One evening David (my late husband) accused me of being a Luddite.

 

“I am not,” I defended myself hotly, then sneaked off to look up what he meant. Of course, he was right. Was he ever wrong?

 

The day my MacBook refused to take a charge and was essentially dead, I had a full- blown panic attack – hyperventilating, unable to stay still, invoking the deity I don’t believe in. It was bad.

 

We are so dependent on technology that it is hard to remember a time when we were not hooked up, tuned in, wired, wi-fi’d, GPS’d, online, on a cell phone, or talking to a machine.

 

Not that all technology is bad. Until something goes wrong. I am absolutely lost without my computer. The meltdown happened on a Friday afternoon, the day before I was leaving for Europe so I would not be able to get to an Apple store until Monday. I was fully expecting to have to leave my machine there for possibly lengthy repairs. Fortunately I had printed out the text of a book I had just finished translating, so I could spend my travel time proofreading the old fashioned way, with pencil and paper.

 

It is time to change the focus from economic growth to universal prosperity.  As long as growth is dependent on technology and capitalism, the rich will get richer, the not so rich will not advance, and the poor will get poorer.

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If instead, we concentrate on actual growth - biological growth - we can reverse much of the damage that man has done to the planet.  We can free millions from the yoke of exploitation.  We can begin to drawdown the CO2 in the atmosphere.

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