The nature of machines

Every time there's a man-made disaster that's happened, a kind of talk finally emerges about Mother Nature biting us back for what we did and how it was a disaster waiting to happen. I don't think there's any such thing as a "disaster waiting to happen" (disasters happen because no one could have predicted their occurrence) but I digress.

We tend to say such things because they are a kind of background on which our civilization is based. Without it, we'd be nothing: all of our most important resources would disappear and the habitability of the world would decline alarmingly. Like some theoretical physicists say, we're background-dependent.

However, all that would still be just as right as it was about 200 years ago if our form of engagement with nature hadn't changed. With the advent of machines, humans moved out from within the resources-processing interface and into the processed-consumption interface.

Obviously, two-hundred years prior, the price of a product could have been determined by how dangerous it was to acquire the resources required to make it. Today, the price of the product is determined by how many people want to consume it.

As Adam Smith argued in the Wealth of Nations (Book 01 chapter 07):

The market price of every particular commodity is regulated by the proportion between the quantity which is actually brought to market, and the demand of those who are willing to pay the natural price of the commodity, or the whole value of the rent, labour, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither. Such people may be called the effectual demanders, and their demand the effectual demand; since it may be sufficient to effectuate the bringing of the commodity to market. It is different from the absolute demand. A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; he might like to have it; but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.

The industrial interface has created a quick process through which absolute demand can become effectual demand (albeit for the purpose of capitalization): it makes previously unaffordable products wanted at first, and then cheaper, and then accessible.

In other words, our background dependence has shifted away from simply nature and towards simply industry. In fact, our engagement with nature is mediated in significant part by our engagement with various industries. Even if we ignore the very-real possibility that there's no clean way to do certain things, the immediate focus is more on consumption patterns than on industrial processes.

That's because everything is demand driven. If there is enough demand for a commodity, then it must be manufactured until the need has been satiated. Such thinking leaves no space for the evaluation of options during the resources-processing stage.

Who, then, watches the watchers? Who has an eye or, better yet, a hand over demand? Is there any such thing as consumer social responsibility? I suppose it's only been gaining traction for a decade or so with the coming of social media and greater general awareness on and accessibility of environmental issues.

However, it's not enough. Just because there are more people consuming than there are people producing doesn't mean the consumers will won; it can never be a war of numbers. On the other hand, I believe that those who engage with the environment in producing things for us to consume should have some say - and how much say should be the focus of policy-level debate. Consumer social responsibility can, at best, influence only how much wealth is created and not how it is created.

If anything, we should've learnt this from the penetration of social media, and technology by extension, into our lives: the way technology develops is hinged significantly on our perception of its capabilities. What technology becomes capable of doing is navigated by what we want it to do more than anything else.

Looks like I digressed anyway. What I (actually) wanted to ask was: with this new background-dependence on industrial processes, will the biggest disasters "waiting to happen" change from the natural kind to the industrial kind? Will they focus less on things such as resource depletion and more on possible resource use?

We've started to toy with industries in an effort to mitigate their impact on nature: if something's going wrong with the natural world, we quickly take a step back and make the necessary corrections on the industrial whiteboard. But because of a changing dynamic, surely this knee-jerk must have long-term effects.

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This is an extension of something that Isaac Asimov touched on in one of his non-fiction pieces called 'The Robot Chronicles'.