Withholding Technology
Technology When children go to school they are taught that one of the things that makes this country great is free enterprise, everyone here has a shot at being successful and that is pretty much true. That is known as the American Dream. There is a problem however, when companies become too large and individuals that control these companies become too powerful. Is there such a thing as being too successful? To answer this question we have only to look around us. A company that gets too powerful can control the market. This means that they not only control prices, and regulations that limit liability for their mistakes, but they can limit technology so that they can drain every bit of profit from older technology before introducing the newer technology. Sometimes the new technology never gets introduced in the market place. This means that we can be held back by companies and we are to a certain extent. I hate to keep mentioning BP, but they are a perfect example of a company that got so powerful that they were able to hold back technology that might have been in direct competition with oil. The company did whatever it wanted to regardless of the law. It had to settle with the government on charges of dumping hazardous substances for the years 1993-1995. This was probably cheaper than paying to dump this stuff properly. In 2005 their Texas City Refinery blew up killing 15 workers and injuring 180 people that lived near the refinery. The plant had been experiencing a series of less serious accidents for quite a while. Many say this was due to cost cutting at the plant. The company was hit with the biggest fine in OSHA history, 87 million dollars. Between 2006-2007 their pipelines leaked into Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. Methanol, a deadly poison was also leaked out of the pipes. In 2007 four BP traders were charged with price manipulating in a propane case. In 2008 the Russian Federation fined BP and their partner over 35 million dollars for price fixing. In 2009 one of their helicopters crashed in the North Sea killing the 16 people aboard. You know what happened in 2010. What do you think of a company with a history like this? Why are they even allowed to operate in this country? The answer is money talks.
Oil Drilling Platform Not all companies are as irresponsible as BP, but some do hold back technology. I am not saying that this is a crime, I am only saying that if this wasn't done we would be a lot further ahead in the world right now. Take the computer chip companies for example. They will sell a set of chips until they either have to update them because of competition, or it has just been around so long that the sales are falling off. There are many stories around about chips that are available that are at least one or two generations more advanced than is what is currently for sale. An example of this is the Fusion chip by AMD. It is said that this chip has been around for awhile, but is only now being tested. The chip combines the central processing unit with a graphics processing unit. This will offer great power and performance benefits, especially to laptop users. It is said that the chip will be released next year. Sometimes the investment in tooling is so huge that companies must continue a product for several years to make a profit. This is understandable, but even this does hold us back somewhat. Look at alternate energy development in this country. Lately we are hearing more about it, but have we really seen any results? Hardly! There is more talk, but there always seems to be some reason that it can not be implemented in an area. You will hear all sorts of excuses such as it ruins the view to put large windmills near the beach or in the ocean. If large energy companies can control congress with their lobbyists, how much easier is it to do when you get down to local governments? Holding technology back is a popular thing to do in industry. Some people say that it should be released right away even though it might make something super expensive. Their thinking is that once it is out there it will start to get cheaper. An example of this might be the 3D television that doesn't require glasses. It was invented years ago by a British scientist who created a system that works on the principle of tiny mirrors instead of pixels. Another system puts layers of material over a HD picture and these lenses have to align millions of pixels. These systems are very expensive. This second system has a drawback right now, but it should be worked out soon. Some of the people watching the 3D picture have gotten motion sickness. They say that this is caused because you brain is constantly trying to adjust the picture. LG and Phillips are said to have started producing these sets, but where are they? For those of you that don't believe that technology was ever withheld, all you have to do is read up on what happened to the electric cars that were created for the California market. General Motors had created an efficient electric car that was far more efficient than even a Prius, but after their leases were up, there were no options to buy and GM had them all crushed, even though their former owners wanted to buy them. This happened almost 15 years ago and the car was the EV1. See a preview about this electric car. LINK Some people suspect that a cure for cancer has been found by a drug company and withheld so that existing expensive medications can continue to be sold. There is no way to prove this as far as I know, but when you think about the way that big companies operate, it certainly seems like a possibility doesn't it? If BP was a drug company do you think that they would release a cancer curing drug? We also wouldn't know, because the system of regulation in this country seems to have collapsed. I was reading an article in the paper the other day and it was warning us not to eat certain foods. Here is basically what it said, don't eat any canned food because some of it is contaminated by the weld inside the can and they don;t know which ones. It went on to say that we shouldn't eat fresh fruit and vegetables because of what they are sprayed with and then it said that certain crops that are transgenic are bad for our organs. Having just about eliminated all foods the article now zeroed in on organic crops and said that they are even worse for us since deadly parasites can be inside of them. Transgenic technology is one technology that should have been withheld forever. Creating a crop that makes its own pesticide doesn't seem very healthy to me, and then purposely growing it in the open so it will spread and then saying it was an accident seems like a criminal act.
Rockets Lastly space technology has said to have been withheld from the civilian sector. If the space shuttle had the ability to go to the moon, and many scientists say it did, then why are we just thinking about going back and waiting for civilian firms to design ways to do that? We could probably be flying to London from New York in just a couple of hours or sooner by now, if we had access to all the technology that the government is holding. It could very well turn out that the government is the biggest holder of technology that is being kept from us. |
