Book description
A sailor crossing the Atlantic in a small yacht would want to
minimize excess baggage. But it would be unthinkable not to carry more
fresh water than seemed necessary, to survive unexpected calms or
storms. Yet the imperative of profit, especially over the last
century, has driven modernity towards 'lean, mean' strategies in every
area of life; squeezing waste out of commercial, technological and
environmental systems may make money in the short term, but is our
highly geared, highly strung way of life sustainable? Andrew Price,
sailor, explorer and environmental scientist at the University of
Warwick argues that in the long-term, spare capacity actually pays.
From the destruction of New Orleans to the loss of the world's
fish-stocks and intractable problems such as MRSA, Slow-Tech
demonstrates how the reckless pursuit of efficiency and
cost-effectiveness frequently backfires. It makes the case for
robustness as an equally important measure of performance in fields as
diverse as healthcare, military operations and engineering. Unexpected
and counter-intuitive yet convincing and timely, Slow-Tech offers an
alternative vision for life in the twenty-first century - a rounded
vision of balance and robustness that would be healthier for the
planet - and healthier for us.
