Automation and another weekend that was.

Another weekend has passed and the Sustainable Living Festival, SLF, is over. LOUD SPACE served as a volunteer for PLUG IN TV and was able to see many products and services available to the public in the name of sustainability. Though intentions for the festival are no doubt noble, LOUD SPACE cannot help but wonder if the festival itself is guilty of being unsustainable.

A train of thought was started when LOUD SPACE attended Peter Singer's lecture on Friday. Posters promoting the evening hung above the stage where Mr Singer spoke. These posters would serve no purpose after the fesitval, and one must wonder if the production of such items is appropriate, especially for a festival such as SLF.

Another question one may ask in the name of sustainability is; was it ethical to fly Mr Singer from Princeton University to the lecture on Friday evening or if it would have made more environmental sense for Mr Singer to have done his lecture by teleconference. (This is assuming that Mr Singer had come to Australia specifically for the SLF. It must be stated again that LOUD SPACE himself is guilty of taking advantage of cheap flights, particularly of recent with AIR ASIA and is not seeking to point the finger, but merely ask questions.)

SLF aside, chickens and half chickens, lie in grease, waiting to be consumed in delis across the country and Lindt Easter bunnies have started to appear at supermarkets again. People line up at cashiers that are no longer manned by humans, swiping their goods under a scanner and then paying for it with cash or card. How much stock is stolen in this manner? How many genuine errors are made by consumers? Perhaps to SAFEWAY and COLES it is still cheaper to lose a little stock whether by mistake or theft than employing a casual, part or full time employee. Automation.

Automative technology such as this has been around for a while now; at parking stations, on public transport and at petrol pumps, but this new addition serves as reminder to everyone about how our world is slowly changing. Changes occurring at such a subtle level sometimes, that people may not even be conscientiously aware of them, except for those who lose their job to these new automative technologies. Hail automation.