Technology to fix prior tech is also risky and could risk extinction – reject IP-driven approaches to tech fixes

This, finally, reveals another common reflex at play: current humanity’s default response to an identified problem with technology is to rely on ‘better’ technology to fix that ‘glitch’. There is of course nothing wrong in aiming to improve technological solutions – but how can we be so sure that these improved technologies actually are solutions, and not just part of the problem? Looking at our track-record over the centuries since industrialisation and the consequences of large scale deployment of technologies, there is little to suggest that reliance on new or improved technology to mitigate the impact of earlier technology will all of a sudden stop having the side effects which got us into this mess in the first place. In the age of the Anthropocene (where human conduct is the main determinant for the fate of life on Earth),24 past experience suggests we cannot afford a ‘trial and error’ approach in deploying technology at scale to save us from the problems earlier technologies have created. Rather, because of our technology-induced capacity to wipe all life off the face of the earth, any solutions we employ to deal with the crises we have created should, when again based on technologies and their application on a global scale, be scrutinised carefully for their impact, if not generally viewed rather sceptical.

In sum, based on our historical experience, there is unfortunately no reason to believe that developing new technologies and propagating them around the globe for widespread use (at least by those who can afford access to them) will necessarily enhance our welfare. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that, by and large, our use and abuse of technology is an – if not the – principal cause of most of the essential risks to our survival as a species on this planet. That in itself should call IP’s uncritical embracing of ‘technological innovation’ as well as its ‘transfer and dissemination’ into question. And this bleak conclusion has not even taken into account the uneven impact of our technologies on some of us, and on other living beings with whom we share this planet – an aspect briefly picked up in the next section.