Will electromagnetic waves become the tobacco smoke of the 21st century?

My ambition to create some sort of regularity and structure in my life lets me read the IHT every morning in the office. While having a cup of coffee, which was brought to me by Bianca this morning, and some slices of dark bread with jam, I came across an article by IHT: Cloud of worry gathers over wireless health risks - by Doreen Carvjal where she discusses the possible effects of electromagnetic waves, especially that of the Wifi spectrum, on the human body, especially the human brain. The electromagnetic spectrum was discovered around the same time when the tobacco industries came into existence around 150 years ago. While the former was around ever since light was on this planet, the cigarette - the most popular form in which tobacco is sold worldwide - is a very recent development. There are a lot of studies that support the fact that smoking has negative effects onto the body while other studies come to a more interesting conclusion, taken the Austrian example, that “Austrian consumers showed little response to changes in cigarette prices. Even income fluctuations did little to affect demand. The older the members of an Austrian household, the smaller will be the part of their income spent on tobacco products. Blue-collar workers spend most on tobacco. Tobacco consumption declines with the level of education achieved”. (ECON Papers)

Lets assume that communicating WIFI is as harmful as smoking a cigarette (remember here that passive smoking is considered to be even more harmful than smoking) and money will still control the world in hundred years from now. No government would freeze subsidies for IT-Infrastructure, WIFI networks and Mobile phones because of a 60 to 80 % possibility of brain chancer of an average adult. This is the possibility of getting breast chancer with connection to smoking. No private company would argue on the assumed results of a serious study that their online service has to stop because of the high risk for customers to get brain chancer.
And do not forget Europe’s social welfare system that is right now not sustainable because of the coasts from the negative effects caused by smoking, which is the main argument behind the Europe wide campaign against smoking.

In the case of electromagnetic waves, that bring knowledge and information in every corner of our advanced technological society at minimum costs and with a maximum of comfortability, we see the same developments like one hundred years ago. The state sees himself as the “enabler of a information society” to “foster growth and development” and subsidise the Development of IT-Infrastructure and sell, not only the Wifi spectrum, to businesses for billions. It also gets rid of its own telecommunication monopoles and let the “market” decide whats the best price for communication among the citizens. The result is seen best if you compare the EU Memberstates in terms of price per MB or just by a quick look on the Digital Opportunity Index 2007 by the International Telecommunication Union. There is not only a north-south gap, but also a west-east one. But what is more striking than the gap is the fact that we “have such insufficient knowledge of the health risks” that some argues (Sylvia Kotting-Uhl from the Green Party) to “force the government to ... favor cable-based technology” even sounds reasonable when in fact they are complete lunatic. Even with the knowledge we have now concerning smoking nobody would condemn cigarettes or tobacco leaves. We might condemn the private sector or the state, or what would be best ourselfs.

So, after I wrote this article I went on our balcony, smoke a cigarette and get back to my office where the nice Apple Airport feels a little bit like the last cigarette. But the taste differ.

Posted on September 25, 2007 by .
Filed under personal.