The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., 1924 – 2006,
 was a liberal Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist with international stature. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ.  In his younger days he was a superb athlete, a highly talented pianist, a CIA agent, and later chaplain of Yale University, where the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr's social philosophy led him to become a leader in the civil-rights and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s.  

Have you thought about getting away, about being left alone and leaving others alone?  As the population of our planet increases and the amount of land upon which we can live remains unchanged—if not, in fact, decreases—this dream of many people becomes a fading, wistful thought.  

In part one of this essay, we saw that other people’s problems could become our own—in fact, have already become our own.  We wondered whether technology could save us.  

Technology could help in a variety of ways:  

·        making uninhabitable land habitable, enabling us to get away from the loud crowd;

·        reducing pollutants, which have the nasty habit of traveling via water and air for miles, if not thousands of miles;

·        increasing health care and food production to alleviate the huge poverty which compels people to travel, to pollute, to have large families.  

However, technology is but a tool.  Technology can be used for good or bad, or not used for good or bad.  For example, PlayPumps, www.playpumps.org, has a merry-go-round which is actually a water pump, for communities around the world which need water.  As children play, people drink for a day.  But if the government disallows its use or controls the pump arbitrarily, the technology’s usefulness to a community can come to nothing.  

The popularity of the cell phone and the ability to bring photos quickly to news media have made it possible to address a problem like the abuse of human rights, as we witnessed in April when Tibetans protested against China’s rule of their country.  

Another example is Médecins sans Frontieres, “Doctors without Borders” in English.  What good is their technologically-advanced mobile operating room if a government or rebel army makes it dangerous for the organization to do its work?

Thus, technology is useful if permitted to be useful.  Unfortunately, for those in power or seeking power, technology can become a means to a nefarious end.  So, while technology has the potential to help, technology does not necessarily alleviate the problems of an ever-shrinking world.  

Of course, not all technology is useful.  There is destructive technology, which aggravates problems and uncomfortably, even dangerously, shrinks our planet.  A salient example of bad technology is the dirty bomb, a small quantity of radioactive material which can cause considerable harm.  And some technology is useful or harmful, depending on the purpose for which it is being used;  an obvious recent example is the Internet, which can be used for good, like viewing Professor Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture,” or for harm, like trying to get one’s fame by harmful stunts or harm to others.  

So, ultimately, technology cannot by itself save us from a shrinking world.  What then?

May 22, 2008