Information Technology Meets Global Ecology IV: Computers
and Consciousness:
The recent spate of “denial of service” cracker events have provided Clinton
a great excuse to ask Congress to increase to $2 billion dollars the amount
that will be put to solving ‘security issues’ on the web (with an additional
$37 million going to the Security Department).5 On the News Hour with Jim
Lehrer, Feb. 10, 2000, the United States Deputy Attorney General, Eric
Holder, made a slip of the tongue in talking about the FBI eavesdropping on
chat rooms 6 to find out information which might lead to the arrests of the
hackers involved in the sabotage. He tried to mop up after his slip by
backing away from his Big Brother on the Net statement but who is he kidding?
So, back to our original question: is there a positive intersection between
IT and global ecology? Can computers and information technology become part
of the fight to save the earth? Or are we IT professional and computer-users
contributing to our fall into the sink-hole of techno-hell-where corporate
profits reign; where the last remaining Temperate Westcoast Forests get
ground up into pulp, sent to Japan and add to Weyerhaeuser’s bottomline;
where wild fish are totally exterminated and we are left with aqua-farming;
and the earth’s macro-systems ( air, soil, water, climate-control) degrade
into irreversible decline?
Perhaps, we should ask an even more difficult question: Are computers
changing our consciousness? And if so, how? Do we feel more connected to
ourselves and the wild world -- the world of moss, rain, leaves and raccoons -- or
does sitting in front of the computer, chatting, downloading, reading and
responding to e-mail create in us a disembodiment, a passivity, and an
illusion of ‘motion’ that is non-existent?
Next week we conclude this sequence.
* *
5 The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Interview with Ray Suarez, Feb. 10, 2000.
6 Ibid. Holder’s exact words were, “It's not just a question of trying to
get back to the computers; you have to do the other things that we do --
figure out who's talking to who, get into chat rooms, things like that --
always respecting people's privacy. I want to make sure that everybody
understands that, but do the investigative things that we would do in other
investigations to see who, for instance, is bragging about something that
they did and then follow that lead. “
