While many of us relish the joys of tech, I hope none of us are blind to its down side. A recent book by long-time science and ecology writer Bill McKibben should be on your reading list.

McKibben has been writing brilliantly about the negative effects of technology for years. His excellent "The End of Nature" warned about global warming as far back as 1989; one of the first books on the subject, it has aged well. McKibben has consistently highlighted the declining nature of our planet, the damaging growth of human population, and the impact of technology on the human condition itself.

My favorite McKibben book, "The Age of Missing Information," compared the amount of "information" broadcast across 170-plus cable channels in 24 hours. (Yes, he saw it all. He had friends and relatives each record one channel for the same 24-hour period and then catalogued and analyzed them.) You might guess that 24 hours of cable compared poorly to 24 hours of camping.

His current book, "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future," plays with the term "Deep Ecology." The latter term is used by environmentalists to signify new ways of thinking about ecology. In this book, McKibben argues that the strength of local communities should be the center of our technological and social support systems. In Rochester terms, he argues for more Fairport Electrics (ideally using multiple sources of renewable energy) and fewer RG&E's. He calls for less factory farming and more farmers markets and CSA's (like our own Genesee Valley Organic Consumer Supported Agriculture). He supports better bike lanes and mass transit like our... well, no place is perfect. You get the point.

McKibben's not alone in these thoughts; even Time Magazine had a recent cover article on the power of "eating locally."

What does this have to do with technology? Technology, and the economy and consumer lifestyle it supports, long ago became the heartbeat of this nation and of Western society. Even a nerd like me can admit it. But learning to do with less technology and less consumerism is vital to all of us. The question is: Are we slaves to our own yen for devices and Kiwi Fruit straight from New Zealand?

At one point, McKibben points out: "The story of the last five hundred years is the story of continued emancipation. The people of the modern world have freed themselves from innumerable oppressions: absolute monarchy, feudalism, serfdom, slavery." At the same time, have we really? Our quest for the cheaply mass produced T-shirt and our addiction to fossil fuels forces us to engage in commerce with governments and corporations that could be described in just those terms. And technology is the engine that drives it all. (Note: this is my point and not McKibben's.) So that's why a book on economy from an ecologically minded, socially conscious writer gets reviewed in a tech column.

You may think you've heard this all before. But McKibben writes on these topics in a way that makes them clear and simple. He always backs his ideas up with concrete examples of potential solutions from around the world. Not everyone likes or agrees with him, but even his detractors admit that he's hard to argue with and shouldn't be ignored. And it's rare that you'll find a technological and social critic who's enough of a mensch to publicly point to his own contradictions, as he did in this quote from a recent Salon interview.

"I've spent much of my life flying and driving around the world to tell people to use less carbon. My great hope is that when St. Peter finishes his accounting I will have ended up two or three gallons to the good - that I will have persuaded just enough people to change their habits a little bit that it will make up for what I've burned. I piously buy my offsets and all, but I'm under no illusion that there's not a great deal of hypocrisy involved."

As a smaller "large city," we have the ability to do some of the things he's talking about and could improve and multiply the examples above, adopting some of the examples he describes in his book. And I propose it as a "What If Rochester Read the Same Book" for the next time around.

To learn more about McKibben and his current book, go to his website.