Last Reflection on JUS494: Science, Technology & Inequality
25 November 2008
This has been my favorite class at ASU. It has opened my eyes, and given me confidence to write and say what I think.
Technologies Transform. Technologies include Information, Exploration, Warfare, Industry, and Entertainment. Science & Technology should be biased toward eliminating Inequality. The process by which technologies are structured and decisions made positions people differently, giving them unequal degrees of power, access, and awareness. New technologies will always be weighted to benefit the powerful and wealthy. The powerful manipulate public opinion – acting on people’s ignorance, apathy, bigotry, or fear. That manipulation is overcome when the public participates, realizes the irrationality of its prejudices, and the false threats of fear-mongering.
If the world wants peace, why are we not preparing for it? Why does the U.S. government give the U.S. Dept. of Defense the highest funding priority with all its human cruelty, torture, terror and violence. Because the military-industrial complex is such a money-making operation for some people. How can we transform public opinion towards nuclear disarmament? Who still remembers Hiroshima? With the apparent military build-up in the Middle East, the ignoring of pleas to be heard and believed against false media propaganda, (like what happened to the Japanese) it’s easy to see Iran is going to be the next nuclear target.
Many people taking action can cause social transformation. Many people are concerned with the greed and corruption which perpetuates war, poverty and inequality. Technology based on positive principles of compassion and unselfishness will go a long way to ridding the world of pain, hopelessness, hunger, despair, grief and horror. The time is now. Let’s get involved.
See principal player/city planner extraordinaire:
Mayor Jaime Lerner at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haKh9mCk3xk
What makes Curitiba unusual is not that it had a coherent plan, but that it was implemented. A city must know where it is growing, how and why. Existing trends must be evaluated technically, politically, economically, and socially. Curitiba has shown that successful solutions do not need to be expensive. A sustainable city spends the minimum and spares the maximum. Curitiba teaches us that solutions are not isolated and specific, but inter-connected as we are with the earth, and all the inhabitants of earth. The entire debate for or against privatization is not important when we realize there is a role for every citizen. Creativity and labor can substitute for financial resources. And a good information system is necessary. The better inhabitants know their city, the better they treat it, especially a city’s planners. Planning is essential, but we don’t have much time to plan and we cannot attempt to have all the answers, but it’s important to start using creativity and innovation now. Having people contribute will keep you on the right track. Taking care of a city is a process that you start, and then give the population space to respond. There is no place in a city that can’t be better.
- Public Transportation System: Innovative rapid bus transport system (uses boarding tubes). Each of 5 axes has a trinary road system consisting of a central road for express buses flanked by high-capacity one-way roads on each side: one in and one out of the city. The boarding tubes have a platform the same height as the bus which eliminates the need for crew to collect fare, enables 2 or 3 times more passengers per hour. 2/3 of the populations use this bus system. Traffic lights give priority to buses. Entire bus system uses no direct financial subsidy. Land-use legislation encourages high-density service and commerce occupation. Land along the axes allows floor area six times the plot size which decreases the further the site is from public transportation.
- Planning Process: The government acquired land along the axes prior to construction in order to organize high density housing to lower-income families (17,000) close by. Road network has structural framework – 4 types of roads: structural, priority, connector, and collector. Capital costs: use of express buses on exclusive bus ways using boarding tubes (.2 million) is far less expensive than subways ($90-100 million per kilometer cost) or light rail systems ($20 million/kilometer cost). Buses are color-coded, there are express buses, inter-district buses and feeder buses-a single fare is good for all buses with ease in transferring. Limited pollution due to bus use. Computerized area traffic control system. Social bus fare: standard fare which meant benefit for the city’s periphery (poor) as shorter trips subsidized longer trips. Expansion of park/green areas and reduced resource use.
- Water, Sanitation & Garbage: Environmental education: “garbage that is not garbage” solid waste management program encourages citizens to separate organic from inorganic. 90% of the population has piped water, 60% has sewage lines. They are developing an innovative lagoon system where water is first treated with micro-organisms in anaerobic lagoons which flow into aerobic lagoons, which flow into the rivers. Other methods used include an open air canal running parallel to a river to prevent flooding and allow breakdown of pollutants before entering a river. A pedestrian walkway and cycle-way is being developed on one of the banks of this canal.
- Preservation of city’s cultural heritage: owners of building designated as having historical value can change the building’s use, but not the fundamental facade and layout. A foundry is now a popular shopping mall, gunpowder arsenal turned into a theater, a glue factory into a creativity center, army headquarters into a cultural foundation, the city’s oldest house is now a documentation/public center, the old railway station is the railway museum, and a stone quarry is an open air theater. They have a 24-hour street where business stay open 24/7 and sustains commercial activities in the city center. The “Guarda Verde” (the green guard, a municipal corporation protects and maintains the green areas. The guards keep the public informed about environmental issues and are trained in first aid. Millions of trees have been planted. Programs encourage community responsibility for the parks such as “Friends of the Park” and “Boy Scout Bicycle Watch”. Local schools promote ecological principles. The parks provide aesthetic and recreational value, also flood control. Each park has information centers on the local environment and ecology, along with bike paths. Botanical gardens are being developed over garbage dumps which include some of the last remaining flora and fauna native to that region. The city provides free bus service on weekends to the parks which are painted green.
- Social services and environmental education: Health care, child day care, adult education, rehabilitation programs. Remodeled old city buses are mobile classrooms for adults in low-income areas, providing short-term courses in hair-styling, mechanics, sewing, carpentry, and word-processing. They go to different areas each day of the week. Income earned from recycled garbage is used on social programs. Jobs in the garbage-separating plant are provided for the homeless and recovering alcoholics. Garbage exchange program – to deal with potential health problems, squatter settlements can sell their bagged garbage for bus tickets and agricultural/dairy products. This has decreased urban litter and increased quality of life for the poor. Cost to the city for bus fares and garbage bags are no different than what they pay for garbage collection. This has prevented garbage from being dumped in forests, rivers, and valleys, and decreased infant mortality rates and saving families’ expenditures on medicines. Since lack of education is one reason for environmental destruction, environmental education is especially strong in elementary schools. Curitiba’s city planners believed one of the most effective ways to teach people about recycling is through the children who teach their parents.
What was the planning/administrative framework necessary to make it happen?
1. Priority on meeting the population’s transportation needs rather than meeting the needs of car owners.
2. Plan, Direct & Control the Growth Process, avoiding large-scale/expensive projects.
3. Encourage physical expansion along linear axes which at the center had a road with exclusive bus lanes.
4. Reduce concentration of employment in city center to return this area to the pedestrian and cultural heritage. Commercial/service sectors were expanded along structural axes north, south, east and west.
5. A special designated industrial area west of the city which generates one fifth of all jobs in the city without significant industrial pollution.
The “Sustainable Song” (watch Jaime Lerner sing it at the end of his video)
It’s possible! It’s possible!
You can do it! You can do it!
Use your car less!
Make this transition!
Avoid carbon emission!
It’s possible! It’s possible!
You can do it! You can do it!
Live closer to work!
Work closer to home!
Save energy in your own home!
It’s possible! It’s possible!
You can do it! You can do it!
Separate your garbage!
Organic, schmorganic!
Do More with Less!
It’s possible! You can do it!
Please do it now!
Election Day Reflection Part 1 of 2
6 November 2008
I was a volunteer poll worker Election Day looking for a story to write that could make us laugh. My fellow poll workers were an well-experience, dedicated group who knew their job well and teased veryone who came their way. Yet that was the extent of the light-heartedness. Most people there to vote, though smiling, were quite serious, as was I.
I was up at 3 am, arriving at the polling booth a little after 5 am. There were already people there waiting to vote, though I did not understand at first they were voters that had arrived before me.
From 6-8 am, we worked as fast as we could. From 8-9 am it wasn’t quite as fast. Then it slowed for a while. Around 3:30 it got steady again for most the rest of the day, but never as fast as morning.
People were pretty intent on voting, even when told they were have to bring back additional identification or vote a provisional ballot, most went home or to their car to get the additional items. One poor guy had an car accident while going to get more ID. We only had one person give up in frustration who said it was a Communist-Republican conspiracy to keep him from voting.
There were mothers who brought their children through the poll booth to show them how voting was conducted. There were people who announced it was their very first time to vote. There were students and the elderly from a nearby retirement home. Many people were in a rush to get to work, or back to work, and it wasn’t fun to tell them we needed additional identification. Many people were listed on our election sheets as having voted early ballot, yet who said they had never requested or voted by early ballot. There were people who had lived and voted years in that same area, yet their names were not on our election list. Both those problems made me worry about whether it could be possible election fraud.
There were people standing outside from different organizations (I’m not sure which ones) who stayed the entire day to watch the process. I admired their dedication to try to ensure a fair election process. There were also a couple people inside whose entire job all day was just to watch the process.
Cameras were not allowed within 75′ of the polling booth, nor were cell phones with cameras so I could not take pictures.
After our booth closed at 7 pm, we had a people there for awhile, trying to finish, but who did not understand the wording of the propositions. We were not allowed to explain anything to them. They had already used the published book on the propositions, but still did not understand. This feels wrong - that somebody (who?) made the wording so confusing. I had spoiled my early ballot for the same reason, needing to change it when I received an email explaining what each proposition really meant. I wonder how many people were tricked into voting other than they would have due to the confusing wording.
We (two poll workers from different parties) had just taken taking the ballots to the designated drop-off point where security were standing close by. The ballots were unloaded and we left around 8:30 pm. I was exhausted and headed for bed thinking I must wait until morning for results.
I heard some confusing information about a concession by John McCain, but I was sure the results could not possible be in yet. Arriving home, I was told John McCain was giving a concession speech. When I looked at the TV, I was shocked to see the incredible words “President-Elect Barack Obama.” I thought was mistaking the news. When I felt sure it was true because people were happy and celebrating, I fell into bed totally exhausted, but happy.
Inequality vs Economic Democracy by Dr. J. W. Smith of the Institute for Economic Democracy
2 November 2008
Early corporations burned all the spice trees which they could not control in order to retain their high charge for spices. Modern corporations control America’s foreign policy the same way. They destroyed the farming industry of poor countries by selling highly-subsidized, low-priced grains to developed and undeveloped nations. Under their self-designed monopolization of the world’s food supply, those corporations doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled their grain prices as food supplies grew scarcer. This monopoly structure is specifically designed to plunder the wealth out of nations, drawing them in so that extrication is almost impossible, and now hundreds of millions now face starvation. These people are helpless against the corporate controlled world structure, and they die. Hundreds of millions dollars of (mis)appropriated wealth becomes hundreds of billions of dollars, while innocent people entitled to a secure food supply die. Both of these crimes of inhumanity against humanity are the result of greed, called ”the Plunder by Trade system” and the “property rights structure” that have been designed into our laws during the last more than 700 years.
This was done under the name of “privatization” which the perception managers of the power brokers have taught us is a good thing. (It’s only good for them. They get away with these outright frauds because advancing technology is so efficient, they can distribute half the gains of technology, and retain the remaining gains in the form of massive capitalized unearned profits. Immense as those unearned profits are, they are only a fraction of the gains in living standards.Technology is monopolized.
How can a nation or region attain security so as to avoid starvation and poverty as faced by hundredds of millions today due to intentional destruction of the viability of local farmers and corporate control of world food supplies?
1) Establish local perma-culture and abandon corporate control of food supplies. Plants providing thread for cloth such as hemp are among the most prolific in the world. Perma-culture can be expanded to produce fiber for clothes and exotic threads made from oil or coal will not threaten the environment.
2) Houses built from rammed earth or rock with ceramic interiors that will last for centuries is also a local industry.
Within those two local industries, perma-culture and housing, are the essentials of a secure society, food, fiber, and shelter. When regional soils are used with attention to protection of nature’s wealth, these necessities of life are not intense consumers of resources.
If nobody get unearned wealth, money in a secure social structure represents real values. Taxes disappear and health care, retirement, governments, and more are all funded from those natural flows of money.
See ied.info to find out more about the Institute for Economic Development.
Perchlorate Levels Deemed Acceptable
The Environmental Protection Agency formally refused yesterday to set a drinking-water safety standard for perchlorate, a chemical in rocket fuel that has been linked to thyroid problems in pregnant women, newborns and young children.
With little fanfare, the agency issued a news release yesterday afternoon saying that it had “conducted extensive review of scientific data related to the health effects of exposure to perchlorate from drinking water and other sources and found that in more than 99 percent of public drinking water systems, perchlorate was not at levels of public health concern. Therefore, based on the Safe Water Drinking Act criteria, the agency determined there is not a ‘meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction’ through a national drinking water regulation.”
Last month, The Washington Post reported that White House officials had extensively edited the EPA’s perchlorate rule-making documentation to remove scientific data highlighting some of the risks associated with the chemical, which has been found in water in 35 states. The Defense Department and Pentagon contractors who face legal liability stemming from rocket fuel contamination have lobbied for six years to avoid a federal drinking-water standard for perchlorate.
In the document released yesterday, the EPA assumes that the maximum safe perchlorate contamination level is 15 times higher than what the agency suggested in 2002.
By that standard, the EPA estimates that more than 16 million Americans are exposed to the chemical at a level that is unsafe.
Congressional Democrats and environmentalists blasted the administration’s decision.
“Once again on a Friday, when nobody is paying attention, the Bush administration announces a policy that will harm the American people,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement.
“The Bush EPA’s failure to set a standard for perchlorate, a dangerous contaminant found in drinking water, is outrageous, and I will do everything in my power to reverse it. Perchlorate contamination endangers the health of our families, especially pregnant women and children, and to simply allow it to remain in our drinking water is immoral,” Boxer said.
The EPA statement said that its regulatory determination will be open for public comment for 30 days and that once the rule is final, the agency will issue a health advisory to guide state and local officials.
Only two states — Massachusetts and California — set limits on the allowable amount of perchlorate in drinking water, both at levels far below what the EPA deemed permissible.
“States have the right to establish and enforce drinking water standards, and EPA encourages state-specific situations to be addressed at the local level,” the agency document read.
The environmental law firm Earthjustice said it will file suit in federal court on behalf of several environmental organizations to try to overturn the decision.
“EPA’s decision has industry’s fingerprints all over it,” said Earthjustice attorney George Torgun. “Weapons makers will benefit at the expense of millions of Americans drinking water spiked with rocket fuel.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin did not comment on the ruling’s substance but wrote in an e-mail: “This decision is not needed by DoD to undertake a cleanup, as we use EPA’s established health risk assessment to conduct our clean-up decisions. DoD has, in fact, been cleaning up perchlorate from military facilities for ten years now.”
PROPAGANDA FOLLOWS TECHNOLOGY
28 September 2008
Topic
U.S. Government Propaganda in Foreign & Domestic Affairs
Thesis
- How political propaganda has adapted to new media technology
Introduction
This paper will contrast forms of U.S. propaganda in foreign/domestic political affairs since the advent of television and the Internet
Body
U.S. government propaganda as a concept, history, and reality in media technology
- Technology determines outcomes
- Technological strategy as rational and planned
- Technology as a political tool of control (Marx)
- Technology as capitalist control, fits with capitalist consumerism of new things
- Change occurs through power struggles
- Technology causes unintended consequences: intended results come quicker, unintended results show up over time
Literature Review
Concept, Origin, & Theories of Propaganda in Domestic & Foreign Affairs
Historical Review
Propaganda in the ICA
Examples
Reality of Media News Technology since 1960
Case Studies
Analyzing the Conclusion
Political propaganda has always been around. However, since 1960, the use of TV/Internet has provided more channels and outlets for manipulation and deception, but also new ways of verifying information, an unintended secondary effect.
Thesis Reworded
Concluding statement
Possible References
Abrams, Joseph. Critics Demand Resignation of U.N. Official Who Wants Probe of 9/11 ‘Inside Job’ Theories. Fox News Online. June 19, 2008
Agence France-Presse. Timeline of Russia-Georgia tensions over separatists. 8/8/2008
Barstow, David. “Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand” NYTimes.com. 20 April 2008. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9501E7DF103CF933A15757C0A96E9C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
Billion, Beaurenaut & Yves, The Epic of Black Gold, (2004)
http://www.zarafa-films.com/ History of oil, corruption, violence, unimaginable profits and human suffering in the 20th century.
Corbin, Jane. Daylight Robbery: What Happened to the $23 billion? (2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7438372.stm
The U.S. Justice Dept. has imposed gag orders which prevent public knowledge of the real problem.
Cowell, Alan. “Iran Won’t Relent on Nuclear Program” NYTimes.com. 24 July 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/world/middleeast/24iran.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Garrison, William Lloyd. Declaration of Sentiments. Boston Peace Conference, 1838
Gelken, Chris. “US lawyer seeks to sue US over Iran threats” Press TV, Tehran. 22 Jul 2008.
http://www.presstv.com/Detail.aspx?id=64435§ionid=3510302
Gonn, Adam. 2 US aircraft carriers headed for Gulf. Media Line News Agency , THE JERUSALEM POST. 8/7/2008.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1218104233164&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
Haaretz service. Jewish Georgian minister: Thanks to Israeli training, we’re fending off Russia.. Haaretz.com. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1010187.html 8/11/2008.
Hodge, Nathan. Did the U.S. Prep Georgia for War with Russia? Wired.com.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/did-us-military.html 8/8/2008
Information Clearing House. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
Inside Iraq: Oil Law. http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_files/iraqi_oil-law.jpg
Aljazeera. June 2008.
http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_iraqwar.htm
Jarecki, Eugene. Why We Fight. Sony Pictures Classics, Charlotte Street film in association with BBC Storyville/Arte/CBC. SonyPictures.com/SonyClassics.com
Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine
Moyers, Bill. Big Oil and Iraq. Bill Moyers Journal. PBS http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06272008/watch3.html
Parry, Robert, Commercial Media Let McCain Get Away with Claims that the “Surge” has Worked, Consortium News, 10 September 2008
Posen, Barry R. The Security Dilemma and the Ethnic Conflict. Essential Readings of World Politics, 3rd edition. WW Norton & Company: New York 2008.
Press TV. Israel ‘has a hand in S. Ossetia war’ http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=66203§ionid=351020202. 8/10/2008
Real Reason Why USA & Israel Will Attack Iran http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEpp9E6aJGw&eurl=http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20210.htm
Daily Mail. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20476.htm. 8/10/2008
Snow, Jon, Jon Snow’s Hidden Iraq (2008) http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/jon+snows+hidden+iraq/1753147
The Dossier. http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_iraqwar.htm
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IS VERY IMPORTANT
7 September 2008
The darkest uses of technology are Coercion & Slaughter. Some examples of political artifacts are Robert Moses’ low bridges of Long Island and McCormick’s molding machines used to weed out skilled workers who had unionized in Chicago. Technological history and U.S. political history have been deeply intertwined. (The Internet was initially developed for military use.) If our moral and political language for evaluating technology categorizes only tools and uses, and doesn’t include scrutiny of the meaning and arrangement of the designs, we will be blind to much that is important.
An important point made in class was that technology could now used to overcome Distortions of our Electoral College, to make our republic more democratic. Who is working on that Transformation? Technologies include Information, Exploration, Warfare, Industry, and Entertainment, but the one that will probably have the most effect on human life will be Biotechnology. This includes expectation of better Health and longer Life, but also Fear of Destruction and Dehumanization, of Agents that Kill or Powers that Corrupt. Biotechnology will change how we live, what we value, and who we are.
Science/Technology should be biased toward eliminating Inequality. Technologies are ways we build Order in our world. Consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or inadvertently, societies choose Structures for technologies that influence how people are going to work, communicate, travel, consume and more for a very long time. The Process in which structuring decisions are made situates people differently, gives them unequal degrees of power and awareness. Choices become fixed in material equipment, economic investment, and social habits. Original flexibility is gone after initial commitments are made. Technological innovations are like legislative acts or political founding where the framework for public order will last many generations. The attention we give to rules, roles, and relationships of politics must be given to the building of highways, creation of TV networks, and design of new machines, especially on seemingly insignificant features (think of Voting Machines). Issues that Divide or Unite people are not only settled in institutions and politics, but in designs of steel/concrete, wires/semiconductors.
Politics is the relationship between modern science and liberal democracy. The fathers of modern science envisioned their projects as a partial remedy for the problems of politics. They were not blind to human passions, human evil, or man’s lack of innocence – the very things that make politics necessary. Modern man is healthier, happier, and more peaceful than his ancestors yet science has not eliminated the need for politics. Liberal democracy could not flourish without modern science and technology.
Technologies are flexible in their design/arrangement, and variable in their effects. A similar device or system could have been built with very different political consequences. Certain kinds of technology do not allow flexibility. To choose it is to choose an unalterable, particular form of political life.
Karl Marx tried to show in Capital that increasing mechanization will make hierarchical division of labor obsolete, and the relationships of subordination swept away by technical means where each person is bound hand and foot for life to a single detail operation. The Capitalist form of that industry reproduces this same division of labor in a more horrific way by converting the worker into a living appendage of the machine. Marx’s idea is that conditions will eventually dissolve the capitalist division of labor, and facilitate proletarian revolution are conditions concealed in industrial technology itself. Engels said “The automatic machinery of a big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. The differences between Marx’ and Engels position brings up an important question for Socialism: What does modern technology make possible or necessary in political life? Adopting a certain technical system requires creation and maintenance of a particular set of social conditions as the operating environment of that system. (Engels) If you accept nuclear power plants, you also accept a techno-scientific-industrial-military elite. Without these people in charge, you could not have nuclear power.
A given kind of technology is strongly compatible with, but does not strictly require social and political relationships of a particular kind. Solar energy activists argue that technology is more compatible with a democratic, egalitarian society than energy systems based on coal, oil, and nuclear power. Yet they do not believe anything about solar energy requires democracy. Solar energy is decentralizing in both a technical and political sense. Technically-speaking, it is more reasonable to build solar systems in a disaggregated, widely distributed manner than in large-scale centralized plants. Politically-speaking, solar energy is a more accessible system. Solar energy is good not only for its economic and environmental benefits, but also for the beneficial institutions it allows in other areas of public life. Just the opposite, the atom bomb is an inherently political artifact. As long as it exists at all, its lethal properties demand that it be controlled by a centralized, rigidly hierarchical chain of command closed to all influences that might make its workings unpredictable. The internal social system of the bomb must be authoritarian – there is no other way.
It is misguided to believe that lost worlds have nothing to teach us, or that our world is in reality the finest human achievement yet or that even politically necessary and morally justified uses of technological power (drilling, drugging, dissecting, destroying) are innocent – because they usually are not.
Questioning new technology we might ask what kinds of weapons should we build? But continuing to build weapons further ensures their use. Does anyone question “Whether” we should continue to build weapons or just how much money can be made off new military technology? Politicians will say “access for everybody,” then give minimum information, try to sound diplomatic, but not always sound logical. Their political intention is decided way ahead of time as to what they want, and for that reason, public participation is very important.
