Tech Problems and Climate Change

I was wrong about technology. I thought it was here to stay. It would never have Humpty Dumpty’s fate. It will always sit on the wall, and never fall. I believed it was the pinnacle of human development, if you regard making things we later throw away for new ones, as development.

Then came the news about the Silicon Valley Bank. Out of business! In January, Google announced it will shave off 12,000 jobs. Is it uploading or downloading? Twitter, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) Amazon, Dell, Microsoft and other tech Humpty Dumpty types, also deleted part of their workforce.

We tend to think of technology as digital, but it has always been there, and the proof is in your basement. Go down there and have a good laugh. We are more conscious of it now, because of the accelerated speed. One product today, it’s outdated after a year.

No problem. We’ll throw out yesterday’s headphones for digital ones. Recycle them? Not on your life. Product development never sleeps. Who cares about climate change? Example. Your first home desk had skyscraper hard drives. Let’s not forget the printer. Today your desk has one tenant, the laptop. However, it is another good example of things that contribute to climate change.

Once upon a time, we said goodbye to the keyboard because tech companies decided to embed it inside the machine. They also got rid of the mouse. The cat was not interested in mice anymore, so technology imprisoned the mouse inside the laptop below the keyboard.

Travel light. I think that was the idea, make computers easy to take on the road and the plane. It took us some time to learn how to drive the inbuilt mouse. I guess someone took noticed and missed Mickey Mouse.

All’s well that ends well. You can buy a separate keyboard and mouse for your laptop. It was a tech mistake and it costs us the environment. We cannot bring back the mice and keyboards we threw away.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.