ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with technology, consumption, markets and related crimes and harms. It discusses a number of implications and consequences for the environment and the resources of the planet. The chapter is also concerned with various contradictions and paradoxes that relate to the ideas that: increased consumption can be more efficient, can reduce waste, can be better for human health, and can help to save the planet. It illustrates the irony around consumer goods alluded to by Featherstone, as a well as a tendency to deny the consequences of commodification. Technology produces 'goods' but also 'bads' and it is widely recognized that technology generates problems. The paradox of growing disillusionment with technology sitting unhappily alongside continued dependence was one of the key points of Young's observations on the place of technology in the politics of leisure and on the limits of creating and living in an alternative cultural world.
