impact  

Adrian Wagner

The rampant progression of technology in the past century has dramatically reshaped the ways in which human beings relate to one another, to the concept of progress, and even to the earth itself.  Globalization has brought cultural interactivity and accessibility to levels unimagined by the generations before us.  This new accessibility and its parent technological manifestations have become both reality and the norm for emerging generations that can no longer imagine life any other way.  Technology itself has become, for an increasing percentage of the 'developed' population, the very interface through which we sustain ourselves.

Technology's progressively dominant role in our lives has made the evaluation of new technologies from a moral, economic, and environmental basis, increasingly important.  Because technologies effect not only human life, but the entire array of life systems on our planet, we must be careful that we do not harm either as we employ the inventions of our creative efforts, and the technologies that emerge from our pursuit of comfort.

Evaluations of new technologies are already done by the very companies that profit from them.  However, these evaluations are primarily carried out through economic cost-benefit comparison.  By doing so, companies are able to ignore the moral and environmental impacts of their technologies, as well as displaced economic consequences of such long-term impacts.  An economic evaluation of technologies is not sufficient in determining whether the technologies are detrimental or valuable to human well being as a whole.  To be sound, any evaluation must consider consequence from a moral, economic, and ecological stand point. 

Whether examined from the perspective of 'nothing in life is free' or the scientific assumption that 'energy can be neither created nor destroyed', there exists a universal law that nothing comes without cost.  This cost is not so much an effective detriment to the rest of the universe, as it is a law that every thing has an effect on something else and thus must also have a cause.  Further more, because nothing is in and of itself, anything can be evaluated by the comparison of what it took to cause it, and what it effects are on things external to itself. 

It is possible to quantify the material costs necessary to "cause" a given technology.  Natural resources are, and always have been, a commodity in and of themselves, based on their availability, and functionality within a culture.  The quantification of the effects of a technology can also be based upon its functional ability to aid in the well being of members of a society.  Clearly, the production of flint jewelry is not going to be cost-benefit effective within a society that is dependent upon flint to build its fire.  However, if alternate fire-building technologies were found, then the value of such a natural resource would decrease.

 Another factor in the evaluation of a given technology is risk.  Risk can be defined as "the chance of injury, damage, or loss. [i] "  An additional cost of any given technology is the probability that it might either fail or be misused in a way that it causes harm to the population that is dependent upon it.  For example, if a company is to build a nuclear reactor within a residential area, then clearly the risk imposed by a failure of such a technology becomes vital part of its evaluation.

Risk is far more difficult to quantify and assess than then is material cost and technological benefit.  First, a technology may impose multiple, unique risks.  The risk of nuclear meltdown at power plant is clearly different then the risk of brownouts due to maintenance upon the facility.  Each risk has its own unique consequence that must be distinctly quantified.  Second, each unique risk has its own probability of occurring, which must be scientifically predicted in order to be quantifiable in a pre production assessment.  The nature of prediction with multiple risks involved becomes even more complicated as each risk is not unually independent of another.  For example, the risk of nuclear meltdown can be decreased if routine maintenance is increased, which in turn increases the risk of a brown out.  Clearly, quantifying multiple risks is no simple task.

Even in the case of a single risk, how does one quantify the chance of injury, damage, or loss, of another human being.  One such quantification establishes a threshold rate of acceptability as a risk that would cause a 10^-6 percent increase in one's average annual probability of fatality.  This rate is based on the annual death rate cause by natural hazards. [ii]   Such a level of risk seems justifiable, provided that it is not without gain, as it is impossible for a society to be complete void of risk [iii] .  How is such a rate, even if established relative to natural phenomenon, to guarantee that the risk of a given technology is not compounded by risks from other similar technology, or even dissimilar technologies that impose the same type of risk. 

If one technology meets an established quantitative maximum of risk, but in the course of a person's life, they are exposed to the same such risk from thousands of different technologies, then such an evaluation of risk is not sufficient to guarantee one's well-being.  For example, an estimated 90% of all cancers are environmentally induced, such that they are theoretically avoidable.  Between 25% to 35% of all Americans will die of cancer.  This means that out of 250 million Americans, 56 million will die of cancer caused by chemicals, radiation, and other such environmental influences.  Yet, clearly there is no one source of any of these intoxicants.  The fatalities are the product of the compounded effect of multiple sources; the problem is as much environmental as it is biological in nature.  The human body accumulates such toxins over an entire life time, storing them in body fat.  Fifty percent of women produce natural milk which would be illegal to sell in a grocery store because of its toxic content.  This is not the result of each woman having consumed a large dose of toxic material while lactating, but rather the cumulative effect of ingesting numerous low, and singularly acceptable levels of toxins. 

Another result of such quantitative risk assessment is that an established rate of tolerance is an average rate.  If a technology induces a certain amount of risk on average, then who there is no qualifiaction that a specific group might have a higher exposure.  The development of nuclear weapons during 50's, 60's, and 70's did not, on average, create a high level of risk to the American population, however thousands of people who worked at the nuclear facilities were exposed to high levels of radiation.  It was not until April of 2000 that they received compensation from the government. Clearly, setting one standard rate of acceptability is not sufficient in the quantification of any single risk, nevertheless multiple risks.

An economic assessment of technology is based by its very nature, in the quantification of risk, cost, and benefit.  While it is easy, if not unavoidable, to put a monetary value on one's resources, and therefore the material costs of a given technology, it must be equally easy to place a monetary value on technologically induced risks.  Clearly, this is far from true.  As a result, risk assessment is often left out of the equation all together.  The power of an economic assessment is that it can easily be manipulated; all moral, environmental, and monetary considerations must be quantified.  Because there is no standard formula for such a quantification, the weight that each risk holds can be chosen to fit the desired outcome of the assessment.  A blatant example of such a manipulation comes from the Office of Technological Assessment's (OTA) cost-benefit analysis of nuclear technology in 1973.  The only way that nuclear energy could be proved as a cost effective as coal burning was by leaving out of the equation a $100 billion subsidy created by the government to promote nuclear technologies.  The assessment also ignored the risk and cost inflicted to the American people, in dealing with the storage of over 10,000 metric tons of nuclear waste, waste expected to remain lethal for nearly a million years.  Clearly, such an economic assessment was not sufficient is determining the effectiveness of nuclear power. 

The idea of compensating variations s   the sum of money which, if received or paid after the economic change in question, would make the individual no better or worse off than before the change.