Progress trap

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (June 2008)

A Progress trap is a situation in which the inevitable negative long-term consequences of an action outweigh the gains of that action perceived as progress because it solved a problem in the short term. The term gained attention following the historian and novelist Ronald Wright's 2004 non-fiction book and Massey Lecture A Short History of Progress. Daniel B. O'Leary's book Escaping the progress trap appeared in 2006. Tadeusz W. Patzek, PhD, Professor of Geoengineering at UC Berkeley, California has posted a web archive of articles and comments on the progress trap phenomenon. 2008, 2007

Contents

[edit] Discussion

While the idea is not new, Wright locates the central problem as being one of scale, the error often being to extrapolate the positive expectation of what works well for long on a small scale until for example resources are overstretched or environmental damage becomes untenable (overpopulation, erosion, greenhouse gases etc.). The book sketches world history as a succession of progress traps.

Thus in the early stone age, improved hunting techniques caused the extinction of many prey species. The only viable alternative, agriculture, in time proved even more progress trap-prone. Almost any sphere of technology can prove a progress trap, even medicine: for example, eliminating natural selection is causing an increase in genetic risks.

The example he states as the first ultimate one on a global scale, weapon technology reaching the threat of total nuclear destruction, is perhaps a bad one: is military technology as such progress, or rather neither good nor bad in se, and would the alternative not have been an apocalyptic World War III instead of the Cold War? Ultimately, Wright strives to counter the modern notion that progress is unconditionally a good thing.

O'Leary goes further, in search of the behavioral source of this syndrome. He finds support, in the work of neuroscientists who study cerebral development and lateralization of brain function, for the view that individuals and societies can become committed to an exclusive form of technocratic rationalism. In this scenario, technical preoccupation gradually prevents creativity and problem-solving from taking effect. Where problems are created by technical specialization itself, such as desertification resulting from irrigation, this can be ruinous. The classic case would be Easter Island, where all trees were cut down for transporting stone monuments, but other examples such as Seymour Cray’s overspecialized Control Data Corporation or the Medieval Church's rejection of science[1], follow the pattern: development excluding solutions to problems that arise from development. In the contemporary context, unabated oil consumption in a time of climate change is seen as an illustration of the problem; sustainable development is a solution.

According to O'Leary, avoiding the progress trap can be done by ensuring through education and cultural vitality, that individuals and societies do not become primarily technocratic. Citing creativity and resiliency theory research, he argues that the intuitive, convergent side of the mind/brain must thrive, so that creativity can be available for preventing progress traps. This is common sense, but spelling it out in scientific terms may in fact be necessary, before policymakers will take notice. The informal first part of the book deals with some of the same subjects covered by Wright. The focus of the second part, behavioral factors, could have been given more prominence.

[edit] Art and the Progress Trap

Aurora Picture Show, a microcinema in Houston, Texas has released a collection of "informational videos by artists who use recent technological tools for purposes other than what they were designed to do and, in some instances, in direct opposition to their intended use." The title of the DVD is At your service: Escaping the Progress Trap and it is included with the Spring '08 issue of Art Lies Contemporary Art Magazine. The videos are available online and offer a challenging, funny and moving perspective on progress.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Roger Bacon (c. 1214–1294)

[edit] External links

[edit] Sources