Since there will be an increase in the number of people, this will generate an increase in people’s needs and a bigger production of trash, pollution and other wastes. The world won’t be able to sustain this and it will probably generate major inequality around the world since only a few will hold the power and be able to afford to live in a city and have access to resources like water, electricity, clean air, etc. We need to start developing the technologies to make sure we can sustain all the population’s needs without damaging the earth more than we have so far.
We need to start building smarter and more efficient buildings and spaces, like for example, the ones shown in the video that generate their own electricity and gather water from the condensation in the air. We need to start creating things that have the ability to adapt to their environment and to generate their own resources so that they can be socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable. The cities that we have now should be adapted to a mix of the past and the future, just as said in the video: Taking a traditional sustainable design and incorporate modern technology to make it more efficient. We should adapt the cities, objects, and things we have now in order to stop producing more and more waste. Even one small improvement can end up creating a chain reaction that will help the environment in a bigger way, just like the trashcans shown in one of the videos. By having more space for the trash and letting people know when it was full, it reduced the amount of times workers had to go pick it up to just the necessary amount.
I think that in all the processes of using new technologies, ethics should always be involved when making a decision. Just like the video about the windmills and how by making more of them they could make a rare bird go extinct. We need to keep the focus on not disrupting the environment and having the smallest effect on it we can have. Also, it’s an ethical matter of what the information collected by these new technologies will be used for. In the videos about collecting information about people in order to have better management of the cities or crime, this data needs to be used for the better good and not to disrupt people’s privacy.
