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The Greening of IT
contributed by Steve Axelson
The Institute of Technology (IT) is a fine school. Or is it? I graduated from IT with a B.S. in Computer Science (1978) and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering (1988).
One day, maybe twenty years ago, as I was leaving an IT class and exiting from the old Electrical Engineering building, I witnessed a heated “confrontation” between a young, fit, tallish blond young man and an elder professor of Electrical Engineering. The professor said something like: “You do it our way or you get out!” He said this with such vehemence and seemingly unnecessary anger that I was shocked to see it and have not yet forgotten it. I see fresh young faces become programmed with this rigor and can hardly converse with them; they are so frigid. I got a beef, too.
The Earth is going down the tubes, as we all know: rainforest destruction, toxic waste, water depletion, etc. The list of maladies is long.
IT trains the people that design the things that destroy the Earth. Nuclear plants, chemical waste, urban sprawl, you name it and an engineer has worked on it. They forgot the last half of the design process, though: fitting their designs into the Earth’s biosphere in a benign way. Air pollution, incinerators, garbage landfills, radioactive waste, and ocean dumping are all introduced by the “fine” work of graduates of schools like IT.
These schools are all over the planet, too, pumping out graduates like so many replaceable parts in the Earth-destroying machine known as “industrial civilization.”
Time is short, biosphere scientists say, for the integrity of the Earth’s biosphere. Are they correct? Should we risk this once and for all decimation of Earth? There is much readable literature on this subject. If you are concerned (and you should be if you are a decent human being) enough to pursue further study of it, check out my website at:
<www.geocities.com/rainforest/andes/4208>
and contact me at:
Steve Axelson
Belle Creek Institute
27173 144th Avenue
Way Welch, MN 55089
I am forming the “Society of Earth Concerned Technologists” (S.E.C.T.) which has a newsletter. This society is to be an antidote to Earth-destroying business as usual in our civilization. If you want to become an eco-warrior as you pursue your technology career, here is a society with strong people to mix with. Who knows where you’ll end up?
Thank you.
Steve.
Peace.
