Technology and Environmental Impacts

1
Technology and Environmental Impacts
2
Important Current Environmental Problems
3
Nature of Environmental Problems

• Environmental problems can affect
• Ability to live, health, and safety
• Ability to work and achieve
• Quality of life, relations, satisfaction

4
Nature of Environmental Problems

• Multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary
• Difficult to break into parts
• Physical and chemical models are often inadequate
• Free body approaches often do not apply
• Difficult to solve, often win-loose or
  loose-loose situations

5
Technology and Engineering

• Most environmental problems are the result of
  impacts from the application of technology
• Engineering can be defined at the application of
  technology

6
Technology and Engineering

• Technology
• use of tools and techniques
• a way of viewing the world
• a way of changing the world
• an attempt to remove chaos and disorder

7
Relation between Technology and Present
Environmental Problems

• Three typical views
• Technology is (or will be) the solution
  technological optimist
• Technology creates more problems than it solves
  technological pessimist
• Technology can either be the solution or the
  problem so must be socially controlled
  technological management

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Technology is the Solution-the technological
optimist

• Technology has brought
• Higher standard of living
• Opportunities for choice
• Greater leisure
• Improved communication
• Greater freedom
• Appears to be no limits to human creativity to
  overcome problems

9
Technology is the Problem-the technological
pessimist

• The result of new technologies is always more
  problems than were ever solved
• Technology has created
• Uniformity and mass society
• Over emphasis on efficiency and connection
• Impersonality and manipulation
• Uncontrollability
• Alienation

10
Technology can be either the Solution or the
Problem-the political or social optimist

• Wide variations among technologies
• Society can direct technologies
• Scale, scope
• Political control
• Social control
• Technologies need to be subservient to higher
  values