Sometimes technology just kills me. Like when I am on my boyfriend's computer and suddenly I get an iChat invitation from his mother.
What do you do? Do you accept, deny or send an instant message back to her saying that it's actually me using the computer and her son is in the garage, as usual, and to call his cell phone if she would really like to reach him? You see, sometimes by adding one technological convenience, you actually make the world more complex.
Apply that concept to the world of conservation. Sometimes people invent something to solve one problem and they end up creating more. For example, biofuels seem like a good proposal, but if everyone started using corn to power cars we would surely starve to death. Does technology ever really produce a solution to a problem without adding new ones? Or, are we just creating a ring of more complex "mind benders" for the future scientists and engineers?
Even though lots of technology is damaging to the environment, we could create things that are good for people and are nature-compatible simultaneously, no strings attached. Hang tight and I'll give an example.
Let's start with what we know. Technology is definitely here to stay. We are accustomed to technological conveniences and learn to cope with their associated burdens. I can't even write this article without using spell-check. What we have is a strange love triangle between humans, nature and technology.
Successful love triangles are infrequent, so we are already treading on thin ice. We need to make sure that both humans and technology can find accordance in nature. We need to make technology our ally.
To all of the extremists who think the world would be better if humanity fled to the mountains and built log cabins and ate food grown in backyard gardens, I say forget about it. Sounds fun, but it won't happen. The key is technology that is not too taxing on the environment, and here is my example:
Scallops may be good on a bed of pasta, but taking them from their habitat is no picnic. This is because scallops and other tasty morsels live in the complex coral reefs in the ocean and collecting them individually is impossible. Fishermen who do deep-sea trawling scrape the sea floor and scoop up the cloud that is created in the stir, which inevitably contains scallops but also many other species that weren't intended to be collected. Ancient coral reef is broken in the process. It is analogous to clear-cutting a forest. It makes that area barren and dead.
Fortunately, some smart people from MIT recognized the problem and reinvented the trawling device. Their new net blows jets of water down against the coral, which stirs the scallops from the dwellings, but doesn't blow over the reef. The net will also swivel out of the way if it comes into contact with anything solid, as to not damage coral reef protrusions.
Even the fisherman will approve of this trawling device because it takes less force to pull, and therefore, less fuel. Hopefully, the ocean floor's habitats will recover and so will the fish population. Here is one instance where the tango seems like it was invented for three.
Lindsay Wood is a conservation biology senior. Reach her at: lindsay.wood@asu.edu.
