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Technology brings benefits, creates serious concerns

I recently read two stories, one about egg production at a farm in Colorado and the other one about tips for home gardening. Both stories have something in common. They both focused on how to use technology to “deceive” nature.

In the case of the egg production, one day after hens are born somewhere in Texas, they are moved 1,000 miles to Colorado, where they are fed with an artificial mix of grains and seeds.

Hens lay more eggs during the summer. So, to avoid any interruption in the production, hens are kept in a barn where light and temperature are carefully controlled. Hens live in a perpetual “summer,” laying eggs year round, even when it’s winter outside.

The other story included tips not about how to prepare the soil, but about what technology to buy (lights, watering systems, humidifiers, fertilizers) to grow plants inside any time of the year, regardless of the temperature or the amount of light in the outside.

Grow-light assemblies, warming mats (to maintain the temperature of the trays with seeds); starting discs with sterilized soil, and fertilizers artificially create the condition for the plants to grow.

It should be obvious that what we do with plants and animals we also do it to ourselves. In fact, it’s so obvious that we no longer see it as a problem and we don’t even question it.

If we reflect for a moment, we will immediately realize we don’t rise with the sun, but when the alarm clock indicates it is time to get up. We don’t eat when we are hungry, but when the schedule says it is time to eat. After sunset, we are not forced to stay inside a dark place, because artificial light allow us to keep doing whatever we want to do.

In the cold of the winter, heating systems allow us to enjoy a comfortable temperature. In summer, heat is not a problem, thanks to air conditioning systems. And, in the same way we feed tomatoes and hens with artificial food, we too feed ourselves with many substances far removed from nature.

It should be obvious I am not suggesting we should return to the time of the cavemen. I am not rejecting technology, nor its benefits and the comfort it brings to our lives. But, how high is the price we are paying for those benefits and comfort?

For example, what’s the point of being invited to respect and take care of nature when the invitation comes from the same technology we use every day to pollute and exploit nature?

Do we really want an immigration reform where immigrants will be transformed into cogs of the techno-scientific machinery of our consumer society? Do we want a health reform where technological medicine is the only alternative?

I have no answers. Only questions. And paradoxically I am writing those questions using a computer when outside is a cold night and here, at my office, I enjoy plenty of light and a warm temperature.

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