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Technology: friend or foe? from staff reports Endorsing resolutions that seek expanded safeguards from landmines (1.13) and nuclear weapons (1.11), the Lambeth Conference yesterday also called for the establishment through the Anglican Consultative Council of a Commission on Technology and Ethics (1.12). Among issues before the new Commission will be topics raised in Section One's subsection report, `Technology and the Quest for Full Humanity', also accepted by bishops yesterday. The high-tech world that is emerging with the new millennium offers both ``promise and danger,'' the report asserts. ``We operated under the scriptural dictum in Genesis 1:28,'' Bishop Frank Allan (Atlanta, US), subsection chair, notes. ``Our dominion of the earth has at best been a reverent stewardship... at worst, our dominion has despoiled the earth.'' While the report takes note of the technological revolution that has occurred since the last Lambeth Conference-for example, the computer revolution, internet, unravelling of the genetic code and cloning-it warns that `` more and more technological power is being consecrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people.'' It suggests that globalisation may be `` a new colonialism.'' Bishop Allan says that what concerns him most is that technology changes people and their value system. |
