility to consider that perhaps we’ve lost more than we’ve gained.

https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/333-winter-1990/stopping-the-industrial-hydra/

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Steven Welzer

The editor of Green Horizon Magazine, Steve has been a movement activist for many years (he was an original co-editor of DSA’s “Ecosocialist Review”).