There's A Hole In Your Neighborhood

AT&T wireless is interested in putting a set of cell phone and wireless radio frequency antennas on the building behind our home.  Generally, cell towers have been placed in less residential areas and more in industrial, business districts.  In Portland, the quieter the road, the less likely you are to have a cell tower placed near your house.  An AT&T representative told us, that the rate of placements would only increase because customers want “to have Internet and phone access from their car in their garage”.  They are also increasing the speed and size of wireless access by going to 4G.  Yes, that’s better than 3G. 

Many Americans have heard about the goal of doing away with the availability of landlines by 2020.  It makes sense when I think about how many of my friends and family have moved to cell phone access as their only form of contact.  The availability of technology is reliant upon how much we want to have cell phone and wireless access as apposed to landlines. 

There are some decisions we have made together as a society without directly discussing them.  One is to have smaller, portable, easier access to communication.  The other is that we are okay with the presence of radio microwaves in almost all places we occupy.  Another is the rate of technology growth of the cellular and wireless Internet industry.  We buy, they make.  

So often, we find ourselves, as a global community, using technology that is detrimental to our life or environment.  Nuclear power is one of them.  Fossil fuel powered transportation is another.  Agriculture is yet another.   Another simple one is food preservatives and processing.  One we don’t always consider is the drug industry.  In each case, there is a need that applies to one or more of our basic human needs for survival.  Examples are:  food, warmth, human companionship, physical health, properity, recreation.  Many of us know the detrimental consequences of these.  Each time we find ourselves weighing the worth of the increase in level of living to the long-term consequences.  The trouble here comes when we are not able to see far enough into the future.  Some indigenous populations in the United States have tried to communicate this message using the idea of creating only what will continue to serve the seventh generation from ourselves. 

It feels like there is enough doubt from people in the US and in other countries about the safety of radio frequency and wireless Internet to humans, animals, and environment.  Maintaining the phone lines was just as detrimental to the environment as the cell phone industry.  With landlines, we used copper cable dug from copper mines, using a lot of clean water to do so.  We needed wooden phone poles, wires in homes, trucks to service them, and some way to charge for the service.  So, in comparison, cell phones seem like a wonderful solution.  But now, we are starting to hear about the health hazards of increased radio frequencies in our living environments.  I can’t help but wonder when we will reach a level where humans don’t die from exposure, but live a life of diminished health.  

How will we answer to this if we have to choose to go backwards in technology.  Would we go back to landlines?  One way to think about it is to consider whether you would be willing to go back to using horses for transportation.  Would you cross the ocean on a boat?  Would you eat only with the seasons in order to eat locally?  Would you use only food and herbs to heal your health problems?  It’s hard to imagine going backwards without feeling like it would be worse. 

So, there’s a hole in our neighborhood.  Though the people in my neighborhood are asking that the cell antennas be put in a less residential area, we are told that no matter what we do, another location in this 8-block area will be proposed.  If we don’t have coverage by 2020, there will be people without constant access to communication in an emergency.  This feel like an artificial concern in order to move toward customer satisfaction, which means better business ratings, which means more money and customer, which means higher stock market prices. 

This whole thing reminds me of that old song about the hole in the bucket…

It seems like there is room to start visualizing what our cities and economies would look like if we started to go non-linear with our technologies.  I wonder if we should start a non-linear technology community, where our creativity guides us rather than a push for a "better" world.  

Learn More:  Slow Technology Movement?
                      Visions of Sustainability 
                      Cell Phone Addiction and Einstein's Quote