7. Antikythera Device
2_6_2009
BRUCE STERLING LAUNCHES
IMAGINARY GADGETS PROJECT
8. TODAY’S FOCUS:
THE ROLE OF NGOs & ACTIVISTS IN BRINGING
ABOUT A POSITIVE GREENER (OR BLUER) FUTURE
_Semantics
_Brief history of US environmental movement
_Silent spring
_Deep ecology
_Inverted quarantine
9. REFRESHER:
WEEK 1: Creators of products and services have
a responsibility to know what’s in the stuff that
we make.
10. REFRESHER:
WEEK 2: The greatest environmental impact, in
terms of product life cycle, is often in the hands
of the end consumer – use and disposal of
products and services. To improve
environmental impact, give consumers the tools
to be better owners/operators of their stuff.
Create Spimes.
11. SEMANTICS
Blue is the new green.
Working definition of green/sustainable business:
Creating products and services that have a positive social and
environmental impact.
Or, create products and services that do no harm.
Or, create products and services that know where they came from,
and know where they’re going.
Or…..
12. A BRIEF HISTORY OF
THE ENVIRONMENTAL
MOVEMENT
USDA Mascot Woodsy Owl, September 1971.
13. 1845: THOREAU WALDEN; OR LIFE IN THE
WOODS
1864: YOSEMITE
1886: AUDUBON SOCIETY
1892: SIERRA CLUB – JOHN MUIR
1910: LAKEVIEW GUSHER SAN JOAQUIN, CA
1916: NAT’L PARK SERVICE
1948: DONORA, PA ZINC
1962: SILENT SPRING RACHEL CARSON
14. SILENT SPRING
These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally
to farms, gardens, forests, and homes — nonselective chemicals
that have the power to kill every insect, the “good” and the “bad,” to
still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat
the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil — all this though
the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone
believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the
surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should
not be called “insecticides,” but “biocides.”
Rachel Carson
15. SILENT SPRING
There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat. This
is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is
unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also
an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at
whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests,
confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of
pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth.
We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar
coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to
assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public
must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it
can do so only when in full possession of the facts. In the words of
Jean Rostand, “The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.”
17. DEEP ECOLOGY
Naess saw two different forms of environmentalism:
Long-range deep ecology movement: deep questioning, down to
fundamental root causes. Involves redesigning our whole systems
based on values and methods that truly preserve the ecological and
cultural diversity of natural systems. Without changes in basic values
and practices, we will destroy the diversity and beauty of the world,
and its ability to support diverse human cultures.
Shallow ecology movement: stops before the ultimate level of
fundamental change, often promoting technological fixes (e.g.
recycling, increased automotive efficiency, export-driven
monocultural organic agriculture) based on the same consumption-
oriented values and methods of the industrial economy.
18. 1969: CUYAHOGA RIVER ON FIRE
1970: EARTH DAY
1970: NRDC FOUNDED
1971: GREENPEACE FOUNDED CANADA
1978: LOVE CANAL
1979: THREE MILE ISLAND
1981: PETA FOUNDED
1984: BHOPAL UNION CARBIDE
1985: VIENNA CONVENTION: OZONE
1986: CHERNOBYL
1989: EXXON VALDEZ
1992: EARTH SUMMIT RIO
1996: KATHIE LEE SWEATSHOP SCANDAL
1997: NIKE SWEATSHOP SCANDAL
2005: KATRINA
2006: AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
19. “REGULATION WILL SAVE US”
The environmental debate by NGOs had been
framed as an issue that could only be dealt with
through regulation, and public embarrassment of
industry.
20. NGOs USE CAMPAIGNS TO GET RESULTS
Not unlike a brand going through a process of advertising, NGOs pick
specific issues to focus on, and they develop campaigns to get
volunteers, the media, and constituents to become aware.
The history of the environmental movement, the early years, relied
on regulation as an end result. Business could not be trusted.
Today, the changing of a business practice is often the aim.
25. THE DEATH OF ENVIRONMENTALISM
Today's environmental leaders are addressing tomorrow's problems
with yesterday's tools: regulatory and policy fixes.
And because serious global problems like climate change and the
looming water crisis have been narrowly defined as quot;environmental,quot;
their equally narrow solutions are easy to marginalize and dismiss by
conservatives, cynics, and other nonbelievers.
Environmental leaders need to quot;take a collective step back to rethink
everything.quot; Specifically: how to reframe issues and build coalitions
around big ideas and values, not specific programs, much as the
conservative movement has done over the past 40 years.
_2004. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus.
28. SHOPPING OUR WAY TO SAFETY
Environmentalism strives to fire citizens up, get them to act
collectively, politically; to organize and force real change.
Environmental awareness does push many people toward activism,
for sure, but we now see that environmental awareness can also lead
to this other response, in which people act not as political subjects,
not as citizens, but as consumers who seem interested only in
individual acts of self-protection, in trying to keep contaminants out
of their bodies.
_Andrew Szasz
29. INVERTED QUARANTINE
Traditional quarantine — diseased individual/healthy
community.
Inverted quarantine —diseased conditions/healthy individuals.
The environment is toxic, illness inducing. Danger is
everywhere. How are healthy individuals to protect
themselves? They can do so only by isolating themselves from
their disease-inducing surroundings, by erecting some sort of
barrier or enclosure and withdrawing behind it or inside it.
Inverted-quarantine products do not work nearly well enough
to actually protect those who put their faith in them. But
consumers believe they work. That belief, in turn, tends to
decrease our collective will to truly confront serious
environmental issues.
30. POLITICAL ANESTHESIA
Feeling that one has successfully insulated oneself from an
environmental threat, one feels no pain, no fear, no anxiety (maybe I
should have called it quot;political anxiety reliefquot;). It follows that one
feels less urgency to do something about that particular threat.
31. SO THEN>>>
Just as consumption and production were separated for the first era
of the industrial revolution, so were consumption and political action.
Good green/blue design will incorporate the political into the process
of consumption, and reveal the commercial in the realm of the
political.
Because everything is connected.
38. NEXT CLASS:
Readings:
The Okala Guide. Module 6: Meeting
Stakeholder Needs, pp. 26-27.
Shopping Our Way to Safety. Part III:
Consequences of Inverted Quarantine.
Chapters 6, 7, and Conclusion, pp. 169-238.
Assignment due next class: Review an existing
NGO or activist campaign that used tech-
enabled community organizing to discuss in the
next class.
