Bittersweet Taste of Sugar (Berlin Technology Museum)

In the Berlin Technology Museum, I learned about the process of making beat sugar. It was really fascinating to read about how it's made, but then I learned about how the harvesting and creation of sugar came about. When it was discovered that sugar can be created from beats, a fierce industry grew up around it, and the technology associated with sugar creation brought about huge negative consequences. First, harvesting the beats for the sugar is a great deal of work, so many businesses relied on slave labor to do the work. The conditions for​ the slaves were terrible. The original process of making sugar produced a lot of waste, which polluted the environment in the Caribbean and Central America, but since the process and the labor were so cheap, the companies had no reason to find better ways to make sugar. This example shows that improvements in science and technology do have influential and positive effects on the world, but, as discussed with Einstein's E=mc^2, science and technology can be exploited for gain, which can lead to harm to other people and the planet.