This I believe

I believe in the power of technology to take what was once considered unattainable, and make it commonplace. My mother grew up in a community where you had to go next door to use the one available telephone, and now I personally carry no less than 5 telecommunication devices everywhere I go. But I also believe that with this comes the responsibility for adapting our lives so that we remain the owners of technology, and not slaves to it. I work in the oil and gas exploration industry, a business intensely driven by technology. Partly because of the advances that I have helped to engineer, there exists today the ability to deliver energy from and to places that once would have been considered impossible. From the deepest depths of the oceans to the most inhospitable climates on the planet, I have done my part to assist the world’s people in consuming energy at 5000 times the rate that it can potentially be preserved by biological and geological processes.

Those who know me, my environmental bent, and my appreciation for nature, often ask me how I reconcile my occupation with my conscience. My mastery of technology has led to conveniences and advances that would have been unthinkable to my parents, and I know it will continue to lead my children to fulfill dreams that in my younger days lived only in the pages of science fiction magazines. What I try to remember is that just because I CAN do these things, this does not necessarily mean I SHOULD. The object lessons of the darker side of energy use lie buried in a thin layer of easily identifiable dust in the sediments under Hiroshima Japan, and stare at me every day from newspaper headlines about ozone holes and global warming.

But I believe what physicist Richard Feynman left on his last blackboard at Cal Tech before he died in February of 1989. “What I cannot create, I do not understand”. What I attempt to heed is the corollary – “What I do create, I must understand.” The same technology that I apply every day to help generate energy can and must be used to communicate how that energy can be used wisely, efficiently and responsibly. So I make a point to take the same technology that allows me to gather and accumulate the knowledge I use every day in my job, and use it to disseminate messages like this one, as widely as the energy that I help to course around our globe. In this way, I remain the master of my technology, not its slave. This I Believe.