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That there is some kind of an inherent distinction between nature and technology is a long standing, very common and rarely questioned assumption. It often serves certain environmentalists, among others (such as luddites and some types of survivalists and spiritualists) when they wish to blame human beings and technology for everything they perceive to be wrong with planet Earth, our environment or human beings themselves and then restrict human activity.
However when I look at human beings, their technology and nature that distinction doesn't quite seem to make sense. It only makes sense as a mere terminological tool used to discern between that which is developed by human beings and that which has evolved independently of their involvement. But that's as far as it goes. To go beyond that and think that we and our products are somehow beyond or outside of the realm of nature is actually ludicrous. Haven't we evolved from nature as well? Isn't "human nature", the set of characteristics unique to us including those which make us develop technology, something that evolved from nature itself? Isn't then technology by extension just as natural as anything else on Earth?
I would say that it is. It is just as natural as the
spider's web for instance. A spider doesn't see its web as somehow "unnatural" just because it made it instead of nature external to him. The spider creates its web for its own purposes. We do exactly the same thing with our technology. Does the fact that we are much more capable and powerful than a spider somehow make a fundamental difference here? Well does the fact that an elephant has much more power than a spider make a fundamental difference? I don't think so.
They are simply different types of beings with different types of natural powers. Neither of them repress themselves for fear of harming some kind of a perceived natural balance. They just are, such as they are, and do what they do, because that's what defines them. The powers that we have over the rest of nature (of which we are unavoidably a part of) are simply what defines what we naturally evolved to be.
It is only our own biases, developed due to diversity of our individual value systems, through which we see technology as somehow harmful for the environment or planet Earth and so on when in fact all that is happening is a transformation, a continued process of evolution, something that has happened ever since the universe existed. We see some kind of a change happening and we think of it as an abomination because we've assigned some personal value to it, a value which has no bearing whatsoever on the actual process in question. You may not like the fact that a rock fell to Earth, but that wont make its falling on Earth into some kind of a cosmic injustice. It's simply a rock falling on Earth, nothing else and nothing more.
Given that our judgment of events as good or bad depend solely on our personal values that is the sole basis for any kind of concern about technology and the environment. However different individuals have different value systems and would therefore have different concerns. Some may want to "save the whales" and others may find trees to be more important. Neither of these values however are necessarily universal and if one is claimed to be this has to be proven. The only way a value can be universal is if everyone actually and voluntarily shares it meaning that no force of any kind would be necessary for them to go along with activities that pursuit of such a value would require.
This is unfortunately a far cry from the typical stance of many environmentalists. They have their own pet peeves and just decide that everyone else must share them. And if they don't then they're "wrong" or "immoral" and enemies of planet Earth and should be forced by law to behave according to said environmentalist's own value systems.
I don't deny that certain technologies could be harmful to us or that they could shift the environment in a way that would make it more difficult for us to survive in it. Given that we, just as all other successfully evolved living beings, have an inherent drive to survive and prosper it is natural that we should worry about all that may jeopardize that survival and prosperity, even if it involves our own technology.
This is still however based on our own values. The difference is that valuing survival and prosperity could be a demonstrably universal human value. Anyone who doesn't wish to survive and prosper please raise your hand! It is however precisely this drive to survive and prosper which also drives the development of technology so instead of treating this as an indictment of technology and everything artificial in general it merely provides reason for continued evolution of technology towards something that would simultaneously assist our continued growth in prosperity and decrease the harmfulness to ourselves.
This brings me to the apex of the argument. Evolution has far greater "experience" and resources in producing functional devices than humans do and this is probably the only reason why in comparison to its products our technology sometimes seems crude and even harmful. Instead of however making us simply "give up" on being what we are, the beings defined by the capacity to think and create new things, by restricting and regulating each other and what we do, this fact should only encourage us to improve our creative abilities to the point where they could match those of the rest of nature.
In other words, bad technology only means that we need to develop more technology, better technology, not less. It requires of us to be more creative rather than using force against each other to restrict our creative endeavors.
This is where science plays its role. It studies nature (and ourselves as part of it) in order to learn how it does what it does so that we can replicate it in ways that is 100% beneficial and 0% harmful to us and those parts of the environment which we depend on. Energy efficient technologies that are emerging lately are a good example of that. Fields such as Synthetic Genomics are examples of us actually reprogramming nature itself rather than crudely replicating it, which makes it another excellent example.
In conclusion I would like to reiterate, however, that even the crude technologies which are to some extent harmful to us cannot be considered as anti-nature. Instead we may look at them as the products of nature which just happened to involve human beings in the process. If we look at other species we may find many other examples of things they evolved which are also crude and to some extent harmful to them, yet necessary for their continued evolution. In fact they may just have been the things which have allowed them to survive to this day.
I would encourage environmentalists to think about this and consider refocusing their efforts from trying to restrict and regulate human activity while demonizing technology and "humans playing with nature" or "humans playing god" to instead trying to guide and encourage it's continued evolution in the direction of greater efficiency and less harm. Restricting and regulating each other by force will only slow down that process of evolution.
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