Our default assumption, since the advent of the industrial revolution has been to think that we can solve our challenges with more and more technological advances. While technology has a pretty good track record of improving our lives, it does not inherently guarantee progress. Technology is neither inherently positive or negative, but it does have the capacity to bring about powerful change.
When considering new technologies, we should approach them with a healthy dose of skepticism and always weigh the pros and the cons before enthusiastically jumping in with both feet.
A good example is that of the technological changes that have transformed the way we design and build architecture. While the energetic performance of newer buildings is through the roof, it comes at the expense of other things, like holistic health and wellness of a building's occupants.
I grew up in a house that was arguably terrible from an energetic point of view, but functioned like a machine that one had to learn to operate for optimal living conditions. We opened windows to ventilate, closed the shades to prevent solar gain, along with a multitude of other strategies to operate it.
If the same house were designed today, most windows would be fixed, we'd have annoying, noisy mechanical ventilation and the air would feel stale. How do we marry the two without sacrificing the benefits of either? How do we keep a house breathable without needlessly burning energy?
Not only design paradigms have to change, but I think we also have to operate from a different set of assumptions. Instead of thinking that everything can be automagically controlled and operated, we should consider how we -humans- physically interact with architecture as a way to bring about positive changes.
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