Energy Efficiency
It’s no secret to anyone that over the past few decades, technological development has shifted towards more “energy efficient” developments. One may be forgiven if it they thought this largely applies to things such as so-called green energy and electric cars. Electric cars do not perform as well as gas-powered cars, that is fairly common knowledge. In fact, energy efficiency has permeated many western living standards, to an extent few realize. The idea is of technology binarily progressing to become more energy and efficient. There is talk in many places of demolishing the domestic energy industry because of a “climate crisis”, while having nothing suitable to replace it with (which in my opinion, is largely nuclear power).
Earlier this year, my family’s previous dishwasher leaked multiple times, causing damage to the floorboards. It was only about 2 years old or so. It was supposedly energy efficient, and it was also a fairly quiet dishwasher, but it would not clean the dishes wells.
Now, one might think older models of dishwasher, which clean thoroughly are are still around. Apparently, they are not made this way anymore, and ones that mimic them are hard to find. It is mainly very expensive dishwashers that clean anywhere near the same standard, apparently. Some of them have leak detection as well. Would that even be necessary if they didn’t do this in the first place?
There is a widespread, almost implicit, myth that energy efficient technology equals technology that is better for the environment, and thus better for humans to use. It uses less electricity, so it’s good for the environment, right?
A more widespread, and in my opinion more insidious issue, are fluorescent lights. Fluorescent lights are a hazard moreso than incandescent lights, notably containing mercury and phosphorous. As an anecdote, fluorescent lights have often made me feel dizzy and ill when underneath then for any significant amount of time, and others have told me about this experience as well. Apparently, this is because they flicker very rapidly, and possibly due to their wavelength as well – they produce high quantities of ultraviolet light. And even taking this “energy efficiency” into account, fluorescent bulbs tend to have shorter lifespans than those of incandescent ones.
I can keep going on about how various appliances have fallen off in quality in the name of energy efficiency, or how wind turbines and solar panels tend to be very wasteful on any sort of large scale, not to mention the environmental damage caused by them. But that is not the point here.
The bottom line is that technology does not linearly progress to be better. On some level, everyone realizes this. “Smart” technology that locks you out of your own devices due to poor design, digital “personal assistants” in the vein of Alexa and Siri gathering data about you, and inferior products commonly made with planned obsolescence in mind, just to name a few things.
Upon the turn of the millennia, and with the rising popularity and growth of the internet, there was a more optimistic attitude about technology. The whole “flying cars by now” saying is a bit of meme, but all it really shows is that there for the average consumer, there is a stagnation in technology doing anything meaningful for their day-to-day life.
That is not to say that there has been no beneficial scientific development over the past couple of decades. However, your average person does not meaningfully benefit from splitting atoms apart or million dollar supercomputers running extremely intensive calculations. Personal computer technology has improved as well, but I would not really say having a better computer that allows you to play video games or do tech jobs easier makes your own life tangibly better. And even that is being affected by scalpers and those who buy components up for the sake of mining cryptocurrency.
It feels like there is not much forward to look forward to technologically. Medical practice is obsessed with COVID vaccinations and has disregarded other ways for one to take care of oneself. If you are young and healthy, that does not matter to most of them. There really is no pretense of efficiency with the policy of vaccinating everyone either. Not too long ago, concepts like the cure for cancer will being discussed, and now things are seemingly hung up on something that should be the Black Death by the way it is talked about, but is not.
“Energy efficiency”, as with other technologies that are seen as progressive and relatively clean, is really just an abstract category people cling to. It’s not so different from the other state-appointed secular deities followed nowadays. They are lauded and promoted to solely make them feel good about themselves, not because of any real attempt at understanding what it means or the truth behind it. That is why they still keep doing and using the things that they do.