December 30, 1990

THE YEAR 1990 has been one of gut-wrenching change and realization for those whose lives are touched by technology, full of “good news-bad news” scenarios:

* Computers are finally getting powerful enough that they’re easy to use, but you can be crippled if you spend too much time in front of them.

* High-tech jobs will continue to be plentiful in California, but soon there won’t be enough water to support life here, let alone rinse a circuit board.

* Online networks have become a potent medium for social change, but the thing that makes them most powerful — their accessibility to the masses — makes them easy targets for governments and institutions who forget about freedom of speech and privacy.

It’s hard for dyed-in-the-wool idealists like me to swallow, but the truth is that whether we’re talking about life or physical laws, everything that happens and everything we do affects everything else, everything has an upside and a downside, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two.

These year-end philosophical ravings were prompted by receiving a copy of SimEarth, a beautifully wrought software simulation modeled after James Lovelock’s “Gaia” theory of evolution, which considers Earth to be a complete, self-regulating organism where all parts — from amoebas to atmospheres — affect the whole.

Will Wright designed SimEarth for Moraga-based Maxis (he also co-designed the enormously popular SimCity) as a game, a toy or a tool, depending on your point of view. Users can populate their planets with anything from single-celled plants to intelligent species. By manipulating chemical, geological, biological and human factors, whole populations are created and rendered extinct.

Though the Gaia theory is not generally accepted in the scientific community, I find it both logical and strangely comforting when applied to ecology in its most basic sense, in the relationship of organisms to their environment. But it’s a little less comforting, though not necessarily less true, when you get a bit more specific about the activities of humankind and civilization.

For one thing, it’s easy to use the concept of “everything affects everything else, so be careful what you change” as an excuse to maintain a suboptimal status quo.

I’ve heard the argument that U.S. companies that manufacture their products offshore in places like Korea or Taiwan are actually doing a good thing. If they were to pay the “exorbitant” cost of labor here to assemble their products, the retail price would be so high that they couldn’t sell them; they’d go out of business, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good, either.

There is some superficial truth to that. I guess you could also cook up a Gaia-esque theory about the benefits of low-level radiation leaking out of computer monitors or nuclear power plants, too. How about this: since ozone layer depletion is increasing the amount of radiation we absorb every day, these relatively tiny bombardments of radiation are just aiding the evolutionary process, helping mutate us into creatures who can exist in a “hot” environment without, say, developing melanoma.

Overstated as usual, but you get the point. As you might expect, I prefer to think of the Gaia theory as a call for positive action, especially by those in the high-tech community; action to not only help heal the planet, but to change the way technology touches us and vice versa.

That means there’s no time like the present to get involved in something, anything that can start a chain reaction of good in the world of technology. Sign up with CompuMentor and help your favorite non-profit learn to use computers judiciously. Educate your co-workers on how to stay healthy while screen-bound. Push your employers to eliminate toxics in the workplace. The bottom line is that nothing changes if nothing changes — and as an organism on this planet, any action you take does make a difference.

I wish you an empowered 1991.