John Linton Have you ever wondered what effect the internet has had on people's lives? If you have, did you come to the conclusion that overall the internet has had a beneficial or detrimental effect on humanity? It is a thought that occasionally crosses my mind and the reason it was prompted this time was that I accompanied Annette to see "The Social Network" yesterday (I really didn't want to go) and was again reminded of how the internet keeps changing the way people relate to each other and to ideas and events generally. Now I could go on to write some very negative things and make a de facto case that the internet is the most deleterious 'invention' the planet has yet seen but there would be no point in doing that.....so I won't.
Instead - have you ever thought about how the 'invention' of the internal combustion engine has actually destroyed the planet to a point where the human race may not survive? Probably not. But it is possible to trace the increasing damage to the planet itself and to the human race in particular and directly correlate those effects to the number of automobile engines manufactured each year. As it's a pleasant Sunday morning why not take a few minutes and have a brief think about how your own life and the lives of those closest to you may have been negatively affected by owning or having access to a car (and when you were too young to drive yourself, a driver). How much fitter would you be and much less would you eat and drink if you didn't have access to a car? When you consider how much less you might eat and drink think how much less of the planet you would have destroyed by not requiring those acres of farmland and other food producing resources to have been destroyed by your personal consumption.
Then go on to consider how many less trucks, roads, fertilsers, rain forest destruction and carbon emissions would be required if you didn't ram those completely unnecessary bic macs and fries down your throat to satisfy your fat cravings? You wouldn't be eating those terrible products, and their equivalents, because without car parks for cars the factories that make them the places that 'manufacture' them wouldn't exist. The point applies to all 'fast' foods equally. But that is only a starting point and indication of the closed circle of how the car has irretrievably damaged your personal health and ruined the planet generally.
If you have ever visited Los Angeles, Taipei, Cairo or thousands of other cities in the world you would have, literally, found it hard to breathe because of the exhaust fumes. It's easy to , again literally, see the pollution in the air in those cities but, between them all, they have far less than 1% of the cars on the planet with the other 99%+ doing the same damage throughout the rest of the world but not as obviously.
However it's the collateral damage done by your requirement to drive a car that causes the real damage....the need to use oil to 'make them go'. Apart from the gigantic ecological damage caused by exploring for, retrieving, transporting, refining and then again transporting oil around the planet have you ever considered how many wars have been initiated to gain control of oil resources? In fact have you ever thought about how many fewer wars would have been fought if their were were no internal combustion engines? Better still, have you ever thought whether there would have been any wars at all fought on the planet after 1918 if there were no internal combustion engines? Almost certainly not - but there would have been very , very few - if any. Think about the benefit of no Nazi Germany and no Pol Pot just for a start
History is the only aspect of human learning where it takes time, perspective, to begin to take any view on the positive/negative effects of any given event.....by which time it is too late to change the effects themselves in any meaningful way. So that means, overwhelmingly, no-one at all gives any thought to whether something is "good or bad" - usually just how much personal benefit any involved individual can derive from it. Greed and waste drive humanity and, like the Aztecs it's what will end humanity's dominance of the planet. (do you know what ended the Aztecs total dominion over the part of the planet so abrubtly?)
The internet may be the major reason why humanity ceases to exist....but in memory of Chris Wright (the most effective teacher of history to adolescents I could have ever have hoped for) I will not attempt to influence your views on that...even if I could do that.
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