Unintended consequences of tech? Try the internal combustion engine and massive government subsidy of fossil fuel via the Interstate Highway system, protection of harbors and shipping lanes, millions of lives spent protecting oil access and ignoring actual costs of production and refining.
Take a look at advanced manufacturing starting with fabric mills and the steam engine and resultant concentration of capitalism and its power. How about advanced high tech weapons and the active sales of those weapons throughout the world. The US promotion of low cost electricity and the associated assumption that every classroom at Stanford will be kept exactly the perfect temperature, lighting, security and connectivity at a cost per kilowatt that in no reflects the true cost of electricity in our military industrial complex. Is the assumption of the proposed thought experiment to assume server farms are as environmentally friendly as real farms (which as a farmer-rancher have enormous environmental load)?
Unintended consequences of tech being rolling LED billboards on a 3,000 pound rolling piece of machinery that kills a few hundred thousand Americans per year? American Airlines had a giant LED flight gate billboard at DFW airport that came down 20 years ago because of hundreds of “unintended consequences”.
Want true “high tech” impacts? Try the data analytics of Walmart or Amazon distribution systems. Try the high tech gains of Waste Management in the well intended quest to handle the USA tsunami of trash. Check out the software advances of FedEx or UPS in delivering your favorite disposable consumer marketed gadget. Sand is Silicon, most of everything from San Fransisco to San Jose is buried under about 6 feet of the stuff just like most of this disappearing planet.
I think I will buy a camel, the even toed ungulate real type. Also the cigarette brand (and learn how to smoke). I’ll put on my actual working cowboy outfit except for of course a Red Hat and a JavaScript tee shirt and ride around with an AR-15 with laser scope fired up and yell, “yeeehaaa call me Mr. Unintended Consequences”. That is a great name for a band, I’ll Google it and make sure it is taken.
