Technology could so easily be used to help people and improve countless lives, but it is also easy to create destructive technology, or twist the use of useful things into something horrific.
Terrorists turned our convenient method of linking the country into a human incendiary bomb. All it took was a bit of planning, poor security at airports, and capitalising on the fear of passengers. Of all things, box-cutters were the weapons used on board the hijacked planes. Hijackers took advantage of our fear of our own technology: we know the power of bombs, and it seems that the hijackers used the threat of bombs backing up their paltry knives to cow the passengers of three of the planes. It was a horribly clever tactic. We are afraid of our own machines.
In the months that have followed the September 11 attacks, the US military has employed its best technology on radar-elusive fighter jets and unmanned spy planes. It has used technology to make this war one of the more humane wars yet, with minimal civilian casualties. But it is still war, and an already suffering people have been displaced. The Taliban may have been using a Red Cross centre for its own purposes, knowing the stigma that would follow attacking such a building.
The Taliban had used its control of technology to control Afghanistan. It banned television and the Internet, and people were unable to hear other perspectives of world and local events, if they even knew about the events in the first place. The Taliban sought to keep the people ignorant and easy to brainwash. The reversion to mediaeval practices has not just been in terms of technology, but in terms of social practice. It was not entirely successful, but until recently fear kept any unrest underground.
Now the threat of anthrax is causing fear back in America. When I think that some chemist or chemical engineer is busy making deadly anthrax when they could be working on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, it makes me so frustrated. People have suffered enough this year. The world wreaks havoc itself. Sydney is only just recovering from the second storm in a month that has destroyed buildings and houses, killed two teenagers and injured many others. Fishermen have been drowned when waves washed them from rocks or small boats. Sharks have killed three people around Australia. All this is quite beyond our control. Why should we want to add to the deaths? Could we not be using our technology and engineering to attempt to survive these things better? Should we be focusing more on protective, rather than destructive, engineering?
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