The Dark Side of Technology

The Dark Side of Technology is intended as a powerful wake-up call to the potential dangers that could, in the near future, destroy our current advanced civilizations. The author examines how fragile our dependence on electronic communications, information storage, and satellites is, as vulnerability increases in an age of raising security concerns. This weakness is evident from the exponential rise in cyber-crime and terrorism. Satellites are crucial to modern-day living, but they can be destroyed by energetic space debris or damaged by solar emissions. Destruction of data, communications, and electrical power grids would bring disaster to advanced nations. Such events could dramatically change our social and economic landscapes within the next 10-20 years.

New technology equally impacts employment, agriculture, biology, medicine, transport, languages, and our social well-being. This book explores both the good and the bad aspects of technological advances, in order to raise awareness and promote caution. Technology may be impressive, but we need to be mindful of potential negative future effects. We ought to seriously consider the long term consequences of an increasing failure to pursue healthy life styles, use of ineffective antibiotics, genetic mutations, and the destruction of food supplies and natural resources. The diverse topics covered aims to show why we must act now to plan for both the predictable downsides of technology, and also develop contingency plans for potential major catastrophes, including natural events where we cannot define accurate time scales.

Peter Townsend, Emeritus Professor of Experimental Physics in Engineering, Sussex University, UK

Peter Townsend is involved in very diverse activities in academia, industry and national labs in 8 countries, in more than 15 topic areas. He has initiated 5 new areas of research, supervised 67 postgraduate students, and has written over 530 publications, plus patents, with more than 500 co-authors. His numerous scientific awards include a Doctor Honoris Causa degree from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and Finalist of Descartes Prize for Excellence in Research (for breast cancer detection). Other main activities include violin playing and fencing from County up to International level.