Writer's Block: Luddites unite!
Are you worried about where technology will lead us? Do you think it's possible that civilization may someday turn away from technology altogether for the betterment of humankind?
*flails* why are so many people inclined to assume that technology itself can be good or evil? Or that "returning to the way it was before technology" will improve things? Technology a means to an end, and abandonmnet of it will make no one any better off than they are now--Sure, lots of kinds of technologies are, in my mind at least, missused or even sometimes ill-conceived, but technology on the whole is what helps advance our society. What really needs to be learned here is not to reject technology, but to learn to use it in moderation.
Over use of technology takes away jobs and therefore, through a rather well known chain, worsens the economy and maximizes environmental impact negatively. We need to lean away from using machines for menial tasks such as automatic checkouts and ATMs, because as convenient as they are, they simply aren't /necessary/ and are, with the wider picture in mind, detrimental. Technology that helps use tissue cells to create organs for people who need them but can't get them due to a lack of doners is something that is beneficial and, depending on ones own personal set of beliefs, necessary.
I feel that we should not fear where /technology/ will lead us, but rather worry about what people will do with the advancing technology. I do not believe that the day will ever come when people forsake technology entirely. There are far too many positive potentialities for that. I do hope that I will live to see the day when the population as a whole can rid themselves from the starry eyes that form every time some new automatic machine comes out and step back and decide if it is something that is really needed or will be something that promises long-term benefits as opposed to simply encouraging laziness.
*flails* why are so many people inclined to assume that technology itself can be good or evil? Or that "returning to the way it was before technology" will improve things? Technology a means to an end, and abandonmnet of it will make no one any better off than they are now--Sure, lots of kinds of technologies are, in my mind at least, missused or even sometimes ill-conceived, but technology on the whole is what helps advance our society. What really needs to be learned here is not to reject technology, but to learn to use it in moderation.
Over use of technology takes away jobs and therefore, through a rather well known chain, worsens the economy and maximizes environmental impact negatively. We need to lean away from using machines for menial tasks such as automatic checkouts and ATMs, because as convenient as they are, they simply aren't /necessary/ and are, with the wider picture in mind, detrimental. Technology that helps use tissue cells to create organs for people who need them but can't get them due to a lack of doners is something that is beneficial and, depending on ones own personal set of beliefs, necessary.
I feel that we should not fear where /technology/ will lead us, but rather worry about what people will do with the advancing technology. I do not believe that the day will ever come when people forsake technology entirely. There are far too many positive potentialities for that. I do hope that I will live to see the day when the population as a whole can rid themselves from the starry eyes that form every time some new automatic machine comes out and step back and decide if it is something that is really needed or will be something that promises long-term benefits as opposed to simply encouraging laziness.