We, the global modern society, have become Prometheus, the destructor of the world. More than 40 000 species are threatened with extinction because of our greed for land, our mindless toxic and harmful emissions, our hunger for fossil energy and mineral resources, and our hate for each other. More than 96% of biomass of all living mammals are we humans and our livestock. More than 70% of the biomass of all birds on Earth are chicken and other poultry. Microplastic can be found even in Antarctica and on top of Mount Everest. All of this is enabled and facilitated by the use of modern technology.
But technology is not a bad thing in itself: we have good technologies that will enable us to construct a planet compatible, circular and renewable society. In order to achieve this, however, we have to get rid of old technologies and mindsets. This art project is to raise awareness and list some technologies that have to go for increasing the chances for species, including ourselves, to survive.
The list is not meant to be exhaustive or a concrete political agenda, it is more to provoke to think about what we really need as a global society and what we better get rid of. For our own good.
Some when in 2022, a person in our neighborhood got killed by a car on a pedestrian crossing over a busy road. Cars are not only noisy, stinky, taking space, and responsible for a large share of our emissions, but also make our neighborhoods a dangerous place. We cannot let our kids unsupervised for a second, not even thinking of letting them play. Everything in the public space is subordinate to the primate of the car, why do we let that happen? After the incident, the public debate was not about questioning the life- and planet-endangering, inefficient means of transport, but only around the specificities of this particular case. So I wondered, why do we still uphold the remains of the fossil age so highly? Why don't we demand to stop this nonsense and put these obsolete, destructive technologies out of use altogether?
And of course, the science tells us since decades that we have to stop burning fossil fuels, stealing ecological space from species, pollute our environment. And this is not for some abstract sense of morality, but very concretely for our own survival.
One step on this way is to realize the damage we are doing to ourselves. We have to see our life and the technologies we use in a different light. Some aspects and technologies we have to give up, not doing so will be self-destructive.
And this is how this idea was born: viewing technology from the perspective of what we really need and what we have to give up. The red tech list is to view obsolete technologies from the perspective of the harm they do and that we will be better of without them.
In a few hundred years, when some future generation may discover the remains of our fossil society, they may wonder what all these strange technological artefacts in the archeological record would have meant and why they were even developed.
Together with my children, we have put some toy cars, a fighter plane, and an attack helicopter in gypsum and carved them out again, as if they were fossils. I wonder, what archeologists in the distance future would wonder what a sports car should have been of any use for? Maybe they would hang it a museum as some strange artefact of a distant past, just to remind everyone that society can evolve into a dead end (and getting out is an incredible hard, but still achievable task).
And this idea fitted in a larger picture: getting rid of obsolete technology (or their use) will save countless of species from extinction. So what would have been more appropriate to create a pendant to the infamous IUCN red list of endangered species?
But note, it is an art project. Intended to change our perception and raise awareness. It is not ment as a concrete agenda, nor a call for violence of any sort. We need to think in the right direction, and if this website helps, it had achieved more than anticipated.
If you have any comments, suggestions or additions, you can drop a message at contact(at)redtechlist(dot)life
Thanks for visiting!
Harald Desing