Week 5 // #relatable technology

A common term being used nowadays is “relatable”.  It’s another one of those words that gets used so often that it begins to die out after another word comes in. Fast changing words are like fast changing fashion, which leads people into fast changing thinking. However, looking into the context of creating sustainability and regenerative communities makes me realize that “relatable” might be a term that can apply well. BUT, not in the way people use it. Let me further explain. In the documentary film Re- Plan It, Jock Brandis, an environmental entrepreneur, is able to reconstruct the idea of using sources to help others relatable to their context. It was astounding to see that what led Jock to wanting to construct appropriate technology was seeing how men and women worked strenuous hours to peel, crack and sort out peanuts by hand in Africa. The documentary addressed, “In Africa alone, women spent 4 billion hours un-shelling peanuts”. Seeing the difficulties of not having advanced or contextual technology intrigued him to use his engineering mind to build something for the people to reduce the time used to sort out peanuts. So, Jock began to work and created a successful model made out of cement and other items that would be found in Africa. He saw how joyful and thankful the people were to have been able to receive an item that was relatable to their job and place. From there on, Jon co-founded the “Full Belly Project” consisting of engineers who really worked on hard science with the resourcefulness of backyard nature.

The Full Belly Project’s motto is “Fail early, fail often”, which seems so contradictory to an engineer’s method of thinking, but this set the foundation for envisioning a world adapting environmental demands. I greatly enjoyed the fact that this organization takes things that people throw away and uses them to create purposeful technology benefitting people all over the world. In addition, the technology being built is well thought of because the engineers look at the context of the people, place, and material accessible to them. This is truly thinking in a regenerative way because it creates a system for people and the environment to work together, not just as one. Ingenious devices(technology) to solve environmental challenges has greatly impacted many people groups all over the world. 

On the other hand, there is also another form of technology that people have come up with. As history progresses, technology does as well; however, not in a form that gives people the ability to work as a system, but as an independent, disconnected individual. For instance, the I-phone contains “I” in it to really make it all about the person instead of the people as a collective. Don’t get me wrong, phones have helped us have access to contacting others and gaining information right at the tip of our fingers. However, I question if phones are a part of the new ideology that has risen in technology? Adam Curtis, the filmmaker of “All watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace”, greatly displays how computers and modern technology have actually “chained” if you will humanity instead of liberating it. Not only has it failed to liberate us, but it has distorted and simplified the view of the entire world around us. While watching the documentary, the beginning portion created a bewilderment in my thought process because it was unbelievable to see how the dream of famous scientists, engineers, and theorists desired systems that can balance power in nature. Cybernetics is the “new organizing principal” they proposed would be the organizing principal of creating a balance in nature. However, this is very false. Cybernetics creates a veil over people’s eyes because it displays a view of nature fantasy driven instead of realistically shown. The attempt to constantly renew technology to tie nature and humans together is actually causing the opposite: it has separated us from the interaction and integration to nature. We all need to think more like Jock Brandis that saw the true need of others and worked together with nature to create relatable devices instead of modern technology that does not suit other places in the world. We need to step away from the “I” and think about “we”.