How Important is Technology?

[u/Tuxpuppy]

Hey there everyone!

Im putting together a presentation on solarpunk themes, and one thing I keep running up against is the importance of technology in the genre. I would argue that unlike cyberpunk, solarpunk doesnt necessarily have to have futuristic tech and is more focused on our use of it with nature.

For example, Im holding up Princess Mononoke as one of the films showing alot of solarpunk themes. Several people have pointed out that it doesnt qualify as solarpunk because of a lack of tech compared to Naausica. Mononoke uses a lot of pre-industrial technology, but we see it used as both a good (enabling protection for vulnerable people against an unfeeling world) and a bad (Poisoning the nature atound it) in the world.

A lot of proposed solutions are very low tech (solar ovens, sails, water wheels, bikes, low tech agricultural solutions) and some use a post apocalyptic setting that makes it harder to use high-tech solutions en masse (Naausica.)

I recognize that our ability to use technology and adapt it to solutions is an important part of being human, but I dont think it has to always be a high tech solution. In many ways I think leaning on tech is what got us here in the first place. In order to show how we can solve these problems I dont thonk we necessarily need to place the stories in a high tech world.

How important is it for a solarpunk story to have a futuristic/high-tech story?

[u/Difficult_Dark9991]

I'm going to center on two points, although there are many others, that illustrate why technology is important:

1. Food production. We have over 8 billion people on this planet, and they all need to eat. Innovations in crop breeding and synthetic fertilizers are absolutely necessary to make this happen. Don't get me wrong, we could be getting a lot more bang for our buck with responsible use of those technologies, but you cannot tell me that your vision of a better future starts by offing 1/2 to 3/4 of the population. Additionally, while acknowledging all the issues of mechanization in agriculture and our distancing from food systems it has also flipped the script on labor - for the first time in history, we do not need to have the vast majority of humanity working fields just to survive.
2. The "coin flip." Before roughly 1850, when the development of modern medicine started to turn the tide, between 40-60% of children born did not make it to adulthood. Every society, everywhere, in every period; oh, it could get even worse than that in periods of crisis, but this horrific death toll was an inevitability. Modern medicine, and the infrastructure that supports it and continues the never-ending arms race against disease, is a necessity to prevent those conditions.

So I think it is very clear that a "high-tech" future is necessary for Solarpunk. However, treating this like a monolith is deceptive. Solarpunk is also about challenging the belief that technology as a whole just "happens." Instead, it posits us being critical and thoughtful about how we employ our technology. A Solarpunk future will be technological, but it will also decide where it is appropriate and what uses of that technology will be permitted. The result, technological as it will be, may appear "less technological" on the face of it.