#invisible technologies

Water, Water Everywhere.

    As I sat trying to figure out a perfect technology that I use all of the time without even thinking about it, I had found myself stumped. I could very easily think of the topics we thought of in class such as Wi-Fi and eye glasses, but nothing that I totally related to. Until I realized the one thing I use all of the time and don’t even truly consider the consequences of my actions— water.

    We use it for everything. At water’s most basic level of usage, it acts as a source of moisture and hydration. We use water to give our plants and our Earth the nutrients it needs to sustain itself with the help of sunlight, we use water to quench our thirst so we don’t die of dehydration. After every use of the restroom we flush away about a litre of water and wash our hands and arms to sustain our basic hygiene needs after each visit. Even still, we have multitudes of uses for water that we don’t necessarily see at first glance. According to material ratios found in an article on gracelinks.org, some examples of invisible water usage are that it takes 24 gallons of water to make 1 pound of plastic, 1,320 gallons in 1 pound of cotton, and that in 2008 in America, 34.5 million tons of paper and 27.9 million tons of plastic were thrown out instead of recycled, both products using large quantities of water to be produced.

    Knowing that fresh water is a very important resource on our planet, why must a capitalism based society still demand huge profit over sustaining the product? I must admit to blindly being brainwashed by materialism in todays society, however the extent simply boggles my mind. Recently I have been feeling incredibly guilty of my water, electronic, and plastic waste and have felt the personal need to act upon the guilt. I searched up a few basic statistics online from Environment Canada, and the two statements that really struck home with me were: 1. Canadians consumed an estimated 643 million litres of bottled water in 1997

(CanadianGeographic.ca) 2. Canadian households use twice as much water as European ones and pay less than half as much for it. (Environment Canada)

Now even though it is a very simple search, it says enough to take a moment and let it sink in.

    Every day without even thinking, we wake up, go use the washroom and flush, wash our hands, brush our teeth with the sink running, do our makeup, throw the toilet paper wipes you used to do the makeup into the toilet, flush again, go out to the kitchen and fill the sink and stick a slap of frozen meat in there so it thaws faster and accidentally leave it dripping slowly, you go drive in your car that is made of metal (75,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of steel!) and plastic to the gas station to get fuel and, woah! You’ve won a free car wash! You get to work, brew a pot of coffee for the co-workers but you’re the only one who drinks it and you dump the cold pot and hour later. Your day continues on when you finally get home after passing your neighbour’s beautiful green lawn watered on an auto-timer, leave the tap running for your cat to drink from while you sit in your shower for 20 minutes and sing Alanis Morisette covers.

    Well, when you’re given a pretty average scenario in that sense, you can see how it could become an issue. While it would be hard to solve the water waste problem on a global scale, just reading into water usage and waste fact in North America alone, doing your part in realizing the blind use of this technology could potentially help sustain your environment. What leads me to say this is the facts I’ve read on European water usage and it claims to be approximately half of what North America uses because of their strict laws on it and higher prices. North Americans like to buy big, have plenty, and be luxurious and that often comes with a literal price.

    Why is it necessary for us to drink from Starbucks and their huge plastic and paper waste? Tim Hortons? Booster Juice and their styrofoam cups of wheatgrass? Whats the point of tupperware if the food grows mouldy and you throw the whole thing out? If the idea of recycling is so easy, why don’t we do it to our best abilities? Without even thinking about what we do, we choose to actively participate in the mass production and unfortunate waste that will eventually lead us to our own health problems. During my 20 years of time spent alive, I’ve found that most of the reasons the world can truly be horrid is because of human greed, pride, vanity, and lethargy towards active participation and minimal effort after ‘serving their time’ at work or something else. If people would take time to focus less on the materialism and more towards the collective hand to sustain the Earth for the next generation to come, we need to try to do the most we can to help lessen our water footprint!

When thinking of the invisible, we often assume the literal meaning of the word – that which cannot be seen. But what if we took the word further and extended it not to something that your eyes can’t see, but something that your conscious mind no longer notices? Things that become so ingrained in our lives that we don’t “see” them anymore. These are invisible technologies. Things like electricity, clothing, glasses, chairs, the list goes on. I believe one of the greatest invisible technologies would have to be the Internet, though. In the last decade or so, the Internet has become an integral part to the lives of many.

So how is it invisible? In the more obvious realm: you can’t see wifi signals, and the cables that carry the main streams of it are buried underground or lay across the sea floor. You can’t see the satellites that are used to bounce Internet signals far distances. But I am mostly interested in the way that it is invisible to our minds – not our eyes. I find that when discussing it, we don’t often talk about the Internet as whole. More often than not, we talk about specific parts of the Internet – specific websites, networks, etc. This is the first step to rendering it invisible – by not using it’s name or recognizing the entire. There is also the fact that many don’t understand quite how it works. We type things on our keyboard and the result of that action is, to us, instantaneous. But to get from point A to point B, lots of things have to happen. The majority of people just don’t know the mechanics, as it were, of how it all works. I think that plays a big role into it’s invisibility, since not understanding something can lead to general dismissal of the object itself.

I would also argue that it’s almost universal accessibility contributes to its invisibility as well. Obviously this may only apply to developed countries, where access is abundant. With free wifi on every corner coffee shop, computers in public libraries, and routers in nearly every household, there are fewer urban spaces without Internet than there are with it. It has become part of our infrastructure as a society; it is woven into our daily life. The feeling you have when your Internet isn’t working is a prime example. You suddenly can see the Internet, but only with its absence. The feeling of disconnection and moment of “well, what now?” illustrates perfectly how much we really use the Internet while not really seeing it.

Taking the Internet for granted is commonplace, too. I personally take it for granted all the time; my life is so much more convenient and easy in some ways compared to what my parents grew up with. I can do my banking, shopping, house hunting, movie rentals, even my job, from home. As a university student, I have access to thousands of academic journals on my computer that I can use for my research and writing. But it goes even further than the practical reasons, too. It provides me with access to anything I could possibly want to learn about, or any opinion or idea of anyone in the world. I read, watch, and listen to world news, about movements, wars, technological advancements. The Internet made globalization happen much faster and on a much wider scope than it could have without. Whole uprisings have used the Internet as a key tool in their strategies. You can begin to see the immense importance and use for the Internet, and wonder how someone could take it for granted – but we do, all the time. I was born in 1994, meaning that I haven’t known a time without it. Which is incredible to think about – I have not existed in a world without Internet. I think for people my age or younger, it is even harder to see it.