Siegel warns not to view
high tech as the ‘cure-all’
By Thomas Henderson
Of Dm Emerald
Oregon’s courting of high
technology may lead to heartache if
the state’s passion blinds itself to the
industry’s ugly side, social critic Len
ny Siegel said Friday.
Siegel, the director of the Pacific
Studies Center, a research facility in
Mountain View, Calif., spoke at the
University on Thursday and Friday
about the social, economic, en
vironmental and military implica
tions of high technology.
Once called “the resident gadfly of
the Silicon Valley” by The New York
Times, Siegel has written articles on
high tech for a number of national
magazines and is editor of two
periodicals: Global Electronics Infor
mation Newsletter and Pacific
Research.
The greatest problem with high
tech, Siegel said, is the tendency to
see it as a miracle cure-all for
economic ills. If approached with
misty-eyed reverence, high tech can
create more problems than it solves,
he said.
An often ignored problem with
high tech is the hazardous wastes it
creates, he said. A number of
dangerous solvents and acids are used
in the production of computer parts
and must be properly stored to pre
vent a public health hazard, Siegel
said.
Siegel added that Oregon must
make adequate provisions for the
storage of high-tech waste if it is to
protect its citizens and attract high
tech firms to the state. If regulations
are in place before high-tech industry
begins moving into Oregon,
businesses will not feel insecure
about what to expect from the state,
he said.
In the Silicon Valley, the heart of
California’s high-tech industry, the
problem of toxic wastes has also been
addressed by a “right-to-know” law
requiring workers be given informa
tion about their possible exposure to
hazardous chemicals, Siegel said. A
bill before the Oregon House, HB
2255, would extend this same right to
Oregon’s general public.
Calling high tech a “highly com
petitive and cyclical industry,”
Siegel said Oregon may be in for a
disappointment if it looks to high tech
as a means to prosperity.
“It’s not clear to me there is enough
high tech to go around to serve as a
substitute for the timber industry,”
said Siegel. “It’s wrong to expect it
(high tech) will pick up the slack.”
High tech also isn’t a cure-all for
the problem of workers displaced
from the ailing automobile, steel and
logging industries, Siegel said. Pro
duction workers often have to take
dramatic pay cuts in the high-tech in
dustry, often working for minimum
wage, he said.
According to Siegel, 80 percent to
90 percent of all high-tech factory
workers are women, many of whom
do at least a portion of their work at
home. Although industrial homework
is illegal, most employers choose to
look the other way, Siegel said.
It is not the major high-tech firms
themselves that use home labor,
Siegel said, but it is prevalent among
the smaller firms that subcontract
work from the major companies.
High tech is more beneficial to
salaried, mid-level professionals than
the working class, Siegel said, and
this factor should be taken into ac
count when wooing high-tech in
dustries. Although Siegel said high
tech can be a legitimate part of a
balanced economic development
plan, he added that it should not be a
plan in and of itself.
“It (high tech) is not likely to create
all that many jobs," he cautioned.
Another often overlooked danger of
high tech, Siegel said, is the threat it
poses to personal freedom. So much
personal information is stored by a
computer, down to items purchased
at the grocery store, he added, “so
meone can spy on you retroactively."
The forces of freedom and repres
sion are in constant conflict, Siegel
said. Their last major battle was
Watergate, won by advocates of
freedom, and before that it was Mc
Carthyism, won by the opposition, he
said.
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