Tech Innovation Is Not Adaptation

“Human ingenuity and technology cannot violate thermodynamics and physics.”

- Tad Patzek, on The Great Simplification podcast

“The early Taoists were fond of saying things like, ‘The minds of the people who use complex machinery will ultimately become machinelike themselves.’ … And what about the minds that use AI? Do they become artificial as well?”

- Blake Klazmer, on Instagram

While “Dead Sea scrolling” (as Jesse Welles coined @wellesmusic) on Instagram yesterday, I encountered a reel of electronic umbrellas retracting from over rows of (presumably very valuable) vines in Borgogne, like the roof of a convertible folding behind the back seats.

Yes, you read that right. Someone has used their mental and economic resources to invent mechanical umbrellas that you can extend to protect a length of a row of vines with a push of a button. With enough of these contraptions spaced properly you can cover your entire vineyard with umbrellas.

I had a flashback to my 20’s when I was an extra during the filming of Marilyn Manson’s video for his song, “The Dope Show” (you can see me for a split second about two-thirds of the way through if you pause at the exact right moment). Manson, who from my experience is a lovely, talented person, employed a cheerful assistant to walk beside him and carry an umbrella (perhaps “parasol” is more accurate) to shade him from the Los Angeles sunshine. Imagine an average height woman holding her arm as high as she could reach to keep the parasol over a 6 foot 1 inch tall Manson wearing 6-inch-heeled knee-high vinyl platform boots and full make-up. Perhaps the woman was the make-up artist just trying to protect her work from melting. But the impression it gave was that of a rock star flex that I still remember for being simultaneously practical and ostentatious.

So I understand how someone can look at rows of electronic umbrellas covering vineyards, or GPS programmed drones spraying fungicide or dropping mealy bug destroyers, or UV robots zapping mildew spores in vineyard rows at night… and be very impressed and even covetous of these high-tech inventions. But I don’t feel that way. I have the opposite reaction.

From a very practical standpoint, when I see tech innovations for agriculture that are more complicated than a thermometer or a rain gauge I see added expense; I see ongoing maintenance; I see glitchy software and regular updates and planned obsolescence; I see moving parts that can break and make the entire system a high-priced farm ornament; I see “labor saving” devices that require teams of technicians to repair and service and hours of training to understand and operate; I see calls to help desks that are in call centers with layers of bureaucracy and hold music on loop that was rejected from a waiting room in purgatory for being too tortuous; I see signing terms of service agreements that are too long to read and in which you give away every right to privacy and agree to uploading your entire vineyard’s P&L statement to a tech company so they can sell it to other tech companies… but you can’t use the device without signing; I see myself supporting corporations that see me as a data mine they own via subscription enslavement; I see start-ups that fold after five years leaving everyone who spent $75,000 on their fancy gadget without any support or service (Thanks, Monarch!). In short: I don’t see a solution but a hundred new problems.

But that’s just the practical side. From an ecological standpoint, when I see someone building electronically controlled umbrellas for vineyard rows, I just have to ask: Does Pinot Noir really taste that good? Really?

And if that question confuses you, let me explain: there are hundreds of ecological solutions that you could adopt that would be less costly, require less use of fossil fuels and fossil fuel-produced inputs, and be more assured of success. But those solutions would require you to grow grapes that are actually adapted to the world that we’re living in, not grapes that were adapted to a world that existed only a few centuries ago.

I recently released two incredibly important podcast episodes. One features a French scientist and professor, Marc-André Selosse, who makes the point that the heritage of wine is a tradition of evolution – not a tradition of keeping the same fetishized grape varieties in our vineyards forever, despite their gross ineptitude at dealing with the mildews, insects, weather, and climate conditions of the Now. The other podcast features Valentin Blattner, a European grape geneticist and grape breeder who helped start PIWI International, who described how easy it is to adapt our wine cultures by simply behaving as intentional bees, cross-pollenating different varieties of grapevines to develop robust, hardy, resilient, and delicious grape varieties… not once for all time, but continuously, generation after generation, creating stunning new varieties year after year that keep pace with the flow of life. Please listen to these episodes if you haven’t. They show the kinds of thinking that will allow wine to stay viable without reliance on technology and all of its failings.

Listen to Valentin Blattner and consider how inexpensive and simple of a solution grape breeding is. Then compare it to the massive investment of time and resources it took to develop a programmable vineyard drone or row umbrellas or any new tech invention that is meant to make it possible to grow outdated and maladapted varieties of grapes. What could drive that misallocation of energy? What beliefs make us think we need to go to these efforts to preserve something that is telling us it can no longer handle the stresses of this world? What biases and prejudices prevent us from seeing the need and the opportunity to simply adapt?

Is Pinot Noir actually that good, or have we just lost sight of sanity over the last century and bought into beliefs that support chemical companies and tech companies… but that do not support, and actually harm, wine?

I’m not against technology (thanks, Substack!). I get that a drone could actually have some significant benefits over a tractor. But why don’t we try to eliminate them both? Why don’t we start erring on the side of ecological solutions for a change? It’s not crazy to think that we could have no-spray viticulture. It’s crazy to think that a variety of grape that requires an oil refinery, a chemical factory, and a data center to be viable is the best that we can do.

Putting an umbrella over your grapes isn’t a rock star flex; it’s putting a sweater and mittens on a chihuahau and taking it for a “walk” in a baby stroller. Except it’s much less adorable and much more ridiculous than that because no one acquires a chihuahua to be productive as an agricultural entity. I get that spoiling your chihuahua and your grapes can both come from a place of love. I really do. But is it really “spoiling” if you must do it to make your grapes productive?

At some point someone has to stand up and say we’ve crossed the line. We are making insane choices and they are spiraling in the wrong direction. There is an objectively better way. Technological innovations are not adaptation, and our wine cultures clearly, desperately need some real, actual adaptation.