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Technology Stocks : INTEL TRADER -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Winsurfer who wrote (2755)	5/4/1998 8:02:00 AM
From: Jurgen Trautmann	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11051

Winsurfer: "Are you saying that western culture is a bad thing?" "IMHO, cars, chemicals, drugs, and technology are great. Monoculture has its good points and its bad points." It's not easy to bring out what I'm thinking (I'm still learning) to this circle of problems. So I'll give you just a few flashlights: First: it depends on "how much" "Guinness is good for you." I'll never forget how good it was the next morning when I took 5 pints the evening before. However, I'll never stop drinking Guinness, as I take my car when I will get somewhere, as I like to use a expoxy-carbon windsurfingboard, as I love my with chemical products overloaded Timberlands. But - as everybody knows - the price is high. Thus I would prefer a more conscious consuming and use of artificial products - at least, as long they are killing direct(like cars are killing walkers or Polyurethan-foam is killing people who produce that) or mediately (like burning waste produces f.e. Dioxin) second: is the technology really fulfilling what we hope to get? Just an exemple for that what I mean: a lot of medical treatments have very critical statistics (if statistics were made from neutral experts). Our current trend is to expect that a pill doen't have too much dangerous side-effects. I would prefer a thinking, that every interference in natural systems (and we haven't not much more clue of them than our ancients in a historical view!) MUST have a CLEAR and UNDOUBTABLE over-all-effect. Another example: the hole region around the "mare mediterraneo" was wooden. Everybody knows that's not a big problem to plant as many as trees as you consume. Now, it's at great parts (f.e. also on the fantastic canary islands) a desert - just good for concrete-deserts named "urbanisaciones". What's happening on the US- and Canadian west-coaat? Would you like to see LA-"landscape" up to Vancouver? Wait a few generations... third: did we choose the most efficient way to get what we want? This is a human-related argument. Some of us fight for production as it - so as if people would be happier by industrial products. The marketing-industry try (with crude success) to suggest, that "buying", "owning" or "using" of products would be that what we really need. This obviously is weakminded - but hard to discuss yet. Mostly the way we react on our needs today is far from "optimal" - and this is not a question pro or contra technology, it's a question of consciousness. Also just one example: We "need" an environment with certain temperature, humidity, air, light. We "need not" dust, noise, electromagnetical fields... (mostly side-effects of the use of technology). Where are the misunderstandings? We use air-condition instead a funcional architecture. We use air-cleaners instead a garden. And so on. And, we do that inefficient. It's not efficient to use a 1.5t heavy tool consuming 10 gallons per mile for getting where we want to get, when we can have a funcional equivalent tool of 500 kg consuming less than 3 l per km. But, maybe the "transporter" of captain Kirk is waiting in front of our doors? However, a lot of us are FIXED in certain tools, certain ways, cause they cannot separate that what they need from the tool they've used so far to do that. Obviously it's meaningless, that all people drive during a long weekend f.e. in a state-park. What they are seaching for? Standing in a line of cars for hours? But how would they react when you would try to cause them leaving their car at home? Last point: Efficiency and loss-free-circle-production The most commun misunderstanding is, that "producing" and "evolution" would have to do with each other. The contradiction is true. The more we can, the more we know, the less efforts, money, energy, ressources would we need for achieving our real needs. The longer a product can do what we hope it would do, the better it is. We admire old buildings, but we contruct short-living-mess. Have you ever seen a reeling of stainless-steel on a peer? A plane can fly for 30 years - but a car? But you can generate a people-jam when you park a old Porsche. The problem of this all is not logic. The logic is quite clear, everybody could understand that, even a president or a cancellor. The problem is, that you can get rich as producer of innocent or infunctional products, and that you have the influence to suggest people that Viagra could help while you have a wife neither liking your nor her own body. A industry suggesting that you was strong & safe when you own weapons. A industry suggesting that's a question of freedom to drive fast so that we Germans accept 30000 death people each year without any discussion. No, Winsurfer, I'm NOT happy with our western industrial culture. I'm a kind of this culture, of course. I can change nothing. What I do in my small world is to limit my personal consuming a bit. Then, when I entoxycate my body, I try to do that using less but better stuff. Long answer? Take a privat-jet, come up to here for a afternoon and let discuss that... (g) Jury