On Sun, 17 Mar 1996 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >All of that said, I do not yet require students to do their work on computers
> >(although I request it, and hand out my email address). They do need access
> >from home before they can do that. Besides, although my campus is convinced
> >that computers are more ecologically sound than paper, I'm not so sure
> >they're right. My computer is hooked up to an electrical outlet which leads
> >to the local nuclear power plant. It is a big plastic piece of work, whose
> >innards were probably built by people with little in the way of education,
> >pay or benefits (people who probably can't afford to have a computer of their
> >own). Your thoughts?
> >
> >Louisa
>
> I thought the people who built and assembled computers were highly skilled
> tecnicians, even overseas.
>
> Betty D
Sorry to tell you, Betty, but computers and microchips are usually built
by "legal" or "illegal," female, immigrant workers from the "third world"
who have little to no education, get paid atrociously low wages, get no
health or benefits, and are not allowed to organize themselves. The working
conditions are horrendous. The production of microchips, for example,
requires the workers to look through a microscope the entire time they
are working (they are forced to work something like 12-18 hours a day),
which destroys their eye sight and after a few years they go blind. Also,
working on microchips requires some kind of "welding" which in the
process produces poisonous gases and the workers have to breath them
because their employer does not provide adequate protection.
And as for your "even overseas" part of your post, do I sense racist,
elitist undertones, here?
-Susan
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Mar 18 15:36:26 1996
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 15:59:26 -0600 (CST)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: unecological computers
It seems everyone on this list is heavily into computers as a solution to
environmental problems but I have a few concerns. First of all as a professor I
have a hard time properly editing papers on disks or the net. It hurts my eyes
to sit for hours in front of the screen and I wonder what it is doing to my body
even though they say the electromagnetic doses are low. I love to sit outside
on my back porch and grade papers and I can't hear, smell or see nature cramped
in a cubicle in front of the computer. I think e-mail has been wonderfuly
informative but am now spending hours dealing with hundreds of messages a day
and am beginning to resent it greatly. I sometimes think we are so enamored
with the new technology we substitute it for real environmental action or real
analysis from being outdoors in the field. There is also the question of all
the wasted plastic and floppy disks as things go obsolete so quickly, not to
mention the lack of a hard copy for posterity. I don't mean to be totally
negative - I see the benefits but wonder if they are worth the costs?
Renae Prell Ph.D.
VAlparaiso University
