essay on nature vs technology

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Nature vs. Technology Essay Example

Technology emerged in the 1980s and a new way of communicating was created; People all over the world were amused by these creations, however, if only we could have foreseen how consuming it induced and how nature was to be neglected. Nature has been society’s livelihood since the beginning of time yet technology has consumed humanity to the point of no return; Ultimately, Technology and Nature are on opposing sides, therefore, there cannot be a harmonious balance between these two misleading variables unless society is willing to leave their phones and walk outside the door.

Our current generation benefits from using technology for its efficiency. Hence, why we are addicted to technology. For instance, technology revolves around our daily lives. It is a source of entertainment and consciousness. Therefore, as we live in a new generation of people who live on the internet, it will be difficult to attract people to experience nature. For example, In the Excerpt “What it takes to Put your Phone Away” by Tolentino, Tolentino states “Social Media Platforms encourage compulsive use by offering forms of social approval- likes on Facebook on Instagram, retweets on twitter-that are intermittent and unpredictable, as though you’re playing a slot machine that tells you whether or not people love you.”Tolentino’s evidence is significant to my thesis because the internet plays an important role in individuals’ willingness to abide by their natural human conduct of the outdoors. This proves my point on how social media is addictive because of the influence it has on our daily lives. It will be difficult to persuade people to give technology up due to the fact that it’s like a magnet of social validation. Furthermore, In the excerpt “Small Change” by Gladwell, Gladwell claims that social media is a source for activists to express themselves; he refutes this claim by stating how social media can’t resolve the issues that are currently occurring in our society. For instance, Gladwell says “These are strong, and puzzling, claims that people are making about eating at separate lunch tables; Why does it matter who is eating whose lunch on the Internet? Are people who log on to their Facebook page really the best hope for us all?”Gladwell’s claim relates to my thesis because it proves my point on how people in the world shouldn’t expect a change in technology if they aren't willing to take action instead of trying to prevent the infamy of the internet through screens. This shows how we live in a new generation that has evolved and relies on technology as a source of staying connected to what is occurring in our society, therefore, Gladwell’s claim opposes the use of technology and supports “real” ways of spreading awareness. Therefore, from my personal experience with technology, I believe that humans can’t escape technology because we implement it in our daily lives and are factored by the effectiveness of these creations although some may say that there can be a balance between technology and nature this can only happen if technology is destroyed as a whole.

Most people's lives have been badly touched by technology, particularly teens; technology has a big impact on our behaviors and brain function, but we ignore this since we are inquisitive to figure out the unknown through our screens. As a result, in order to promote nature-society, the internet will have to demolish technology as a whole, particularly the portion that negatively affects people's mental and physical well-being. For example, In Except “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv, Louv questions the people of America by stating “Why so many Americans say they want their children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the opportunities for them to watch it? More importantly, why do so many people no longer consider the physical world worth watching?”.; Louv’s claim relates to my thesis because it proves how children in our current society are being pushed to technology because of their parent’s incompetence to even consider exploring the real world, therefore, leading them to be reliant on technology for their basic everyday needs. This shows how modern-day families would rather let their Children watch Tv than explore the world. Due to the regular consumption of technology, children are likely to experience social anxiety because they don’t interact with the real world and isolate themselves from people which impacts their emotional health. Furthermore, In the Excerpt “2019 C40 Keynote Address” by AOC, AOC states that “New York, the state we know today, will be partially or completely flooded by 2080. That is given our current trajectory and accounting for optimism in our actions .”AOC  claims that on how climate change negatively impacts our society today; Therefore, Aoc seeks to inform American Citizens of the consistent disregard we display when the issue of climate change is being discussed. For example, Aoc states “New York, the state we know today, will be partially or completely flooded by 2080. That is given our current trajectory and accounting for optimism in our actions”.This is significant because of our current society’s depleting economy and how we as a society need to be thankful for nature and its resources because it is not likely that the world we know today would sustain the damage we continuously display to nature. This proves how the development of this new technology is physically affecting the world due to environmental pollution, Americans' ignorance of climate change, and the wellbeing of nature because of their constant attachment to their phones to the point that the world outside is being disregarded as important. Although technology was supposed to benefit our society it does in some aspects however it is destroying nature and distracting people from what is occurring in our society thus we people of the earth need a balance between technology and nature the only way to accomplish this is to limit our time on screen and look out the window for real experiences.

A  phone rings and everyone instantly checks it; hours and hours go by and you’re not concerned about the outside world. Sleep-deprived but still watching TikTok. You run to charge your phone when it is on one percent like your life spends on it, however, we cannot blame anybody but ourselves for this addiction because we as a society have normalized this obsessive usage of technology. We need nature to survive that how we live without nature there is noting the world is dying to prevent this I encourage you to go on google and look up human-made disasters since were always glued to our phone we  might as well benefit from it.

The Future Relationship between Humans, Nature and Technology

In what ways might new technological developments change and shape our relationship with nature? This article discusses the background to and approach of a futures study on this topic by STT .

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“What if” should precede “whether” and “how”

The Case of Interspecies Translation Machines

1. increasing sustainability challenges and diverging technology visions.

While ecological crises are not new, recent years have been marked by a growing stream of reports, news articles, and books on various sustainability issues that are increasingly manifesting themselves. Goals related to reducing CO2 emissions and restoring biodiversity seem out of reach, and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are increasing. And that’s not to mention the multitude of sustainability challenges that arise from or are exacerbated by these issues, such as soil degradation, ocean acidification, eutrophication, salinization, water scarcity, and food insecurity. We live in an era where ecological crises are increasing and intensifying. The complexity and interdependence of ecosystems and their functions are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Resource scarcity, COVID, the nitrogen crisis, drought, floods – countless problems point to the delicate relationships between different ecosystems and confront us with the dependence of our social systems on these ecological systems.

Although collective awareness of the seriousness and urgency of these problems seems to be growing, visions vary widely on how to address them effectively and desirably. Technology often plays a prominent role in these discussions. At one extreme are those who see technology as the solution to all kinds of sustainability challenges. At the other extreme are those who see technology as a threat to a sustainable world and advocate for behavioral change rather than technological change. In other words, those who believe in techno-salvation [1] versus those who fear techno-tragedy. Science journalist Charles C. Mann identified these two polarized archetypes as the wizard and the prophet, respectively (Stellinga, 2022; Van Noort, 2018).

Of course, people cannot be divided into one of these two groups in such a black-and-white way. There is a whole spectrum of views regarding the role of technology in relation to sustainability and nature. But it is clear that the way technology is perceived, experienced, promoted, and deployed affects the way we look at nature and our relationship with it, and vice versa.

[1] A term coined by Robert Gifford, professor of psychology and environmental studies (Van Lonkhuyzen, L. (2022, July 4). Climate change, people prefer not to think about it. Why? NRC. Retrieved on August 11, 2022, from https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2022/07/04/klimaatverandering-blocken-we-liever-uit-ons-brein-waarom-a4135496 (article is Dutch)).

2. An old and new discussion

The way humans and nature relate to each other has been a recurring topic for writers, philosophers, scientists, artists, and others throughout history. Ideas about this relationship are not static and change over time, shaping and being shaped by human action.

Technology has played a role in various ways in the evolving relationship between humans and nature. For example, new scientific methods and tools have given us more insight into animal experiences, contributing to awareness of similarities between species. This refuted the earlier dominant idea that animals were a kind of machines, unable to think and feel like humans. Another way technology has played an (indirect) role is through the technology-driven industrial revolution. The urbanization and other societal changes that came with this transition led to both a sense of alienation from nature and its romanticization. And in the current Anthropocene era, the use of various high-tech applications has had a major impact on nature. This has led to both a call for more (different types of) technology and a plea for less technology for the benefit of nature.

Looking back, we can recognize technological developments that have influenced and changed the relationship between humans and nature in the past. But how will future technological innovations and applications play a role in the way we look at and interact with nature?

Will technology in the future be used to redefine perceived planetary boundaries – as argued in ecomodernism (Stellinga, 2022)? Or will it be utilized to live and produce more in harmony with nature, and draw inspiration from nature? Consider concepts growing in popularity such as nature-based solutions, biomimicry, and biodesign. Will the perceived distinction between nature and technology gradually disappear in the future, and will we witness an unprecedented fusion of the two? This latter view is in line with, among others, the vision of the Next Nature Network, which identifies a new kind of nature made by humans and seeks to deploy technology for a more natural world (Next Nature Network, n.d.).

Societal implications These questions challenge us not to automatically assume an extrapolation of the present. They also inspire us to bring into focus and imagine what does not yet exist but may come into existence in the future. What will technological changes come to mean for existing paradigms and perspectives? Will technological innovations reinforce existing dominant nature images, or will new nature images emerge? And how could these future relationships between humans and nature then have consequences for the way we develop and apply technology? Fascinating issues to ponder!

Painting a picture of the ways in which future technological developments could change our relationship with nature is more than just fascinating. The different relationships that could develop will have different implications for what our world and society will look like and bring with them different ethical and societal issues. Reflecting on this helps us to view technologies not in isolation, but to envision their broader meaning and influence. This is a prerequisite for reflection and discussion regarding their effectiveness and desirability, and hopefully this exploration of the future will encourage such reflection and discussion.

3. Research approach

This futures research aims to map out how new technological developments could change the relationship between humans and nature.

Since it is not about predicting the future and the future can unfold in different ways, it will involve outlining various directions in which this relationship could develop. These future scenarios are not an end in themselves, but a means to create awareness about possible future directions, stimulate imagination, and invite reflection, discussion, and action.

Technology and society shape each other in a process of mutual influence. The choice to take new technological developments as a starting point in this exploration is therefore not intended to suggest one-way causality, but to take future technological developments as a lens and delimit and guide the research accordingly.

This research aims to answer the following central question:

How might new technological developments influence the relationship between humans and nature in the future, and what do we see as a desirable perspective in this regard?

To this end, answers will be sought to the following sub-questions:

• Which future technologies and technological applications have the potential to change the relationship between humans and nature?
• In what ways could these developments affect the relationship between humans and nature, and what possible future scenarios could be formulated based on this?
• How do we value the different future scenarios, and what role do ethical and normative issues play in this?

To explore these questions, a wide range of stakeholders including Symbiose will be involved. Stimulating public discussion and reflection will play an important role in this process. As this research at The Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends progresses, developments will be shared in new articles on this website.

• Next Nature Network (z.d.). Philosophy. Retrieved on October 17, 2022, from https://nextnature.net/welkom
• Stellinga, M. (2022, 24 June). Wordt het krimpen voor het klimaat, of groen groeien? NRC. Retrieved on August 11, 2022, from https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2022/06/24/wordt-het-krimpen-voor-het-klimaat-of-groen-groeien-a4134587
• Van Noort, W. (2018, 19 October). Klimaatgekkies hebben gelijk, duurzaamheidsfetisjisten ook. NRC. Retrieved on August 11, 2022, from https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/10/19/klimaatgekkies-hebben-gelijk-duurzaamheidsfetisjisten-ook-a2674698?t=1658403978

The original text is translated to English by Bertrand Burgers.

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Technology is changing our relationship with nature as we know it

University of Washington psychology professor Peter Kahn has spent much of his career analyzing the relationship humans have with nature—and he thinks that relationship is more fragile than many of us realize.

Kahn works to understand the intersection of two modern phenomena: the destruction of nature, and the growth of technology. As UW’s director of the Human Interaction with Nature and Technological Systems Lab ( HINTS ), Khan researches humans in relation to both real nature and “technological nature”: digital representations of the wild, such as nature-focused documentaries, video games, and VR stimulations.

Technological nature has its benefits; engaging with it makes us feel good by triggering our innate “biophilia,” a term for humanity’s inborn, primordial affiliation with the environment. For example, researchers have found that nature videos played in prisons drastically reduce violence amongst inmates, suggesting nature’s relaxing influence translates through screens. Studies have also found that watching Planet Earth brings viewers joy and markedly lowers anxiety, and that workers in offices with plasma-screen “windows” that play livestreams of the outdoors are happier and more productive than their counterparts working in rooms without any windows at all.

We’re seeking these nature alternatives as society urbanizes and wild places become harder to access. Yet there is a limit to the extent technological representations of nature can provide the soothing, restorative, creativity-enhancing benefits of a walk in the real woods.

Kahn’s concern is that in the process of pursuing more realistic technological nature, we are becoming increasingly alienated from the real thing, growing to accept a digital substitute for engagement with the wild, and compromising our fundamental affiliation for the environment in the process.

Quartz spoke to Kahn about the increasing prevalence of technological nature and why humans will be unable to invent an alternative to fostering meaningful connections with our environment.

What benefits do humans derive from our relationship with nature, and how is that relationship changing as we advance technologically?

Nature is necessary for our physical and psychological wellbeing. Interacting with nature teaches us to live in relation with the other, not in domination over the other: You don’t control the birds flying overhead, or the moon rising, or the bear walking where it would like to walk. In my appraisal, one of the overarching problems of the world today is that we see ourselves living in domination over rather than in relation with other people and with the natural world.

Can technological nature experiences such as VR nature simulations or video games provide comparable benefits to those reaped from time spent in real nature?

We get benefits from technological nature, but we don’t know what we’re missing. For example, people are now doing more and more climbing inside climbing gyms. It used to be that you climbed outside and had infinite degrees of freedom of your choices up a rock wall and experienced all forms of weather, and you needed to modulate accordingly. But in a gym, one’s freedom is reduced. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not as good as actual nature.

Now apply technology on top of that. A masters student from the University of Iceland, Ryan Parteka, recently visited my research lab. Ryan had VR renderings that he took from the heart of the wildest areas of Iceland, and with his assistance, I tried it out. I put on the VR goggles, and there I was in Iceland in wide-open plains. It was the afternoon, and the wind was starting to blow. I heard it blowing strong—but it was unnerving because I did not feel it. Even more unnerving, I didn’t need to do anything, I didn’t need to take care of myself: When I’ve been in wild places with the sound of wind like that, I immediately go for my hat to keep my head warm, and I put on a layer. But I’m experiencing this VR in the safety of a research lab inside a warm building in Seattle.

Our connection with nature needs meaning. One powerful form of meaning is to take care of oneself so that you don’t get hurt and can thrive. You take that out of the experience, and you dumb it down.

VR nature is dumbed-down nature. In the future, those using VR may be able to move around more and even choose their own route through an open VR space. That will allow more degrees of freedom, but when you bump your head into a VR rock, what happens to your head? Nothing! You’re not bound by nature—but neither can you be freed through it.

Why do humans seek out technological nature when engagement with the real deal potentially offers more satisfaction, health benefits, and depth of experience?

We are a technological species—we’ve always been one. But for hundreds of thousands of years our technologies were rudimentary. When our minds evolved from paleolithic to neolithic to now, our technologies did, too. We’re drawn to technologies not only because they are foisted on us by corporations, but also because the impetus for them lies within the architecture of our very being.

But, even though we are a technological species, we are now out of balance. To thrive, we need more nature and more wild forms of interaction with more wild nature; I doubt we need tons of new technology.

Do you foresee a future in which technological nature replaces the real thing to a meaningful extent? Could it ever be a substitute for nature? 

My realistic vision is that we employ technological nature as a bonus on actual nature, not as its substitute. Teenagers who have grown up in urban areas can put on a VR headset and get some small awareness of a wild place, but that visual awareness is severed from the meaning of interacting with the wild in that place. As children grow up in less-natured areas, they have fewer experiences with actual nature, and so when they then experience a technological version of nature, they have less actual experience to map it onto. In this way, the physical and psychological benefits we’re seeing of technological nature in this generation will likely diminish in the generations ahead.

What would be your ideal vision of technological nature’s use?

An ideal vision of technological nature would be to at least keep the technological nature “pure.” By this I mean not overlaying non-natural augmentations and images onto the natural forms. This will certainly happen with nature VR. There will be a million ways that people overlay imaginative imagery onto the natural world, and we won’t know what actual nature is and what’s simulated.

For example, I conducted a handful of studies with people interacting with Sony’s robot dog, Aibo, when it came on the market. At some point, the designers changed the design so that Aibo could speak your email to you. It’s a little odd to have a robot dog reading your email—that’s technological nature morphing into mixed forms. Children will come of age with these new mixed-genre forms of technological nature.

Could you describe your theory of “environmental generational amnesia”?

I first began to recognize the problem of environmental generational amnesia in the early 1990s when I was interviewing children in the inner city of Houston, Texas about their environmental views and values. One finding especially surprised me: A significant number of the children interviewed understood the idea of air pollution, but they did not believe that Houston had such a problem, even though Houston was then (and remains) one of the most polluted cities in the United States.

I would wake up in the mornings there stifled by the smells from the oil refineries, and my eyes would sting a little. How could these kids not know it? One answer is that they were born in Houston, and most had never left it; through living there, they constructed their baseline for what they thought was a normal environment, which included that existing level of pollution.

Building on this research, I had proposed that people across generations psychologically experience something quite similar to the children in Houston: that all of us construct a conception of what is environmentally normal based on the natural world we encounter in our childhood. With each ensuing generation, the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each generation tends to take that degraded condition as the normal experience. This is what I have been calling “environmental generational amnesia.” It helps explain how cities continue to lose nature, and why people don’t really see it happening—and to the extent they do, they don’t think it’s too much of a problem.

How should we best engage with technological nature in order to deepen our appreciation for our environment?

You might see children in preschool gain some sense of additional wonder by using a microscope to examine some nature, or a smartphone app might help us identify aspects of nature when we go for a nature walk. But such examples miss the large trends that are shaping our species. Ryan Parteka hoped that his VR renderings of Iceland would lead people to love wild places and preserve them. But for the most part, I don’t think that will happen. Any noble vision designers have of “Oh, I’m creating this technological nature so that people come to love and value real nature” will be shown to be hopelessly naïve.

People need to interact with actual nature. The solution is not just talking more about nature or creating videos of nature or other forms of technological nature. No, the solution is ever-deepening our interactions with nature and having more wild nature to interact with.

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Nature and Technology

• First Online: 22 June 2022

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• Olivier L. de Weck 2  

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This chapter discusses the relationship between nature and technology. We argue that technology – as we have defined it – is not unique to humans but that examples of technology can be found in nature. Next, we review the concepts of bio-inspired design and biomimetics which are the application of biological principles to artificially created technology. Increasingly, with the emergence of biological engineering, we are starting to understand (or are rediscovering) how nature itself can become technology. Finally, we consider the emerging notion of “cyborgs,” which are humans that have inserted technology into their own bodies or are using technology to modify their own bodies. These possibilities have given rise to the new field of bioethics . We can increasingly modify or create biology-based systems and technologies, but should we? Since humans are biology-based animals and are part of nature, some argue that all technology is inherently “natural.”

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de Weck, O.L. (2022). Nature and Technology. In: Technology Roadmapping and Development . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88346-1_3

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Nature and technology are merging. What does that mean for sustainability?

This could be the green tech revolution that no one's talking about..

The 21st century will challenge everything we think we know about nature and technology. Thanks to new tools and swift advances in our ability to read, write, and edit DNA, we’re gaining a much deeper understanding of — and control over — how life works. Scientists are cataloguing the trillions of microbes living in and around us that we depend on, while so-called synthetic biologists are engineering new ones to do and make things for us. (One day in the not-too-distant future, we may master more complex organisms, too.) The more we learn, the more we’ll be able to use biology as a tool to, say, treat diseases, improve agricultural yields, even develop new kinds of cosmetics.

At the same time, our machines are becoming more biological. They can think and communicate with one another. They can sense and react to the world around them. And thanks to the ubiquity of wireless networks, our gadgets can now connect into new kinds of ecosystems that turn our cities and homes into smart, responsive environments.

In short: The line between biology and technology is beginning to blur, and it could mean the beginning of a new industrial revolution.

The first industrial revolution was either a huge success or a massive failure, depending on who you ask. On the one hand, it led us to a world full of skyscrapers, airplanes, cheap food, and factory-made everything, where those of us in developed countries get to live long and comfortable lives. On the other hand, it wrecked the environment and left us dependent on resources and systems that are inherently unsustainable.

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But we’ve learned a lot in the past century — not just about how to build things, but also about how those things affect us and the rest of the planet. Decades of rampant development have shown us that just because we can do something, doesn’t mean that we should — and that the industrial revolution, while awesome, was not something that we can get away with again.

This time could be different. With the proper guidance, the technological developments happening now could lead to a world where we replace chemical factories with microbial communities, use the Internet of Things to merge our technological ecosystems with natural ones, embrace nature-inspired design as a genuinely smart engineering principle, rather than a niche concept, and generally start progressing in a way that isn’t so dismissive of the natural world.

The big question is: Will we actually do it?

There’s always been some friction between tech-heads and hardcore environmentalists. In part, that’s because technology has had a hand in our environmental woes through time immemorial … and, conversely, environmentalism has been the source of endless guilt trips for an industry that has thus far thrived on rampant and reckless progress. Innovation always comes with a measure of uncertainty and risk. That has manifested in some pretty disastrous ways (see: Ozone hole, lead poisoning) but it has also led to some incredible technologies (see: polio vaccine, cellphones) that a leery public can sometimes take for granted.

But technology is too pervasive for even the most radical environmentalist to deny, and climate change is too important for technologists to ignore. Fortunately, a reconciliation may be on the horizon. Earlier this year, a group of scholars released the “ Ecomodernist Manifesto ,” a declaration saying that we humans can and should embrace technological development without sacrificing the natural world: “A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.”

Just last month, scientists and historians gathered in Berlin to discuss the so-called “technosphere” and how it interacts with the natural world, or biosphere. One of the presenters at the conference was Peter Haff, a geologist and physicist at Duke University, who pointed out in an interview that “Basically every square meter of the Earth’s surface — it’s probably safe to say — has some signature of human activity somewhere on it, even if it’s just little particles.”

The technosphere is now as much a part of Earth as the biosphere, Haff says. It’s part of “big ‘N’ nature,” he said, meaning everything in the universe, including humans and our machines.

“The Earth has always from time to time begun interesting and strange things,” says Haff. “One day there was no biology, and the next day, there were these things growing up on the land or in the ocean or crawling around on the surface that hadn’t been there before.”

The technosphere is no different, he says. It’s just that now, instead of forming streams and mountains and forests, the Earth is forming highways and airplanes and cities.

That’s not to say that the technosphere is sustainable — we’re producing too much waste too quickly for the Earth to handle. But at the same time, Haff and others believe that society as we know it can’t go on without the technosphere.

So, whether or not we’re heading into the next industrial revolution, what we really need is an industrial evolution — a new and better way to develop emerging technologies so that we’re better adapted for life on this planet. And we need a new breed of conscientious technologists to lead the way.

In this series, we speak with some of these new technologists. They’re scientists, artists, and thinkers, and they embrace new technologies but not at the expense of the natural world. From synthetic biology to nanotechnology to the Internet of Things, this series takes a broad look at what the 21st century has to offer and asks: Could all this hype form the foundation of a sustainable world?

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Industrial evolution, leather jackets made in labs this fashion designer wants to make it happen, this sci-fi enthusiast wants to make “solarpunk” happen, this artist is using technology to bring nature back into the city, climate change will stress plants out. these scientists think they have a solution, a water crisis in mississippi turns into a fight against privatization, indigenous leaders are risking their lives to speak at the un, rivers are the west’s largest source of clean energy. what happens when drought strikes, republican attorneys general mount a new attack on the epa’s use of civil rights law, modal gallery.

How Technology Affects Our Relationship With Nature

A s meltwater from high country snows fills Yosemite Valley with the thunder of its renowned waterfalls, National Park Service firefighters are readying their customary tools for fire season: Pulaskis, half-axe, half mattock implements used to clear fireline by hand, rolls of canvas hose, backpack pumps and notebook computers. Yosemite Chief of Fire Management Kelly Martin takes a notebook along on any fire she goes to, working in a virtual command app known as Wildland Fire Decision Support System linked to satellite data on fire spread and intensity, weather forecasts, maps of previous fires and vegetation types, organization charts and contacts, and real-time reports by line officers.

In a neighboring Yosemite office, wildlife biologist Caitlin Lee-Roney and her team of wildlife technicians are ready for the summer’s skirmishes between bears and campers, with their tranquilizer dart rifles, packs containing veterinary drugs and a laptop on which Lee-Roney can track the GPS collars on problem bears from the sofa at her residence before she goes to bed. When bears show up repeatedly in areas where people are present or act aggressively toward humans, she captures them and fits them with combination radio/GPS collars. Once they’re released, she can attach an electronic proximity detection device to a tree in a campground that can even be programmed to send her a text message if one of the animals comes within a preset range of slumbering park visitors.

What Martin and Lee-Roney do in the course of managing a national park is still pretty hands-on, but with the growing reliance on technology in the natural sciences, particularly in research, something big has happened to the old-time naturalist with his binoculars, notebook and broad-based knowledge of the names and habits of plants and animals: he’s all but extinct. Enough time in the field to wear out your hiking boots has been replaced by enough time in front of a computer screen to wear out your eyes. Graduate students increasingly see nature as teenagers see war in computer games, from above, with the omniscient viewpoint of a satellite.

The benefits are, of course, staggering. Armed with all those digital maps of the complex patchwork of previous fires and vegetation, Martin can exploit, hours ahead of time, the opportunity to get a handle on a fire running toward an area where another recent ignition has cleaned out available fuel, or be forewarned when the previous blaze was long enough ago that the area has grown back in a thicket of flammable brush. Biologist Lee-Roney can see some situations that lead to bear-human conflicts before they happen, as can Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists monitoring GPS-collared grizzlies that share the suburban fringes of Anchorage with kids on bicycles. In the Arctic, where the effects of climate change are particularly acute, satellite tracking is revealing critical information on creatures that exist in such remote and harsh environments that human senses could never have known them—such as the king eider , a beautiful duck that fitted with tiny GPS tags is revealing its hidden migrations at subzero temperatures in the dark, across polar seas.

But emeritus scientists who watched the transition from direct observation, extensive fieldwork and a broad, descriptive knowledge of nature to computer modeling and molecular biology indoors worry that something important has been lost. “I’m afraid we spend more time in front of the computer than we do in the field,” says Dr. James M. Peek, a professor emeritus at the University of Idaho in his 80s. “We’re increasingly training technicians instead of wildlifers,” he says.

Such was the substance of a warning issued in 1996 by Reed Noss , then editor-in-chief of the journal Conservation Biology , about a growing phenomenon he labeled “keyboard ecology.” “Like most of you reading this journal, I do not get out in the field much anymore,” wrote Noss, today a distinguished professor of conservation biology at the University of Central Florida. “I cannot help feeling uneasy that the middle-aged biologists of today may be the last generation to have … been taught serious natural history. … The naturalists are dying off and have few heirs.”

What may be at risk is not only the nature of information, but human ability itself. In the Marshall Islands, a multidisciplinary team of scientists has been studying “ wave piloting ,” a traditional skill by which Marshallese sailors navigated out of sight of land by subtle observation of the forms of ocean waves. The practice is believed to be descended from the sort of skills by which ancient mariners settled the Pacific from Southeast Asia to the Solomon and Marshall Islands beginning 60,000 years ago. Today, even the best sailors have GPS devices, and wave piloting is a dying art. In short, as we rely more and more upon technological enhancements of our faculties, a formerly powerful capacity for direct observation and finely-honed senses may wither.

Noss’ warning may have elicited knowing nods from a few colleagues twenty years ago, but it has largely fallen on deaf ears among university administrators in charge of curriculum, he says. “There is unfortunately no broad, concerted effort to reduce this pernicious trend,” he concludes, sadly.

Nevertheless there are bright spots, but largely outside professional science. Natural history observation and field time are very much alive among knowledgeable amateurs such as birders, native plant enthusiasts, cave explorers and tornado trackers. If academics are increasingly stuck in front of their monitors, a movement known as “citizen science” seeks to collect field observations by skilled amateurs of things like the blooming time of certain plants or the return of migrating birds or butterflies, to track the effects of climate change . Conservation organizations are training “ river monitors ” who travel on foot or by kayak to assay populations of fish and invertebrates and measure turbidity and dissolved oxygen as indicators of stream health.

For now the five senses and battered binoculars are alive and well among amateurs , and after all, it was amateurs— 18th century birdwatchers and Victorian ladies and gentlemen with butterfly nets, plant presses and telescopes—who founded the natural sciences in the first place. And whether we are professionals or amateurs, nature will be there in one form or another when we’re ready to turn that thing off, go outside, and look, listen and feel.

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Essay on Nature And Technology

Students are often asked to write an essay on Nature And Technology in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Nature And Technology

Understanding nature and technology.

Nature is all the plants, animals, and landscapes around us. It’s the air we breathe and the parks where we play. Technology is the tools we use, like smartphones and computers. They help us talk to friends far away and learn new things.

Working Together

Nature and technology can work well together. Scientists use technology to learn about nature. They can track where animals go and how to protect them. Farmers use technology to grow more food without hurting the land.

Balance is Key

It’s important to balance nature and technology. We must enjoy and look after our natural world, not harm it with too much technology. We can use technology wisely to keep our planet healthy for everyone.

250 Words Essay on Nature And Technology

What is nature and technology.

Nature is everything that has not been made by humans. Trees, rivers, animals, and mountains are all parts of nature. Technology, on the other hand, is the things that humans have made to make life easier. This includes computers, phones, cars, and much more.

Nature and technology can work well together. For example, we use wind, water, and sunlight to make clean energy. This is good because it does not harm nature like old ways of making energy that used coal or oil.

Learning from Nature

We can also learn a lot from nature to make better technology. This is called biomimicry. Scientists look at how plants and animals live and try to copy that in technology. For example, they have made robots that can move like a snake to get into small places.

Keeping Balance

It is important to keep a balance between nature and technology. We should not let technology harm nature. We need clean air, water, and soil to live healthy lives. So, when we make and use technology, we should think about how it affects nature.

Nature has been here for a very long time, and technology is quite new. But both are important for us. We should use technology to help nature, not hurt it. By doing this, we can make sure that the Earth is a good home for all living things, now and in the future.

500 Words Essay on Nature And Technology

What is nature.

Nature is all the plants, animals, mountains, oceans, stars, and everything else that wasn’t made by humans. It’s the air we breathe, the grass under our feet, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea. Nature is like a big, beautiful painting that’s always changing with the seasons.

What is Technology?

Technology is the stuff humans make to solve problems or make life easier. It’s your computer, the phone in your pocket, the car your family drives, and even the light bulb in your lamp. Technology is made by taking ideas and using materials from nature to create new things.

Nature and technology can work together. Think of a windmill. It’s a machine, which is technology, but it needs the wind, which is part of nature, to work. When the wind blows, the windmill can make electricity without harming the environment. This is how technology can use nature’s power in a good way.

Sometimes, technology learns from nature. Have you ever seen a plane and a bird? They both have wings because wings are the best way to fly, and humans learned that from watching birds. This is called biomimicry, which means copying nature to make technology better.

It’s important to keep a balance between nature and technology. We need technology to live comfortably, like having houses to live in and medicine to keep us healthy. But we also need to protect nature so that the air stays clean, the water stays pure, and animals have homes.

There are challenges when nature and technology meet. Sometimes, making technology can hurt nature. For example, cutting down too many trees to build things can lead to fewer homes for animals and less clean air for us. It’s like if someone took away parts of the big painting of nature we talked about. That would make the painting less beautiful and maybe even ruin it.

Looking Ahead

Looking ahead, we need to make sure that technology doesn’t damage nature. We can create technology in a way that’s safe for the environment. This means making things that can be used again and again or making things that don’t pollute the air or water.

Nature and technology are both amazing. Nature gives us a wonderful world to live in, and technology helps us live in it better. But it’s like being on a team. Both the team members need to work together and respect each other. We can enjoy the benefits of technology while also taking care of nature. This way, the future can be bright for both the natural world and for humans. It’s up to us to make sure that we keep the balance right, so that both nature and technology can be a part of our lives in a good way.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Natural Resources
• Essay on Native American
• Essay on Nationality

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Promises and Pitfalls of Technology

Politics and privacy, private-sector influence and big tech, state competition and conflict, author biography, how is technology changing the world, and how should the world change technology.

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Josephine Wolff; How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?. Global Perspectives 1 February 2021; 2 (1): 27353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353

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Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated and increasingly interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems all rely on more computer software than they ever have before, making them seem both harder to understand and, in some cases, harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance of individuals and information processing relies largely on digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and therefore involves less human-to-human contact than ever before and more opportunities for biases to be embedded and codified in our technological systems in ways we may not even be able to identify or recognize. Bioengineering advances are opening up new terrain for challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions regarding human-natural relations. Additionally, the management of these large and small devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, so that control over them is both very remote and removed from direct human or social control. The study of how to make technologies like artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things “explainable” has become its own area of research because it is so difficult to understand how they work or what is at fault when something goes wrong (Gunning and Aha 2019) .

This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions. This can seem like an impossible task in light of the rapid pace of technological change and the sense that its continued advancement is inevitable, but many countries around the world are only just beginning to take significant steps toward regulating computer technologies and are still in the process of radically rethinking the rules governing global data flows and exchange of technology across borders.

These are exciting times not just for technological development but also for technology policy—our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever but so, too, are our understandings of how they can best be leveraged, protected, and even constrained. The structures of technological systems as determined largely by government and institutional policies and those structures have tremendous implications for social organization and agency, ranging from open source, open systems that are highly distributed and decentralized, to those that are tightly controlled and closed, structured according to stricter and more hierarchical models. And just as our understanding of the governance of technology is developing in new and interesting ways, so, too, is our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are realizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out the full range of ways that technology is changing our society, what we want those changes to look like, and what tools we have to try to influence and guide those shifts.

Technology can be a source of tremendous optimism. It can help overcome some of the greatest challenges our society faces, including climate change, famine, and disease. For those who believe in the power of innovation and the promise of creative destruction to advance economic development and lead to better quality of life, technology is a vital economic driver (Schumpeter 1942) . But it can also be a tool of tremendous fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making processes and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities within and between countries to a staggering degree, or creating new weapons and avenues for attack unlike any we have had to face in the past. Scholars have even contended that the emergence of the term technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a shift from viewing individual pieces of machinery as a means to achieving political and social progress to the more dangerous, or hazardous, view that larger-scale, more complex technological systems were a semiautonomous form of progress in and of themselves (Marx 2010) . More recently, technologists have sharply criticized what they view as a wave of new Luddites, people intent on slowing the development of technology and turning back the clock on innovation as a means of mitigating the societal impacts of technological change (Marlowe 1970) .

At the heart of fights over new technologies and their resulting global changes are often two conflicting visions of technology: a fundamentally optimistic one that believes humans use it as a tool to achieve greater goals, and a fundamentally pessimistic one that holds that technological systems have reached a point beyond our control. Technology philosophers have argued that neither of these views is wholly accurate and that a purely optimistic or pessimistic view of technology is insufficient to capture the nuances and complexity of our relationship to technology (Oberdiek and Tiles 1995) . Understanding technology and how we can make better decisions about designing, deploying, and refining it requires capturing that nuance and complexity through in-depth analysis of the impacts of different technological advancements and the ways they have played out in all their complicated and controversial messiness across the world.

These impacts are often unpredictable as technologies are adopted in new contexts and come to be used in ways that sometimes diverge significantly from the use cases envisioned by their designers. The internet, designed to help transmit information between computer networks, became a crucial vehicle for commerce, introducing unexpected avenues for crime and financial fraud. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, designed to connect friends and families through sharing photographs and life updates, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, originally intended as a means of decentralized digital cash, have become a significant environmental hazard as more and more computing resources are devoted to mining these forms of virtual money. One of the crucial challenges in this area is therefore recognizing, documenting, and even anticipating some of these unexpected consequences and providing mechanisms to technologists for how to think through the impacts of their work, as well as possible other paths to different outcomes (Verbeek 2006) . And just as technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, they can also bring about extraordinary benefits—new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics and save thousands of lives, new sources of energy that can drastically reduce emissions and help combat climate change, new modes of education that can reach people who would otherwise have no access to schooling. Regulating technology therefore requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting potentially beneficial innovations.

Nations around the world have taken very different approaches to governing emerging technologies and have adopted a range of different technologies themselves in pursuit of more modern governance structures and processes (Braman 2009) . In Europe, the precautionary principle has guided much more anticipatory regulation aimed at addressing the risks presented by technologies even before they are fully realized. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the responsibilities of data controllers and processors to provide individuals with access to their data and information about how that data is being used not just as a means of addressing existing security and privacy threats, such as data breaches, but also to protect against future developments and uses of that data for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making purposes. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine, or TÜVs, perform regular tests and inspections of technological systems to assess and minimize risks over time, as the tech landscape evolves. In the United States, by contrast, there is much greater reliance on litigation and liability regimes to address safety and security failings after-the-fact. These different approaches reflect not just the different legal and regulatory mechanisms and philosophies of different nations but also the different ways those nations prioritize rapid development of the technology industry versus safety, security, and individual control. Typically, governance innovations move much more slowly than technological innovations, and regulations can lag years, or even decades, behind the technologies they aim to govern.

In addition to this varied set of national regulatory approaches, a variety of international and nongovernmental organizations also contribute to the process of developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies, including the International Organization for Standardization­ and the International Telecommunication Union. These multilateral and NGO actors play an especially important role in trying to define appropriate boundaries for the use of new technologies by governments as instruments of control for the state.

At the same time that policymakers are under scrutiny both for their decisions about how to regulate technology as well as their decisions about how and when to adopt technologies like facial recognition themselves, technology firms and designers have also come under increasing criticism. Growing recognition that the design of technologies can have far-reaching social and political implications means that there is more pressure on technologists to take into consideration the consequences of their decisions early on in the design process (Vincenti 1993; Winner 1980) . The question of how technologists should incorporate these social dimensions into their design and development processes is an old one, and debate on these issues dates back to the 1970s, but it remains an urgent and often overlooked part of the puzzle because so many of the supposedly systematic mechanisms for assessing the impacts of new technologies in both the private and public sectors are primarily bureaucratic, symbolic processes rather than carrying any real weight or influence.

Technologists are often ill-equipped or unwilling to respond to the sorts of social problems that their creations have—often unwittingly—exacerbated, and instead point to governments and lawmakers to address those problems (Zuckerberg 2019) . But governments often have few incentives to engage in this area. This is because setting clear standards and rules for an ever-evolving technological landscape can be extremely challenging, because enforcement of those rules can be a significant undertaking requiring considerable expertise, and because the tech sector is a major source of jobs and revenue for many countries that may fear losing those benefits if they constrain companies too much. This indicates not just a need for clearer incentives and better policies for both private- and public-sector entities but also a need for new mechanisms whereby the technology development and design process can be influenced and assessed by people with a wider range of experiences and expertise. If we want technologies to be designed with an eye to their impacts, who is responsible for predicting, measuring, and mitigating those impacts throughout the design process? Involving policymakers in that process in a more meaningful way will also require training them to have the analytic and technical capacity to more fully engage with technologists and understand more fully the implications of their decisions.

At the same time that tech companies seem unwilling or unable to rein in their creations, many also fear they wield too much power, in some cases all but replacing governments and international organizations in their ability to make decisions that affect millions of people worldwide and control access to information, platforms, and audiences (Kilovaty 2020) . Regulators around the world have begun considering whether some of these companies have become so powerful that they violate the tenets of antitrust laws, but it can be difficult for governments to identify exactly what those violations are, especially in the context of an industry where the largest players often provide their customers with free services. And the platforms and services developed by tech companies are often wielded most powerfully and dangerously not directly by their private-sector creators and operators but instead by states themselves for widespread misinformation campaigns that serve political purposes (Nye 2018) .

Since the largest private entities in the tech sector operate in many countries, they are often better poised to implement global changes to the technological ecosystem than individual states or regulatory bodies, creating new challenges to existing governance structures and hierarchies. Just as it can be challenging to provide oversight for government use of technologies, so, too, oversight of the biggest tech companies, which have more resources, reach, and power than many nations, can prove to be a daunting task. The rise of network forms of organization and the growing gig economy have added to these challenges, making it even harder for regulators to fully address the breadth of these companies’ operations (Powell 1990) . The private-public partnerships that have emerged around energy, transportation, medical, and cyber technologies further complicate this picture, blurring the line between the public and private sectors and raising critical questions about the role of each in providing critical infrastructure, health care, and security. How can and should private tech companies operating in these different sectors be governed, and what types of influence do they exert over regulators? How feasible are different policy proposals aimed at technological innovation, and what potential unintended consequences might they have?

Conflict between countries has also spilled over significantly into the private sector in recent years, most notably in the case of tensions between the United States and China over which technologies developed in each country will be permitted by the other and which will be purchased by other customers, outside those two countries. Countries competing to develop the best technology is not a new phenomenon, but the current conflicts have major international ramifications and will influence the infrastructure that is installed and used around the world for years to come. Untangling the different factors that feed into these tussles as well as whom they benefit and whom they leave at a disadvantage is crucial for understanding how governments can most effectively foster technological innovation and invention domestically as well as the global consequences of those efforts. As much of the world is forced to choose between buying technology from the United States or from China, how should we understand the long-term impacts of those choices and the options available to people in countries without robust domestic tech industries? Does the global spread of technologies help fuel further innovation in countries with smaller tech markets, or does it reinforce the dominance of the states that are already most prominent in this sector? How can research universities maintain global collaborations and research communities in light of these national competitions, and what role does government research and development spending play in fostering innovation within its own borders and worldwide? How should intellectual property protections evolve to meet the demands of the technology industry, and how can those protections be enforced globally?

These conflicts between countries sometimes appear to challenge the feasibility of truly global technologies and networks that operate across all countries through standardized protocols and design features. Organizations like the International Organization for Standardization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and many others have tried to harmonize these policies and protocols across different countries for years, but have met with limited success when it comes to resolving the issues of greatest tension and disagreement among nations. For technology to operate in a global environment, there is a need for a much greater degree of coordination among countries and the development of common standards and norms, but governments continue to struggle to agree not just on those norms themselves but even the appropriate venue and processes for developing them. Without greater global cooperation, is it possible to maintain a global network like the internet or to promote the spread of new technologies around the world to address challenges of sustainability? What might help incentivize that cooperation moving forward, and what could new structures and process for governance of global technologies look like? Why has the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persisted? Do the same traditional drivers for public policy, such as politics of harmonization and path dependency in policy-making, still sufficiently explain policy outcomes in this space? As new technologies and their applications spread across the globe in uneven ways, how and when do they create forces of change from unexpected places?

These are some of the questions that we hope to address in the Technology and Global Change section through articles that tackle new dimensions of the global landscape of designing, developing, deploying, and assessing new technologies to address major challenges the world faces. Understanding these processes requires synthesizing knowledge from a range of different fields, including sociology, political science, economics, and history, as well as technical fields such as engineering, climate science, and computer science. A crucial part of understanding how technology has created global change and, in turn, how global changes have influenced the development of new technologies is understanding the technologies themselves in all their richness and complexity—how they work, the limits of what they can do, what they were designed to do, how they are actually used. Just as technologies themselves are becoming more complicated, so are their embeddings and relationships to the larger social, political, and legal contexts in which they exist. Scholars across all disciplines are encouraged to join us in untangling those complexities.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches was published by MIT Press in 2018.

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Science-Based Medicine

Exploring issues and controversies in the relationship between science and medicine

Nature vs. Technology

Nathanael Johnson has written an interesting book about what “natural” means, and doesn’t mean, drawing upon his own life but more importantly – the scientific literature.

Nathanael Johnson was brought up by hippie parents who subscribed to every “natural” belief and fad. His mother nearly died of a postpartum hemorrhage when he was born at home (he weighed 11 pounds!). His parents didn’t report his birth, and he didn’t have a birth certificate. He co-slept with his parents, never wore diapers (imagine the clean-up!), was allowed to play in the dirt and chew on the snails he found there, was fed a Paleolithic diet, was never allowed any form of sugar, didn’t know there was such a thing as an Oreo cookie, was home-schooled, and did not know that public nudity was taboo until he and his brother shocked the folks at a church picnic by stripping naked to go swimming in the lake. Nudity was customary in his home, and he was encouraged to “let his balls breathe.”

As he grew up, he started to question some of the dogmas he had learned from his parents. He had been taught that good health resulted from forming connections with nature, but he found that nature “generally wanted to eat me.” Now an adult and a journalist, he understands science and how to do research. He tried to read the scientific literature with an unbiased mindset, asking questions about the subjects in his book’s title rather than looking for evidence to support any prior beliefs, and he arrived at pretty much the same conclusions we science-based medicine folks did. But he still appreciates that a natural approach has value, and he seeks to reconcile nature with technology. He calls his book a comfortable refuge from people who are driven to extremes.

When his wife was pregnant, he interviewed home birth advocate Ina May Gaskin, visited birthing centers, looked up statistics about C-sections and fetal monitoring, and decided what he wanted was “No Nonsense Evidence-Based Midwifery.” He and his wife found exactly that in a hospital where nurse-midwives delivered the babies and high-tech care was immediately available for emergencies. All went well, but throughout his wife’s labor and delivery he worried about whether they had made the right choice. Afterwards, he realized that more worry was in store: no matter how he tried to protect his newborn daughter, she would, in the course of her life, be hurt, would suffer, and would eventually die. A nurse told him “Whenever there’s uncertainty or discomfort, people tend to want to fix it. We have absolutely no tools in this culture for simply accepting, but that’s what you have to do sometimes.” These are wise words that patients might do well to consider before seeking the false certainties offered by alternative medicine.

He investigates food and identifies three faulty assumptions :

• Molecules Matter, Food is Irrelevant. He says he stopped reading labels because the same type of food molecules may have different consequences if they arrive in a slice of coconut, a steak, or a scoop of gelato.
• Everyone Is the Same. No, some of us can digest lactose and others can’t; and we are difference in many other ways. Evolution has molded humans to eat diets as diverse as humanity itself.
• Institutions, Not Individuals, Should Be in Charge of Diet. We learn food preferences and food traditions through our culture. Adjusting nutrients at a national level reduced the risks of goiter and neural tube defects and eradicated vitamin deficiency diseases like pellagra, beriberi, and rickets, but obesity became a problem. “In attacking the nutrient-efficiency problems we created a super-sufficiency problem.”

He decides that eating scientifically is impossible because no diet advice is well-supported by science. Both science-based diets and natural diets go beyond the evidence and produce gurus who claim certainty where there is complexity. They are like two sides of the same coin. He argues for rediscovering the pleasure of food rather than just eating to satisfy hunger or to eat the “right” number of calories of the “right” foods. At the same time, he realizes that telling people to eat what they enjoy would be catastrophic for those with metabolic disorders and laughable for those who can’t afford it.

He describes his brief and disastrous experimentation with a raw food/live food diet. He discovers that when he thought he was avoiding toxins, he was just ingesting different toxins, plant toxins. He says yes, there is probably something out there trying to make us sick or eat our brains, but there is very little certainty about which toxins are harmful to the human body in what doses over a lifetime. It would be a worthy goal for science to identify all toxins and remove them from our diet, but “I can’t wait that long for dinner.”

He investigates vaccines. He offers the insight that when parents ask a pediatrician about vaccine risks, they are looking for advice from someone who has seriously considered the risks and the objections of anti-vaxxers rather than just dismissing them. Simple reassurance that science has decreed vaccines necessary is counterproductive. He counters the argument that we have insufficient proof that vaccines are safe by citing Wendell Berry’s advice that the trick is not to find certainty, but to act thoughtfully with partial knowledge. (That’s the trick of science-based medical practice, too.) He comes to a new understanding of vaccines as a “natural” means of protecting children from disease. He realizes that “unnatural” means things he doesn’t understand. The more he learned about things like vaccines, the more natural they seemed.

He puts a new spin on the old canard that doctors only treat symptoms, not underlying causes. After his appendectomy, he asks the surgeon why it happened to him and why it happened when it did. He gets only a vague answer. “Conventional medicine is concerned with helping pragmatically, using the information available to accomplish what it can…you don’t have to know why a fire started to put it out.”

He talks about placebos, describing Benedetti’s research . He suggests there is a role for metaphor in medicine. His mother tried “Earthing” and felt better, less driven, less scattered, better able to enjoy the moment. She realized it might be a placebo effect, but she felt a sense of connection with the earth. He suggests that she was being “healed by a metaphor.”

He argues for a kinder, gentler practice of medicine. He thinks the Flexner report had the effect of eclipsing the patient. And certainly, part of the appeal of “integrative medicine” is the way it returns the focus back to the “whole” individual patient. In a way, it is “a manifestation of love.” He tells about a doctor who prescribed suicide drugs for terminal patients and found that none of his patients actually used them. Their discomfort was not caused by their disease, but by their loss of control. He wished he had realized that was the underlying problem and had been able to remedy it more effectively. “When healing is reduced to a battle between technology and disease, patients lose both responsibility and control.”

He tells about a pediatrician who spent hours educating his patients about asthma, diabetes and allergies, and measured his success by the fact that for the last 5 years of his career not a single patient from his practice had to go to the ER for complications of those diseases. He voluntarily cut his own paycheck by $50,000 a year by teaching the parents of hemophiliac children to administer clotting factors at home instead of coming to his office each time.

Johnson investigates organic farming, industrial pig farms vs. small family operated pig-friendly farms, and forestry management for multi-use purposes rather than as a single crop. He even investigates raw milk, recognizing the dangers of infection, but also learning that milk from grass-fed, pampered cows has a different microbial flora that might conceivably have a beneficial effect on health by protecting humans from more harmful bacteria. He suggests there may be ways to achieve the economies and successes of mass food and lumber technology with more animal-friendly, tree-friendly, and human-friendly methods. He makes it sound as if it’s definitely worth a try.

We are all isolated beings struggling for survival, but we are also part of a larger whole. The technological perspective builds a protective barrier around us; the natural approach sees us as part of a nurturing whole, invites nature in, and fosters relationships. Nathanael Johnson argues for neither the technological nor the natural perspective, but for reunification. He says:

I can’t do without technology: I’m not willing to give up antibiotics, or movies, or ice cubes, or germ theory, or space exploration. But I’m also dismayed by the way faith in technological progress tends to trade away beauty, and wonder, and joy, and all of those slippery, unquantifiable things that – in the end – make life worth living.

There’s a lot of good science and common sense in this book. It gave me a better understanding of what those “natural” advocates are thinking, and of ways in which modern medical practice could be improved. The only quibble I had with it is that he talks about right brain/left brain differences that are not substantiated by recent evidence.

Harriet Hall, MD also known as The SkepDoc, is a retired family physician who writes about pseudoscience and questionable medical practices. She received her BA and MD from the University of Washington, did her internship in the Air Force (the second female ever to do so),  and was the first female graduate of the Air Force family practice residency at Eglin Air Force Base. During a long career as an Air Force physician, she held various positions from flight surgeon to DBMS (Director of Base Medical Services) and did everything from delivering babies to taking the controls of a B-52. She retired with the rank of Colonel.  In 2008 she published her memoirs, Women Aren't Supposed to Fly .

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• Posted in: Book & movie reviews , Nutrition , Obstetrics & gynecology
• Tagged in: diet advice , food production , home birth , midwives , Nathanael Johnson , natural , Technology , the environment , vaccines

Posted by Harriet Hall

‘Digital technology and its impact on human nature’ examined in Vik-Bailey lecture

In our recent Vik-Bailey lecture, Antón Barba-Kay – the Robert B. Aird Chair of Humanities at Deep Springs College in California – took a deep dive into the topic of digital technology and its potential to end human nature.

Hosted at CGIS South on April 11, the lecture was well attended – including a full seminar group, whose students are currently studying Barba-Kay’s book A Web of Our Own Making: The Nature of Digital Formation , which was published last year by Cambridge University Press. 

During his presentation and audience Q&A, Barba-Kay deliberated on the themes of AI and proving one’s humanness, Aristotle’s theory of the good life and how it compares to modern-day living, and the effects of digital technology on creativity, privacy, community, and well-being.

“Is the internet part of the good life in the way that shelter, clothing, and music are? Is a smartphone? Is social media?” asked Barba-Kay. “If you were asked to envision utopia, will Gmail, Tinder and Hulu have a place in it? But if you could make the choice never to use digital technology again, would you do so?”

Photo by Dylan Goodman, credit The Harvard Gazette

The event was covered by Liz Mineo, Staff Writer at The Harvard Gazette , with the article perfectly capturing Barba-Kay’s sentiments on ‘how the internet is changing us – not for the better’. Read the full piece here .

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April 25, 2024

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Scholars explain the ideology that says technology is the answer to every problem

by Seyram Avle, Jean Hardy, The Conversation

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen penned a 5,000-word manifesto in 2023 that gave a full-throated call for unrestricted technological progress to boost markets, broaden energy production, improve education and strengthen liberal democracy.

The billionaire, who made his fortune by co-founding Netscape —a 1990s-era company that made a pioneering web browser—espouses a concept known as " techno-optimism ." In summing it up, Andreessen writes, "We believe that there is no material problem—whether created by nature or by technology—that cannot be solved with more technology."

The term techno-optimism isn't new ; it began to appear after World War II. Nor is it in a state of decline, as Andreessen and other techno-optimists such as Elon Musk would have you believe. And yet Andreessen's essay made a big splash.

As scholars who study technology and society , we have observed that techno-optimism easily attaches itself to the public's desire for a better future. The questions of how that future will be built, what that future will look like and who will benefit from those changes are harder to answer.

Why techno-optimism matters

Techno-optimism is a blunt tool. It suggests that technological progress can solve every problem known to humans—a belief also known as techno-solutionism .

Its adherents object to commonsense guardrails or precautions, such as cities limiting the number of new Uber drivers to ease traffic congestion or protect cab drivers' livelihoods. They dismiss such regulations or restrictions as the concerns of Luddites—people who resist disruptive innovations.

In our view, some champions of techno-optimism, such as Bill Gates , rely on the cover of philanthropy to promote their techno-optimist causes. Others have argued that their philanthropic initiatives are essentially a public relations effort to burnish their reputations as they continue to control how technology is being used to address the world's problems.

The stakes of embracing techno-optimism are high—and not just in terms of the role that technology plays in society. There are also political, environmental and economic ramifications for holding these views. As an ideological position, it puts the interests of certain people—often those already wielding immense power and resources—over those of everyone else. Its cheerleaders can be willfully blind to the fact that most of society's problems, like technology, are made by humans.

Many scholars are keenly aware of the techno-optimism of social media that pervaded the 2010s . Back then, these technologies were breathlessly covered in the media—and promoted by investors and inventors—as an opportunity to connect the disconnected and bring information to anyone who might need it.

Yet, while offering superficial solutions to loneliness and other social problems , social media has failed to address their root structural causes. Those may include the erosion of public spaces , the decline of journalism and enduring digital divides .

Tech alone can't fix everything

Both of us have extensively researched economic development initiatives that seek to promote high-tech entrepreneurship in low-income communities in Ghana and the United States . State-run programs and public-private partnerships have sought to narrow digital divides and increase access to economic opportunity.

Many of these programs embrace a techno-optimistic mindset by investing in shiny, tech-heavy fixes without addressing the inequality that led to digital divides in the first place. Techno-optimism, in other words, pervades governments and nongovernmental organizations, just as it has influenced the thinking of billionaires like Andreessen.

Solving intractable problems such as persistent poverty requires a combination of solutions that sometimes, yes, includes technology. But they're complex. To us, insisting that there's a technological fix for every problem in the world seems not just optimistic, but also rather convenient if you happen to be among the richest people on Earth and in a position to profit from the technology industry.

Provided by The Conversation

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Earth Day 2024: Planet Vs. Plastic

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Born in 1970, Earth Day has evolved into one of the largest civic events of all time. When we observe the 54 th Earth Day on April 22, the health and safety of the planet couldn’t be timelier, especially when it comes to dealing with the proliferation of plastic.

Over the past 60 years, around eight billion tons of plastic has been produced, according to a recent study in the journal Science Advances — 90.5 per cent of which has not been recycled . As a result, this year’s Earth Day theme— “Planet vs. Plastic”— demands a 60% reduction in the production of all plastics by 2040.

Just how big of a challenge is this? What type of numbers are we talking about? Here’s some perspective:

• In 1950, the world produced just two million tons of plastic. We now produce over 450 million tons .
• Half of all plastics ever manufactured have been made in the last 15 years.
• P roduction is expected to double by 2050.
• More than one million plastic water bottles are sold every minute.
• Every year, about 11 million tons of plastic waste escapes into the ocean.
• Only 9% of plastics ever produced has been recycled.
• Plastics often contain additives that can extend the life of products, with some estimates ranging to at least 400 years to break down.

Plastic is literally everywhere

An advertisement from the American Plastics Council in a 1997 edition of the New Yorker suggested that plastic wrappers and containers were the “sixth food group” that were there to keep contaminates out of our food.

Close up shot of microplastics on a hand.

In a twisted type of irony, Microplastics are now in almost everything and everywhere. Even in in much of the food we eat and water we drink! Microplastics are tiny particles of plastic (from ½ inch to microscopic) is synthetic that never disappears. As Stephen Jamieson recently explained in a Future of Supply Chain podcast, “We're ingesting a credit card size worth of plastic every single week as humans, and the real health impacts of that, we don't truly know and don't truly understand.”

What is the world doing about it?

In the Podcast, Stephen discussed the upcoming fourth session of the United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee he is attending in Ottawa, Canada from 23rd to the 29th of April. The goal is to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, that will, as Stephen stated, “by early next year, actually ratify a new treaty at the United Nations to eliminate plastic pollution by 2040”.

What can businesses do about it?

Think about optimizing your entire supply chain for sustainability, rather than just individual functions.

For example, you may be pulling certain levers in your design processes, or manufacturing plants, only to realize that the sustainability gains in that process are offset by much a much larger negative impact on logistics or at the end of life of a product.

Perform Life Cycle Assessments on your products

A Life Cycle Assessment is a method for the compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product throughout its life cycle (ISO standard 14040).

In simple terms, it’s a way by which you can understand the sustainability footprint of a product throughout it’s full lifecycle, from “cradle to grave.”

By enabling product footprints periodically across the entire product lifecycle, you can gain insights on the environmental impacts of your products across the entire lifecycle for disclosure and internal product and process optimization.

Design with end of life in mind

As Earthday.org says, “We need to invest in innovative technologies and materials to build a plastic-free world”.

And this starts with how we design products and packaging material in the goods we manufacture and deliver. The sooner we phase out all single use plastics, the better. We need responsible design and production solutions that facilitate a product and package redesign that enables companies to engage in the circular economy and reduces waste without sacrificing quality.

Enforce compliance at each step of the product lifecycle

If you look at most companies’ website for their mission statement or purpose, sustainability is front and center. And supply chain sits right in the middle, both as a major contributor to the problem, and a major opportunity to improve.

But you can’t manage regulatory and sustainability requirements, track registrations and substance volumes, classify products, and create compliance documents, as well as package, transport, and store hazardous materials properly with accurate labeling you won’t be able to measure how you are performing.

This takes a stepwise approach to:

Record: The first step is to gather all necessary ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) data along the entire value chain. This data cannot be found easily in one single system. Currently this is a highly manual and therefore time consuming effort compounded by data quality challenges.

Report: There are more than 600 ESG frameworks/standards out there and they are being constantly developed further (Take the evolving plastics taxes across Europe for example). The requirements for companies are constantly changing. A high effort is required to keep up with the current requirements to report along the respective regulatory & voluntary frameworks.

Act: In many companies sustainability action is already happening but in many cases this this is still partly disjoint from the strategy or not yet covering all business processes

What can we as individuals do about it?

The reality is that everybody has a role to play in the “Planet vs. Plastics battle, and the sustainability of the planet in general.

Little things like using reusable bottles and straws and bringing reusable bags to the store are great first step.

You can also go to earthday.org to learn more about the battle between planet vs. plastics, and find an event near you where you can help clean up the planet.

Let’s make every day Earth Day, to protect this beautiful rock we live on for future generations.

To learn more, listen to The Future of Supply Chain Podcast – Earth vs. Planet .

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Technology vs. Nature in ‘ War Horse’ by Steven Spielberg Essay

When compared to the military conflicts of the past ages, World War I demonstrated an unprecedented prevalence of technology. Bolt-action rifles and machineguns, tanks and heavy artillery, zeppelins, and airplanes were only some of the technological advancements that led to the emergence of the new type of total war. In this new war, combat was not so much a contest of the physical prowess of soldiers and animals but, rather, a technological competition with machinery dominating the battlefield completely.

Steven Spielberg’s War Horse , released in 2011, explores this period of history and presents a vivid artistic interpretation of animals with machines in warfare. In the film’s pivotal scene depicting the charge of British cavalry in 1914, lighting, motion, and framing alike highlight the grim triumph of technology over nature.

Befitting its title, War Horse follows the life and adventures of the steed named Joey during the early 20th century. Sold from a Devon farm to military service, Joey becomes a cavalry horse for Captain Nicholls. As World War I begins, Joey’s and Nicholls’s regiment is shipped across the Channel to fight in France as a part of the British Expeditionary Force. Joey’s first battle experience comes when the unit the horse is assigned to leads a valiant cavalry charge against the German position in the first weeks of the war.

Although initially successful, the attack stops at its tracks in a matter of minutes, as the charging riders come after the heavy machinegun fire. The scene is a relatively accurate depiction of the actual episode of the battle of Mons on 24 August 1914. In this event, 9th Lancers and 4th Dragoons attempted to attack German troops but “came under fire as the German infantry reacted, and the charge was brought to an ignominious halt” (Lomas). Thus, the movie sets the scene firmly within a historical context to emphasize the juxtaposition of nature and technology in its pivotal scene.

One of the ways the film uses to stress the distinction between the beasts of war and military machinery is lighting. British cavalry begins its charge on sunny noon with scarcely a cloud in the sky, and the riders and horses alike bathe in sunlight. Moreover, as Parker-Starbuck soundly notes, soldiers mount their horses in the middle of a field “full of high reeds, golden and rustling in the wind,” which makes the charge scene even brighter (Parker-Starbuck 378).

In contrast, the German machinegun positions are situated on the edge of the forest, conveniently hidden in the shadow of the trees. Thus, the lighting emphasizes a sharp contrast between the cavalry riding forward under the sun rays and machineguns covered in the darkness beneath the dense tree branches.

Another device utilized by the field to juxtapose animals and technology is how the scene utilizes motion or lack thereof. The British cavalry rides with a stampede of hooves, swiftly covering most of the distance to the enemy. Horse and human bodies move en masse, creating a sense of power and impetus among the viewers – Parker-Starbuck is right to call the scene “electrifying” (379). Machineguns, on the other hand, are completely still, and once the German soldiers assume their position behind them, they seize moving as well, waiting for their opening. The film contrasts the vigorous charge of the galloping cavalry and the motionless stillness of the killing machinery.

Finally, the framing of the scene once serves to stress the contrast between technology and nature put against each other on the battlefield. Once the Germans open fire, the camera cuts to a close-up of the firing guns. The shot is framed so that the audience does not see a single human being: only the machinegun muzzles and the occasionally bewildered horses without riders that manage to reach the firing positions. This framing of the scene deliberately excludes humans from the picture: it depicts combat as machine vs. animal, and the animal loses decisively. By doing so, the film offers an artistic depiction of “a transitional period when the animal body was being replaced by machinic technologies” (Parker-Starbuck 379). All the strength, speed, and vigor of a beast of war mean nothing when put against the modern machinery of war.

As one can see, War Horse uses its depiction of World War I to juxtapose technology and nature in a military context. Having set its pivotal scene firmly in a historical context, the film uses nearly all facets of its pivotal scene to emphasize the contrast between the charging British cavalry and German firing positions. While the horsemen ride forth bathing in light, German machineguns are utterly still and hidden in the shadow of the forest edge.

Finally, by excluding the human element from the scene, the movie puts machinery against animals directly and demonstrates the grizzly outcome, thus signifying the transitional period in history. War Horse demonstrates how metal and powder replace muscle and sinew as the decisive force on the battlefield, signaling a grim triumph of technology over nature that manifests in the mass destruction of total war.

Works Cited

Lomas, David. Mons 1914: The BEF’s Tactical Triumph . Osprey Publishing, 1997. Google Books . Web.

Parker-Starbuck, Jennifer. “Animal Ontologies and Media Representations: Robotics, Puppets, and the Real of ‘War Horse’.” Theatre Journal, vol. 65, no. 3, 2013, pp. 373-393.

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IvyPanda. (2022, February 12). Technology vs. Nature in ' War Horse' by Steven Spielberg. https://ivypanda.com/essays/technology-vs-nature-in-war-horse-by-steven-spielberg/

"Technology vs. Nature in ' War Horse' by Steven Spielberg." IvyPanda , 12 Feb. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/technology-vs-nature-in-war-horse-by-steven-spielberg/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Technology vs. Nature in ' War Horse' by Steven Spielberg'. 12 February.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Technology vs. Nature in ' War Horse' by Steven Spielberg." February 12, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/technology-vs-nature-in-war-horse-by-steven-spielberg/.

1. IvyPanda . "Technology vs. Nature in ' War Horse' by Steven Spielberg." February 12, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/technology-vs-nature-in-war-horse-by-steven-spielberg/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Technology vs. Nature in ' War Horse' by Steven Spielberg." February 12, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/technology-vs-nature-in-war-horse-by-steven-spielberg/.

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Guest Essay

Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe

By Matthew Waxman and Adam Klein

Mr. Waxman served in senior national security roles in the George W. Bush administration. Mr. Klein served as the chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from 2018 to 2021.

This is an extraordinarily dangerous time for the United States and our allies. Israel’s unpreparedness on Oct. 7 shows that even powerful nations can be surprised in catastrophic ways. Fortunately, Congress, in a rare bipartisan act, voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key intelligence power that provides critical information on hostile states and threats ranging from terrorism to fentanyl trafficking.

Civil libertarians argued that the surveillance bill erodes Americans’ privacy rights and pointed to examples when American citizens got entangled in investigations. Importantly, the latest version of the bill adds dozens of legal safeguards around the surveillance in question — the most expansive privacy reform to the legislation in its history. The result preserves critical intelligence powers while protecting Americans’ privacy rights in our complex digital age.

At the center of the debate is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Originally passed in 1978, it demanded that investigators gain an order from a special court to surveil foreign agents inside the United States. Collecting the communications of foreigners abroad did not require court approval.

That line blurred in the digital age. Many foreign nationals rely on American providers such as Google and Meta, which route or store data in the United States, raising questions as to whether the rules apply to where the targets are or where their data is collected. In 2008, Congress addressed that conundrum with Section 702. Instead of requiring the government to seek court orders for each foreign target, that provision requires yearly judicial approval of the rules that govern the program as a whole. That way, the government can efficiently obtain from communication providers the calls and messages of large numbers of foreign targets — 246,073 in 2022 alone.

Since then, Section 702 has supplied extraordinary insight into foreign dangers, including military threats, theft of American trade secrets, terrorism, hacking and fentanyl trafficking. In 2022 intelligence from 702 helped the government find and kill the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, one of the terrorists responsible for Sept. 11. Almost 60 percent of the articles in the president’s daily intelligence briefing include information from Section 702.

Although Section 702 can be used only to target foreigners abroad, it does include Americans when they interact with foreign targets. Not only is such incidental collection inevitable in today’s globalized world; it can be vital to U.S. security. If a terrorist or spy abroad is communicating with someone here, our government must find out why.

Some of what is found via Section 702 is therefore sent from the National Security Agency to the F.B.I. The F.B.I., which investigates threats to national security in the United States, can then check that database for Americans under investigation for national security reasons.

We agree that those queries raise legitimate privacy concerns. And those concerns are especially acute for public officials and journalists whose communications with foreign officials and other potential intelligence targets may be sensitive for political or professional reasons.

It is also true that the F.B.I. has broken the rules around these 702 database checks repeatedly in recent years. Agents ran improper queries related to elected officials and political protests. The wiretaps of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, also involved numerous violations of FISA rules. The Page wiretaps involved traditional FISA orders, not Section 702, but the bureau’s many errors there raised understandable doubts about whether it can be trusted to comply with other FISA rules.

Fortunately, there are ways to prevent abuses of Section 702 without compromising its critical national security value. The bill passed by Congress contains numerous reforms that will dramatically improve compliance. It sharply limits the number and ranks of F.B.I. agents who can run 702 queries, imposes strict penalties for misconduct and expands oversight by Congress and the courts.

Some of the bill’s critics argued that the F.B.I. should be required to obtain a warrant from a special FISA court before using the information collected under 702 when investigating Americans who may be involved in terrorism, espionage or other national security threats. But requiring such a warrant would have been unnecessary and unwise.

Getting a FISA court order is bureaucratically cumbersome and would slow down investigations — especially fast-moving cybercases, in which queries have proved especially useful. It would cause agents to miss important connections to national security threats. And because this information has already been lawfully collected and stored, its use in investigation doesn’t require a warrant under the Constitution.

Another problem is that the probable cause needed for a warrant is rarely available early in an investigation. But that’s precisely when these queries are most useful. Database checks allow an agent to quickly see whether there is a previously unnoticed connection to a foreign terrorist, spy or other adversary.

Balances struck between security and privacy need continual refinement. Recent years have shown Section 702’s great value for national security. But they have also revealed lax compliance at the F.B.I. The latest reauthorization boosts privacy without blinding our country to threats in today’s dangerous world.

Matthew Waxman is a Columbia University law professor who served in senior national security roles in the George W. Bush administration. Adam Klein is the director of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas, Austin, and served as the chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from 2018 to 2021.

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