By Patricia Burke

“This story pushes us to consider the material impacts of computation and the trade-offs we make when companies push us to adopt more resource-intensive digital tools.” – Paris Marx re; materialism

Some topics that those who are thinking about the true costs of tech are thinking about: Patricia Burke with Flo Freshman.

Society is sleepwalking towards a dramatic increase in the consumption of water and energy in order to support generative AI and ChatGPT; with access to clean water and electricity still not available in many parts of the world, and with utility infrastructure across the country that has not been constructed or maintained adequately to protect the grid from EMPs and solar flares.

Let’s not think of this as progress or glorify the politicized idea of ‘addressing the digital divide.’

Here are some topics that those who are thinking about the true costs of tech are thinking about: infrastructure; energy; water; Pavlov’s dogs: children, mining, and e-waste: wireless as an environmental pollutant, and ‘clean’ energy-fueled aggression that sustains global inequities and violates individual and community rights, and the Rights of Nature.

Replace that bowl of dog food with a cell phone.

Pavlov’s Dogs: What associations does society promote for cell phones and the expectation /demand for ubiquitous connectivity?

Kenda Cherry of VeryWell Mind wrote, “Pavlov’s Dog: A Background” Ivan Pavlov was a noted Russian physiologist who won the 1904 Nobel Prize for his work studying digestive processes. While studying digestion in dogs, Pavlov noted an interesting occurrence: His canine subjects would begin to salivate whenever an assistant entered the room. In his digestive research, Pavlov and his assistants would introduce a variety of edible and non-edible items and measure the saliva production that the items produced. Salivation, he noted, is a reflexive process. It occurs automatically in response to a specific stimulus and is not under conscious control. However, Pavlov noted that the dogs would often begin salivating in the absence of food and smell. He quickly realized that this salivary response was not due to an automatic, physiological process, Based on his observations, Pavlov suggested that the salivation was a learned response. Pavlov’s dog subjects were responding to the sight of the research assistants’ white lab coats, which the animals had come to associate with the presentation of food. Unlike the salivary response to the presentation of food, which is an unconditioned reflex, salivating to the expectation of food is a conditioned reflex.”

Simple Psychology reports that “Ivan Pavlov’s key contribution to psychology was the discovery of classical conditioning, demonstrating how learned associations between stimuli can influence behavior.” (This discovery forms the foundation for the marketing industry, for example, the conditioned belief that unstable, tippable SUVs that exceed the capacity of highway guardrails are ‘safer.’)

In the same way that Pavlov altered the inborn physiology of dogs, humans (including addicted children) have had their physiology altered – by devices.

The window that the researchers used to observe the dogs has been replaced by an army of voyeuristic corporations, investors, the military-industrial complex, app developers, marketers, surveillance interests, and hackers.

What indoctrinated associations/learned responses and political and economic drives justify cell phones and required infrastructure???

A. Safety? B. Connection? C. Entitlement to a Basic Human Right (via the United Nations)?

Whose safety, connected to what, and whose human rights?

The image of the tethered dog includes a device that measures salivation. Horrific images of similar experiments on orphaned children are HERE. We have not stopped harming children, (but not only via placing them at risk via access to social media, and tech addiction……)

The privilege of sending texts and selfies and searching social media is financed by children in the global South, and by the Nature environment

Cellphone connectivity is being built on the backs of children working in mining and e-waste disposal outsourced to impoverished nations.

In addition, the more that consumers ignore the unconscious demand for more data, the more justification for data centers. Can we catch ourselves in the act?

Futurism.com explained, AI’S OUTRAGEOUS ENVIRONMENTAL TOLL IS PROBABLY WORSE THAN YOU THINK WOW, THAT’S *BAD.* “ [] as Wired reports, the way data centers waste water is even worse than how households would waste it by leaving the tap running. “The water that is available for people to use is very limited,” Shaolei Ren, a responsible AI researcher at UC Riverside, told the magazine. “It’s just the fresh surface water and groundwater. Those data centers, they’re just evaporating water into the air.” “When we get the water from the utility, and then we discharge the water back to the sewage immediately, we are just withdrawing water — we’re not consuming water,” Ren continued, (as communities of ‘conservationists’ buy into the idea that wireless ‘smart’ water meters with built-in obsolescence cycles are needed – to transmit usage).

“A data center takes the water from this utility, and they evaporate the water into the sky, into the atmosphere.” And once evaporated, that water doesn’t come back to Earth for another year.”

Climate? anyone? Hydrological cycle, anyone? Drought, anyone?

Cognitive Dissonance and “Doing Good”…

Continue Reading at Patricia’s Substack and Subscribe!

Images courtesy Floris Freshman

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