Group 5 Presentation: How to Discuss

I think that we should discuss how the fear of technological change fits into environmentalism. We could talk about how one of the arguments about how climate crisis can be averted is through technological developments which will allow us to grow more food using considerably less resources, and other technologies which could basically make nature obsolete. But the arguments in both the Joy article and in Brave New World by Huxley show that a world in which the natural way we live our lives is changed would not necessarilly be a good one.

The Joy and Huxley pieces do not necessarily talk about environmental devestation, but they do discuss technological progress getting rid of our individual choices and technology actually making those choices for us. It doesn't take too much of a leap to extend this to the environment and what kind of environment would exist in a world controlled by technology. Although we can't look into the intelligent design of robots and see what kind of decisions they would make, I don't see robots making particularly good choices towards nature. The whole debate here just goes into something basic about man-made versus nature-made, two things which are often at odds with each other since man has created many technological products which devestate the natural world.

We could talk about how their are two choices for mankind: continue this path of increasing technology which could lead to losing our individual freedoms and our environment or give up some of our freedoms now, such as the ability to have many kids and to consume as much as we want in order to maintain our freedoms and our planet for the future.

Do we want to all talk generally about the topic, or do we each want to talk about a specific aspect of the readings?