In David Suzuki’s essay “It Always Costs,” he focuses on the notion that technology causes more harm than good. Suzuki’s essay suggests going against the societal assumption that technological advances and innovations are always a good thing. He believes that no matter how beneficial technology seems to be, it always has a cost. In reality technology prevents us from becoming as progressive as we think we are due to the severe environmental harm it causes. Analytically I will demonstrate how as a society we rely on technologies far too much, people are quick to assume that the latest advancements are best, the negative influence consumer corporations have, and the negative effects of technology dependency.
As a society, we rely on and trust technologies far too much. Suzuki argues that with further research and testing, the negative side effects of technologies could be avoided. Suzuki supports his argument by introducing the exemplar of DDT to prove the true negative environmental effects that advances in technology has. This synthetic pesticide proved to wipe out large numbers of malaria infected mosquitos, and in turn also save the lives of many communities in tropical countries from the deadly disease. The major downfall of DDT was the unpredicted massive ecological damage it caused. Unfortunately, the toxic chemical was not specific to what insects were being targeted; it did not just kill mosquitos, but large amounts of other insects as well (344). Another detrimental effect of DDT was biomagnification; the initial quantities of the chemical, caused more harmful effects as it became more concentrated along the food chain due to its ingestion by many different organisms. As animals lower on the food chain are eaten by other animals, DDT becomes more concentrated in the fatty tissues of predators. This cycle continues until it reaches the primary predator of the food chain, who receives the highest amount of DDT, which can sometimes lead to adverse health effects. This is just one example of a technology that was embraced, which later had side effects that were not anticipated. Suzuki insinuates that we should not jump into accepting new technologies as quickly as we often have in the past.
In today’s society, people are quick to assume that the latest and most current technology is the best. We should take more caution when approving newer technologies due to limited testing available. Current testing and regulation of technologies is clearly insufficient in western society. Presently, there is no way we can properly test the unanticipated side effects of technological advancements that occur over a length of time. No matter how much testing is conducted, there is no true way we can anticipate something that has not already happened. Suzuki suggests that what we see as progress as a society might not actually be productive as we think due to our technological advancements. Along with inadequate size and scope of the tests required to be done, time proves to be a limiting factor to assessments. In order to combat the issue of limited assessments, Suzuki suggests implementing a more in-depth and educated analysis of possible technologies in order to sufficiently weigh their benefits and negative side effects. This would allow people to make a more informed decision to determine if the technology should be used. By taking more drastic preventative measures we could radically avoid future complications (345).
A major downfall of current testing is the influence that big consumer corporations have. Their impact can cause the results to be unreliable, because these companies will do whatever they can in order to get the results they want to sell their product. Just as Suzuki states, “industry will be on its best behaviour, so the results will always be on the conservative side” (345). In western society, consumers are very blind to the products that they are buying. In many cases we do not participate in any background research to check the credibility and possible harmful effects of what we are purchasing. It is the jobs of the consumer to become more educated on the products they are buying, and become more active participates in the buying process. Consumerism is driving the rate of advancement to become faster each year, we take technological advancements and new innovations for granted; newer does not always mean better. Companies are taking advantage of this increased consumer demand, and moral responsibility is becoming weakened by greed.
Technology has major negative effects on society, it has allowed people to become largely dependent on it. Because of this dependency, people are beginning to think less and allowing the technology to do all of the work for them. This is evidenced by Suzuki’s quote, once technology is in place, it becomes impossible to do without” (345). People become so reliant on the technologies abilities that they forget what they used to do without it. Complications of technologies are being overlooked because people are blinded by the benefits. An example of this presented by Suzuki, was the introduction of oral contraceptive. It had seemingly been tested considerably, which had shown no significant side effects. No amount of examination could have anticipated the negative effects the contraceptive would prove to have. Only after millions of women became accustomed to the birth control pill that doctors were able to see the very obvious effects (345). Sadly, this seems to be the case of many pharmaceuticals only after people begin using them regularly and over a larger scale, we are capable of seeing the side effects.
Evidently, many of my beliefs follow with what Suzuki states throughout out his essay. In his essay Suzuki goes against the societal assumption that technology is always a good thing. In most cases no matter how beneficial, technologies always seem to have their downsides or negative unanticipated effects. Through the use of many different specific examples Suzuki shows multiple technologies which were embraced by society that eventually went wrong. The benefits of technologies are undeniable, but so are their ecological damages.